WIP Wednesday

Im participating in the WIP Wednesday! I love wednesday because there is always so much eye candy over at freshly pieced!!! I like seeing the process!

I had alot of time to play in my studio this past weekend. I went on a denim kick. Sorry about the pics today, i was in a hurry... life has been so busy lately!

I made this bag ...

Recycled Jeans Bag

its from legs of old jeans and the inside is a vintage sheet i picked up the other day. Its ok, but its not big enough to be a big bag and not small enough to be a purse type bag... im going to work on the design of that and maybe make a few of these for christmas presents. this one i am using for my laptop, wish i would have padded it but... i will have to make a laptop sleeve now, wont i!

Well, making the bag, gave me an idea... i triple stitched the bag and the seams were so nice and flat afterwards... i thought hmmm.... I have 800 6 in squares cut out for 6 denim rag quilts, i have made one but you know what, those rag quilts are a pain in the patootie. so... i started sewing them together like this....

Denim Quilt

Im staggering the bricks and double seaming them to reduce the bulk... im really digging it and i think i will make 6 like this instead! I had planned on making a texas star on the back of the rag quilts and i have enough red, white and blue fabric, i can just piece it! These will be for the hampton sons and son in laws (travis, jess, buck, coleman, chris and jonathan)

Speaking of Jess, Ralph's oldest son, he has been diagnosed with spinal cancer. We dont know anything else other than that. So please keep him in your prayers, he is only 34 years old. He lives in Alaska and I think he will be coming home to live with us through this.

But back to WIP's... I worked on the other Kisses from Paw Paw Quilt for landon or trevor. I have one flimsy done, im putting together the other...

Hugs from Paw Paw Quilt

I figured out on the first one, i could put these 6 pieces together and do it two rows at a time instead of one.... so its ready, i just need to start making the rows.

Here is a better pic of the one i have finished:

Hugs from Paw Paw Quilt

Landon is 5 and Trevor is 4. Landon started pre-K this year and yesterday as we were leaving for work in the afternoon the school bus dropped him off... I cried... he looked so grown up!!! Travis' family lives on the ranch in the spot where ralph raised his 6 kids, we live in the ranch house that his mom and dad built in the late 60's. Its nice having them so close by!

Other than that, my pile of flimsies is growing. I did start quilting sharons pastel stripe saturday... but ohhh i have a puppy in some trouble, he chewed the batting from between the layers on one side while i was taking a break. Fixing that of course has overwhelmed me and im not sure what to do! I have a hole that is 6X12" I cut a piece of batting to fill the hole but im not sure if i should sew the two pieces of batting together or just quilt it making sure they stay together... any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Others:
You can see all of my on the WIP tab above...

The only one that made any other progress was Adrianna's HST Diamonds. I started putting rows together yesterday morning and should have more of it done by next wednesday!

hope yall have a beautiful wednesday... cant wait till the weekend so i can sew some more. This is a busy week for me with alot of stress and bills due... ugh... i cant wait to escape to my projects.

another flimsy and a plan

I worked this weekend on this:

Kisses from Paw Paw

I am making a matching twins for Landon and Trevor. Since they have a bunk bed. I'm making them slightly small for a twin, i always hated making the bunk beds with all that extra comforter.  They are 3 1/2 inch squares. Mostly it is plaid shirts but i threw in some 30's retro prints, gingham and some shirts that weren't plaid as well. This is the first quilt ive made "on point" and it was easier than i expected, i had been really intimidated by that.

It took me a while on this one to figure out the quickest way to put this together, but about half way through i figured it out.  you put the three pieces together, add one of the other points between two whites to make a 2X3 block. Then you connect these with the point from the next row combined with a white. The trick is, other than the three next to each other, you should never be sewing a print to a print, its always print to white. hmmm... might have to actually show that in pictures, it sounds more complicated than it is. I am about half way through piecing the 2nd one. I think they are going to have solid blue borders and i have a few blue and green sheets that will make the backing.

I also mentioned that i was collecting scrubs for my neices' quilt. I am going to use solids with white points.

Making Rounds

Ive decided the name is going to be "making rounds" instead of nurses running in circles. I can make pretty drawings now, I bought a box of crayons when walmart had their school supply sale. I love my crayons!! I had a box of colored pencils but it was a small box and i couldn't get darks dark with them... lol im a kid at heart and i like crayons.

I'm not sure how big I'm going to make the solid pieces, it depends on how big the pieces are that i have to work with when i start cutting into the scrubs. Id like big blocks 10" or so but if I'm going to get more mileage from smaller squares 6" or so... i will have to do that.

Yesterday i fixed a wrinkle in the pin basting of the striped quilt that is ready for quilting. It is much much cooler now (i had to go put on socks this morning cuz my toes were cold!!) and i can begin quilting that the next time i have a few hours to work on it.

All of my finishes and flimsys are in a stack. i cant wait to see the pile when they are done. I'm really looking forward to Christmas and having a huge stack of quilts that i get to give out! ho ho ho i will feel like Santa!

quilts in progress

the heat wave has broke!! woo hoo it stayed in the 70's and 80's today. We are getting a ton of rain from tropical storm Lee and it is SO badly needed here. This is the dryest it has ever been in recorded history! I am hoping to get back to the quilting tomorrow!

I have been doing a little organizing...

Fabric for Recycling

Ok, so i have been buying alot of shirts, we went yardsaling today... i now have almost a full closet of shirts for quilts and i have a plan for each and every one of them. See those oranges, i bought another today and as soon as i have 12 or so... it will be this:

I am now using pintrest, i found this from sometimescrafter

i dont know what it is about orange right now but it calling "make me into something beautiful" In the mornings i sit there with my coffee and stare at my fabric stash (a closet full of shirts i have bought) and those oranges keep smiling at me. I get up, rearrange the shirts to put green or blue or brown or grey with them... and yeah i like it... but the oranges dont seem to smile as much... so i saw this and there it is!!! that is what i want to do with my beautiful orange shirts. They need to be alone and smiling.

I have also been buying scrubs. I have a neice who is a nurse so next year she is getting a quilt out of scrubs.

Of course when i need red and blue plaid shirts to finish dallas' quilt, those are the ones i cant find. I am still looking for some red ones.

I have finished the irene flimsy and hope to quilt it and bind it tomorrow... although it may become a lee quilt if it doesn't quit raining in south lousiana which is closer to home. (however it can keep raining here in east texas, please!!!)

Irish Chain Quilt

I am working on adriana's quilt. I have a stack of these:

HST Quilt

and im not sure what to do with them now. I had planned on doing this:

HST Diamonds Quilt

But when i was playing with them trying to decide, ralph really liked this:

Pinwheels Quilt

I will play some more tomorrow maybe matching up the fabrics on the 2nd one.

one of my "leader/ender" projects (thats what im going to call it at least, its really its a "i really love to play with 1 1/2 in squares"

Lovely Little Windows

I have about 30 with 2 sides sewn on and i am LOVING it. But... im getting ahead of myself because this was going to be for NEXT christmas and i need to finish THIS christmas, AND it was going to be for the neice who is now getting the scrub quilt. hmmm this one might actually be for ME!!!

The other "leader/ender" project is an ocean waves quilt, i have been making these and when i have a shoe box full, i will count and see how many more i need! lol.

Ocean Waves Quilt

Its going to be incredibly scrappy and im using every bit of ugly fabric i can find.

I think thats a  pretty good run down of whats perculating in the studio!!

A Quilt for Irene

Having survived hurricane Rita in 2005, and i really feel it was "survival," I know that there is going to be someone from irene who is without a house, or all their belongings and who a quilt will bring comfort, so instead of sitting powerless and i do whenever there is a natural disaster, i started putting together some squares i had started and they are now my quilt for irene. Im sure there will be a drive for quilts eventually and i will send it.

Hurricane rita was the hurricane that came thru east texas about a week or two after katrina hit new orleans. We thought we might get a little rain, we live 165 miles inland! but it did alot more than that. Rita didn't get alot of covereage because new orleans was such a mess, but it did affect my life. We were out of power for 2 and a half weeks, during the storm the roof was blowing off the house i was in, we spent hours collecting buckets of water that was just pouring into the house, i remember feeling the rumble of the cement floor it was a tornado that ripped through forest down the road. The wind was amazing, for 10 hours straight we listened to 100 mile an hour winds rip through the trees, we had a pen of weanlings who were just bawling the whole storm... talk about heartbreaking, there was nothing we could do for them, no shelter we could offer. ugh... i hate thinking about it and i know that lives will be changed, homes lost, dreams broken because of irene and i know that i can make someone feel a little less vulnerable and devistated with a quilt... so im making mine.

Its a modified irish chain out of 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 inch scraps, ive been making the 9 patches for a while now and i have almost enough to put together a full size top, so im going to finish it the next couple days.

Irish Chain Quilt

I have had alot of good quality time in my sewing room this past week, i have loved it (My house is a wreck, but there is always tomorrow)... i think im going to start calling it my quilt studio, i like the sound better and i can retreat to my studio and be an obsessive artist and everyone will say, "ah yes, you know how she is when shes in her studio, nothing else exists!."

Know whats funny, i am enjoying the scrapiness of the irish chain and another one im working on, i find mismatched blocks comforting, the last few things ive worked on, the stripes, the red and blues that im making now... lol they are scrappy but too matchy matchy for me. To me, this irish chain is a scrap quilt and it makes me happy.

Here are a couple other shots i took this morning.

Recycled Fabric for Striped Quilts

some more stripes... im loving stripes!

Ive decided the best way to organize my odd quilting fabric is to leave them as shirts until im ready to use them. So... i now have a closet of shirts, this is my "pastel stripe" collection.

striped quilt

and whats this... a little box of stripes???

once ive cut up a shirt and used part it... to keep it organized im cutting the rest of it into 6 1/2, 3 1/2, 2 1/2 and 1 1/2 squares and some strings as well of course. All the other squares im throwing in bins for that size but my stripes are special and they have their own little box.

wow... im sounding really weird about these stripes... ill stop now. My prayers are going out to the east coast. Hunker down and hold tight, you will get thru this!!

does anyone else do this?

When i get an idea for a quilt, I cant just write an idea for a quilt down, i HAVE to make a block or two of it. I have blocks all over my sewing room of ideas, some are now quilts in progress... others, well they are random blocks, in various places that have no home. I guess im going to save them because someday they may be worked into a quilt or maybe a quilt back. But... do yall do this or are you content with seeing an idea on paper?

Mostly what ive worked on this week is trying to get control of the piles of fabric in my sewing room. Of course i keep getting sidetracked. This is how the process goes. I am sorthing through the pile (i am up to 3 big bins of fabric that needs to be put somewhere so that it is usable. none of it is yardage, its all scraps from fat quarter size to strings. I find a peice of thin muslin that i was going to use for foundation material. I look at it, i look at the nice neat pile of strings that i have been ironing and putting in their proper home... i cut a peice off of the foundation fabric and i sew a couple strips on, ohhh how pretty, im loving it.... well i then DIG in the nice neat box of strips... undoing the work ive done, and i sew some more strips on... now i have a pile of wrinkled messy strips (at least they are still in their proper bin) and string thingy started when i know i dont have enough strings and i know i have 11 other quilts to finish before christmas.... but... i did find out that i do love the way it looks. Im going to keep it until after the 11 others are done and finish a stringy kaliedescope quilt.

I went to goodwill again yesterday looking for more red shirts. I bought 10 shirts for 10 bucks, only 3 of them red. I need about 4 more red plaid shirts!  5 of the shirts i bought were pastel stripes. YEP... i am up to 8, i figure i want about 15 before i can do a striped shabby quilt for myself. I of course have a different design in my head so im sure in the next week or so, i will be cutting into them and making a block or two of the plan... even though it will be months before i can make this for myself.  (ok.. i also went to the quilt store and to walmarts and made purchases at both of them too. I spent 30 bucks on fabric yesterday!!)

Alot of the scraps, im just cutting into squares. 3 1/2, 2 1/2 and 1 1/2. Of course all these pretty little squares call me... i found a bunch of white 2 1/2 squares that i had cut for another project im no longer making... so what do i do... i sit down and start sewing 9 patches, for an irish chain quilt... again... NOT one of the 11 i need to finish by christmas but oh its so pretty and i like making 9 patches! I figure i will make one everytime i find enough white squares for a patch. I have alot of white scraps in my bins that need to be cut into something, might as well be 2 1/2 in squares.

So... i am still not on the plan... i am trying to organize the mess and im creating more projects instead... lol. The heat looks like it will be around for a week or so more... i cant wait till its over!