My new iron

On Wednesday my new iron showed up! That was fast and now I am back in business!

I spent all day Thursday at my brother's house helping him pack. He made me wrap all his vintage and expensive glass he has collected over the years. To say the least I used a lot of bubble wrap! When I got back to my house there were two boxes at the front door which puzzled me. I hadn't ordered anything. Guess what? One box was another iron!

Isn't that crazy? Now I will have a spare which is fine by me. Both of them came from the same place too. The other box was a bit heavy

In the box are Harley Davidson t-shirt for this years raffle quilt.

Looks like I might have to switch from working on scraps to t-shirt quilts. I have the commission one that has to be done by May and now the Harley quilt which needs to be done about that same time. Since it takes me about two months to make one, I had better get started on those.

I love all your comments about the grasscloth. I have had my share of removing wallpaper and it is a real pain especially when it is on the ceiling or glued directly on drywall! My brother has seen grosscloth in one of his buddy's houses and liked the look of it. The grasscloth changed the look of the two rooms we installed it in and elevated the look more than I thought it would. It was a challenge to cut and a scissors was easier to use than a razor blade for fitting it in tight spots. I just hope I don't have to do it again!

Blast from the past

My one brother was coming into town last night so I needed to go dust and vacuum his house a bit. I went right after work to his house. After getting the downstairs done, I then discovered I had forgotten his sheets that I had washed and were sitting on the shelf in my laundry room. I had to drive home and then drive back to his house so I could make up the bed. This picture is one of the pillows he had me make years ago when he was redecorating his bedroom. He gets to stay in some high-end hotels with his job, so thus lots of pillows to get that high-end look.

It was years ago that I also helped him hang grasscloth on this room and the other bedroom. That was definitely a learning experience. I had hung wallpaper, but not grasscloth. It is a different animal for sure, but looked so good when it was done.

Ready to sew

I have the second scrap quilt top ready to sew. I will probably bind it in a bright color - maybe orange, red, or yellow - to add a bit more pizzazz to it.

I had taped the Golden Globes and speed watched them last night. I have never seen so many unflattering, ugly dresses in one award show with weird sleeves being a theme along with plunging necklines that did not do a thing for the person wearing them. Then some of the colors! There were several green dresses, an orange one, and that brown one Gwenyth Paltrow had on made me scratch my head. Besides being brown it was tacky. I thought the best dress was Renee Zellweger. The color was beautiful, the style simple and classic, and she looked fabulous in it. The Grammy awards are next and that is where you expect some crazy outfits.

First scrap top, but ...

I managed to get one top sewn together using scraps and a piece of white Kona yardage from the pile I showed last week. The top is 40.5" x 48.5". Those are 4.5" squares which I sewed into 16 patch blocks. It wasn't quite wide enough so I added the yellow for a border using scraps from the yellow bin. Here is the top

I think I will put a scrappy yellow binding on the top and bottom edges and blue on the sides. I need to dig in my scraps and find enough to make binding out of.

I am not sure using the white is the way I am going to go after I get the rest of the blue squares sewn together. I don't feel like I used enough scrap fabric. I mean I need to make a dent and at this rate it will take forever! LOL!!! Using the white did use a bit from my stash so that at least is moving in the right direction of reducing the stash too. Here is the pile of blue pieces that have white sewn to them.

I will need to cut more squares of different colors so I have more to work with. I think the bigger squares does make a fun color impact. My iron died yesterday. I have a spare one that I used to finish out the day. It is a low end iron, but it will get me thru until the new one I ordered shows up.

I also am having issues with my #2 sewing machine. It is doing some wacky things like it keeps sewing when I have taken my foot off the foot pedal! I need to send it to my repair man. My other Pfaff 1475, #1, has a broken spring that holds the integrated walking foot in place so I can't use it. I should have sent that to my repair man when this happened, but I just didn't get around to it. Hopefully I can keep #2 running until I can get #1 fixed.

Where do I start?

With bins and bins of scraps, where do I start? The more I thought about it I came to the conclusion "this is not rocket science". I am not out to do anything revolutionary; I just need to turn these scraps into decent, usable, and hopefully cute quilts. I can see a lot of checkerboard, 4 patch, 9 patch, or 16 patch quilts. Making a lot of blocks and then playing with contrast and color will be the way I plan on approaching this. I just need to start and not get hung up on results.

These leftover bits and scraps were on top of one of the bins so that is where I am starting.

I think I will pair up the white and black strips with this pink and aqua fabric.

I have a lot of small yardage whites, off whites, and grays that will work the other colors.

I also pulled out these squares and strips I had cut from scraps over a year ago. The squares are 4.5", 3.5" and 2.5". The strips are mostly 2.5". Pairing these with white or off white should yield a lot of blocks.

I think this is enough to keep me busy this weekend! LOL!!

I did get another package from Amazon. It is an adapter. It doesn't fit anything I have.

1st and 2nd finish for 2020

My friend and I were still sewing on New Years Day and I finished baby quilt number 9 and 10 so they are my 1st and 2nd finishes for 2020.

The lap sized quilt and one of the baby quilts are already earmarked for someone. My brother will be seeing the fellow at the end of the month so I need to get the labels on these two plus one more quilt that is not in this stack. My brother will be in town next week so I am hoping I can hand the quilts over and not have to mail them.

My goal this year is to try and make a dent in my scrap hoard,

and keep my fabric buying to a minimum. I did have to buy some fabric for the back of the t-shirt quilt I have been commissioned to make. I bought 7 yards of the blue and instead of paying shipping I got 4 yards of the gray.

My spreadsheet shows my stash increased by 202 yards including the 50 yards I ended up from my friend and I used 149.5 yards for the 23 finishes and several lap sized tops I sent to Vicki. I need to try harder this year and reduce my stash.

I ended up with 38 empty spools for the year.

In the last 10 years I have made 173 quilts of all sizes.

2019 finish 21, 22, and 23 and Happy New Year!

I finished these three yesterday. I still have two to bind so I guess those will be my first two finishes for 2020. LOL!!