December Purchases

My last purchases post before this was at the end of September (post for 10/2/19) so I have refrained from buying for two whole months. But since then I have succumbed to the lure of fabric and associated notions. I do like to post my purchases for a reason other than showing my daughter and quilting colleagues what I have added to my stash. I like to look back when I make something and recall the circumstances of who I was with and where I was when I bought something I press into service. It also helps me appreciate how long something has ripened in my stash.

Oklahoma City OK, December 6th, 2019, Savage Quilter

I visited my daughter Robin and shared some sewing time with her the week right after Thanksgiving. We visited her local quilt shop and I made a few purchases on Friday, the day before I was to leave to go back home to California. I have been trying hard to restrain my fabric purchases, yet I firmly believe that as quilters we need to support our brick and mortar stores. I spotted this set of #2 HB graphite pencils. They would be my supportive, non-fabric purchase from the Savage Quilter.

The ten sayings on them by Bonnie K. Hunter are fun. I think my favorites are: "When I learned how to quilt, I forgot how to cook." and "One fat quarter, like one cookie, is NEVER enough!" It seemed like these pencils would be a pleasure to use and would be unique enough they would stay in my sewing room and not stray. Hmmm. Since I typically use mechanical pencils, now I need a pencil sharpener. Oh well, I could ask Santa or Amazon.

With Thanksgiving just behind me and Christmas imminent, I was drawn to this set of four tea towels by Moda, one of which featured Frosty the Snowman. I have made pillows from Robot themed tea towels (post for 6/9/19)) that came out out great. I could do the same with these tea towels. I was waffling when the clerk said those magic five words. "It is our last set." I have seen several projects using that Frosty image. Plus there is one other novel idea – I could actually use them as dish towels! With all these possibilities how could I possibly pass them up?

Near the checkout counter I spied this animal/floral fabric in a seductive dark deep blue. Yes, this is fabric – not pencils, not towels, not a book, not a tool. Nevertheless, I fell in love with this fabric and I had two very viable alternatives to consider in lieu of impulse buying. My daughter's favorite quilt store has now gone online with over 9,000 bolts of fabric so I could phone or email them to get some if I still desired it once I was removed from close proximity to the temptation. Robin offered me the option of thinking about it – after all Savage Quilter is only about 15 miles north of Robin – and she could pick some up for me if I decided I truly wanted it after some rational thought. But fabric purchase is not rational; it is emotional, and I caved to buy some there and then. Not wanting to cut such a large print apart, I decided it would make a gorgeous backing so I bought three yards. Actually the benefit of buying in person is that I could see the length of the repeat length and add another one-third yard so I need not unwittingly chop off the head of any creature. So much for my two month hiatus from fabric purchase.

Since Savage Quilter has now also gone online in addition to their brick and mortar store, I will not need to wait until I visit my daughter again to indulge. But I probably will wait. Unless I need more of something I bought there, it is so much more satisfying to have someone beside your side, ooh-ing and aah-ing over your choices.

Actually the fabric was the not last item I bought. I guess the longer I stayed in the store the weaker my restraint became. I saw a Cadillac of seam rippers with two size options on either end. I did not have one of those (and survived very nicely without it, thank you). But what if it did make that onerous task of removing stitches easier, relieve cramping in the hand, be faster, be more visible, etc.? I bought it. I have used it already and it is nice having two size options – not necessary, but nice.

Lafayette CA, December 12th, Cotton Patch

On the Thursday less than a week after returning from my daughter's, I attended a Christmas party/ meeting of a longarm group that meets every other month in the classroom of a local quilt shop (local meaning 30 miles from where I live), Cotton Patch. After the gathering I went across the street to browse the associated store. Friends of ours just learned that they will become grandparents so I needed to replenish my supply of feminine flannel to make burp cloths. Here are the options I chose to add to my drawer full of other half yard cuts. I absolve myself of guilt for this fabric purchase since its residence time in my stash is so small. It is amazing how many people I know are having babies and these make great gifts. They do not generate UFOs either.

While I was there I was attracted to the central green print  in the next photo. The green is a very soft shade and the entire print was muted. I bought two other fat quarters from the same line because the green is subtly hard to match. Besides, to quote Bonnie K. Hunter again, "One fat quarter, like one cookie, is NEVER enough!"

I also splurged on the book Sew Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Mary Hertel because the patterns are so quirky cute. Paper piecing is not my first love, but I am quite willing to be patient and creative with it when the results are so whimsical.  The back cover shows some of the completed projects.

But the store purchases were not the worst of the fabric financial impact on me from that day. One of the ladies at the meeting had brought in and shared a holiday quilt she'd made. It's design mixed star blocks with sections from panels. I admired it greatly and took some closeup photographs of the panel inserted areas as inspiration. I have many panels and I thought it clever how sections were added to, squared off and sized to be the same as the pieced Sawtooth Star blocks, and then artfully scattered throughout the quilt top.

She told me the quilt was from a kit and gave me an info card which revealed it to be from Moda KIT36040, titled from the fabric collection To Be Jolly from manufacturer One Canoe Two.  I went home and did some computer research.

Online December 13th and December 21st

I found the Moda kit To Be Jolly available from the Fat Quarter Shop but also by a small independent quilt shop Yellow Rose Jenny who had it on sale at two thirds the price.  I was amazed since when I buy a kit I rarely sew it up until enough time had passed that it is no longer available anywhere. The very next day on December 13th, I bought the kit from the small independent shop and she mailed it out so swiftly I was impressed.

I looked at that kit and my photographs of it and decided that since the quilt had a white background I wanted a lighter colored backing than anything I had in my stash. I did like the candy cane backing set that the Fat Quarter Shop proposed for it, so one week later on December 21st, I ordered it online from the Fat Quarter Shop.

Both these items arrived before Christmas. I wrapped them and put them under the tree and thanked my husband for the gifts. Opening them Christmas morning gave me pleasure all over again.

Christmas Pillowcases

The week after Thanksgiving I was in Oklahoma visiting my daughter's family. I had brought sock monkey Christmas pillowcases for 4 year old Isaiah, construction shown in my post for 5/11/19.

For 7-year old Autumn I would make at least one Christmas pillowcase with her. When we turned the pillowcase, she was very particular about poking out those corners. She showed off the finished product with pride. Then she tried it on for size. I made a second identical pillowcase except that the opening was on the opposite side.

The next pair of Christmas pillowcases is for my husband Frank. They were not on our bed last night since I had them wrapped and waiting under the tree. Two days ago I was on a mission to get them finished in secret and I succeeded. I had fun picking the fabric combination. They will go on our bed tonight.

I fussy cut the border and made it a tad wider to accommodate full ornaments.

I whipped out these two pillowcases for my son Alex. I wanted them pre-washed and on his bed to sleep with Christmas Eve. In progress photos do not exist.

These will be the last of my pillowcases for 2019. Who knows what the next year will bring?

Those Knit Hats Again!

In July, I had made five knit Santa Hats, proud of myself that I had not put it off until the last minute of the holiday season. I described my progress on them in competition with a reading race with my sister in my post for July 15, 2019. I was ahead of the game. And then, one week before my youngest son left for his special needs Christmas camp in the chilly mountains, it occurred to me that he might like one, also. I ordered online a DMC kit of Top This!, Santa version, got it within a few days, and finished knitting it up December 11th, just in time for camp with one day to spare. This makes Santa Hat #6 that I can add to my knitting completions for 2019. I was pleased to learn that it had been chilly enough that he wore his knit Santa Hat the entire time.

I'd completed five Elf Hats in the fall per my November 4, 2019 post. Photos follow of my son's daughters wearing two of the six hats for their family and my daughter's family wearing their four hats.

Christmas Cars

This Christmas-themed panel caught my eye. I liked the atypical christmas colors –  yellow, gray, and black with red instead of the classical red and green mix. The twist on the recently popular theme of a red pickup truck carrying a Christmas tree appealed, too. 

I also had a mug and tray pair I'd bought at HomeGoods and a pillow from Crate&Barrel I picked up at the end of last season, both with vehicles. This year I added a black and white Merry Christmas sign from a local shop. I had all the accessories. Now I just needed to make the quilt.

I knew I wanted to make the panel go farther than its WOF by 24", so I needed to intersperse other blocks between each car. Yet I did not want the interspersed blocks to become the attention grabbers and distract from the featured cars with Christmas trees. I was inspired by a sample quilt I saw at a Brentwood show in August of 2017 (my post dated 8/21/17) that used quarter square triangle blocks in monotone shades of blue alternated with creature images.

I took a photo of one taxi block and went to my "design program", aka Microsoft PowerPoint, and alternated repeats of the featured panel with quarter square triangle blocks. I had to play with the color arrangement to get the secondary pattern of diamonds I so liked in my inspiration sample.

Then – imitation being the highest form of flattery, right? – I auditioned shades of gray for those quarter square triangle blocks just as my inspiration had used shades of blue. The grays I'd bought were shown in my post for October 2nd at the September Pleasanton Quilt, Craft, and Sewing Festival. Those grays were b-o-r-i-n-g... big yawn! But I did like, and decided to incorporate, a deep gray solid with a secondary weave of goldish thread throughout that gave it a nice sheen. Instead of two other shades of gray I chose a yellow and a red that went well with the vehicles. Merry Go Round in yellow is a Sandy Klop design for American Jane Patterns. Between the Lines in red is from RJR studios.

I noted that each car “square” was not quite square, measuring wider than tall by ⅜". The dimensions of each car block, with its grey frame and raw edges as cut apart, were  8¼" wide by 7⅞"tall. Making hourglass blocks would offer a slight challenge. The hourglass block, once the diagonal seams were sewn, would need to be the exact same size as the slightly rectangular raw edged car blocks.

I remember seeing somewhere that the cutting size for a square intended to become a half square triangle or quarter square triangle needed to add ⅜" for the seam allowance in each diagonal cut, assuming a 45° angle. With two diagonal cuts I needed to add ⅜" + ⅜" for a total of ¾" in both dimensions. I cut a sample block with dimensions of my car block but added ¾" in height and ¾" in width. For my trial run with scrap fabric, I cut two pieces of fabric 9" wide x 8⅝" tall. The trial block finished 8⅛" wide by 7⅞"tall. It was a bit narrow in width so I tweaked the width by ⅛" and tried again. A 9⅛" wide by 8⅝" tall cut dimensions made a second sample that perfectly matched the dimensions of the raw car block at 8¼" wide by 7⅞"tall. This means the two seams intersecting in the center are not at right angles to each other... just off enough to require vigilance to sew the correct triangles together. The triangles are not identically sized as they would be in a perfect square; sides and top/bottom triangles are different and I had to keep track of which was which when sewing those bias seams.

In my case, the yellow triangles were always side triangles and red triangles were mainly top/bottom triangles except for along the side edges. Gray could be either so I had to be super careful and label them religiously. Since the red was striped, that was a helpful clue. My caution paid off because my seams met at the points and I love those secondary charcoal diamonds that resulted from my planning. But my 5-block-wide by 5-block-tall top, once the vertical and horizontal ¼" seams were sewn, would measured 39¼" wide by 37⅜" which was smaller than desired. At this point I have no clear picture what the end goal is, only that I thought bigger would be more useful. Extended the charcoal diamonds out into a vertical edge border would be a nice finishing touch. Adding red triangles to protrude into top and bottom borders would add completeness, also. To keep my quilt in portrait format, I would also needed to add an additional header and footer to offset the greater width.

I remember taking a class in seminole patchwork and thought the diamond pattern it created would echo the secondary diamond pattern of the quilt top thus far. I had to scratch my head a bit, but I did figure out how to get the red stripes to continue to be vertical and not at a slant. I would put this diamond chain insert only at the top, striving for artsy, and deviating a bit from up/down symmetry. Plus I was scraping the bottom of the barrel for the charcoal gray. Look closely and you will see that some of these small squares are themselves pieced. Fortunately it is camouflaged by the grain of the interwoven gold threads.

I extended the triangles of the red stripe over the two top car block into the charcoal gray header and footer, and added red triangles along the vertical edges.

So here is where I am now. The quilt top measures 47" wide by 62" tall. I think I want to frame it with some perimeter sashing but am currently undecided. Making a quilt from a kit goes so much quicker. I don't have to pause to think, nor stop to take time to make decisions. This quilt will not be completed in time for Christmas 2019 but it will be worked on during this Christmas season. That is  maybe an even better yuletide treat.