Quilting and Stuff by Knitnoid

Author Archives: Pam

I made my first quilted item as a visual aid for a math project in 7th grade. Over the next 25 years quilting was hit or miss, but quilting took over all the other crafts I've done in 2003.

False Start

It started simple enough — my 1 1/2″ box of strips is overflowing and I’ve been hankering to make a Log Cabin quilt. Not that I don’t have at least 3 projects that I’m actively working on, or that one of my goals this year was to finish anything new I start, or that I have several projects waiting in the wings that are on my list to finish this year.

But would this be a new start if the strips were already cut?

Anyway, I pulled a bunch of 1 1/2 inch red squares or pieces which were at least 3 inches long out of the box. I spent time last night separating the lights from the mediums, brights and darks. I pressed my lights and then decided “dark” would be anything that wasn’t “light” and mixed my mediums and brights back into the dark pile.

At that point, I should have put everything back into the box and sat on it to get it to close if necessary.

I made 40 cute little red and light 2-patches.

Then I sewed them to dark strips. — some times with the light square on through the machine first, sometimes with the red square first, sometimes with the dark fabric right side up.

I pressed and trimmed the blocks only to discover that I didn’t always have the 2-patch oriented the same way and I had a couple of the dark fabrics with the wrong side of the fabric up.

It wasn’t until I came back to my computer to figure out whether I needed a dark fabric or light fabric next that I discovered my biggest issue. My first strip should have been light!

This is when all the strips got put back into the box.

The box is no longer overflowing, but I think it’s because I pressed the light strips, not because I used that much fabric.

Stash Report

No pictures today. There was no fabric brought into the house — it’s still out in the car. 🙂

My sister and I dug through a few more of Mom’s boxes Saturday and I found several lengths of fabric which came home with me. Once I bring it in and find a place for it, I’ll count it, and the rest of the fabric that’s still kicking around in moving boxes.

For all the fabric cutting that I did this week, I don’t have much to show for it on my report. My pre-cut pieces won’t get counted until I use them. I didn’t think I had any fabric to count, but there was the last bit for Oklahoma Backroads, and what I used on Dancing Flowers.

Here are the numbers:

Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added to Date: 79.431 yards

Fabric Used this Week: 1.578 yards
Fabric Used to Date: 32.911 yards

Net Stash for 2010: 46.52 yards

See how others are doing by checking out the links at Patchwork Times.

Singer Treadle Machine

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This Singer Treadle machine was my great-grandmother’s. I remember my mother sewing on it during our visits to my grandmother and great-grandparents in California. When I was older, I even sewed on it out in the laundry room.

After my grandmother and great-grandmother passed away, my parents brought it to Kansas City. The summer after my high school graduation it was setup in the basement and my mother and I made my college wardrobe — she sewing on the modern sewing machine — a Kenmore Diamond Jubilee which was then 20 years old — and I on this treadle machine. Given where it was located in the basement, I can’t promise that we had the motor hooked up.

The treadle machine made the move with my mom 7 or 8 years ago. It’s been sitting in the dinning room and used as a buffet and/or plant stand. Sometime this summer, as soon as I can figure out where to put it and how to get it home, this machine is going to come home with me.

My nephew, who is 7, was amazed when I opened it up. He had no idea it was a sewing machine. I wanted to get a look at it to see what condition it’s in. The hand wheel moves the needle up and down with no issues. The treadle moves smoothly — but it doesn’t turn the hand wheel. There is no way I’m going to plug the motor in until it’s been checked out and possibly the cord replaced. I’m sure the belt needs replacing as well. Looking in the pictures, I see the “break” is where the staple is, so perhaps it’s not it as bad of a condition as I thought.

Now I’m off to find treadle resources because I really would like to piece a quilt on this machine.
In the drawer is the manual. I didn’t think to take a picture of it. It says it’s a Singer (obviously) Sewing Machine No.66. The copyright on the manual is 1915. The motor says it was patented May 22, 1971 1917 by Hamilton-Beach Mfg Co.

Carolina Christmas – Poinsettia Stars

The Poinsettia Star blocks are made – the 2 x 2 — 16″ blocks that is. Well, except for one. I seem to be missing an individual star block. I don’t know if I miscounted or if it’s here somewhere in the sewing room.

No More Blue Scraps

It’s taken 3 days, but I have no more blue scraps. Instead I have 3 1/2″, 2 1/2″, 2″, and 1 1/2″ strips; 4″, 2 1/2″ and 2″ squares and HSTs – most which finish at 3″

Click here to see what I started with.

I’m off to see if I can get them into the appropriate boxes, then I’m going to go piece!

Distracted

This week I outlined a couple of simple goals – deal with the blue and neutral scraps and get half of my Carolina Christmas blocks sewn together. I’ve made it through at least half of the scraps and I’ve sewn together a few of the Carolina Christmas blocks – but then I got distracted.

But then, instead of getting up and pressing the blocks, I pulled this drawer out. This is Oklahoma Backroads — or will be after I sew them together. Up to this point this has been my leader/ender project. But tonight these pieces were calling me, so I gave in to the distraction and finished up 10 blocks.

Perhaps now I can get back to this week’s goals.

QA Wednesday

This week I’m getting the Quilting Accountability report done on the correct day 🙂

Last week I outlined several things that wouldn’t need much to complete.  When I finally remembered to do my QA Report I simply wanted to make progress on at least two of these tasks.  I’m happy to report that I succeeded.

The label is on the quilt and I got the pillowcase made. I also finished the Dancing Flowers quilt top.

So what needs to be done this week?

These blue and neutral scraps need to be cut up for two reasons –

  1. I need blue and neutral pieces for the Blue Ridge Beauty workshop I’m attending in two weeks
  2. I need to empty the scrap basket by July.

Also on the list is making progress on the Carolina Christmas quilt top — I’m going to aim for at least half the blocks sewn together by next week.

Check out Bari’s and others’ lists of weekly goals over .

Dancing Flowers is a Top!

I finished the sashing this evening and have decided to leave that narrow black border — just enough to bind and call this a top. Now to cut the binding and see what I have that will make a good backing.

Dancing Flowers Cornerstones

I’ve had lots of comments on the layout I’m using for Dancing Flowers.

Thank you.

But I can’t claim all of the credit. EQ6 helped tremendously with the cornerstones. In EQ the cornerstone is called French Knot Corner. I’ve only used 2 colors and the background instead of 3, and I took out the fiddly diagonal seams and partial seaming, reducing the number of pieces to 24. Even so, the 4 cornerstones took me about 2 1/2 hours – not including the time spent on cutting the fabric. These are cute, but I’m so glad the ones on the quilt are going to be twice as large.

Way back when…even before I received the Black and Bright swap blocks, I thought I’d set the blocks in 4 strips and alternate the pieced strips with narrow strips with applique flowers. I got as far as cutting out the flowers for the quilt before deciding it would make the quilt too busy, not to mention “I don’t do applique”. Anyway Dancing Flowers was my test project and will become a wall hanging.

What’s on My Design Wall


I’ve been putzing around in my sewing room all weekend and finally got enough stuff put up, I was able to re-hang the design wall. Not only have I been cleaning, but I’ve been quilting and finally came up with the setting for my Dancing Flowers wall hanging. The picture above is from EQ. I imported pictures of my blocks and then set them into the quilt design.


So far all I have done is the inner sashing.

I settled on this layout since I’m making it to go with my Black and Bright Swap block quilt. Here’s an EQ rendering of the quilt. Perhaps by the end of the year this quilt will make it into the top 5 UFOs to finish.

To see if others are working on their UFOs or something new, check out the links at Patchwork Times.