Thinking Out Loud On The Blog

Kayak trip cancelled due to perfect weather.

The forecast called for rain and the trip required earlier than normal waking.  So when I did finally wake up and saw the forecast was wrong, the weather was perfect and we cancelled the trip for no reason, it was too late to get moving.  

Bummer.

But, looking on the positive side, I had some time to sit down and sew a bit.  

I finally finished that last quilt top square. 

Woohoo!

Oh yes, you have to suffer through at least one gratuitous close up.

That's how much fabric was left over.  Not much.  

Which is another bummer because I need more fabric to make the squares all fit together.  

WHY did I make those napkins when this fabric told me it wanted to be a quilt?!?!?!?!?

I do love my napkins, though. 

Anyhoo, my lack of indigo dyed linen led to me making a bunch of silly looking piles of fabric under my smallest square to try and find something that worked.  This one is dyed light blue with indigo but has a print on it which might be distracting.

Linen lavender remnant of a jacket.  But also thicker than the other linen in the quilt.  Hmm.

A linen/cotton blend skirt.  Beige.  

Olivey-brown linen pants.

  

Linen shirt.

Other pair of linen pants, grey.

Hmm.  I guess I'm just thinking out loud on the blog here.  

I often get a different view of something after posting it here.  

The extra fabric I pick will also show up here and there between squares to make them fit together.  I'll let you know what I pick.  Either I make a point of it all being blue or I have another color peeking out here and there.  

Win win, I'd say.  

She Caught Me

My life is changing.  Not in a bad way, at all.  I'm not done blogging either.  

I just have to figure how it all will fit together.

I've been having tons of fun.  I've started a website for our business.  I'm actually really proud of it because I know NOTHING about coding.  It was very confusing and weird but it doesn't look completely embarrassing.  

RustedThread.com

There's still more for me to do but at least it's a start.  

Yesterday, my daughter and I went to a "Drawing Jam" run by Lynda Barry, who is amazing.

That's her brain on the left and mine on the right.

It was a blast.  My daughter got to discuss her drawing with Lynda Barry,  

Here she caught me taking her picture.

I STILL haven't finished the last square of my quilt top but I'm close, just as close as I was last time I posted.  Today I finish our chicken coop, tomorrow I kayak.  

I just need time to sit down.  :)

Ready Freddy

I only need to make one more log cabin square to call this ready, Freddy.  

Making it into a quilt top, though, takes more time than you might think.  

That's because I don't make each square a certain size, I just sew them together until they are around about the same size.  

When I sew the squares together, I often have to add a strip here and there.  

I could cut the squares down but then I'd lose so much of my precious squares and I would be sad.  

Can't have that.  

I'm This Quilt's Paparazzi

I've made some slow but good progress on my indigo quilt.  

Making up a quilt as I go along makes me so happy.  I thought I'd just walk through it here because, for some odd reason, people tend to be a little intimidated by the process.

First I cut up some fabric (duh).

I pick a satisfying shape. I like me some diagonals.

Then I add a piece to one side.  I usually pick the diagonal edge because then I can work the panel towards being sort of a square by the time I'm finished with it.

Chop chop to even it up.

Then I kind of cheat by just grabbing a piece of fabric that is larger than I need so that I can cut it down to size later.  

I love to use all the little scraps and so I don't feel like I'm wasting fabric.

Right sides together and line 'em up.  No, I don't pin unless I really have to.

I iron all the seams open as I go along.  I love ironing linen.  It can really take the heat.

 Here it is before I cut in down to make it square.

Here's where I started. I know, I really went overboard on the pictures.  

It's really more of a rectangle.

I sewed these two together.  

Here's some more bits about to be added on to a square that's already pretty far along.  When I pick my little pieces, I always make them longer than they really need to be.

 

Because of the seams, doncha ya know.

See, it's just long enough after sewing it together and ironing the living shit out of it.  

Chop chop again.

Sew sew again.

 

And there's one of the square is in all her glory.  I feel like I'm this quilt's paparazzi.

I just thought I'd add this one last picture. I take great pains to make sure that my seams don't line up.  One always slips by me though.  I've made 10 squares.  I need to make one more and then I can sew them together.  I've been so busy that I haven't been able to commit my regular loony amount of time quilting.  But when I do, I have a blast!

Big Messy Pile In My Garage

Remember when the fabric we dyed with indigo told me it wanted to be a quilt?

I didn't listen right away.  First I made some napkins.

 

Then, for some reason to do with people visiting and using my car and me being disorganized, it all ended up in a big messy pile in my garage. That's right, the garage. 

But now it's all alright because I spent my afternoon sewing it into quilt squares.  

Have I ever mentioned - over and over again - that I loooooooove improvising a quilt together.  Love it.  I can't imagine that following a pattern is even half this much fun.

I also love linen and have taken a ridiculous number of close up

and far away

 and close up pictures.

I made seven squares today.

I'll probably make nine all together,  Maybe twelve, I don't know.

I think this is my favorite.  

So here's another picture of it.

This one I'm going to just keep in one piece.

I haven't sewn for a while and it was so fun to do.  

I remember once telling a friend of mine that I had figured out how to make quilting go really fast.  Then I realized that I didn't actually speed up the process, I was just enjoying myself so much that time was flying.