Reckless and Unsupervised, Quilter Goes Rogue! Strippy Thousand Pyramids, Anyone?

I Made Cute Little Triangles Out of Scraps!

The past few days have been more chaotic than anticipated, and we have company coming in from out of town on Friday so there's lots to get done in preparation for houseguests.  Those are my excuses.  Anyway, I found that I wanted to do a little "decompression sewing" just to hear the rhythmic stitching of my sewing room and touch all the pretty fabrics while my mind was wandering off in multiple directions.  That is not a good mindset for figuring out how to adjust the bottom pieced border for my Jingle BOM, which ended up about 1/4" longer than the top border.  And I'm waiting to start joining pineapple log cabin blocks until Jingle is a complete top in line for quilting.  So I got this wild urge to just grab leftover 1 1/2" wide fabric strips that I'd cut for my log cabin blocks and start sewing them together, with no plan at all.  There was a very good possibility that I was wasting fabric, thread, and time on this fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants piecing.  It was exhilarating!

No Pins or Nothin'!

For my pineapple log cabin quilt, I chopped up lots and lots of fat quarters and fat eighths into 1 1/2" wide WOF (width of fabric) strips and draped them over a tall laundry drying rack to keep them wrinkle-free and ready to go for the FOUR YEARS that I have been working on those blocks(!).  I wanted a lot of variety for the pineapple blocks and I ended up with an awful lot of leftover strips, enough to use in several different scrappy string-type projects.

Lots and Lots of Leftover Strips

I came up with several different designs in EQ8 for using up the strips, such as the Pythagoras-Meets-Jane design I shared with you the other day, as well as this offset star design:

EQ8 Offset String Star Baby or Wall Quilt Design

Here's the other EQ8 design I came up with for my leftover strips:

Another Idea for Leftover Fabric Strips

I still like each of those designs, and I may (or may not) make BOTH of them at some point.  However, each of them would require more brain power than what I have available at the moment.  You know when your Internet is running really slow because one of your teenagers is downloading a movie, Brother the Other is streaming music, and your husband is downloading computer updates all at the same time?  That's how my brain is running right now.  I didn't want to muck around with templates or foundations or even rulers; I just wanted to sew little strips together into big pieces and then decide later what to do with them.  So I just started grabbing strips of fabric and sewing them together, with NO plan.  It felt so wicked!

This Is What Reckless Abandon Looks Like

And then, taking a break from my mindless, reckless strip piecing, I poked around on Pinterest for some ideas of what to do with my pieced-together strips.  Inspiration struck when I stumbled across this lovely quilt, "My Life Aquatic," that was made by my friend Julie of Pink Doxies in 2015:

Inspiration Quilt "My Life Aquatic" Made by Julie of Pink Doxies

Isn't that beautiful?  I don't have the dimensions of Julie's quilt, but I think her strips are wider than mine, like maybe from a jelly roll.  But  that's my plan, as much as I have one.  I pieced 8 of my 1 1/2" strips together, and that gave me a big enough piece of "made fabric" to cut out triangles using my Nifty Notions Good Measure Bias Triangle ruler, just lining it up and slicing around the perimeter of the ruler on all three sides with my rotary cutter.  

Nifty Notions Bias Triangle Ruler

That's the ruler I used to cut out those first two triangles at the top of this post.  Nifty Notions calls it a "Bias Triangle," but it's actually an isosceles triangle (two equal sides) because the length of the sides is longer than the length of the base.  This is the triangle that works for a triangle-in-a-square or "peaky and spike" block, like 54-40 Or Fight:

54-40 Or Fight Block Made With Bias Triangle Ruler

 I think I'm going to switch to my 60 degree equilateral triangle ruler.  An equilateral triangle has all three sides the same length and all three angles measure 60 degrees.  As I discovered with my Tabby Mountain Disco Kitties, it's MUCH easier to piece equilateral triangles together because you can just slap them together RST (right sides together) with all the edges even, no pins or nothin', and they'll come out perfectly.  Isosceles triangles need to be offset just so in order to open them up and have the seam look right:

Remember How "Jog the Ends Slightly" Made Me Crazy?

I'm not looking to give myself any more aggravation than absolutely necessary, if you know what I mean!  I'd like to give my seam ripper a few days off for good behavior!  

Meanwhile, I got all the foundation paper carefully torn away the first of 36 pineapple log cabin blocks last night.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, either -- just took time and patience.  

Well, I still need to prep some vegetables and do a last-minute dust-and-vacuum run through the house before it's time to pick my niece up from the bus station, so I'd better get off the computer and get on with it!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up with:

• ·       Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/ 
• ·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

Nothing Is Finished! Let's Start Something New!!! Tula Pink's Tabby Mountain Quilt is Happening TODAY!

Greetings from the oddly frigid winter wasteland of Charlotte, North Carolina!  I hope your new year is off to a better start than mine is.  I frittered away my New Year's Day baking cranberry orange scones for my family, shopping for fabric online, and falling down a flight of stairs because my socks slipped on the carpet when I was carrying down a laundry basket.  I caught myself with the railing and didn't hurt anything more than my pride, but this was NOT an auspicious beginning to 2018!  My biggest accomplishment for Day One of 2018 is that I found a new quilt project that I want to make, and I am going to make it TODAY.  I am so excited!

60" x 74" Tabby Mountain Quilt by Tula Pink for Free Spirit

This is the 60" x 74" Tabby Mountain Quilt, a free Tula Pink pattern that is available from Free Spirit right here.  All you need to make this is the Tabby Road Fat Quarter collection, which I already own, and a third of a yard each of eight coordinating solid fabrics which I also already own.  I think I could cut and piece this entire quilt top in the time it takes me to make just ONE of my paper pieced pineapple log cabin quilts, and I think it's adorable exactly as Tula Pink designed it, so no need to spend additional time designing an alternate colorway, either.  So, why am I sitting here writing about it instead of upstairs MAKING it, you might ask?  

Because, in order to show off the large scale kitty cat print fabrics effectively, this pattern uses 30 degree triangles cut from 10" strips of fabric.  Although I own all of the fabrics and I even own a Cut For the Cure 30 degree triangle ruler, that one is only 7 or 8" tall and this is only going to be a quick and easy project if I can quickly and ACCURATELY cut out all of those triangles...

30 Degree Non Slip Triangle Ruler by Creative Grids

The Creative Grids ruler pictured above is 20" tall and it would be perfect for this project.  I just called my Bernina shop (5 minutes from home) and they don't have the ruler I need, so that means I'm either going to JoAnn's (20 minutes away) or to the next closest quilt shop or fabric store (the Bernina quilt shop in Lowell or Mary Jo's in Gastonia, both about 45 minutes to an hour each way depending on traffic).  Ugh.  Maybe I'll drag my teenage permit-holding driver out of bed and make him drive me around from sewing shop to sewing shop for driving practice???  Probably not worth the earful of whining I'd get from my reluctant chauffeur.

Although I really love this quilt exactly as is, with all of the same fabrics, I also think this pattern would be great for using up some of the other large scale prints in my stash.  And in addition to continuing to work on my WIP projects this year, I also need to mix in some quick, easy and fun projects for "instant" gratification -- and much-needed longarm quilting practice.  I need to build up a lot more confidence and experience with that beast of a longarm machine before I can quilt something that I've been working on for years, like my hand applique projects or my pineapple log cabin quilt!