Christmas Stocking

I do two things every year in late November. I avoid shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, and I make a stocking for the Omaha Quilt Guild's Stocking Challenge . This year, I sent my family off to a movie without me on Friday afternoon and made my stocking. Photos show front and back of stocking.

The orange fabric was the challenge fabric. I chose snowflake and sky fabrics to be a background for my free-hand cut star.

I like to try something on a small scale that I am thinking about for a larger project, so this stocking has crazy-quilted patches. The stitching was done by machine and I didn't fuse the patches onto the background.

I'm happy with the stocking and what I learned: It is easier to start at an "end", rather than work in a circular pattern around a middle.

I hope the child who gets this stocking enjoys it for many years.

Measurable Work

My cash register table needs a cover. For a couple of years worth of shows, I've made do with a big black tablecloth. I fold the too-wide length under and pin the too-long sides up. And promise myself that I'll make a custom cover that FITS. And stuff happens and I don't get it done and I go to the next show and go through the folding and pinning and promising.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a thunderstorm. I planned to spend the day cleaning out my flower beds for spring, planting some early color. With my outdoor plans stymied by the heavy rain, I realized I could make my often-promised table cover AND satisfy an on-going need to produce measurable work.

I started by raw-edge appliquéing strips and chunks from my scrap tub onto a base of muslin about 6" wide. When the first piece was 24" long, I started another. When I had enough 24" pieces to cover my table, I joined them together. I added a skirt black polyester to surround the table and hemmed it so it hangs just an inch off the floor. I finished all the seams so the poly wouldn't ravel. Not creative, but satisfying. I did some top-stitching with varigated threads. I will notice the color, whether anyone else does or not.

This is the finished piece. Colorful, somewhat creative, measurable work. I'm happy. Except that I'm not sure I like the idea of Mike Piazza in an A's uniform.

Too Small To Keep, Too Big To Throw Away (TSTKTBTTA)

After a question about a technique that was sort_of_in_the_neighborhood_ of TSTKTBTTA was posted on QuiltArt today, I thought a quick tutorial might be of interest. I save scraps of my hand dyed fabric (Hey - it's expensive!) and developed this technique to use those scraps, which range in size from 1/2" wide to 5". I have made a number of quilts that use this technique.

Supplies:
Scraps of fabric. Can be irregularly shaped or left-over squares and strips. If a scrap seems too big or isn't the correct shape, I take scissors to it!

Fusible web.

Base - can be batting, Peltex, muslin or other fabric. This is a good place to use those too_thin_really_ugly_outdated_what_was_I_thinking fabrics, since they will be covered. I like my base piece to be slightly larger than the finished dimension. Example: for postcards, start with a 4.5" x 6.5" piece of Peltex.

Apply fusible web to base. OR: Use scraps that already have fusible web on the back.



Arrange scraps on base. Overlap edges slightly (1/4" at most). When you like what you see, fuse them down. In the example shown, which is about 8" wide by 6" high, I think the scrap on the top right is too big.


Optional step: sew down raw edges.



My August 2005 Journal Quilt - "I Grow Flowers, Not Vegetables" (8.5" x 11") is one of the three quilts in my pattern, Tres Flores. All three quilts use the TSTKTBTTA technique to create the background.






Once I have the base covered and fused, it generally becomes a background. Sometimes I cut it up to create applique pieces, such as the leaf in this piece.

Have fun!

Why Use One Fabric When You Have Twenty?

When I make quilts, I like to work with many fabrics, rather than a few. Making these "scrap" quilts always generates SCRAPS! I saved the long skinny ones for string piecing. Most of the chunky scraps I threw away. But my hand-dyed fabric scraps were too precious to discard. When the scrap collection outgrew the first three storage boxes, each larger than the one before, I decided I had to start using them. I call the technique I've been exploring for about a year "Too Small To Keep - Too Big To Throw Away" (TSTK-TBTTA). These scraps fall into the 2-4" range. Bigger scraps are big enough to do something with, smaller scraps are a PITA to work with.

And yet, I found myself fusing these teeny scraps to a 4" x 6" Peltex postcard base. Scraps with fusible web on them, trimmed off a TSTK-TBTTA scrap. Scraps that are smaller than PITA-size scraps. Scraps so small that I normally don't even hesitate before tossing them into the trash. Scraps so small that they don't deserve to be called scraps! And I was using them.

My placement technique was simple - the scrap should cover Peltex, not other scraps. When I had the entire base covered with a jarring collection of color and shape, I "quilted" by sewing many straight lines at odd angles across the scraps.

Leftover from June's Journal Quilt were quite a few sort-of/almost triangular pieces of pink fabrics. These became the petals of my FireWorks Flower. I like how the flower quiets the explosion of color of the background. I'm not crazy about the dark gray chunks near the edges of the postcard, but I decided to think of them as the paper housing which gets blown away unnoticed when fireworks are set off.

This postcard will be mailed to the next person (Betty H) on my Omaha Postcard Exchange List.


The 2nd postcard is Blue Daisy. I finished the postcard, signed it, wrote the date as 2005 not once, but THREE times. Twice on the front, once on the back. If not for a daughter who pointed it out, I might never have caught my error. After four days of agonizing over my error, I mailed it to my June Postcard recipient without correction. My first ever late mailing :(