It's not butter

It's parquet.  At least that's what it looks like to me.

This is just a casual layout.  I'll move blocks around.  It reminds me of a parquet floor.

Light and Dark String Quilt continues

I made a few more blocks yesterday, and I think that this will be the layout.

I don't quilt a lot every day, mostly 3-4 blocks.  I do a great deal of knitting, so I balance that with the sewing.  Works well for me. 

And now I'm back to walking.  Only short walks because it is so cold.  Right now it's -2 and will go up to around 19.  But I want to get into shape for real walking, so off I go, totally bundled up.  I look like the Michelin Man with all my layers.

Design floor Monday

I'm happily making these neutral light and dark string blocks. Here's one layout. 

Here are some more ideas.

Another possibility is adding strips between the blocks.  I'll have to buy yardage for that and I don't know if I want to go light or dark.  And will there be enough contrast either way when the dark is up against a dark and a light with a light.  What do you think?

Lights and darks

A new string quilt has begun.  Only one block so far, but I'm loving it!  Very little color, which is unusual for me, but I really really like it.

Design Hubz Monday

Some people have a design floor; others have a design wall.  I have a Design Hubz.  The man has a wide wingspan and so functions as a quilt holder. Yay, Design Hubz!

The actual color is more toward the bottom pic.

I'm doing this as a quilt-as-you-go quilt. I have some good moments with this method, but also some bad ones.

First of all, it is very pleasant to make my wonky log cabins right on the batting itself.  I sew and quilt seamlessly.  That's the best part. It's also pleasant to sew the blocks together.

What I did not like was sewing the rows together.  It's stiff, awkward, and bulky.  Ordinarily, when I sew my blocks together, I press the seam to the sides and then can easily butt them up against each other for nice points.  Not with this bulky thing.  I pressed the seams open and graded the ends of each seam.  But I broke more pins attempting to pin those seams together when making each row.  Plus grading the seam added to the general bulkiness under the needle. I really didn't enjoy the process at all.

And here's the kicker: I now have to attach the backing to the piece, which means getting the entire mess back under the needle and fighting with it.  

However, I am not a "quilter", not as defined by any quilt police out there.  I'm getting confident enough to do my own thing. So, instead of quilting the mess by ditching it, I'm going to tie the layers together.  That seems to be a reasonable solution to this problem.  I've tied 2 quilts and I have to say that they look just fine.  If you like fancy quilting and such, well then you wouldn't like them.  But pretty embroidery floss that matches the quilt colors looks charming and not obtrusive and really lets the colorwork and patchwork shine.

Dancing logs

My loggy blocks are dancing away!

I'm feeling under the weather today.  Not hard given that I had an attack of GERD last night that was really awful!  I'm so tired that all I want to do is go to sleep.  Good thing that these silly blocks take almost no brains or effort.

The cold and snow are also getting to me.  We're pretty lucky that we don't live in MA, but we have enough of the snow and ice to give me cabin fever.  Maybe it's a good thing that I feel icky!

Grumble grumble, complain complain.

A quilt for Rose

Last summer, Rose, our third grandkid, picked out some lovely fabrics to match her newly painted room.  I finally finished it and crinkled it last week.  It's just waiting to go to her house.

She brought along paint chips when she visited, so we matched up that pretty green very easily.  She liked a selection of my roses and pinks, so I was all set.  The strips are all different widths, adding to the wonkiness. For me it's all about the color, and that's what this quilt shows. She hasn't seen the quilt yet, but her mom says that she will love it.

So now 2 out of the 6 grands has a quilt.  Benjamin has his I Spy quilt.  What do you think a 14 year old kid would want?  He's so not interested.  But then I didn't think he would be.  That leaves me with a 9 year old boy and an almost 6 year old girl. 

More dancing blocks

A friend said that my blocks look as if they are dancing.  I think she's right.

Quilt-as-you-go

I've been playing with this technique, and here are the results:

Such fun and so easy.  Wonky log cabins are the best!