Cute and Useful

A few months ago, my husband decided it was time to give up his Mr. Coffee-type coffeemaker and replace it with a french press. One thing he wasn't happy with was letting the brewing (and brewed) coffee sit on the counter losing heat. This carafe needed a cozy! 

You see the result above, made from several layers of cotton batting scraps, and fabrics from my stash in taupe, gray, and bright red (not the bluish colors my camera prefers to present). It was fun to cut without measuring and without thinking very much about color placement. Getting the batting layers to form an even circle and stay that way was a little tricky, while I sewed some quilting lines from top edge to bottom edge. And then, I had to ease/gather in the pieced covering (added after the quilting) when I put on the binding. Somewhat unorthodox construction, but it worked. Velcro holds the tab in place. 

By the way, the over-the-top blue flowered and plaid wallpaper will be gone as soon as I can work that into my schedule, to be replaced by off-white walls and bright red under the cabinets. 

Stash Assessment

Yikes! Do I have cotton twill, or what!

Contemplating another braided rug, I decided to go through all my fabric bins and shelves and find all the cotton twill I've cut up from khaki pants, and also any not-yet-cut-up pants. I knew I had some of both, but expected I might well need a trip to the Dig and Save before starting another project.

In short, I hit the mother load. Looks like I have 12 in-tact pants, plus more than 50 (!!) already cut up (some partially used), plus another 8 or so piles of unusual colors, like purple, bright red, yellow, and lime green (from miniskirts, kids' shorts, etc.). You'd think I'd remember cutting up so many pairs of pants, but ... well, I don't. It's certainly a nice surprise, though.

Those brights are calling to me. I remember my plans for those.....

Two Quilts and a Rug

Despite being out of town for a bit and working a lot, I've tried to do something quilt related every day, with pretty good success. Trying to keep a good work/life balance going. 

A lot of what I've been doing hasn't lent itself to photos or been especially blog-worthy, though. I can't imagine that anyone wants to hear details about me dithering over online purchases of batting, or my quest for the right fabric for new quilting frame leaders.

But I do have some results to share. My first braided rug is done! It's about 2 feet by 4 feet, consumed nine pairs of khaki pants (with very few scraps), and should be sturdy enough to survive years of shoes, melting slush, salt, mud, and washer and dryer sessions. 

For strength and speed, I chose to machine stitch the braided strips together. To avoid thickened ends, I just machine stitched several rows close to the cut ends, instead of binding them. We'll see how those cut ends hold up. I can always trim and finish them a different way later. My sewing machine complained a bit about having to pierce umpteen layers of tightly woven cotton twill (especially at those joins), and I broke one needle. 

I'm planning to make more of these, experimenting with color placement. Although I like the chenille rug a lot, these are less taxing to make and also more rugged (pardon the pun). 

Now, back to quilts. After some mulling, I decided to pare down the scrap star quilt top to a more manageable size. Now it will fit a queen-size bed, with modest overhang. I'm debating whether to try basting it on my hand quilting frame---something I've never done before. The advantages are saving space, much easier access, and an overall more pleasant and ergonomic basting experience. Hmm. 

The 14 blocks (two rows) I took off are now, somewhat rearranged, the basis for a second scrap quilt. I dug out the scrap box that has the leftovers from the original top and found two extra star blocks! Both have stars made of fabric that I like but decided was too dark for this project. But I'm going ahead and including one in this second top, to make a 3- by 5-block center. (The block at the lower left.)

I plan to string piece the multitude of scraps into a border, adding whatever else is in my stash of cut-up shirts to make a decent-sized top. 

A Quick Update

I've been out of town for a bit and, with one thing and another, haven't had time to post. And today, I discover that Blogger is having issues with  uploading photos, so I'll have to make do with just words for now. 

One of the nonphotogenic things I've been doing lately is gearing up for free-motion machine quilting. My past experiences with this have been poor to mediocre, so I've been trying to honestly assess my problems and figure out ways to get through or around them. 

1. Gloves with gripper dots. A few test runs have been very encouraging!

2. A "slider" mat for the needle area. No real trials yet, but I don't think it can hurt.

3. A table behind the machine to support the quilt better (added to a table to the left and the fact that the machine is set down into a table). 

4. My new sewing machine (an admittedly expensive fix!), which provides a 10-inch bed, auto thread cutting, low-bobbin indicator, and a slightly different (and I think better) feel to how the stitching starts (hoping this helps with those huge-first-stitch problems).

5. Sticking with circular designs. No points or straight lines! And nothing that depends on accuracy.

I'm trying to give myself every advantage! 

The Braiding Project

The days have been flying by! I'm working hard to get the first batch of copyediting on this new book turned in Monday, on schedule, so there's been precious little time for sewing. And what time I can squeeze in is not what one would call quality time---I'm pretty brain dead. It's a perfect time for some easy, repetitive tasks.

A few weeks ago I started cutting strips from khaki pants for a first attempt at a braided rug. Yes, another rug project. We are in serious need here! 

I will actually be plaiting, not braiding, which means that the worked strips will be very flat and wide. After some trial and error, I decided that using half-inch strips for plaiting would be manageable and look nice, and having each strip contain four layers of fabric would give enough body without being too heavy.

I start with pieces cut 1-7/8 inches wide, with the grain, and as long as possible. I put them through a Clover tapemaker (cutting a point on the end of the strip helps get the fabric into the tapemaker) and follow with the iron as I pull the tapemaker along. With the two raw edges nearly meeting and pressed flat, I fold the strip in half lengthwise and press again, so the raw edges are neatly encased, and the top and bottom surfaces are identical. I then open out the folds and piece lengths of strips together (a bias join, with the seam pressed open) to get a length a bit more than 6 feet. Then, I fold everything back up and sew near the edge. 

I figure I'll need nine individual strips like the one on the right, above, to make a roughly 3-inch-wide plait. Here are the first strips, grouped by color and loosely knotted together, ready to be woven into 4-foot-long plaits! At the bottom of the photo are more strips ready to be folded and stitched.

This little rug project is going to eat up a lot of pants! I get at least five 6-foot-4-inch lengths from one pair. But that means nine pairs of pants will produce five finished 4-foot plaits. That's a rug only 15 inches wide and 4 feet long. Well, I've certainly got lots of these pants, and if I run out, there's always the Dig and Save. 

Thinking about "What If?"

I've gotten some very nice comments about the colors in my quilts (thanks everyone!), which got me to thinking about how I approach color choices, which in turn had me thinking about my "what if?" moments. I guess the bottom line is that I've wanted to see what would happen if I purposely put restrictions on my choices. This, somewhat paradoxically perhaps, seems to spark my creative thinking---apparently some variation on the "necessity is the mother of invention" paradigm. 

On the day I said, "What if I don't buy any new fabric for quilt tops?" I had to come up with alternatives, which led me to the incredible bounty of inexpensive used clothing in this town. But very few clothes provide traditional quilting cottons. My fabric love drew me to glowing silk ties, wonderful wool suits, linen that I couldn't resist, mountains of cotton twill pants in umpteen shades of khaki and beyond, and more men's cotton shirts than I ever imagined. 

There's a good reason most quilters use the fabrics they do. Most of the other fabrics are a pain in one way or another (and often several at the same time). But I'm completely hooked on the what-ifs and on the quiet thrill of ignoring the usual rules. I'm happily pairing silk ties with wool suits, and figuring out ways to use heavy cotton twills without too many piled up seam allowances. Some things I try don't work out, but most do, at least in my view, and they lead to even more what-ifs. 

Figuring Some Things Out

Well, all that blathering earlier today about my quilter's block regarding the scrap star top made me feel a little better, but what really helped me was a little trip to Lazy Gal Quilting. Looking at Tonya's hand quilting is always nice, and I browsed through her past posts to see some more examples. 

Lo and behold, there was a photo incidentally showing some of her hand basting---with really short stitches. Why didn't I think of that myself?! Yes, it will take more time than the traditional long stitches I've always seen, but it will hold the layers better and the stitches won't be nearly as likely to get caught on things while machine quilting. This just might work! The other downside is, of course, picking out the threads from under the machine quilting, but I'm willing to deal with that, too. Thanks, Tonya!

I'm even getting excited about the prospect of marking some simple designs and trying to follow the lines. Hey, I have a new machine now, with a giant 10-inch bed, and my first attempts at some machine quilting on it were encouraging. I think the way the foot works keeps the quilt more stable than on the old machine.