Ash Wednesday

That two-days-in-a-row thing didn't last, did it?  Well, I've been pretty busy working on quilting projects these past few days.

It's been a very productive, in fact.  I got Lauri's "blue jeans & t-shirt" quilt finished up very quickly, doing a quick, all-over swirly pattern.  I was able to deliver this back to her on Monday after the guild meeting.  I sat with them for a little more than an hour, visiting.  The two of them started Weight Watchers and have both lost over 30 lbs. each.  They look great!

She had given me one other quilt to finish up--this is a baby quilt for a Sounders Fan family.  She said that the baby is a boy and wanted to stay away from girly-swirly quilting, so do something more...masculine.  OK...  To get some ideas, I needed some outside assistance.  I had heard of people talking about Leah Day's 365 quilt project, so I went to her web site and found the hundreds of examples of quilting patterns.

After looking through several patterns that would be too dense for the quilt top, I came across one that is more adaptable for a larger space, and had a very "Snakes & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails" kind of feel to it.  It's called "Oil Slick" and makes one think of oil drips in a parking lot--the rainbow of colors spreading out across the pavement.  It would have been even more striking had I done it in rainbow thread, but this would have clashed with the Rave Green and blue fabrics.

Having finished up a couple quilts "for pay" I loaded up a quick little quilt for our guild's charity for Children's Hospital.  This was a cute little country/cowboy quilt that had a polar fleece back.  With such a heavy fabric for the back, I decided to not put any batting in it.  I really don't think it needs it.  The one thing I found with the polar fleece is that it's really stretchy on the weft, so I had to load it up on the warp, which I normally don't do.  I took Leah Day's "Oil Slick" pattern and modified it a bit.  I think it looks like snake tails, don't you?  "There's a snake in my boot!"



Having finished that one, I loaded up another charity quilt and tried another new pattern that Leah calls "Super Spirals".  It's fast, it covers a lot of territory, but I don't like it as much.  Maybe if I make it even more wonky and deliberately wobbly.  I'll have to experiment on that later.  I also decided to take some of the weird size pieces of batting and piece them together.  When I do a quilt for a customer, many times the width of the quilt top is significantly smaller than the batting's width, so I'll cut off 20"-30" off one side of the quilt and set it aside.  I don't have any plans for this leftover batting from other projects, and I really don't want to use it for customers who are paying full price for the batting, but for charity quilts, it's perfectly fine.  Once it's quilted up, no one will ever know.

Then I pulled out the quilt that I started for Cammie more than 10 years ago.  I racked that up and pulled out more of those batting leftovers.  As you can see in this picture, there were two pieces of batting used in this quilt.  Oh, you can't see it?  On the left side, mid-way down, there's a yellow square.  The batting sticks out just a smidge farther on the bottom piece.  Once the binding is done, again, no one will ever know.

I consulted Leah's web site again, and found this pattern that was very similar to the "Oil Slick" but with a more feminine touch.  It's called "Bed of Roses" and has very little retracing of stitches, which is what made Oil Slick more challenging.  I finished it up really quickly and I'm very happy with the result.  I need to get the binding on it, then it'll be done and ready to put on Cammie's bed....at long last!

So, then it was time to do another charity quilt.  This one, I actually made the top last July at the quilt show and turned it in.  This was made from a bunch of "DOTS" charm squares that were swapped, and apparently the donor decided she didn't want them after all.  Then, last month, the charity quilt gal, Doreen, brought it out and was looking for quilters to finish it.  I figured I may as well finish it up!  Again, I used batting scraps to quilt this and will turn it in at the next meeting.  The quilting pattern was a modified swirl--looked more like snake heads or large question marks, but without the dots...the quilt was already covered it dots, I suppose...



The only other thing that I've been working on is an Anglo-Saxon weaving project.  The nature of this weaving causes a great deal of twist in strings to build up.  In an effort to alleviate this twisting without having to untie and re-tie all the 24 sets of strings, I figured I would try something that was suggested on a web site to use barrel swivels from the fishing aisle at Fred Meyer.  As the twist builds up, it can untwist via the swivels.  Two things I've discovered...the twist stays between the posts until you get to the end; and the leftover strings tend to get tangled up in the swivels preventing any un-twisting.  Next weave, I'm going to tie the swivels in at the beginning of the project rather than at in the middle.  I will also have to figure out a way to tuck in the ends so they don't get tangled in the swivels.  Not sure how I'm going to do that.  Tape?


I'm feeling a little sickly today.  Time to get some soup and then start the afternoon runaround.