The No Buy Pledge

If you’re not a quilter, you may hear quilters talking about “stash” and “no buy”.   When I walk through a fabric store, pretty pieces of fabric just jump into my hands and I take them home.  And I create a stash.  Pretty pieces of fabric waiting for me to use them.   Of course, that’s both a good and bad thing.  It enables me to make lovely quilts without buying much, if any fabric.  But I seldom do that… because….I like buying fabric.

A few days ago, I decided to take the “no buy” challenge. These things have “rules” as most challenges do.  Legal to buy is backings, borders, and backgrounds.  And while those are legal, I’m going to try to make do without purchasing them.  Because one challenge to myself is that I will go “no buy” for a year–or until I reach 100 yards, whichever comes first.  Since I have a full-time job, and have other things in my life (running, dog rescuing, family, and home), I would expect that I won’t be able to use 100 yards of fabric in a year.  And since I have set this up with legal purchases, my yardage count will be NET.  So if I buy 5 yards of backing, which is entirely legal, I’ll have to use up 5 yards elsewhere to offset it on that 100 yards.  And, I won’t count as yardage things I’ve already committed–like completed tops.

I don’t buy a lot of pieces 3+ yards.  Heck I don’t buy a lot of pieces over a yard.  So, if I want to not end up in the hole, I’m going to be piecing some backings.

I made this wonkly log cabin top before I got distracted last year.  The top, obviously won’t count toward my new pledge.  BUT,  I pieced this interesting backing, and of course the binding will.  So I will end week 1 with about 2 1/2 yards used.   I’ve been a bad blogger this last year, but I’ll try to check in at least once a month with how my “no buy” pledge is doing.

What are you doing to simplify your life?

Getting Things Done

I have had more energy these last few weeks than I have had in a while.  Perhaps it’s because I’m losing weight, perhaps it’s desperation that the end of the year is approaching, perhaps it’s to avoid doing things I shouldn’t.  Whatever the reason, early in November I made myself a promise to finish 6 projects.  Well, as of last Tuesday, I am done.  The final one went out Tuesday night.  Here is the final quilt I did.

After returning from Fedex (who apparently delivered the package to the wrong address, and I’m still looking for it…..), I started Bonnie Hunter’s Allietare Mystery and am doing my dutiful Monday morning link up.

I did manage to get Clues 1-3 done so far, and will start Clue 4 today.

And how about you? Are you doing anything productive?

I Completed Clue 5

As I said, I now have a house full of visitors, but Clue 5 was a pretty small one, so I managed to do it quickly while everyone was sleeping in.  So it didn’t take long for me to put together the few blocks that we needed for this clue.  Then my daughter and I sat down and did some arranging with them.  I’m not sure if this makes sense given the number of each units, but it does make some interesting blocks.

I (Think I) Win the Scrappy Challenge!

Early in 2014, Judy L at Patchwork Times issued a Scrappy Challenge.  I started doing her January Challenge and by the time of her link up I had made 30 blocks.  If you find her January link up, you can see mine there.  I put a red in the center of each block, but after that, I gave no thought to anything except 1)  neutral background 2) light on the rectangles around the center 3) mediums on the big triangles, and 4) darks on the smaller triangles.

So with 64 “Big T” blocks, I took my selection of blacks and added them as sashing.  The red cornerstones in the sashing is a constant fabric.  I PURCHASED the border, which is black with multi-color polka dots.  The backing is also scrappy–I used yardage, but there are 4 fabrics in it–in long stripes.  Other than the border, I purchased NOTHING for this quilt.  Which is 98 x 98.  I quilted it myself using the a panto called “Hearts a flutter” and I love the way it looks.  Here it is on my queen size bed.  There is a full row of blocks hanging off either side.

Did you do anything scrappy this year?

Keeping Up: Clue 2 Done

At this time of year, we all have commitments.  So when I decided to participate in Bonnie’s Grand Illusion Mystery, I knew I had some things to work around.  December is always a busy time at work, and then there’s other things–an HOA meeting, quilt guild board meeting, I took a quilting class, etc.  With the quilting class yesterday, I didn’t think I’d have enough time to finish Clue 2.  Yet here are Clue 1 and Clue 2 all done and stacked, semi-neatly in a project box.

Now back to other things!

To see how others are doing with their mystery, go to http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2014/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-2.html

Quilt Show A-Comin’ !

I haven’t been updating this lately.  Too many life changes going on.  My son has moved to Florida, and I have been a bit sad.  I have been quilting a couple of quilts that are promised to our guild’s quilt show in October, including “The Voices Told me to”.  I have just completed quilting and binding this monster, which contains over 3,000 half square triangles.  The title of it was a toss up between Voices and “Bane of My Existence”, but I settled on the “voices” title.  I also completed  “Twisted Kitties”.

But as of yesterday, I have finally removed the last quilt for the show from the frame, and started attaching the binding.  I will have several that are display only–but I still want them to look nice.  Kitties will be display only–it’s nothing exciting, but it’s kind of cute.  I think as I get older, my work just isn’t as good.  Having a quilt show every year also seems to deplete my creativity.

Need to get back to binding Kitties.

Quilting the Voices

I have started quilting “The Voices” as I have come to call it. I appreciate now more than ever how tiny those silly HSTs are.  Quilting it is tedious, and after two weeks I have only managed to quilt about 1/4 of the body of the quilt.  Borders are just stabilized for now.  In fact, I haven’t decided what I will do with the borders…..

To break up the monotony of quilting the tiny terror, I stopped and took the blocks I made at quilt camp last month and assembled them into a baby quilt.  I used the Twisted Sister template to make the blocks and used a fun little cat fabric to insert faces into the blocks.  I’m calling this one “Twisted Kitties”.

Right now I still have about half a dozen quilts to quilt, so I hate to start new ones, but oh my I have so much fabric to use up!

The Voices

And I have something to report.  I have finished piecing a top.  A long time ago I started making little bitty blocks from all the cutoffs I had leftover from making flying geese and other blocks where you cut off the leftover after sewing on a triangle.  I trimmed them up into 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 inch blocks.

One day a little voice in my head told me that I had enough I should do something with them.  So I made the little bitty blocks.  I kept making them and making them and then I added some pinwheels.  Then I made some more for a border around the bigger blocks.  A week or so ago in quilt camp I had 64 bigger blocks made and then when I got home I laid them out and sewed them into rows.  This takes quite some time because, as you can tell, there are a few points to try to match.  People were telling me I was insane.  So the working title of this quilt top became “The Voices Told Me To”.

It is 72 x 72 and contains 3,016 half square triangles.  So that’s 6,032 triangles in it. That’s 18,096 points.  One of the points is perfect. Good luck finding it.

BUT! except for the borders of cream batik, it is all cut off of yardage that was counted, so only the border counts toward de-stashing.  Now I need to make a backing for it.  It is almost tempting to buy a wide backing.  But, I’ll think about it  🙂

The Mythical Pieced Orphan Block Backing

We all say we want to use up scraps, but well, most of us don’t make scrap quilts.  And if we do make scrap quilts, we march right out and buy that big extra wide fabric for the backing.  Guilty!  But as you know, I keep trying to do some stash reduction.  For my most recent quilt, I pulled out a few blocks I had already made (see my gadget challenge) and another one that I made in complimentary colors for the quilt.  I did have one piece that was 2 yards that was in my stash.  The rest is just smaller pieces from my stash.

Please don’t think I invented this method of taking a block or two and putting it in a strip of fabric so that it makes a “panel”.  I’ve done my own version of it for a while, but I usually only use cutoffs from the front or leftover pieces.  And note, I am not trying to center anything.  The lighter blue on either side of my panels is actually a two yard strip.  I started with it, made and added the red panel.  Then I had a small piece of the same light blue (oriented the other direction–it’s a directional fabric) that I added to the red panel.  Then I used up several blocks and made the darker blue panel and sewed it to the right of the narrow blue strip.  Then I sewed the light blue fabric (2 yard piece) to that panel and made a tube.  At that point, I had 4 panels joined in a tube.  To finish the backing, I randomly selected a spot to tear the fabric so that it looks like I have 5 panels.  And neither of my block panels are centered either horizontally or vertically.  That’s too much pressure.

Honestly, I could have made a couple of more panels and maximized scrap usage.  But that’s enough for today.  How about you?  Do you ever make scrap backings to use up your orphan blocks?  I only used 5 on this backing, but I have used more.  And used those big purchased solid backs too.

Sewing Room Havoc

One thing my sewing room doesn’t have is a door.  We are going to remedy that next week, so I had to move a bunch of stuff out of my sewing room.  This is my guest room that has a twin size bed.  On it you can see four tubs.  That is my entire stash.  All of it,  every bit, except a small bin of strings.  Anyway, I figure it is still hundreds of yards of fabric (and I hope my husband never sees this post).  Way more than I will ever need, and yet not nearly as much as many of my friends have.

How about you?  Could you fit your entire stash into 4 bins on a twin size bed and have room left over?