Blame it on DST

I was so careful.  I changed all the clocks (furnace thermostat, microwave, bedroom, living room) last night and made myself go to bed early, and even fell asleep pretty easily - not the usual outcome when I get in bed before midnight.  I woke up at the new 6 am, and did not curse the fact that my body was convinced it was still 5 am.  Admittedly, I was dragging a bit, and didn't manage to get out and do the weeding that was on the plan for this morning, but I made it to knitting group on time and did not drop any stitches or otherwise screw up the pattern for my current shawlette. 

Came home, did a bit of weeding and cleared away the dead foliage from the Japanese forest grasses in the sideyard -- so nice to see the bright spring green shoots poking up through the soil! - but didn't do too much else because it's never a good idea to spend too much time weeding the first time I'm out there for the season.  Went back into the house, and decided to work on the drawstring project bags I cut out earlier in the week.  New project bags for new projects, coming up! 

I cut out the corners for the boxed bottoms, stitched up the side and bottom seams, pressed all the seams open, la la la la la....  I do these assembly line fashion, so I had four all stitched up and ready to turn before stitching the lining bottom close.  I turned one, stitched the bottom, pressed the top seam, picked up the ribbon for the drawstring, and realized...

I forgot to leave an opening and stitch a channel for the drawstring.

Seriously? 

And of course, I had left the sewing machine on the very small stitch length that is its default...  And the bag is lined, so that seam allowance is not easily accessible.  Grrrrr.....

I knew what I needed to do.  I did it.  My project bag now has a drawstring installed.

It's a cute project bag.  I like it. But I am Not a Happy Camper.  Daylight Savings Time, thief of sleep, I hate you.

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.

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!

Blue Plus Sign progress

Went straight into the studio when I woke up today and worked on the blue plus sign quilt top for a few hours, stitching the top together. I am a big proponent of sewing one's tops together in chunks instead of rows, and even though this design is laid out in rows, there are a few opportunities for breaking it up into chunks.

You have to pay close attention to what you're doing, though, and I didn't pay close enough attention, so there was a lot of sewing of long seams going on.

When I had the top laid out unpieced, I liked the way some of the plus signs were extending out into the border area because I hadn't cut all the pieces to size, so I left them that way as I pieced. I don't have any extensions at the top or bottom, though, and it feels unbalanced to me. I can add some to the top and bottom or I can unpick the sides and take out the pieces that are extending into the side border area. I'm trying not to let my decision be driven by the reality of which approach will take less work.

Taking Jaye's advice to "avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry," I am going to go away and eat dinner and see how I feel about it then!

Center Diamond Leftovers

I have a lot of scraps. A LOT of scraps, which make me very happy. At one point, they were all contained in an Ikea wire basket system and a bunch of plastic storage bins

- nice and tidy, yes? Ha! The scraps have way outgrown this space, and much as I love them, I want some shelf space back. And floor space. So I'm into round five or six of "My Scrap Bag Runneth Over," my work series dedicated to making quilts that are not only scrappy-looking but really made out of scraps.

This week's project -- using up some of the scraps left over from the Center Diamond One of Each 6" fabric club I belonged to for several years - lots of 2"x 6" and 2" x 4" pieces. This "plus sign" design is perfect for using these, and I got on a roll on Friday night, staying up into the wee hours laying out this:

I'm pretty happy with it, but debating whether that white/blue leaf print in the middle stays or goes. Is it jumping out too much? Do I take it out, or try to find another couple of white background prints to scatter around the top? Decisions, decisions...

Tired, stupid and happy

I bonked my head on some scaffolding when I was getting off the bus this morning, and I blame it on a baby shower gift.

A lot of the staff at the company where I work are young and female, and there's always a baby or two on the way. Much as I would like to, I couldn't possibly make a quilt for all those babies -- instead my standard shower gift is a set of 3 large (42" x 42") flannel receiving blankets. Hemming a big piece with the fancy stitches on my sewing machine is quick and fun, and I get to buy lots of bright colorful flannel prints for which I would otherwise have no use. (It's always about the fabric at my house!)

Instead of wrapping paper or paper gift bags, I use tote bags as my gift wrap. I use Alicia Paulson's "Jane Market Tote", which is fun to make because it allows for lots of different fabric arrangements. I usually have a few on hand, but had run out and needed one for today, so I made this last night:

I'm pretty happy with it -- it was a great way to use these two fabrics, and it went together pretty quickly, but - I didn't realize I needed to make one til 10 pm, which meant I didn't get to bed until 1 am -- which meant I was still feeling tired and stupid when I got off the bus at 8:15 am. But at least I was tired and stupid and and full of post-fabric-handling endorphins...