July 4 – Stashbusting report

I nearly forgot it was stashbusting report day.  This week, 4.25 purchased, 12.25 used.

YTD used: 194  YTD purchased: 76.25 so Net fabric used YTD is 117.75 yds.

I got my Continuous Chain shown in previous post all cut out.  And laid out Crocus Clusters on the design wall – or at least most of it since I was running out of wall.

 You’ll have to imagine the plain inner purple border going all the way around.  I put just some scraps of it in the upper left corner.  I’ve either hidden the strips I cut for that border or was too anxious to get sewinng and never cut them.  Have to go back and see if I marked them off on my notes before I start the search to find them. I think I might have just not cut them yet.  I also didn’t put the plain border strips up on the wall between blocks but I like the way it turned out.  I used three greens for my leaves instead  of two and had extra fabric of the light green so decided I wanted that in the outer border instead of the dark green I originally drew the pattern for – I always seem to change something on my own version from the original drawing I did – artistic license. 🙂

 

Denise

And don’t forget to vote in McCall’s Design Star Challenge – whether for my quilt, Ode to Spring, or another one you love.  (My MOm has been busy casting her vote every day) 🙂  There’s 147 quilts to provide viewing eye candy.  There’s a link to the contest in the right sidebar.

My Continuous Chain

I finally got the fabrics scanned in for my  second Continuous Chain quilt and have been working on that.   Here’s the fabrics I will be using.

If I use the dark green as my Fabric 1 in the original layout (where the darkest brown is) and the Paisley as the dark in my second combination (Fabric 3), I get this look

  It looks very much like the Continuous Chain cover page — with the dark green chains making a continuous design.  What I don’t like about this one – the aqua/white mini print looks a bit too “hey look at me” in the border.  The scan of the fabric is a bit brighter than in reality but it’s still trying to be the center of attention in the border.  And overall this version is just a bit too  “dark green” for what I want.

That paisley fabric is my favorite.  So, if I switch the paisley to fabric 1, aqua to fabric 2, dark green 3, little green print 4, I get a totally different look.

  The dark green draws your eye to more of a diagonal line than continuous chain, but I like the way the colors are spread though this — a softer look to it and shows off more of the paisley.  But in this one, not quite enough of that aqua color – I think there needs to be a bit of it in one of those borders.   Hmmmmmm…. so I came up with a third choice.

  I swapped out a paisley fabric border and put the aqua in it’s place and added aqua binding.  I think those additions balance the aqua out a bit better and I know I’ve got an extra piece of the aqua in case I need it. So coloring three it is. 

The reason I want to have the paisley more visible – other that I love paisley – is this quilt will be for my bed – imagine that!  But look how lovely that paisley looks against my headboard.  I love it!

Best laid plans have run amuck again

I had high hopes of getting lots of sewing done today.  But I also knew there is lots of things I want to get cleaned out this 3-day weekend – cabinets, closets, sewing room – so it all started with cleaning out the fridge.  It didn’t help that I woke up with a headache so was slow in getting moving. But then since the fridge was all clean, I started cleaning out and reorganizing a few kitchen cabinets.  About mid afternoon, when I was getting hungry since I hadn’t had breakfast or lunch, I looked in my nice clean fridge and thought – where’s the food??  Absolutely no fresh fruit in it and I was nearly out of coffee (out of coffee!!! on a three day weekend!!!).  So made a trip to the grocery store – coffee, watermelon, cantalope, grapes – I’m well stocked now.  Then back to more cabinet cleaning since I had the kitchen torn apart.   Stuff I haven’t used since I moved in here several years ago hit the dumpster.  All those odd coffee cups I’ve accumulated over the years – history.  Cleared out DVDs and videotapes I no longer want; cleaned out the books that I’ve already read.

Now, my original plan was to clear out one cabinet of some extra storage space I have in order to put the video collection and some dvds in there out of the way.  How that turned into cleaning out all the cabinets and the fridge, I’m not sure but they did need it.  Cleaned   I’ve been plugging away most of the day and honestly, unless I open the cabinets and look inside, things don’t look much cleaner around here. 🙂  But I’m one of those people that when I’m on a cleaning binge, things get worse before they get better. LOL  But tomorrow is another day — another day where I plan to start out the day by cutting out a quilt before going back to the cleaning!

I did spend a couple hours finishing the last instructions for Continous Chain so that’s all set and I won’t have to worry about that each month.  And now that it’s all broken down into monthly installments, I can tell you the last installment will be posted the beginning of December.

Now I just have to finish writing up Crocus Clusters – maybe next weekend – I’ve got some quilting to do!