Okay so....

... so I decided to move my blog over to Wordpress. I would very much love it if any of you who read me here, would join me over there at http://wipgirl.wordpress.com/. I haven't quite settled on a layout there, but it's a work in progress. And it's being updated, while this is not.

Fabric Friday: Amy Butler or Kona cotton?

Mod Times: Ironing. Ugh. a photo by clumsy chord on Flickr.

It's the Kona Grape and Aqua that'll be part of a quilt that I'm working on, which is part of the Mod Times Quilt-Along. A lot of people who participated are already done their quilt tops, but I've still got a stack of these to iron, then I need to sew the cross-piece in between (most of) them and then I can start piecing the top. This quilt is one made by the woman who is running the quilt-along, and is basically what mine will look like, though I'm making mine significantly bigger (almost 4 times the size).

And this is what my print bits will look like:


The aqua in the cross-pieces will lighten up the darkness of the purple (a lot) and I'm really excited to see what it'll look like finished.

But I'm SO very not excited to go on ironing. I am usually a very haphazard ironer, which I know stretches the fabric and makes for wonky shapes where wonky shapes should not be, but I'm trying very hard to be careful with these. I'm even blocking them as I press to make sure they're the right size. Which I'm doing basically because this entire quilt is pieced with inset seams, and I find that slightly scary enough without my pieces not fitting where they belong because I've stretched them out of shape.

I'm hoping to get started on piecing the top this weekend (since I'm off Saturday/Sunday AND my sister and bro-in-law are leaving for Russia on Saturday, so I won't even have to worry about being noisy while they're sleeping or any of the other reasons I sometimes put off sewing till later. I've gotten quite a few more pressed since I took the photo, about 70 are done with 30 or 40 left to go. (I forget how many I started with, a lot though.)

(The Amy Butler is home decor weight Coreopsis in Spruce from the August Fields line.)

Fabric Friday: Munki Munki Elephants

Munki Munki Elephants a photo by clumsy chord on Flickr.

Well, it's a day late, but I was sleeping most of the day on Friday and I just never quite got around to it...

Today's Fabric Friday is a piece of Munki Munki marching elephants that I got in a scrap pack I bought on Etsy. It's the sleeve of a pair of women's pajamas, and about 10" x 12" (it's wider at the bottom, about 12" wide, and has a line of holes where stitching was picked out). It's really not so dark as it looks, but it's very thin fabric and the black table I photographed it against really shows through.

I don't think I'll ever use it, so I think I'm probably going to post it in a swap community on Flickr and see if I can get something else in exchange.

Cute though.

Fabric Friday: Mod Times Mendocino Quilt-Along

Mod Times Mendocino Quilt-Along a photo by clumsy chord on Flickr.

It's hard to imagine that these stacks of fabrics will actually make a quilt, but that's 65" x 83" worth of quilt top.

There are fifty rectangles and eight squares of Mendocino fabric. Three hundred thirty-six squares and rectangles in aqua. Three hundred ninety-three rectangles of purple.

If anyone is quilting along (Mod Times Quilt-Along) and wants to make their quilt larger, this is what I decided to do. I'm making mine nine columns across and six rows down, with no changes to the size of the pieces. It should come out about 65" x 83".

From the print fabric, you need:
50 @ 3.5 x 7.5
08 @ 3.5 x 3.5
From the border fabric:
049 @ 1.5 x 9.5
100 @ 1.5 x 7.5
108 @ 1.5 x 5.5
016 @ 1.5 x 3.5
120 @ 1.5 x 2.5
From the background fabric:
240 @ 2.5 x 4.5
096 @ 2.5 x 2.5

I very much hope that I got the numbers right when I was figuring out what to cut - I don't have very much spare purple and what what left I cut into 2.5" strips for binding. I really want to finish the quilt with that purple framing the edge, but I don't know if I'll have enough length left to do the entire way around. I may have to piece it with other scraps or to use some aqua (I do have a fair chunk of that left). I could try buying more of the purple, but I don't recall what colour it was and I'd be concerned about dye lot anyway. (Looking at the inventory at Simply Solid Fabric, where I bought it from, I think it might be Kona Raisin, but it could be Hibiscus or Dark Violet or some other very deep, dark purple.)

It took me a few hours today to cut all of that, and now my legs are tired, cramped, and sore, and I've got a headache to end all headaches. But hopefully I'll get started sewing tomorrow, because I'm excited to see what it'll look like.

Talk to Me Tuesday #44: Works in Progress

In which I show off my Firefly shirt, show a bundle of black binding for a quilt, and talk about starting another quilt-along, the Mod Times Quilt-Along.

I very often record my TTMT videos on a Wednesday, as this one was. I was having problems with Windows Live Movie Maker crashing my computer though, so I wasn't able to save it until this morning and get it uploaded. (When it was at 99% recorded I thought for sure it was going to crash again - my laptop SOUNDED like it was slowing down, about to turn off, which was what had been happening - but fortunately it didn't.)

Here's a usable link to the Mod Times Quilt-Along. You can also see some pictures of what I and the other are doing at the Flickr Group. Somehow has posted a pretty amazing looking version done using Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 line, which works really beautifully in this pattern.