Quilting Again

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Finally finished the clean out of my townhouse on Friday. There’s still stuff to be given away and put in the trash, but the big purge is done!

So yesterday I was able to resume quilting. This quilt was about half done – I had 16 design repeats left to embroider; I did 10 after fighting with my embroidery machine for an hour: it was refusing to sew with the cotton variegated thread I had been using without breaking it repeatedly. 

I did the usual things: rethreaded both top and bottom thread, change the needle, cleaned lint from top thread path, cleaned out the bobbin thread area…. I even tried straight stitching on scraps with the cotton thread, with polyester – the problem was the cotton thread, perhaps a weak spot, because eventually I was able to embroider/quilt with it and was able to complete the quilting. Trimmed the excess and bound the quilt.

Quilt Top

Quilt Back


This is Quilt #8 which I’ve completed for the show in Parrsboro end of August. #9 (shadowed blocks) is pin basted and ready to be quilted. I set up a block design and a border embroidery last evening – I’ll begin working on that today. 

I am hoping to create a 10th quilt before the move. I won’t have access to my machines for three weeks and will be busy setting up the apartment early August. I know what I want to create for the top (still pondering what to do with the back). So I’ll get started on the quilting and do the prep work for #10 in the next few days.

Happy to be sewing again!

Adding To The Stash

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The other day when I dropped into Sew With Vision (my local fabric shop), the plumeria (frangipani) print fabric called out to me. I admired it, but didn’t buy any. I was back in today and today I couldn’t walk out without it!

I was able to partner it with four other bright fabrics. Now I need to go through my stash to see if I have any other fabrics to go with these – I have a feeling I don’t. I did buy 1/2 m of each so I have lots of fabric to play with as it is. NO idea what I might do with this – I know if I cut it into strips / triangles / squares I’ll lose much of the integrity of the plumeria but the colours will still be strong.

For now, I’ve put them away in a labelled box on my shelf. They’ll call out to me again, once I’m settled. At the moment I have two quilts to finish before I pack up my machines.

The purging is ALMOST complete – just the pantries (I have four food storage locations) to go through, none of them large. That’ll take a morning to throw out long outdated packages and tins and perhaps even storing what’s left in those large plastic tubs I bought the other day. Better than 2′ cubes – the tubs, although smaller, have handles so they are liftable!

Day by day, I’m getting there. Yesterday, 40 years of my professional life was sorted into paper / plastic / cardboard and bundled into recycling bags. Out the door. I had to ask myself – is that all it was? But then I think of the students in those classes whose lives were affected by the experience whether they’re aware of it or not. Those 40 years has a gentle ripple which keeps moving outward….

Before / After…

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My house sale was confirmed Friday – Saturday I started the BIG PURGE – all the books (but a favorite few) GONE! I have begun going through knickknacks, clothing, fabric, kitchen stuff, serving pieces… I started a “Value Village” pile. (Value Village is a thrift shop that supports the local Boys/Girls Clubs.) I haven’t offered much to friends – everybody already has too much stuff of their own.

Here is the living room bookcase – before:

After:

The study before:


After:


In all, I took 65 grocery bags FULL of books to Women For Music – a not-for-profit that holds book sales in support of  Symphony Nova Scotia. I know some of what I took will end up shredded and in the landfill – I just couldn’t do that myself!

I’ve also made two trips to Value Village – large car-full loads each time and I have yet another VV pile growing. I’m guessing I will make at least two more trips there before I’m done. 

I’m aiming to have this purge completed by coming weekend so I can get back to sewing without having this clean out interfering. I have two quilts to quilt and possibly one more to start from scratch before the end of June when I’ll have to pack up my machines. I’m having a showing in Parrsboro end of August/early September – I will have nine new quilts to show (maybe a tenth), as well as three wall hangings – two I didn’t show last time – one from 2014 and one new. So I have lots to accomplish in the next four weeks!

Blue/White/Yellow…

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Finished these socks last evening. I don’t have any like this in my sock drawer – I claimed them for my collection. I actually had someone else in mind as I was knitting but they’ll get the next pair…


They’ll be fun to wear with navy and I’ll have to see if Woolovers has a golden yellow sweater…

Shadow Quilt – Quilt Back

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I started this insert for the Shadow Quilt back by cutting 2 1/2″ strips of the fabrics used on the top and sewing two strips together. At that point I wasn’t sure what I would do with the double strips. I ended up cutting equilateral triangles, sewing pairs into diamonds, then compiling four diamonds into a larger one.


This large diamond gave me 9″ for the start of what I intend to be a 14″ strip.

I aligned five large diamonds end to end: 75″ – long enough for the quilt back but I wanted to fill in where the points touched. I added single small diamonds on each side in the space. That still left ten half-diamonds needed on each side. The easiest way to figure out the dimensions for these half-diamonds was to place a sheet of paper beneath the diamond layout and draw in the missing half-diamond (I added a 1/4″ to each angled side to be sure there would be adequate seam allowances).


I did the same for the 1/4 diamonds needed to complete the ends as well.

Now diamonds are pieced in diagonal lines. Because I was improvising as I went along, I already had the large 4-part diamonds sewn which complicated the process somewhat. In the end I laid out the pieces and assembled the strip section by section.

Width so far: 9 1/4″ – so I’ve cut strips for each side:


The borders: 1″ red, 1/2″ dark grey, 2 1/2″ light grey on the outside. The strip will be inserted into the darker grey fabric with vertical pale lines and dots.

I’ll add the borders tomorrow.

Restored…

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I returned from Toronto with a couple of pair of worn out socks. One pair was beyond salvation. The holes in the foot and heel were too large to repair. I’ll save the legs and knit new feet, I thought, but there was so much lint embedded in the yarn I knew I’d never be able to restore the legs to a wearable condition. That pair got trashed.

The second pair, on the other hand, had possibilities: one sock had a hole in the toe and both heels were worn through, but the main part of the foot wasn’t worn too badly. So I cut out the heels and removed the cast-off toe portion of both socks and started to work. I knit new heels and toes and those socks are now just like new!


They’ll go in the mail In the next few days.

Sewing Studio – Plan

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sewing studio

Here is my current tentative layout for my sewing studio. The kitchen/dining room/living room is a large rectangular space: from the kitchen island to the windows/sliding doors/ is 31′. Width at the doors is 11′ – at its widest the room is 15′. It’s a big room! There is a doorway on each side leading to a bedroom, but the overall main space is uninterrupted.

There is enough wall space to accommodate the sewing tables for each machine at the balcony/window end of the room. Because the room is so wide, I envision a kitchen island for a cutting table – the unit 24″ deep, 6′ long, with a 3’x6′ top (this will overhang the base by 12″ and perhaps allow the “back” of the island to have shelving) with a cutting mat surface for rotary cutting. I see something like this:

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(without the granite top) and probably 12-15″ longer to accommodate shelves at the end as well as the back. Since most of my furniture is teak I thought a finish something like this would work – simple and in an approximate colour family.

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A unit like this would compensate for the lack of a closet with shelving in this main space. Right now, my sewing room is very compact and has spilled over into the closets of two other rooms!

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However, I think with this shelving and repurposing my teak shelving storage unit and the dining room buffet to handle fabric and notions I will have plenty of sewing storage. (There is also a “den” – for a “box room” where I can put the overflow if I need to.)

Now I need to be patient and wait until I’m actually in the apartment to place what I do have and then see what kind of space I have for the island – who knows, I might be able to make it even bigger. I want to be able to stand at the cutting table and not be far from the machines, ironing board, and the shelves where stuff is stored. Right now I can do that in my small sewing room (9.8′ x 8.7′).

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While I will have much more space I want things to be close to hand.

Getting this all set up is going to be fun!

 

 

House Sold!

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My house sold this week – now my life gets crazy! I’ve got six weeks to sort through my “stuff”, decide what to keep and what to pass on, pack it so I can actually find it when I arrive at the new apartment.

I will actually have more floor space than I have in the townhouse. Before I looked at apartments I thought about how I use the space I have: I spend almost all of my time sewing, doing things at the computer, and knitting/watching TV in my bedroom. I don’t use my living room/dining room space much at all. So I decided I would actually set up a sewing studio in the main area of the apartment. I spent yesterday afternoon with a friend scaling up the floor plan I obtained online so I could think about where to position existing furniture and consider what I might want custom made.

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There will be lots of room for three sewing tables (one for my quilting machine, one for my serger, and one (much larger than the one I currently have which needs to be built) for my embroidery machine which I use to quilt the quilts. There is also going to be room for a cutting table. I had originally planned to use my dining room table with a cutting mat surface for that purpose, but I was in Home Depot yesterday and realized a kitchen island with drawers and shelves in the end sitting in the middle of the room surrounded by machines (and close to the ironing board) would be just the thing. I’m not going to order that until I get the machines set up. So I may end up with room nearer the kitchen island for the dining room table.

I plan on using the smaller second bedroom as a computer/sitting room (with a day bed for an occasional guest).

Now I have to go through all the books (there are books in every room, right now) and get rid of almost all of them – I will just keep those I actually reread: the Dorothy Dunnetts, the Exordium (a si-fi 5 series set which I reread often), and I don’t know what else. The challenge will be figuring out what to do with the discards – I hate sending them to the paper recycling depot, but there aren’t many used book stores left in the city.

Then I will have to go through all the ornaments/dishes on the shelf unit currently in my living room and sort those. I will also need to carefully sort the art so I can easily find the few I’m going to have space to hang.

I have a check-list that I need to dig out and start working my way through it. I’ve also got to keep in mind I’ve committed to having a showing of 10 new quilts end of August through to mid-September. I’ve got 7 completed, #8 is being quilted at the moment, and #9 I’ve just finished piecing the top (borders still to come). So I have to come up with one more quilt and get it stitched before mid July when I have to be out of the house!

And there’s still a possible quilting class June 7 and 28. I know what I’ll be making during the class – a variation of the quilt the participants will be working on.

So my life has suddenly become a lot busier!

Shadowed Blocks Quilt

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Just finished piecing the centre portion of this quilt top. I will add 4″ borders in the off-white background fabric. I’ve got a medium/dark grey small print fabric for the backing – have no idea yet what kind of piecing I will do. I have plenty of left overs from the blocks (part of my Fossil Fern stash) so I will do something with it.

I saw photos of shadowed block quilts a while back – squares, rectangles… It was something I wanted to try. It’s a relatively simple pattern to figure out – I did deliberate a bit before deciding on that charcoal colour for the shadow. I auditioned dark reds, lighter greys, but this grey seemed to make the coloured blocks float which is the intention of this quilt idea.

Now to come up with something for the back of the quilt.

Grey/White Striped Socks

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I liked working with this yarn. It was just a bit softer than most of the socks yarns I have used. (Don’t you know I can’t find the label – I’ve tossed it out! It is a blend of 75% merino/25% nylon).  Because I only had a 50g ball of yarn, I interspersed a solid white and a pale grey as I knit so I could extend the pattern most of the way to the toe.