September Monthly Recap

September was a month filled with pondering, planning, stash shopping, and stitching.

Studio Squirrels Exhibit A  - the quilt top and scrappy pieced backing for Ludiosis were started and finished, neither of which were seriously on the radar until after the first of the year.

The long-planned set of twelve new pillows achieved a major milestone with the top slabs stitched and the batting and backing for those slabs cut.  Next month I'll get them sandwiched, quilted, and trimmed to size before cutting any of the pillow envelope backing pieces.   The goal is to have them in use by early November.

The vacuum sealed pillow forms were released from their packages and are expanding while the rest of the process proceeds.

Exhibit B for the studio squirrels is Candy Corn - a gift project that saw a quilt top and a finished quilt started/completed during the second half of September.

Exhibit B-Part 2 is the long runner made using the three extra columns from Candy Corn.  

On the intentional side of things, Rastro (the second bonus quilt from the Macnas series) became a finished quilt.

Githerments, the third bonus quilt from the Macnas series, was pin basted and is ready for quilting/binding in October with thread chosen and bobbins wound.

Motley, the fourth bonus quilt top from the Macnas series, was donated to Many Hands and Many Hearts along with yardage I had planned to use for binding.

September saw plans come together and significant prep work for several sets of seasonal utility mats and placemats.  

The squares cut for December's set of reversible utility mats (posted here) have now been sorted into groups for 5 top slabs and 5 back slabs ready for piecing.  Batting and binding strips were also cut.

(Above) Six 

tops (gray print), six backs (spotted black), and six pieces of batting were cut this month with lots of binding made for a second 

set of January placemats.  

I pulled this gathering of pieces from the resource boxes to make a companion set of five utility mats for January.

The scrappy tops will be pieced using these fabrics and the backs will be cut from companionable yardage (pulled but not shown).

I finished this pair of gift pillowcases on the 29th making them the last project of September.

Finally - squirrel Exhibit C - introducing Dug.

* * *

Stay tuned for lots more stitching/quilting/binding during October. 

Quiltdivajulie

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"Little by little, one travels far."

J.R.R. Tolkien

Welcome to the Studio

Welcome to the studio, Dug.

Given that he's the one who uttered "Squirrel!" in the movie UP, it seemed only fitting that he join up with my studio squirrels.

(birthday present from younger son who gets my squirrel-y sense of humor)

I used the three extra columns from Candy Corn and turned them into a 15" x 70" runner for our dining room buffet as part of our October seasonal decor.  

Quilted with Glide thread in Raven (deep purple) using closely spaced uneven wavy lines.

Candy Corn is now pin basted and the bobbins for Max are wound.

The goal is to get this one quilted and finished so it can be gifted during Sunday's family dinner. 

* * *

This was my "big" birthday present from DH . . . I haven't even begun to figure out all the things it can do but I have managed to customize the screen photos using several of my own pictures.  

One step at a time.

Quiltdivajulie

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"The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things."

Henry Ward Beecher

Candy Corn - the Flimsy

The Luminescent Leaves print (Ann Lauer for Benartex) used in the backing for Ludiosis was released in multiple color ways.  

Tuesday morning as I put away the remaining fabrics from making Ludiosis, I realized that this purple, green, orange, and black version of that print would be perfect for an October/Halloween ottoman quilt for Young Man's Family (a wish quietly thought out loud by elder son back when Ruska was gifted).

The purple (Alluring Butterflies, also by Ann Lauer) and orange (Button Mosaic, Kaffe Fassett Collective) yardage have been stashed for too long.  The too-perfect binding was already made having been abandoned from some previous project.

So YES, this quilt NEEDED WANTED to be made NOW.

By Thursday afternoon the top was sewn, pressed, and pinned on the design wall.

I used the 3-Hour Baby Gingham Quilt free download from Fat Quarter Shop and altered the tutorial's approach to suit the size I needed (55" x 70").

Straightforward cutting, lots of paired strip sets pressed to the dark, 14 very long sub-cuts, followed by ten long nested seams.

(I previously used this tutorial when making Merry and Bright)

This on-sale backing is on order and due here early week so there's a pretty good chance I will have Candy Corn quilted and ready to gift by the end of September.  

Candy Corn (named by younger son) most definitely qualifies as a total squirrel project.  

Plus there are three extra long vertical columns to play with - yet another seasonal squirrel waiting in the wings.

Rastro has been pin basted and is about to be quilted.  The pin basting pool noodles are empty and ready for Candy Corn as soon as the spiderweb backing arrives.

And slowly, a few at a time, I've been fusing these smallish pieces of sari silk onto tricot interfacing so they're ready for action when their time eventually comes.  The wide backing the un-fused silks are resting on is a 2025 print by Alison Glass for Andover.   

I've named this project Silfira (noun meaning "silent fire - an inner, quiet confidence that doesn't need to be loud to be powerful").

 

* * * 

Looking back over this post I realize once again how true the opening words from my profile in the sidebar really are:   "Liberated. Eclectic. Colorful. Scrappy. These four words encompass who I am as a quilt maker."

Quiltdivajulie 

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"Creative people don't relax. We just change projects."

Jaya Lakshmi

Studio Squirrels At Work

In the last post, I mentioned my dilemma for backing Rastro.  

The large scale floral in this photo was intended to back Motley (the fourth Macnas series bonus quilt).  After weeks of dithering, I finally decided that Motley, the top, will be donated to Many Hands and Many Hearts so it can become a comfort quilt.  

That decision left the floral yardage available and, truth be told, I like it better for Rastro than either of the other scrappy pieced backing options.

There wasn't enough yardage to match the design along the center seam so I inserted a strip of Kaffe Fassett 's 2021 Moss Flower.  

And now there are two freshly pressed backings hanging on the balcony - Rastro's on the left and the one for Ludiosis on the right.  (both are approximately 62" x 84").

And speaking of Ludiosis, despite my earlier statements about setting the blocks aside for later, this has become a full-on project (thank you, studio squirrels).  

I simply had to put some of the blocks up on the design wall to reassure myself that my plan would work.  Happily, there's definitely enough potential to keep going.  As of Thursday evening, I need only another 30-40 blocks before I can take these off the wall and start on the real layout.  

I'm very glad I did not follow the tutorial's suggestion to sew everything into one massively long strip before pressing and trimming individual blocks.  I've had so much fun adding the narrow cut off edges into the fabric mix and trimming the 4.5" blocks a little along.

* * *

With another ten days with temperatures in the high 90s predicted, I'm hopeful this run of available studio time continues.

Quiltdivajulie

More Pillow Slabs and Squirrels

There are only two more pillow top slabs to piece before I press all twelve and square them so they're ready to pin baste.

However - the studio squirrels have been busy distracting me.

Backstory - I've been stashing leftovers and gifted pieces and parts for the past year or so and sorted them into several potential projects over the past six weeks.  

This particular group was set aside to become the scrappy backing for a quilt project I named LUDIOSIS (noun - "the sense that you're just making it up as you go along").

(includes backing fabrics from Kefi, Xanadu, and Fandango plus HSTs gifted by Lynne during her new-flooring-induced studio clean out)

Now the HSTs are sewn into columns (shown here folded in half), and the also-folded-in-half leftover backing strips are pinned to the design wall.  

The water lily print from Repose may or may not make the 'Final Cut' and the same is true for the floral backing from Kefi.  Very much in the still-thinking-about-it phase. 

The overall plan is to get this scrappy backing sewn together and hung in the waiting to be quilted closet.  That way the back will be ready when the quilt top is done and pin basting is imminent.

This photo shows the jumbled contents of a second project box for the quilt top including leftover bindings, Macnas series rectangles, tumblers and extra blocks from Lynne, and strips from a number of  previous projects.

And now I have this - a tall stack of cafeteria trays containing those random leftovers cut into uniform 4.5" widths by an array of lengths.

The tray on top holds stacks of newly-sewn strip sets with the next addition pinned so I can use these as leader enders once the last 10-15 Scrumdiffereous pairs are sewn.  

My inspiration came from the 2023 Scrap Happy Quilt tutorial by Gigi's Thimble.  That said, I am not going to sew all of my 4.5" pieces into a massively long strip like she did (been there, done that with the Dumpster Diving quilts).  Instead, I am sewing groups of pieces together, trimming out 4.5" blocks, then adding any usable cut offs to the trays of available segments.

This green basket on top of the stacked trays contains close to 40 finished 4.5" blocks.  I need nearly 300 for my 54" x 72" plan, meaning there's lots more sewing, pressing seams open, and trimming ahead.

* * *

So I don't loose total control to the squirrels, once all of the blocks for Ludiosis are made I'll use Cathy's SAR (some assembly required) approach and put them back in the project box to be turned into a top after the last three Macnas bonus quilts are finished.  

Quiltdivajulie

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"It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything."

Winston Churchill

August Recap and September Begins

In August I finished Journal for Joy - a scrappy eclectic glue book celebrating all sorts of things that make me smile.  

Holus Bolus, the first of the four Macnas series bonus quilts, was finished.

A stack of harvested Asian bits were transformed into a themed accordion journal.

Pieces and parts were cut, sorted, and pinned into pairs for Scrumdifferous.

I finally finished the long pending Squirrels altered book.

And the set of six reversible scrappy strip-pieced September placemats that were cut out on August 1 had their bindings finished on August 31.

Along the way there was also a lot of stash shuffling and editing, multiple donation boxes were sent out into the world, and the studio squirrels raised a ruckus leading to two more new quilt projects that truly need to wait until after the last three Macnas series bonus quilts are finished.  

And finally, continuing with my year-long series of monthly back yard photos, here is one taken early morning September 1st.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Most people don't want to be part of the process, they just want to be part of the outcome.  But the process is where you figure out who and what's worth being part of the outcome."

Scottie Pippen

The Squirrels Have Done It Again

The wide back on the left has been waiting in the closet for ages and the squirrels are on a rampage to USE what is lurking.  As usual, their one thing led to the next.

The fabrics above will be used to make two quilts - one using the wide back and the other backed with the black and gold paisleys.  When I thought there would be just one quilt, I had started calling it Color Burst - but when the second "sister" project developed, I needed another project name.

The wide back quilt shall be called HAPPIFY (verb - to make happy).  The current plan was inspired by Gerful (2021) and Vivacious (2016).  I'll use black on white prints as the alternate fabric.

The paisley backed quilt shall be called ENTHRALL (verb - to capture someone's attention or fascination; to charm or captivate).  At this point I'm thinking about making another version of Poppyseed's baby quilt (that baby is now nine years old).

All of this will happen next year, unless the squirrels keep making trouble in the studio.

Downstairs, I've switched our seasonal decor from July's "Red, White, and Moo" to August's "Back to School." 

With Young Man now in fourth grade (!!) our decorations continue to evolve from his ABC building blocks, crayons, and coloring books to classic black and white composition books, colorful pencils and erasers, a big bowl of scrabble tiles, and the like.  

And when I started to clean off my art table so I could drape the backing and top in order to roll them onto the pool noodles, I found myself drawn into the beginnings of a long-planned pink and green joy journal.  There is something deeply satisfying about cutting and gluing in order to turn paper scraps into a visually pleasing, cohesive something.

* * *

The good news is that the drafting table is now clear and Holus-Bolus WILL be pin basted over the weekend.  

It's time to move those four Macnas bonus quilts forward.

Quiltdivajulie

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"Be the attitude you want to be around."

Tim DeTellis

Three Finishes to Share

Like my fabrics, I've been working over the past month or so to USE a lot of the accumulated paper stash.  Finished journals take up much less space than their array of raw materials.

This first project involved a purchased accordion (concertina) journal, items harvested from two different magazines, a few postage stamps, and woodcut images from my favorite next-to-the-computer calendar.

This is the front cover.

You can see here how I used vintage rice paper book pages to cover each of the accordion's pages.

This is a sample of the way I finished out the interior.  

One set of "sides" feature winter images from the calendar and compatible magazine cut outs.  

The other "sides" feature non-winter calendar images and magazine cut outs.

Making this was quietly satisfying and the end result is very restful to flip through.

The next finish has been a long time in process.  A thrifted book had its pages removed so I could insert new pages using vintage ledger papers.

The first pages acknowledge the inspiration for the genesis of SQUIRREL!

The rest of the pages contain all manner of squirrely items.  Text from a North American animal handbook, greeting cards, stickers, drawings, comic strips, and so much more.

This spread shows the squirrel/nut-themed washi tape I found and some old squirrel postage stamps.

I used pages from a thrifted kid book for the front and back interior covers and facing pages.  I cut more images from that book and another to use throughout the altered book.

I deliberately left open spaces and lots of envelopes so I can tuck in additional items as they are found; but for now I'm calling it done.

The third small finish (literally) was to add my bits to a Bricolage Factory "tiny journal".

This photo shows the scale and one cover.

I worked my way through one set of pages before turning the journal over and working back through the pages with text, etc. facing the opposite direction; much like viewing an accordion journal.

A scrap of painted piano roll and a snippet from a larger design . . . it was fun to work on such a small scale.

This is the other cover featuring a bit of washi tape saved from an envelope that came in the mail.

* * *

I've decided that Nimiety and its scrappy pieced backing are going to Many Hands Many Hearts organized by Cynthia Brunz of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.  I had fun making Nimiety and used up a lot of strips and leftovers in the process, but I think it has a better life ahead as a comfort quilt (or two should they decide the back would make a good top).  

Holus Bolus and its back have been rolled on to pool noodles.  I'll get the batting cut and rolled onto the third noodle so pin basting can happen in this week.

One stitch, one scrap, one thing at a time.

Quiltdivajulie

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"You can do it like it's a great weight on you, or you can do it like it's part of the dance."

Ram Dass