New Sewing room - trash to treasure

Since our move last summer from Texas to Missouri, I've been mostly throwing stuff away, it seems, though we have plenty of things left. The sewing room was left as the last challenge. I'd promised my husband I was going to put all my crafts into one room, and this job was much more difficult than I'd ever imagined. In my case "Artist" is defined as a person who buys more supplies than she uses.

As I'm writing this, the task is almost done. But here we were at the start of the project:

I took the above picture first, and was surprised to see how orderly it looked, mainly because I'd already organized the bookshelves. But I just turned around and took a photo of the rest of the room, and the true story emerges.

The pile of things in the bottom right of the picture are numerous boxes and plastic bins  not yet opened or sorted. Hours and hours tolled on before I had a handhold on this mess. The brown desk under the windows eventually left the room, but it was used for a myriad of things while I was working here. The three wire basket units were to be my fabric stash, but fabric proved to be too heavy for them. You'll see my solution in the next blog.

Loosening up from perfectionism

This little coffee coaster is for my sewing room, using just scraps of fabric. I'd just read "15 Minutes of Play" by Victoria Findlay Wolfe, and since I had a little basket of small scraps nearby, did just as she advised. Her method uses crazy-quilted scraps like the above that are then cut into traditional shapes and pieced together with solid or coordinated fabric, for a very attractive combination. For me it's an appropriate blend of sane methods and crazy quilting. I really like it.

On this sample, I pulled up the backing fabric to make the edge, then sewed a decorative stitch down the raw edge. The first time I tried it, I used some left over binding that turned out not wide enough (now in the trash). The next ones I make I'll use some of my other left over binding. I like the more finished look. These might even make a last minute Christmas gift from me to someone. They're a ball to make!

The next two borders: STARS

For each color combination, four 6-inch blocks and eight 4-inch ones are made. The half square triangles are created by using paper patterns, then cut apart and put together into a variety of star designs. These stars will be laid out on point, then, to make the next two borders. It's fascinating to me to see the effects of combining the colors in different combinations.

There are 17 colors altogether in this quilt, and they are ones I chose to replace the colors designated by the quilt designer. This means my teeth chattered when I chose them, from fear that the colors are not going to  work in the whole design. I'm a real beginner here, but I tend to jump into complex things early in learning a craft, just because it's more interesting. I'm too impatient.

One of the challenges is that the printed out half square sewing paper patterns are just about 1/32 off on one direction, so every six inch block had to be sewn with that in mind. Next time watch me use the professionally printed grid sheets instead of my own printed out ones.

Just who am I, anyway?

Today it's literally been an entire year since I've posted here. As I've just joined Sharon Boggin's TAST for 2012 (that's "Take a Stitch Tuesday), I've renewed interest in this Blog. I first "met" Sharon when I received squishies from her in the USA/Australian squishie exchange conducted by her and Willa. One year, many of the Australian squishies were lost in transit, and Sharon heroically filled in for the missing pieces. I think I got three from her that year, all of them lovely. I subsequently took an online class from her on crazy quilting. I seem to be a perpetual student in that area.

Here's what I've been working most on lately: my daughter's quilt. I see from a previous post that I started this quilt in 2009 (February ), so I'm not what you'd call a speedy quilter. In my defense, this quilt is by far the most intricate I've ever tackled. Here's a picture of its progress:

It's actually gone far beyond that, but the next "layer" is a bunch of 6" star blocks (32 of them), pieced out of 1" pieces, to be laid out on point for the next border. I'm having a lot of fun with it, but am struggling with giving myself permission to work on it. Even though it's now a "have-to" project, it's so much fun that I tend to try to have my day's work done before I allow myself to work on it.

And.... I also struggle with whether I'm a sane quilter, a crazy one, or a knitter. I love all three crafts. One of the reason I joined TAST is to be forced to work more on crazy quilting.