The Fabric Stash

Seems like this is the time of the year when everyone is discussing their fabric stash...  admit it, the Christmas holidays are over, there's not much in the way of entertainment in the cold Midwest in January, so it's probably timely.

 

I've shown you some of mine before...  I have a sewing room in my basement.  I used to put things out on shelves and in baskets.  But then I was invaded by a family of field mice who chewed a couple dozen holes in a piece of silk and linen that rendered a yard and half completely unusable except as patchwork.

 

I hate mice.  Even when I don't see an actual mouse, I hate coming across their leavings.  You see tiny specks of things that weren't there yesterday and you wonder what it is.  Aaagh!! Don't touch it!

 

Enter the bins.  And a hubby with traps filled with peanut butter.  Get them OUT!!

 

Now I have so many bins, and they take up a lot of space.  At first I tried to organize by fabric type for garment fabrics... all the cotton/poly knits together.  Sometimes that worked.  I've also put groups together for what would work for an outfit, or all the pants weight fabric together.  It's kind of a mishmash, admittedly a work in process.  It helps to label the bins.  I've taken packaging tape and a small square of cardboard and placed a tag on the outside of each bin.  Portable and easy to change.

 

If I don't do that I have no idea what I have where.

 

OK I KNOW it's too much.  But it's my only vice.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 Quilting fabric at first was just a small problem issue...

I could group things, tie them nicely and put them in a bin for a future project.

But the stash just started to grow on its own, I swear, while I wasn't looking!

It did help when I was planning a project.  I organized by fabric length.  Over a yard, a yard, half yards, fat quarters, etc.  Then I organized by color, a bin of blue, a bin of red, all the browns from cream to chocolate.  That led to bins of Christmas and a bin of batik, plus a bin of plaid and a bin of dot.  And just for fun, a bin full of miscellaneous pieces that could be cut up for scrap quilts.



The current box of stuff to be cut up into usable bits...

I got the Scrap Insanity book, did the recommended 2 inch, 3.5 inch and 5 inch squares.  I branched out to strips too.  2 inch, 2.5 inch and 3 inch width of fabric strips had bins of their own.  I made my own jelly roll bundles.  Those are very convenient when you want to actually sew, not figure out what you WANT to sew.

One day I took out the bin of 2 inch squares and went wild...

The right side of my design wall looked like this.

I have a box of projects that are not quite finished, and quilt blocks left over from either testing a pattern or where I made too many or maybe just made some because I could.  Some day there will be a whole rash of finishes!  Really, it IS possible!

a box of UFOs and orphan squares.

 Not only do I have responsibility for my personal stash... but I have to help Suzi manage the church group's stash!  This is how it looked after we spent a little time working on it in November.

It doesn't look that good right now, but we have about a dozen quilts in various stages of completion and there are kits galore for the ladies who want to sew tops.  I think messy and working is much better than neat and organized but nothing's happening anyway, don't you?

I have taken to calling this a personal collection instead of a stash.  After all, does your husband have a beer can collection because he's going to USE them all???  Ha!  I'm stocking up against inflation.  Or a snow day.  Or my retirement.  Whatever --  I love my collection.  Every single inch of it.

If I have to use up everything I have, I am going to freakin' live forever!

Sew on...

Ooops! Fixing a Knitting Blunder

So you know how sometimes life gets in the way of what you're doing?  I think this story might be like that.

 

Someone who shall remain nameless (but it isn't me) was knitting a child's sweater while watching TV or something.  I have knitted this sweater at least a dozen times so I know how this can happen!

 

The sweater has a hood and zips up the back.  You start at the face edge, knit the hood, then you bind off.  You fold the hood, pick up stitches at the sides and join the sides to make the face opening.

 

I don't know how clear it is in this picture, but this person flipped the pieces when picking up the neck stitches, so the face edge is okay on the right side and flipped on the left.

 

She was having trouble on the sleeve cables and frog stitched one sleeve a couple of times.  It finally came together.  Almost.

 

The edge on the left is actually the face edge, the diagonal down the center should be at the center back, not the center front.

Wrong way.

Right way.

Normally I do the hand picked zipper when she's done with the sweater because she hates doing the zipper and I don't mind.

She showed me what happened and was really upset with herself for doing this.  I sympathized!!  Who would want to frog stitch the whole dang sweater???

ME:   What I would do if it was mine would be to clip the picked up stitches, turn the hood the right way, and use the mattress stitch to put it back together.

SHE:  OK, here you go.

ME:  Oh boy.  I was wondering what I was going to do with all my leisure time...

Actually this didn't turn out to be such a bad task.  FINDING the picked up stitches might have been the hardest part.  But since I would be separating a bound off edge from the top edge of the neck band, I was pretty sure it wouldn't unravel.

I put the neck band on waste yarn with a big yarn needle.  That's the light purple you see in the photos.  I cut at the center and unraveled the picked up stitches.  Then I flipped the hood the right way and pinned it to the neck band again.

Now all I need to do is stitch the pieces back together, block the sweater and sew in the zipper.

Piece of cake.

I should be able to knock this off while watching Jeopardy tonight!

Knit on...

Charity Sewing

The church quilting group met this past Saturday to catch up from the holiday hiatus and show what we've been working on since we last met.

Wow, all I can say is wow.

Bonnie worked on a new pattern, a big chevron using strips, not triangles.

This pattern is called Cut Apart Nine Patch.  Quilted and finished.

The pattern for this purple number is called My Favorite Donation Quilt.

Rail Fence, quilted and finished.

Shirley even tried her hand at free motion quilting, a new skill for her!

Another chevron, this time with smaller strips.  You need more strips but you get more colors.

This pattern has a name, but I can't recall what it is;  it is essentially snowball blocks with sashing.

We love our string quilts!  Quilted and finished.

Xs and Os, quilted and finished.

Yellow Brick Road pattern, quilted and finished.

I pieced this 60 degree triangle pattern a while ago and decided it needed to move OUT of my UFO box...

Our new Welcome banner.

Someone asked us if we could make something to cover up the chip in the paint on this wall.  I don't know if it was a joke or what.. the space is about 18 inches wide and the chip is down below where the O in Welcome is!  What could you put there that wouldn't look odd?

So we got creative and I pieced some wonky letters.  I was very into wonky that week!  Then I passed it along to my co-leader, Suzi, and she did an amazing job of quilting it.  We got a dowel and a string and voila!  Chip covered, and not at all awkward.  It's right inside our back door and now is one of the first things you see when you come into the Fellowship hall in the church.

Now, back to those UFOs...

Sew on!

Back to Blogging!

I just looked at the last time I posted anything and I took a seriously long break!  Oh well, everyone deserves to have some time off over the holidays...

I have a bunch of things to finish up and I'm doing some project planning.  I'm not going to call what I'm doing anything like making a resolution, because we all know how those go.  But I do want to do better at starts and finishes this year.  My stash just keeps growing and I have to do something before my family nominates me for the Hoarders TV shows!

I'm seriously into scrap usage these days, and by scrap usage I mean using up those bins and bins of things that I've cut up from the leftovers of other projects.  I was so industrious about cutting small chunks of fabric into the planned 2 inch/3 1/2 inch/5 inch pieces that I now have many more than I can use in a weekend...  so I'd like to get going on sewing some of those bits together.

In my weekly blog review I come across lovely things and good patterns.  Right now I'm crazy about log cabins in all shapes and forms.  You're saying shapes and forms?  Log Cabins?  What?

How about wonky log cabins?  Triangle log cabins?  Hexy log cabins?  Ha!  You knew that, right?

None of these LCs is going to help me on the squares, but they're clearing out the strips and chunks bag.  This week the ladies at the church guild are getting a lesson in how to do these types of squares because I kid you not, we have a stash there too!

Next project I'm going to try with them is to return to my spool blocks or maybe some bow ties.  We can do some nine patches if we can find sets... I think I have a bin of fours and fives of the same colors that the grands sorted out for me one Saturday if I can find it.  A nine patch of two inch squares turns out to measure five inches if your seam allowances are right.  (A four patch of twos should be 3 1/2 inches...)

Here's a nice tutorial about Bow Ties on Quilty Pleasures: 

http://www.quiltmaker.com/blogs/quiltypleasures/2015/01/qm-bitty-blocks-things-to-consider/

These spools were two inch squares and two by five inch strips.  Matching colors are good, but if you use similar colors and pair them with one background color per block it works too.  I have a box of these units I should finish up.

On the list!

Also to complete:

More doll inventory for the shop in Mukwonago
A commission to make an outfit for a beautician doll
Two Christmas quilts to layer, quilt and bind
My 1600 Inches Jelly Roll batik needs layering, quilting and binding

I suppose I should finish up the Phone Guy's Wife quilt...

 And the Black and White and Stars too.

OK, I'm stopping with the list now.  Too much to do, too little time!  I need to win the lottery so I can quit my job and stay home and

Sew on....

Happy New Year!

Brrrr... the temperature today is above zero, but only just.  Well, OK it's 10.  But the wind chill is minus 2.  Our safety manager sent out a notice on how quickly you can get frostbite in this kind of weather, and it's five or ten minutes!  That's not enough time to get to the bus stop!

It was hard coming back to work after a week and a half off.  I had to put on real shoes.  And my cubicle is still chilly, even more so when the temperature outside is so low.  Yesterday it took about six minutes for the gauge in my car to register more than C and I was a quarter of the way home before the heater was throwing warmth.

Winter has arrived.  With a vengeance it seems.

So over the holidays I spent some time sewing and knitting.  And then cleaning up my messy room before I could sew again.  (What's new?  HA HA!)  I got all my Christmas gifts done, and I think everyone was pleased.  Christmas Eve was nice.  Church was early since it's always the live Nativity play.  We had a very well behaved donkey this year.  No poops in the gym!  My son said he was disappointed since it wasn't as stinky as last year... 

I received a gift card for Patched Works in Elm Grove.  What an awesome quilt shop!  If you haven't been there, why not?  You should go.  They have what you need!  Here's a link to Julie's blog... Patched Works Blog to find out what's going on there, or here's the store link:  http://www.patchedworks.com/

The day we went, the grands and I took no time at all to spend what was on the card PLUS a few bucks more.  But we got some treasures.  Miss E found some spider web fabric that was on sale, and Miss A found some Angry Birds Halloween that was also 30% off.  PJ bottoms are being planned.

Our pile must have looked strange because the cutting table lady said "What are you making?" like they usually do but her tone indicated that she just didn't understand it AT ALL!  I had two veggies prints, the Halloween prints, a flag print and one with portraits of the presidents, plus three white-on-whites and one very loud orange.  Oh, and two Christmas prints.

"Oh we're just filling gaps in the stash..." I said.  "You know, trying to finish up some projects.  That's my New Year's Resolution." 

I didn't say what year!

Miss A was fascinated by how the lady was whipping the bolt around and measuring.  She asked how she learned to do that...  "Lots of practice!" was the answer.  Isn't that always the way?

After lunch at the sub shop we adjourned to the craft room to look at the treasures and plan some projects.  We had stopped at Michael's on the way over.  Miss E is working on a canvas with melted crayons; I can't wait to see how that turns out!

I have lots of things to start, and to finish!  And I have to remember to take pictures...

Sew on!

Christmas 2014

Embarrassment of Riches

 

So this is what happens when you haven't used up all of your stash...  someone else has to sort through and decide what to do with your hoard.

 

Poor Ruth, she had such plans!  In this box is a kit for a pink baby blanket and a kit for a white afghan shown in the  next picture, patterns and all.  There are also two bags of yarn in sweater type quantities, one red and one green.

 

Afghan kit... complete with yarn to do duplicate stitch embroidery...

 

 This box held skeins and partial skeins.  I pulled out my yarn winder and made some cakes.

The brown box at the bottom of this pile was full of "misc balls of yarn" according to the label.  Yes there were small balls, and wads, and loops and a couple of skeins of cream yarn that were missing their labels.  I tossed a lot of little wads of the unidentifiable, the tiny and the otherwise unusable schnibbles.  I still had a box full of small bits. 

This was even after I donated a big bag of larger misc. skeins and balls to the preschool at our church for craft projects!

On top of the box is a pile of stuff, and next to the box is a bag that is overflowing with bulky yarn.  Sadly, that was mine before I added the endless treasures from Ruth! 

Lest you think I'm a total hoarder, the reason that bag is falling over is that I've been digging in there for yarn for the hats I'm knitting for Christmas.  I am NOT showing those yet... not that much of my family reads my blog but it's the principle of the thing you know.  Gifts.  Surprises.  'Nuff said.

I've knit so much this fall that I'm buying stock in pain-relieving hand lotions and rubs!  My knuckles ache on a regular basis.  In fact they're aching right now just looking at the picture of this bag.

 

Oh this little bonus bag?  This is the result of a trip to Michael's to replace a skein of brown that was wound into balls and then hopelessly lost in the embarrassment of riches that is my yarn stash!  I just needed ONE SKEIN to finish my project!

Ha!

I justify it by saying it was all on sale, then I had a coupon for 15 or 20% off my total purchase so I would have been irresponsible not to purchase some if later I would have had to go back and pay MORE than I paid that day!

I know you get that... I know you would have done the same.  Or not.  LOL!

Knit on...

Treasures in Knitting

The one I knit

The one I used as an example.

My last post about knitting the Christmas stocking showed you the results of the knitting.  I delivered the stocking on Wednesday of last week, just in time for the Thanksgiving reunion of the family for whom it was knitting.



This week my co-worker said the family who saw it was impressed.  Everyone came to his house for the holiday except the family of the little boy for whom the stocking was intended!  His poor mom had some sort of stomach ailment and was throwing up in the car on the way, so they went home again.  Aww... I'm so sorry she was ill, but I'm glad she was wise enough to go home and be comfortable in her own home until she's better.

So when my friend asked what he owed me, I had to say nothing.  No money changed hands.  And the reason is treasure!  Yes, treasure.

Not gold or silver or even jewels.  Gems for sure though.

When his mother stopped being able to follow a pattern to knit, she left a stash of some size.  He had asked me last week if I was interested in any of it.  That's what happens when you are known to be a crafter, people bring you stuff.  Sometimes it's trash, sometimes it's treasure, sometimes it's a mixed bag.

Speaking of bags, there were several of those.

 

Inside of this bag was a big surprise!

 

Ruth was evidently quite the knitter.  There were at least six projects that were not finished.  The first one I came across was a rug, knit with Aunt Lydia's Rug Yarn, in blue and white.  Quite patriotic!

 

 

The pattern was in the bag too.  The book it's in is from about 1976.  You know why patriotic themes were popular that year!  (Hint:  anniversary of important date in history... 'nuf said.)

It's only two colors, right?  My daughter, Alex P. Keaton young republican, likes this one very much.  She thinks I should finish it right now. 

Maybe after Christmas...

Another project was a blanket with a Raggedy Ann and Andy theme.  This one is knit with sport weight yarn.  For non-knitters, that's skinny.  Think many more stitches per inch than the rug or even the stocking!  Plus all those intricate details!  Ugh, not my thing.  If it's yours, and you think you would like to give it a go, send me an email and I'll gift it to you!

 I'll show you more of the stash in another post.  It's been sorted, the bits and scraps have been tossed, the little balls that might be big enough for a doll item have been organized.  A large bag of miscellaneous partial skeins were donated to the preschool at church for projects.  And I feel rich in potential projects!

Of course I now realize that not only do I have my OWN UFOs... I own Ruth's too!

Mixed blessing indeed.

Knit on...

One UFO Finished!

I wasn't actually counting UFOs this year.  WHO am I kidding, right?  I never will have a UFO count of zero, that's just wishful thinking.

Remember that stocking I was knitting for the grandson of a co-worker? 

I am happy to report that is it DONE!!

Yep, finished.  Sewn together.  Ends buried, clipped and hidden!

I delivered it yesterday morning, and granddad is pleased and impressed.

 

The pattern was from the Mary Maxim catalog.  Probably purchased in the 70s by his mother.  She knitted the entire family stockings beginning with him, his wife and three children.  She added the in-laws (sons- and daughter-) and then the grands (her greats).  But she developed dementia and is unable to knit anymore.

So I pitched in so the last grandson wouldn't be left out.

My knitting is a different gauge.  My KLEIGH stocking came out much larger than her last 'KREWE' stocking, by about 2 inches.  But at least Kleigh is no longer left out.

I'm feeling kind of virtuous.  I know, I should get over it.

In return for all that knitting, I am the recipient of mom's stash, or at least a good portion of it.  She had about six UFOs of her own.  I'm blown away by her fair isle knitting.  There are several projects with very intricate patterns.

• A blue cardigan with Raggedy Ann and Andy knitted in
• A brown cardigan with an owl
• A pink sweater with beautiful cables
• A pink carriage robe in a lace pattern
• A purple vest
• A white rug with an eagle outline in blue

My daughter voted that I should finish the last one.  We'll see.  Maybe after I read the pattern through.  I will consider it.

So my dears, the lesson here is this:

TRY to finish up some of your UFOs!  You don't want the people who are going to have to deal with your stash to have to take a chance on finding someone who will appreciate your stuff!

So Ruth, when you get to the other side and you know what's what again, know that I appreciated your work.

Knit on...

Might Have to Rename The Blog...

Yeah, Susan has not had a lot of time for sewing lately.  Although I've THOUGHT about sewing a lot.

You've ready my room cleaning binge post.  My right shoulder is still suffering the effects of that one.  I have rotator cuff tendonitis... I guess I should store my fabric in smaller bins or something!  Having to heft those big ones when they're full is creating more issues than it's solving.

I DID sew some small strip sets the other day for a quilt I'll be demonstrating this weekend.  It's a zig zag that's done without triangles.  I found a tutorial on someone's blog and tried it.  Here's the link if you want to see it.

http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/2013/10/how-to-make-zig-zag-quilt-without_30.html

But one of the ladies in our church quilt group wants to make one, so I was trying to find instructions to cut a kit for her.  And I had to try it out to see how much fabric is required for the size we usually make.

I pulled a bunch of precut strips and sewed them together.  I was using 2 inch strips instead of the three inch referenced in the tutorial, so mine is considerably smaller.  But cute.  Very cute.

I wanted to do a rainbow effect.  I chose white as my solid.  It's working out well. 

See?  Oh yeah, you know how I am about photos.  Hopefully I can add some when I remember to take them.

Meanwhile, if you can --

Sew on...