Art History and Curiosity Quilt

What a struggle to make this small quilt.

It began when I saw a fabric on Pinterest that I just loved and really wanted.  It is called Treasure Hunt.  Finding it was the problem.  It only showed up available in Etsy.  My problem with Etsy is that I’ve never used it much and was not well versed in using and buying from it.

Treasure Hunt is a grunge fabric.  I do have a love for grunge.  Not real life grunge so much but definitely in art.  Marcia Derse has wonderful grunge fabric designs.

Treasure Hunt is being quilted and will take me awhile to finish it.  So this post is about a little Art History and Curiosity quilt.  (Those are the fabric names)

After making this little whimsical quilt , I wanted to make another.  The size is so perfect for a single person to just grab and go sit on it in the park or the yard or at any event where seating is the ground.

Marcia Derse fabrics are obviously extremely popular and are out of stock everywhere.  I could only find them available on Etsy.  Even there most are sold out.  I bought half yards of each of these pieces to put them together.

The ruler shown with the Curiosity piece on Etsy showed the color squares measuring less than 1” in size.  In reality when the fabric arrived, the color squares measure about 2” each!  That was a shock.  I didn’t know there was a link to click on to get the sellers description of the fabrics...where the seller states the blocks are 2”.  Etsy has been an expensive experience for me.  

Now I needed to make them work.  I was NOT going to buy another piece of fabric from Etsy with the shipping costs.  Plus, the seller does not cut the fabric between panels or following a graph design.  Add to that, the end of a bolt is where fabric is usually wound wonky anyway.  So I lost more of the Curiosity fabric than I was happy about just to straighten it.  

I won’t even go into the struggles I had with a simple grid quilting that was not simple in any measure of the term.  I used a piece of grunge fabric from my stash for the binding (because I did not want to add fuel to the fire with buying another piece on Etsy). This quilt measures 40” x 41”

But I won the fight and it’s done!  It is not fabric stashed in a drawer.

Paper Pieced Table Runner

From Turid’s blog  I learned about  Leila Gardunia’s  free paper piecing scrappy triangles.  I downloaded them and printed them.  They come as a 6” block but I shrunk them down to 4.5” blocks.

I had a limited amount of the the gray fabric so I made blocks until I ran out of it.  

That gave me only 20 blocks.

From sloppy to nice and neat.

It’s a good thing I used a minimum amount of fabrics.   I can get pretty messy when I’m paper piecing.

There weren’t enough to make them into the design I was hoping to use so I worked on alternative layouts.

I decided on blocks of 4 blocks.

I quilted it with too many rows of quilting.  I don’t care for tight quilting lines.  I think they make the piece too stiff.  I removed 2 rows of quilting in each direction.

Much better.  You can still see where I removed quilting lines until it hits the washer.  Then the needle holes will disappear.

The table runner measures 49”x15”

Now that I’ve had that practice I am going to make them at full size for a Christmas quilt in the design I had planned to begin with.

My August calendar journal

Many, many awesomely fun days of sewing last month.

I forgot to cover the personal stuff...Mom is doing fine.

I have to write blog posts with Blog Touch to write them on my iPad.  The app crashes often while writing and adding photos.  Every time it crashes I have to edit the post and then it puts “(Temporary Backup)” in front of my post title.  It does that every time it crashes.  So if you see that, this is why you see it.  I have to edit the title in Blogger dashboard.  Jeezelouise, the hoops we have to jump through sometimes!

Paper Piecing Fun

I couldn’t seem to get enough of paper piecing with my Chillingsworth quilts.  So I kept on sewing neutral strips.

I have a love for grunge.  But sometimes I don’t like the design of the grunge.  Like on this table top.

I set out to cover it with the paper pieced strips and text sashing.

I love all those precise seams!

I don’t save my empty thread spools these days.  

SO much is plastic in this modern life.

(That is my portable design wall behind this little table)

This mat is very busy for this use and doesn’t make me love it.  At least not for this purpose.  But it will do until I decide on something else.




July’s calendar journal also is not a favorite to look at.  But there’s always next month for aesthetic improvement.

He’s called Chillingsworth

I’ve had a tiny scrap of Chillingsworth on my small design board since finishing my last Halloween quilt last year.  Suddenly while sewing I felt I needed a handy tiny pin cushion.

His severed head was perfect for that!

The next waiting project I pulled from the stash drawers were two Chillingsworth panels.  They’ve been languishing for a couple of years while I collected more Halloween fabrics in anticipation of a clear idea of how to use this panel.

I knew I did not want a throw quilt.  But all plans kept leading to a quite large wall hanging also.  I spent 4 days looking through Pinterest for inspiration.  I finally came across 1” Scrappy Strips by Leila Gardunia.  They are paper piecing strips.  Now, I could have sat and drawn them myself, but for $10 I could just photocopy what I needed and get started sewing right now.

Anyone familiar with these Chillingsworth panels might notice that I cut down the sides of the panel.  I worried about doing that not being sure those top and bottom corner designs would look too odd.  It just had too much blank space around him for me.  So I cut anyway.  The corners don’t look odd to me.  OR if they do, they just add to the already oddity of Chillingsworth wearing only a top hat.

I started with this strip design but it looked too ... something.  I didn’t like it for a border for him.  So I chose the straight piecing design strip.

Here is where that awesome little plastic steam(less) roller became my best ever buddy.  It made pressing those hundreds of strips quick and easy.

The paper is so quick to pull off of these simple strips.

The trash is proof of the fun I had making these strips.

While I was making the borders I wondered how to quilt him without having to freemotion quilt around him and without having straight rows of quilting going through him.  So I drew my quilting lines.  (Forgot to take a photo).

I finish the back of my hanging quilts with strips to run a flat stick through.

Each of my kids will get one of these Chillingsworth guys.  I think the cream color one can be left out all year for creep-loving people...like my kids.

Stash busting!  It’s so awesome to get some of these older purchases made into “things”. 

An early-ish Happy Halloween!

The Purple Quilt

A purple quilt for a daughter-in-law that loves the color purple.

I don’t know if there is an official name for this quilt.  It begins as a disappearing 9 patch.

Then sashing is added between all the blocks.

So I call it a “floating” disappearing 9 patch.  It turns out the fabric I chose for the sashing/background is variegated or ombre, so not the best choice for a “floating” look.  

I had most of this quilt’s pieces cut 2 years ago, waiting to get sewn.

A couple of tools that I cannot live without in my sewing space.  The first one is old...the chalk liner.

This plastic steam roller (as I call it) is new for me.  But we became bestest friends right from the start.  It flattens seams better than an iron!  However have I sewn for so many years without this simple tool?!

What a great feeling to get purchases out of the drawers and under the needle and to completion.  All that is left is to pack it up and send it to a new home.

Finished size is 77.5”x62”

I continue to work on more of those projects that are sitting in the drawers waiting their turn to come out and be something.

A Whimsical Small Quilt

My fabric stash is bulging.  I need to stop buying fabrics just because I like them.

But this little quilt came about from a gift of three Candy Bar (I think is what they are called) precut packs from Rachel...(years ago!)

They just haven’t spoken to me no matter how many times I handle them.  There were four packs, I made a pillow cover with one of them a long time ago.  I pulled them out and challenged myself to use them.

I decided I wanted a whimsical look.  I divided the pieces for rows of 42 or so inches in length, arranged them and stitched them end to end.

Next came my favorite fabric that turns anything into whimsical.  The stripe is cut into 1” wide strips the length of the fabric and stitched between the rows.  I didn’t want to have to piece the stripe which is why I chose the length of 42” for piecing.

Next came the quilting...

...and then the binding.  It is so fun to look at.

The quilt is a little small for a baby quilt (and I don’t know any babies anyway).  It measures 41”x33”.

So, a yoga mat maybe?  I don’t yoga.  

A child’s play mat maybe?  No small children around.

I do know that I would have liked to have it when my daughter was in high school on the track team and I had to sit on the ground to watch and to wait.  She didn’t like running...they had bleachers over there to sit on.  No, she liked to throw heavy things like the Discus and the Shot Puts.

I’ll find a use.  Until then it’s so stinkin’ cute that it makes me smile and I’ll just enjoying seeing it everyday.