A little Spring inspiration...

I was cleaning the hexie scraps off my coffee table this morning when this caught my eye:

Spring has been very slow to settle in around Chicago this year. We've been on a two-month roller coaster of high and low temps, accompanied by rain and gloom. These colors just popped against the Kona Snow, and of course got my imagination going on the color palette for yet another new quilt. They're pretty striking together, aren't they? And oh so happy on a damp, dark day.

And in pulling the above pic off my camera, I also found this one. I caught these tulips in bloom on a rare sunny(ish) day venturing out to my cousin's in the suburbs last week, where at this time of year it's 15-20 degrees warmer than it is near the lake. Those same vivid pinks and bright greens just pop.

I think it's a sign.

Uh-oh...

I wasn't feeling real great last weekend and the weather was pretty dismal. Spending a couple days on the sofa binge-watching the last season of "Downton Abbey" was pretty much all I was up for...except I hate just lying there, being totally unproductive.

Out of curiosity I'd bought some 3/4" hexie papers at the International Quilt Show a couple weeks ago (another post, and unfortunately my photos didn't turn out very well, so not much to show). I'd never done English Paper Piecing before and figured I'd try someday, and cutting and basting little scraps fit in very well with the weekend's planned event, which was, well, being a couch potato.

"Someday" doesn't usually come this quickly:  my first fabric purchase was in the closet for six years before I decided to attempt my first quilt!

So I pulled out my cache of solid scraps and went to town. I might rearrange some, add a few more flowers and I still have to finish all the border pieces, but I think it's pretty cute so far. It's destined for a friend with the perfect empty spot on her kitchen wall. She keeps bees (that lone yellow hexie is somehow going to become one, haven't thought that far ahead yet), so the hexagons are fitting.

It's laid out across my coffee table as it gradually gets pieced together. And covered with magazines every night so Archie isn't tempted to weigh in on an alternative arrangement.

Who knew hexies could be so addicting?

One more...

Here's a full pic of another Lenten Quilts for Kids project. Technically, I guess it's not really a quilt-as-you-go -- it's really more foundation piecing, given the back is one piece of fabric. Whatever you call it, it turned out OK.

I learned a few things (see this post), and will probably attempt it again if I need a quick no-frills project.

It ended up being 40" x 46", and very, very pink.

Faux feathers...

Man, I had a lot of drag issues with this quilt!

I'm not sure if it was due to sheer incompetence on my part, or the fact that the home dec weight on the back was slipperier than usual. When I trimmed it all up, it looked like I had quilted feathers into it.

You can tell exactly what direction(s) I quilted in. I had pinned parallel to my quilting lines; in retrospect, pinning perpendicularly -- and additional pins --  would have held the heavier weight backing more securely in place.

The backing before washing

The backing is a Crate &  Barrel Outlet Marimekko find from several years ago -- I think it was somewhere around $3 a yard, and was waiting for just the right quilt. I love how it picks up the colors from the front and lightens it up. 

I was pretty worried about how it was going to turn out with all that wacky puckering. Nothing was pre-washed, so washing in hot, hot water encouraged shrinkage, and in the end it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The puckering morphed into crinkles, and all is well.

It still needs a Quilts for Kids label, but is otherwise ready to be shipped. Hooray!

Quilt as you go-go...

Given the success of the last mini-QAYG project, I thought the girls would enjoy contributing to a larger quilt. Attention spans are waning now that their doll quilts (the original goal of our lessons) are finished; these 10" x 13" blocks finish quickly, and we're all looking for a little instant gratification at this point.

All ready for a QAYG!

I cut a bunch of backing squares and batting, established a layout for the back (the middle stripe on the front coordinates with the backing fabric so I can keep the layout straight without having to flip the blocks over to determine who's who), and emptied the box of trimming strips. Everything was spread out on the floor when they walked in the door.

The girls finished six of the colored blocks, which made a good dent. I kept going with the colored blocks after they left and got them all quilted.

I've discovered that I don't trim my strips nearly wide enough -- this would go a lot faster if I'd give up more than two inches of fabric when evening up cuts. Cutting some wider strips is in order to make the black blocks finish more quickly. The girls aren't big fans of "Skinny Minnies."

As much as I'd like to wrap this marathon up, they won't be back for at least three weeks with Easter and Spring Break coming up. Their mother really wants them to get a good sense of their contribution and understand that they're using what they've learned in order to give back. For that, I'm happy to extend the finish line a little longer.

My cat is a camera hog...

He knows where I keep my camera, and the thunk! the drawer makes when I take it out. The quilt is still drifting to the floor when he appears out of nowhere and pounces on it, ready for his photo op.

My original intent was to audition thread before I started pinning, but that notion got rejected rather quickly.

First the thread had to be inspected...

Then the quilt sandwich tested for nappability.

That workstep takes quite a while. Quality Control means everything to this guy.

And you wonder why I never get anything done?

The Curse of the ADD Crafter...

The girls didn't have acting class this week so didn't come by for their sewing lesson, which puts our quilt-as-you-go projects on hold until next weekend. That's fine by me, because I got it in my head around Wednesday or Thursday that I should see if I could do a QAYG project on a larger scale. You know, because I didn't have anything else to work on.

I cut a bunch of strips of varying widths from my "Good & Plenty" stash, and used that pink and black spray dot yardage for backing. Kind of wish I'd thought it through a little better, but if I don't charge full speed ahead with an idea once it's popped into my head, there's a very good chance it won't reach the finish line. It's The Curse of the ADD Crafter.

Turns out this was a perfect spell to counteract the Curse! It took a day to tack the strips down, and another day to quilt and bind. Wham bam, and it was done! And I learned a couple things along the way, which made the entire venture worth it:

1. Extra pinning perpendicular to the stitching helps avoid creep. I started out pinning parallel to the seam, and things on both the front and the back got shifty very quickly.
2. Press after every strip so the previous strip doesn't buckle. The wiggly quilting afterward helped camouflage this, but it's nice to have things flat to begin with.
3. I wish I'd marked horizontal reference lines on the batting before I started, because things got a little crooked toward the bottom.

Edited to add:  I would have started this whole thing in the middle instead of at the top. It would have been much more manageable if I'd gone in either direction, and I probably wouldn't have had as many problems with shifting.

It ended up ~40" x 48". As a first try and a really quick project, I give a thumbs up.

This one goes in the Quilts for Kids pile, and I get to put a check mark in the Finish column. Awesome!