Which Way To The Chocolate?

Which Way to the Chocolate?

63 x 78

Machine pieced and hand quilted

I quilted with big stitching in a variety of threads from my stash -variegated brown perle #5 and perle #8, light brown 20 wt. 

I didn't mark any quilting lines. I just eyeballed about 1/4 inch inside each geese and then stitched in the ditch around the sashing and then stitched lines about 1/4 inch away from each other inside the sashing. 

I used a chocolaty brown muslin for the backing and it's kind of fun that you can see all of the stitching echoed on the back. 

It's been cold in these here parts lately so I'm ready now to cover myself in chocolate! 

This was my goal #6       for the      First Quarter 2016 Finish Along. 

I'm going over today to:

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Marginalia (aka The Circle Game)

My January Circles. 

I finished a couple of books, we ate the last of our homegrown onions, my cousin's husband died, my oldest son turned 42, I looked through seed  catalogs, ordered seeds and received seeds.  I finished a quilt, I remarked on grandkids shoe skating on ice in the cornfield on a frigid day, played games with the grandkids...

...I suffered some very stressful days at work...

...felt crabby and blue...

...and I'm sick of robocalls.  Iowa caucuses are tonight so hopefully the calls will end. 

I've been making circles since Nov 4, 2015. I guess I now have 89 circles.  I need to start sewing them together. I want to keep them in order sequentially and think I have a layout in mind. 

Whose crazy idea was this?

Audrey of Quilty Folk

She talked quite a few folks into her Quilty 365 idea as evidenced by the monthly link!

I can't believe the variety of circles being made out there in blog land. Oh what fun!

Kaleidoscopes, Butterflies and Kaleidoscopes of Butterflies

I've added 30 more butterflies to my Kaleidoscope of Butterflies.  (Did you know a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope of butterflies?)

I've been using waste triangles for the butterflies and blue 2.5 inch squares for the backgrounds. 

There's even some butterflies in the blue backgrounds. 

Linking up butterflies to:

Moving it Forward Monday at Em's Scrapbag

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

And speaking of butterflies...did you know that Monarchs need Milkweed to survive?  I let it grow wild out back in my gardens. I took this pic during the winter of 2008. It's how milkweed looks out there this time of year.  

An InLinkz Link-up

Short, Bright and Skinny

Short, bright and skinny? No, I'm not describing myself except for maybe the bright part.  I'm talking about the strings I used up in this quilt top. 

It's 45 x 54.  I used some 5 inch b/w centers I've had laying around here from a swap long, long ago. 

Since this is wider than a width of fabric I'm thinking I will make one big happy block for the back and use some of my long strings around a big center. We'll see. 

My plain Jane Janome is in the shop for repair. I heard a clunk and that was it. No more sewing for me. And I was about 3/4 finished with free motion quilting my Fireworks quilt.   My husband helped me get my crazy Ken Kenmore out of the attic and I decided to give it a try while Jane is in the shop.  I haven't sewn on it since I made my daughter's wedding dress about 15 years ago and got frustrated with him and banished him to the attic.  I'm spoiled by Jane's 1/4 foot which doesn't fit on Ken so decided I would just sew on Wonky today where it doesn't make any difference if seams aren't perfect.  I finished up 8 blocks and then assembled the top.  And I'm kind of liking Ken again.  I might have to find space for him in the sewing room.  Right now he's hanging out in the spare bedroom.

This kind of quilt is a lot of fun.  It's a perfect pick-me-up for a cold, rainy winter day. Where else would Santa meet Spiderman? 

And, oh JOY...the spiders are after the chocolate while the monkeys and puppies look on and the reindeer hang upside down. 

When this gets finished it will either be a donation quilt or a car quilt. 

For Christmas  I'm making several "car quilts" to include with other items in some emergency/survival boxes for the car.   Other items to include in the boxes might be hand warmers, flashlight, small shovel, extra gloves,  whistle, jumper cables, salt/sand, multi-purpose tool...there's lots of websites out there with suggestions. 

Linking to:

Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework

Blue 1.5

I've been making these little 3 inch spools since 2013. Maybe by the end of this year I will have enough for a large quilt. I figured I need 783 of them for a 81 x 87 quilt (blocks set 27 x 29).  And with these 15 spools I now have 630 blocks - 146 of them in shades of blue. 

While I was at it I dug into the 1.5 postage stamp collection and made three 49 patches. 

This is the last blue week for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Think I'll go see what everyone else has done to chase away the blues. 

Looking Back...Are You Ready for a Good Laugh?

I really don't consider myself any type of quilter - Improv, Modern, Traditional, Crazy, Lazy, Wonky...that's me. (Notice the title of my blog is Sane, Crazy, Crumby?)   I'm all over the place. 

But, I guess in the beginning I was what would today be considered Improv. 

I made this blue jean quilt in 1992 out of the family's old blue (and other colored) jeans. I followed no pattern - just followed a whim. 

How do I know it was 1992? Because I embroidered it on this quilt. 

I wanted to practice some embroidery stitches on I didn't know what.  Worn out blue jeans were handy. 

For years we took it camping. That's back before we had the pop up camper and went tent camping. We sat on this quilt around many a campfire and I probably washed many smore's off of it. Kids would sit on it during the day and play card games. If it was cold we would cover up with it at night.  Or we would put it under our sleeping bags to keep the dew off of us.  I  have two other twin sized denim quilts out in the pop up camper we still use when we go camping.  Before camping they were bedspreads on the boy's bunk beds.  The camper is closed up for the winter or I would have gotten those out too.  

I tied the quilt with several strands of embroidery thread.  It has held up well but is now falling apart. It retired to the quilt rack hanging on the wall in the spare bedroom.  I don't know why. It was a learning experience and it is full of memories.   (By the way...I learned that it's not really easy to practice embroidery stitches on blue jean seams).  

Oh, and the back was a big piece of soft plaid flannel.  (Sorry for the blurry photo...it's windy and cold out there.) 

Ok, now let's go back in our time machine to the 70s. You can see the small  denim quilt next to the queen sized quilt made out of left over fabrics from back when I made clothes for the family.  I must have been ahead of my time. It sure looks like what today is called a jelly roll quilt.  (I really don't like jelly roll quilts if the truth be known). 

This quilt is from about 1977 and we lived in Florida then. I made this as our family beach quilt.  Four of us, ice chests, strollers, diaper bags, beach toys,  towels and other stuff fit nicely on the quilt. 

Mickey Mouse fabric was from one of the shirts I made my husband. I was going to go looking for pics of him in that shirt for proof but was too lazy to go through old photos. 

That flowery print was what I used to recover a chair I bought at auction.  Hey, it was the 70s! Anyway, it was a small chair and the fabric was probably too light weight but it is a little heavier than regular cotton and I'm sure it was a good price because we weren't exactly rolling in the dough back then. 

I estimated this as vintage 1977 because I see some little girl fabrics in the quilt and my daughter had some little dresses and sun suits made from some of the fabrics in this quilt.  (Actually this really isn't truly a quilt by the strictest definition of quilt but as far as I'm concerned it's a quilt) . We moved back to IA in 1979 and used this quilt for a couple of years at the beach so 1977 it is.  Again I have some pics of my daughter in clothes made from some of these fabrics.  And strangely enough...that brown calico sure looks like some fabric I just picked up for about $3 yd on clearance. 

To make this I cut (with good old fashioned scissors) the scraps into what looks like about 2.5 inch strips I had marked with pencil and ruler. I sewed those strips together (by color I guess. Wasn't that fancy?)  into long strips and sewed them to an old sheet using the sew a strip, flip, sew a strip, flip method to attach to the sheet.  I don't remember where I got that green plaid I used for binding...maybe from my step mom? 

I actually didn't pay any attention to what types of fabric I used...there's different weights and types; seersuckers and gauzy and some cotton/rayon blends. 

The old sheet I used on the back is yellowing now.  You can see it was old to begin with. I put a few "band aids" on the holes that were in the sheet and I didn't even bother to cut off the doubled over fabric of the sheet.  Remember, I wanted a quilt to spread out on the sandy beach. 

Ok. Here's the part where I show you this was actually made from scraps left over from clothes I made.  See that purple strip there?  And below it, on top of the quilt you can see...

...the shirt I made (and actually wore) with that fabric.  Go ahead and laugh. Yes, I still have it. I have a lot of the cotton shirts I made stored in a box to cut up and use someday in something. I used to cut them down and make things for my daughter until she grew up.  I think that shirt has shrunk about three sizes (or is it just me)?

Yes, I'm a hoarder. An improv hoarder.  

Do you have an improv story? 

Link up with  Ann at Fret Not Yourself or Kaja at Sew Slowly and tell your story. 

UFO Attack

No, I'm not being attacked by a UFO. I'm attacking a UFO. 

Blind Man's Fancy is one of my many UFOs.  I think it has lingered as a UFO for so long because I hate cutting fabric especially when the pattern calls for so many odd sized pieces. Those little HSTs finish at 1 13/16 which is really weird and so I can't use my usual method of making HSTs which is using an Easy Angle ruler.  I have to follow the methods used in the pattern for all these weird sized pieces for a 15 inch block. 

 I do want to make and own a quilt like this so I decided to work on it again last weekend and made six more blocks.  I need a total of 25 (or maybe reduce to 16? ) plus this will have flying geese for sashing. 

Since this pattern is supposedly modeled after a civil war era quilt I'm using civil war reproduction fabrics.  I found a free pattern by Beth Donaldson to use.  I also have a slightly different set of instructions from the book History Repeated which I bought after I started making these. 

There's a Pinterest board with lots of Blind Man's Fancy quilts 

in case you are interested in how the final quilt will look. 

  

Normally when I make these blocks I choose 7 different fabrics starting with the center 6 1/8 inch piece and work out from there, cutting fabric for each section of the block. Then I sew.  I don't cut all the fabric pieces at one time because of the "hate cutting" factor. I also hate drawing sewing/cutting lines on fabric and so that is why I sew a little, cut a little, sew a little, cut a little especially on blocks like these. 

In order to keep this UFO moving forward I've devised a new plan of attack. 

Now I'm going to work from the outside in and also use some of the already cut pieces left over from the last 11 blocks.   So, I will mix and match the pile of 5 inch fabrics to make 4 each of all the hourglass units I need.  I will mix and match the pile of already cut 4 3/8 inch pieces and make all those 1 13/16 inch HSTs and so on.  So, I think rather than make one block at a time I will make all of the necessary UNITS I need from already cut to size fabrics and then make the blocks.  I think that will be more appealing to me and help me get this quilt completed! 

Linking to: 

Move it Forward Monday at Em's Scrapbag

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt.