Sunday Stash Report 2013, Week 4 - Oops, I did it again!

Easy Street is causing me to break my resolve not to add to my stash this year!  I ran out of blacks-on-white so I had to make a quick run to my favourite store yesterday.  I couldn't go Thursday to support my LQS, but I certainly made up for it yesterday!  (Please pardon the lighting in all my photos, it's another rainy day here on the Wet (West) Coast of BC, Canada - also be warned, I tend to ramble and this post is more so than usual!)

 

Added this week: 6.75 metres

Added Year to Date: 25 metres

3/4 metre were blacks-on-white, the 2 metres of Bella Snow is for next-up project using Mama Said Sew and the rest - well, just because ;o).  There are 2 metres of the black and white check which may become sashings or a binding, and a bunch of fat 1/8ths to add to the stash.

Hamels has these wonderful baskets full of fat 1/8th's and I was having trouble finding any blacks-on-white. They even let me go through their hidden closet of stash as well - there were bags and bins full just waiting for room in the baskets on the floor! (When I figure out how to get the picture off my phone, I'll share it.) I've come to the conclusion that there must be lots of Easy Street quilts being made here in the Fraser Valley, because there wasn't one to be found.  I ended up with 2 Fat Quarters and a piece of yardage.

 

But I did find all these other great pieces while I was digging.  There is a method to my madness when I buy fat 1/8ths and I usually don't buy more than 10 at a time - at 99c each, I'm getting 1.25 metres for just $9.90 - a bargain in Canada where prices can be as high as $16/metre.  A fat 1/8th in Canada is also 5" tall (whoops, my math was off - it's 10"x22"), so I can get 8 charm squares out of one piece or strip it down a la Bonnie Hunter-style.  I've included more on how I sorted these ones at the bottom of this post (just so I don't bore you!)

 

I also had a finish this week!  My Gramma quilt top is finished:

 

Used since last report: 4.5 metres

Used Year to Date: 5.25 metres

Net Used/Added for 2013: 19.75 metres

 

I bought this as a kit the same year my grandson was due; since he is now 4, I figured I better get it done as part of the Year to Get it Done.  The kit was purchased at Tangled Threads in Lynden, WA, another shop I consider local to me as it is only about 40 minutes away from my home.  It was packaged with a blah black background, so the owner let me choose a different fabric - I choose these wonderful splotches in primary colours.  It also came with a soft print in a light green for the arrows - which no longer went with those primaries - but I liked it so I left it in the kit to be added to the stash later. 

 

I bought a charm pack of Moda Marbles in brights and left the whole thing until this past summer, when I raided the charm pack to add blocks to my Tetris quilt.  Alex picked the aqua Minkee from my stash for the backing, and wants a yellow binding - and Gramma, can you put a hammer and a sword on it? Not sure how to accomplish that - on the label probably - even though this quilt isn't specifically for him (it's for the spare room that the grandkids use).

 

 

The sayings have positive affirmations and are hand-printed by Block Party Studios - they have lots of options available, including some for quilters!  Tangled Threads carries a wide variety, but BPS has so many more online (no affiliation, just thought I would share the link now, instead of when I get the inevitable questions).

 

 

I continued piecing Easy Street blocks as leaders and enders.  I need a total of 300 4-patches to make mine king-size, and I got them all done! Now on to 32 of each more block, and I can finish that quilt up!

 

 

The kit was generous - I had a full 1/2 yard left, plus some smaller pieces and triangles for the scrappy bins.

 

BTW - do you ever do this?

 

 

I think I need a haircut when I start tying my hair back with selvedges!

 

Now, on to my Fat 1/8ths purchases:

 

I tend to buy for one of the following reasons:

- it will find into a current project

- it will fit into a planned project

- it is from a new/current line that I might buy more of (cuz I'm getting it at a much cheaper price, up to 1/2 off the regular price)

- it fills a colour gap in my stash (a fat 1/8th is the smallest size I put in my colour bins)

- or just because I like it!

 

Today's purchases were:

 

1 fat quarter and 1 fat 1/8th - put away with my Hexie Madness project, which is still stalled.  Made from all '30s-style prints (and a few real ones from my grandmother's stash).  Every flower is different, no centre/ring combination is the same.  I am currently at about 80 of 270 flowers needed.

 

1 fat 1/8th added to my tribute-to-Mom quilt.

 

2 fat 1/8ths added to my coordinates (ignoring the one Christmas fabric moved to the above project)

 

Hamels sells scrap bags of coordinated prints - it works out to about $5.33/metre and can include current lines, like Vintage Modern and Blitzen!  By adding to these bags when I find bits in the fat 1/8ths bin, I've been able to gather enough to make lap-size or baby-size quilts.  Which I should probably do soon again, as I am now up to 2 overflowing shoeboxes full.

 

The black wordy print got put away with the rest of my Word Play fabrics - I have enough now to make a lap/twin quilt - I just have to decide on the accent colour.

 

And the rest, well let's be honest - it doesn't all get put away at once (as you can see from my piles-to-file on top of my bins of colour!

 

Have a great weekend!  I'm off to Easy Street for now!

 

 

 

My new toy!

I saw an iron being demonstrated in Costco the other day, and thought $119 was a bit much to spend, when I had one that worked perfectly fine.  Then I read this post by Melissa of Happy Quilting!  It's not the same iron, it's one step down but after reading her review, and going back to ask a bunch of questions, I came home with this:

Of course, it only comes in orange, which clashes a bit with my blue, hot pink and lime green accessories, but maybe I'll make a little wall hanging to pull it all together!

It weighs more and is bigger than my old iron, but as soon as you let go of the handle it has this little feet that pop out and lift it off the ironing board (see the gap under it).  This keeps it from scorching your fabric and your board, and you never have to lift it more than a millimetre to slide it over your seams.  Of course, a new iron meant I had to test it out (but not until my 3 things were done) so I tried my hand at some flying geese.

These are for my Just Takes 2 Red & White quilt.  I'm trying different methods as I've never really been successful at making FG's.  This is the foundation-pieced method (supplied with the pattern) but I'm not married to it.  I prefer Judy Niemeyer's foundation-piecing method with precut pieces of fabric, and I can't figure out what size to cut them for these blocks.  And then I would get everything turned the wrong way, so I was frogging (you know: rip it, rip it with the seam ripper) a lot. I got frustrated and put them aside to work on the solution this weekend.  I already have some ideas - as I was piecing this, I realized I could probably use my companion angle and EZ angle to make these, and use chain-piecing to speed up the process.  

I wasn't ready to stop playing with my new iron, so I pulled out some ancient Christmas fabric inherited from my mother and ironed the wrinkles out. That iron literally got the wrinkles out with one pass!  Then I made some snowballs for Katie Mae's snowball fight.  Mine are 6 1/2" unfinished, with 2" squares in the corner.  I'll make more as I dig through the stash to add to this:

This quilt is going to be a tribute to my Mom, who has been gone for 11 long years.  Her favourite holiday was Christmas, but because she had a wicked sense of humour, she loved to portray herself as a Grinch. She also loved the classic Christmas shows, and couldn't resist this shirt with her favourite Sesame Street character, either. She used to wear this T-shirt when her workplace tried to make them wear some t-shirts emblazoned with the latest catalog cover (she worked in customer service at Sears), much to the customers' delight.  I came across it when we were cleaning out her closet and after all these years, decided it was time to do something with it. 

 I bought some Grinch fabric (Robert Kaufman line), and I've pulled some of her old Christmas fabric scraps (some date back to the early 80's) out of the box.  I'll use mostly moderns and solids, but I want some of her scraps in it. I have an idea in my head, and have drafted an initial design and I'm going to work on it slowly, and let it percolate.  I'll make blocks in some basic finished sizes (i.e. 3", 6", 9", 12", etc) and wait until I have a good size collection before I actually put together the final design. 

What I've done so far: I cut the T-shirt apart preserving all the design.  I then backed the T-shirt with a very lightweight fusible interfacing to eliminate the stretchiness.   Because the T-shirt was a smaller size, the words on the bottom extended beyond the area where the armholes were.  I solved that by piecing some strips of wonky flying geese and inseting them, making a final block of 18 1/2" square.  This will be the centerpiece of the quilt. 

One of Grinch fabrics I bought was the book panel, and I'm going to make wonky log cabins from some of them, and maverick stars from some others.  I'd love to add some of the Peanuts characters fabric, but they have a lot of blue in them, while the Grinch fabrics don't. I may still find a way to incorporate at least a little bit.  This quilt doesn't have a time frame, so I can be patient!