Scrappy Trippin'

I got sucked in!

I had read Katy's post a day or two earlier and said to myself that's pretty scrappy! And then while figuring out InstaGram and finding people to follow (and hopefully some to follow me!) I happened upon all the #scrappytripalong pictures and fell head over heels and I couldn't resist the fun anymore and started my own Scrappy Trip that night. They were all so scrappy and looked so fun and easy. And since one of my goal's is to use up some fabric, well I though this was perfect so I forgot about loading a quilt onto the longarm (since now there are 12 in the closet, so much for goals!) and dove into my scrap bins. I only had one rule: it had to already be in a scrap bin, no cutting from yardage.

I love scraps but my stuff is not normally this scrappy, I like to use controlled scrappy. This is so far from that and the first couple of blocks were hard as far as picking which strips to use. Then I just let go, and now I get it! Really, anything goes!

It's fun to use scraps, but I do think I need to go back and cut some more strips. It is starting to feel very green in person and I think I need a bunch more brighter colors. I am up to 13 blocks, number 14 is already picked out, but I am going to take a break for a little bit today and load this one up onto the longarm after lunch and making a quick backing.

This one is from a Flickr Bee, String Me Along Again. The tutorial I had everyone use is from Film in the Fridge Scrappy Triangles. I had to make lots of blocks here! I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt it yet, but I'll be sure to let you know here and over on InstaGram (@birdydanana) and on Flickr.





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Lofty Goals

I have a couple of pretty lofty goals for the new year. I hesitate to call them resolutions because I've never been a resolution kinda girl, but the turning of the new year is a fresh start and I thought I'd take advantage of that!

First up, I want to quilt all of the quilt tops I already have put together.

Some of these have been hanging in the closet more than 4 years, part laziness too busy and busy making more and quilting for others, but some are really because I am just stumped on how to quilt them. There are at least 11 of them hanging there.

I want to finish all the quilts I already have blocks for from bees or whatever projects I've started. There's at least 6. And to do up the one last quilt kit I have in there. Of course this doesn't mean I won't start more....

A big goal is to just use my fabric! I have a hard time cutting into my fabric and actually using it, I'd rather go buy more for a specific project than cut into what I already have. So I really want to just pull fabric and go sew, which is why I have so much to begin with! We do not have a quilt store within an hour of our house, so I tend to buy a lot when I do get to a store, especially if there's a sale, and order a lot online so that I have a large stash to choose from when I want to sew.  I have started cutting a 6 1/2" inch piece from every new fabric that enters my studio to go into my scrap bin in the hopes it will encourage me to use them, we'll see, that is a new part of my scrap system!

I want keep my stash closet more organized than I did this year! Last year around this time I took a very long time to fold all my printed and solid fabrics neatly onto little boards and (comic book boards) and organize them by color. Over the past year it started to look like this, just throwing new fabrics onto the front of the shelf and piling them on over the year.  This year I need to keep this

Looking more like this

It's a whole lot easier to pull fabric when it's pretty and organized! And it's certainly more fun to look at! I have not taken the time to do this treatment to my batiks yet, which is what you see on that bottom shelf. Some day, I'm not in a hurry as I have pretty much not been using batiks at all, but at least they are organized by color should I need to grab some. Yep, I have waaayy too much fabric!! Which is why I need to use it! Just spotted a new quilt along in the last couple of days, think I might join in the fun #scrappytripalong over on Instagram and Flickr. Oh and I bit the bullet and joined Instagram (@birdydanana) so come join the fun!

Hopefully my inspector will keep me on track as he bops along my shelves while I'm pondering my fabric choices!

Romeo
The Birdydanana

I also want to clean out and declutter our 3 enormous storage closets upstairs. We moved in here over 4 years ago and some of that stuff has not been touched since the day it was put there. Time for some stuff to go! I've already started cleaning out my kitchen cabinets and reorganizing them and it feels good to just get rid of stuff that no longer appeals to us and we certainly don't use!

And my last, maybe most important goal is to keep my fitness level where it's at, well at least before I was sidelined for my pitiful knees! Running the Savannah Marathon in November was fantastic, especially since I had great running partners. We were hoping to run another in January, but since I have been a couch potato other than Physical Therapy since Thanksgiving that one is out. So for now it's back to boot camp in January, I'm so excited to move it again, and pick another marathon to train for. Incidentally I've decided that I may be slightly addicted to exercise now, as I really love the way I feel when I'm done and it's a great stress reliever and I have really been missing that for the last month.

I have plenty more goals but those are the biggies and I'm sure I've already bored you to tears and surprised you read this far!

Happy New Year Everyone!



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Got Scraps?

My scrap storage situation has been bugging me for a long time. Every time I want to make a something with scraps they are all over the place. I used to just drop them all into this very large hamper.

Except this little guy thought it was a cool place to hang out and despite the lid, he would slip in there anyway! So between cat hair and the bottomless pit it seemed to be, I pulled them all out and dumped them on our dining room table and sorted them like so by color

While this was much, much neater, it also put them into my fabric closet out of sight, which to me usually means out of mind. And maybe too organized for scraps! So when I needed something from the bottom bin there was lots of shuffling and sitting on the closet floor. I needed something, just wasn't sure what... I have a bar height table that I use for my cutting table, and store big bins underneath with projects and yet another scrap bin of recently used fabric scraps meant to be filed into those bins above. 

So then I had an idea. At Ikea they *used* to sell a table, I think it was a kitchen island, with lots of drawers. So I thought I could replace my cutting table with that island, and that would solve the problem. Except they don't sell it anymore....Back to the drawing board. Then I came up with this

A ClosetMaid Cubical system! Bought at Target for like $50. Then decided to get the matching bins for $12.99 for a 2-pack. Problem solved, and the color matches my table and there's even room on top for my selvedge bin and a couple of project bins. And there's still room behind it for my fabric dyeing supplies and that tub of recent scraps. Since I now had all that room in my fabric closet, I got another Cubical and put it in there to keep that a little more organized, too, of course I forgot to take a photo before writing this post, but you get the idea ;)

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Giant Star!

Just finished whirlwind quilting on this one, another one of my sisters quilts (she can sew them faster than I can quilt them!). This ginormous quilt is a Christmas gift for my Niece and her hubby so it needed to get done crazy fast. So I received the quilt last week, and of course needed to order thread to match, but was able to get it done in a couple of days and it is now on its way back to her to finish up the binding. I did some jelly feathers (a'la Lisa H. Calle), some swirl feathers (a'la Green Fairy) -which I don't feel like I'm great at, but they came out ok and they blend into that reddish border so they're kinda hidden! And just some back and forth quilting in the borders. I attached the binding to the front while it was still on the longarm (my favorite way to get the binding on now!) and so all she has to do is stitch it to the back. She's hoping to be done so they can take it home with them after their visit for the holidays.

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A finish!

Well I finished up my sister's green quilt, that one was so much fun to pick a different design for each curvy row and stitch it out. I finished up in the dark so folded it up overnight to wait and take pictures the next day (and of course it creased!) flat on my sewing table to hopefully catch some of the texture from all the quilting. And of course, as I am prone to do these days, I was channeling Angela Walters the whole time I was stitching away! 

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Next up...

SO in between all the craziness around here I have managed to load up a quilt onto the long arm. 

Next up on the longarm is a quilt made by my sister. I made this same quilt a few years ago, and she wanted to remake it, so she took my pattern home and got to work. She added a lot more yellow/orangey yellow than I did and I really like it with more color, mine was very green. It looks very wrinkled in the picture, but it really wasn't that bad in person!

So my plan with this one was to just have fun! I thought in between the curvy blocks I would do some wavy lines with pebbles in a few of them in, then in each of the wavy sections I would quilt a different filler design.

So far so good I think! I've got about half of the quilt done so far and hopefully will finish up in a day or two. Sorry for the bad iphone picture...

Another post coming soon, much sooner than it took me to do this one! Gotta get into the hang of this bloggy stuff! 

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My Wonky Stars

This quilt was months in the making! I sent red and aqua fabric scraps along with Kona white for the background off to 11 Bees from the Moody Blues 2 Bee and asked them to make wonky stars. Any kind of wonky stars they wanted in any size and more than one if they wished. Let me tell you those girls got creative! I loved each and every star I got back and only had to make a few more to get enough to make the quilt. Here are all the blocks I received: 

Wonky Star Blocks

I laid out all the blocks on my design wall in a layout I liked. Then moved them into loose rows so that I could add more Kona white to each in order to make larger blocks and then make those blocks into rows.

Here are all the blocks put all together and ready to quilt

When I was putting the quilt together I knew exactly how I wanted to quilt the white areas. The stars, well, not so much! I wanted to do swirls with flowing tails so the stars would look like they were floating across the quilt.

Here it is all quilted up

And all finished with binding

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