Flying Geese Exchange, week 3

Time flies

... when you're busy celebrating.  This past weekend was my birthday weekend; I took a couple of days off from work and went to Portland to play with friends.  Very casual playing -- nothing too structured, not much planning.  The weather cooperated -- well, it poured rain on Saturday, which was, of course, the day we were all over town shopping, but it wasn't raining sideways, and it wasn't snowing, and I call that a win for January.  And a lot of the time, there was sunshine and blue skies:

My kind of weather.  Didn't even need my gloves the day I took that picture.

Since I was going to be there for several days, I decided to rent a little cottage in the Alberta Arts district, about 3 blocks away from the friends I was there to play with it.  It was a lovely space -- lots of light and clean lines, which made for a very peaceful experience.  

 

At home there is a lot of stuff that demands my attention when I get up, but at the cottage I found myself starting the day with a peaceful hour with a cup of tea and my journal.

Can't replicate the light and clean line at home (yet -- too much stuff) but I'll work on the hour with tea and journal.

It was a very easy weekend.  There was cat visiting with the very handsome Henry:

Also, yarn shopping, fabric shopping, dinner out, dinner in, walks around the neighborhood, a very strange movie, a very small amount of football watching, and lots and lots of knitting.  I cast on Piper's Journey right before I left, and it grew from this

to this:

I also made a lot of progress on the tubular stripey cowl - I'm into the home stretch with the medium and dark blues.  

At the end of this section I'll graft the beginning to the end, which means I'll have to break out the Kitchener stitch tutorial,  I might be procrastinating a little about that.  That's OK.  While I procrastinate on that, I'm into the lace section of Piper's Journey and am having a lot of fun.  I wasn't sure I was on the right track, but now it's beginning to look like lace, and I am Very Happy.

I like what happens when I decide to dedicate myself to celebrations.  I need to find room for more of those in my life.

Flying Geese Exchange, week 2

Decided to use the same background fabric for the month of January.  That'll give me time to dig through the piles and find my other gray/white prints!

Moving right along

Some days are better than others when it comes to the Year of Making concept.  Today was a very good day.  I spent some time on sewing projects and on knitting.  My current knitting project is a striped tubular cowl that will have 5 sets of stripes by the time I am done.  I'm working with Rowan Baby Merino Silk DK, in three shades of blue and two shades of gray.  While I like the gray shades well enough, the blue ones are what got me started on this project in the first place.  I am almost through the third set of stripes and soon will have only the colors I like best left to work with.

I also finished (my part of) a project that has been lingering for far too long.  This quilt top is made from the Curio pattern, out of an early issue of Fat Quarterly magazine. 
 

 
The fabrics come in part from dresses that a friend kept as her daughters grew out of them, with other fabrics from my stash chosen to coordinate with those.  (Also yards and yards of fancy muslin.  It's shocking how much yardage can get used up in sashing a quilt design of this type.)  I got half way through the first of two tops and hated what I was doing, so took it apart and had to come up with a different plan.  After having the materials in hand for at least a couple of years, I got the tops finished last summer/fall.  Today I finished the backs to go along with them.

My commitment was to make the tops.  The backs were bonus and my friend will be having someone else do the actual quilting on these.  I'm not happy at how long it took me to get this done, but I am  happy with the design solution I finally came up with, and I'm really happy that I'll be putting these in the mail tomorrow.  This was the oldest item on my unofficial to do list - yay!

Want to make vs need to make

I've made things almost as long as I can remember - one of my earliest memories is of sitting under my mother's sewing table, pinning scraps into "garments" for my dolls (I don't think my mother knew about my hoard of straight pins.)  If I go too long without making something, I become a very cranky person, which is Not A Good Thing.  On one level, it's always about needing to make stuff.  But when it comes to what I choose to make, sometimes it's all about making whatever I feel like, and sometimes it's about making something I need.

The other day I pulled an old and much loved pillowcase out of the dryer, smoothed it out with my hand, and watched it rip right down the middle.  No salvaging that -- I love how soft this pillowcase was, but a seam where my face would be?  No.  So today I went through my stash of baby blanket flannel, found some that would work reasonably well with my sheets, and made new pillowcases.  

It's been awhile since I made a pillowcase and I had forgotten how easy these are.  It took me about an hour and a half, from going through the stash to choose fabrics to fluffing the pillows inside the new cases.

I used the "burrito" method, which leaves you with no raw edges on the inside.  The Twiddletails tutorial for this is very nice, as is this video tutorial from the Fat Quarter Shop, which is what I was following today.  I will do a few things differently, though, the next time I make these. 

•  The cases came out a bit larger than I like -- I don't like to have so much of the cuff hanging off the side of my pillowcases.  The tutorial I used calls for cutting the body at 27.5" x 41", and the cuff something like 8.5" by 41".  I cut the body at 26" and the cuff at 8".  I'm happy with the cuff but next time I'll go an inch smaller with the body.  

•  The tutorial calls for a scant 1/4" seam plus a hefty 1/4" seam for the French seams that finish the sides and bottom of the case.  That wasn't enough to make sure all the lose threads on the edges were caught inside the seam.  Next time I will use a 1/4" seam for the first seam and a 1/2" seam for the second seam.  Cut at 41" wide, there's more than enough room to lose a bit more to the seam allowance. 
  
• I will NOT be making flannel pillowcases again.  There's a step that involves pulling the body of the case through as you turn the cuff right-side out.  The flannel sticks to itself and it was so hard to pull it through that some of the (very small) stitches came loose and had to be re-done.  Flannel is nice and cozy but next time I'll stick to quilt-weight cotton.

Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with the pillowcases - and I still have time to get in a little knitting this evening!

Off the list that doesn't exist

Flying Geese Exchange, week 1

 Jaye and I have a block exchange project going this year - well, not blocks, but pieced units.  We started out last October planning to exchange blocks, based on a quilt we had seen at PIQF, but neither of us was enjoying piecing those blocks, so we abandoned that idea and then tossed ideas around a bit before settling on exchanging Flying Geese units.  Our rules are:

  - gray/white print for the background
  - any print for the foreground
  - pieced units to finish 2" x 4"
  - each of us pieces 4 units each week, keeps two and sends the other two off for exchange

We chose a particular range of gray/white prints for backgrounds for the original exchange project while we were together in October, and decided to stick with those for this project so that we should end up with backgrounds that will work together.  We don't have rules for the foreground prints, but I will probably stick pretty close to the original palette to start.  We're using the piecing method that involves a large square and four smaller squares, which we both find easier for making sure we have accurately-sized units.  I am MUCH happier with this project, because these are fun to piece. I have no idea what I'm going to do with my units, but that's OK.  The point of the exchange at this point is the interaction - it will be interesting to see the way the fabric choices evolve over time as we each respond to what the other sends.   Making something out of the complete set will be a related but separate project for me.  

At the other end of the project life cycle is this quilt, which I just finished.  It's been in the works for years.  I don't even remember when I pieced it - several years ago at least.  A friend quilted it for me last year on her long arm machine, and I started putting the binding on it this summer.  I got three quarters of the way around the thing and then it sat there, waiting patiently for me to come back to it.  Finally yesterday evening I got out the hand sewing box, sat myself down with an iPod full of podcasts, and finished the last of the hand-sewing on this.  Done!

I haven't made a formal crafting To Do list, but if I had one, I could now cross this off of it.  I have to say it felt good to put the Flying Geese units in the mail today, and even better to weave in the tail on the hand piecing thread, pick the loose threads off this quilt and call it good. Next up - packing it up to send off to its new home!

Starting by Finishing

I heard about the "Year of making" project from a friend late last month and have been ruminating on the idea ever since.  I can be fairly literal at times, and the idea of a year of making a thing every day actually made me nervous - I want to end 2015 with less stuff in my life than I have currently, and I don't need to feel an imperative to generate stuff.  Also, it's already a rare day that I don't knit or sew or quilt or work in my garden or in some way or another engage in the act of making.  My life is purposefully set up to enable me to be making -- dedicated space, plenty of materials, time alone or with others when I can be working with my hands.

But still.  The phrase "a year of making" resonates with me.  Partly it's the word "make" which, in the wake of a couple of rough years at my day job, feels very powerful to me.

MAKE... a start

MAKE... a decision

MAKE... a change

MAKE... a difference

It's all about agency, about taking action, about choosing a direction, rather than being banged around by the world.  I want that.  I need that.  I suck at that practice of taking a word and using it as a guide for the year, but if I were going to choose one for 2015 it would be "make."

Also, I know other people are going to be practicing a Year of Making and I want to play along. So I spent some time the last few days thinking about how to define a practice that could go beyond the making that I already do every day.  I settled on two approaches. One is give more deliberate and overt attention to my making, through writing about it, photographing it and spending time with other people who are engaged in making. The other is to bring more intention to it, by focusing on a theme or a set of parameters.  I decided against a theme for the whole year - that way lies a high potential for boredom and an early end to the project.  For me, a monthly theme is the way to go.

My theme for the month of January is "starting by finishing."  I have knitting WIPs, quilting UFOs, commitments I've made to other people to make things.  Some of these are relatively new, some of them are really old; the thing they have in common is that they take up space and make me feel crowded, both physically and mentally.  Finishing older projects won't be the only thing I do this month, but focusing on that feels like the right way both to start the year of making and to clear the decks, mentally and physically, for the rest of the year.

If the idea of a Year of Making sounds good to you, check out Kim Werker's interview with Miriam Felton, and her new ebook intended to give you a jumpstart for your own Year of Making. Very cool stuff!