The Cat in the Bin

Someone has invaded my work-bin for En Provence:

Flame

Flame

Notice how she has even rearranged the once neatly stacked fabrics.  Good thing I'm not working on those colors yet!  My neutrals are starched and pressed laying flat under the bin.  I put the bin atop them last night thinking ahead that I'd probably wake in the morning finding them all rumpled from the kitties.

Maybe she'll follow me to the bed where I plan on taking my daily nap in 5...4....3...2....off I go!

Design Wall Monday - 28 November 2016

My design wall is empty today as I finished Allietare yesterday.  But soon you will see the beginnings of En Provence.  

A portion of Allietare.

While I had Allietare folded laying on the bed, I flipped one corner back (you can see the fold line diagonally from top left to bottom right) and got this different look.  It made me think it could make a nice wall-hanging even if it looks different.

neutral selection

For En Provence, these are just some of the neutrals I can choose from.  Notice that I'm including a few more that are not just solids nor tone-on-tone.  I may have to do another pass through my scrap bins.  

Linking at Patchwork Times.  I'm off to a dental appointment.

Almost forgot...I can link up at Quiltville as well since I have neutrals pulled.

Stash Report Sunday - 27 November 2017 - Week 48

Hooray for me!  I have Allietare finished as a flimsy.  The borders are on and its folded up ready to go into it's hibernation box.  

I could really improve my camera skills, but with an old digital point-and-shoot, that probably won't happen any time soon.  I might be able to get a better shot tomorrow, if I want to open it up again, when I can get daylight shining on it.  It would have to be window light only as it rained here and the ground is wet...and it's really, really windy.

I stood on the stairs and looked down upon the quilt.

I had put the skinny inner border on yesterday.

Looking at it from the end.  Not enough room to get the whole thing.

The wider black border went on just this evening having finished around 6:15 p.m.  I'm happy it's done to this stage, and am really pleased with it.  I think it's a bit wonky in a few places, but not so badly that anyone would care...except maybe a top-notch quilt show, which isn't in its future.

I

Hanging over the upstairs railing.

My neutrals leaned far more on the white end of the spectrum.  I'm still trying to break away from neutrals being only light solids or tone-on-tones rather than as Bonnie says with the 'ground' of a fabric being anything lighter than a paper bag with any blend of colors/designs on it.  Old ways of thinking die hard, but I'm trying.  I also think I've had enough of large, bed-size quilts for quite awhile.  For this year's mystery, I'm thinking I'll only do about half, or maybe I'll make all the components and just make two smaller quilts from them even if I have to add a few extra to reach whatever dimensions look best with a smaller quilt.

With this being done to flimsy, I can now count fabric OUT of my stash, whooohooo! This will definitely help offset my purchases of the year.

Used This Week: 11.79 yards
Added This Week:  0 yards
Used 2016: 11.79 yards
Net 2016: 8.06 yards increased

Linking at Patchwork Times

Getting Ready

I know a whole LOT of ladies (and probably a few guys too) are already knee deep into the first clue of Bonnie Hunter's 2016 mystery quilt, En Provence.  Me? I'm taking my time.  Only minutes ago I made the effort to loosely store away all the genealogy/file stuff that had found a new home atop my cutting mat on my file-cabinet cutting table.  Oh how quickly flat surfaces become overtaken.

All clear.

After spending most of yesterday in the kitchen, my body was pretty achy.  I slept well last night [excepting the nightmarish dream that had the presidential election result switching to the other party - don't shoot me...I wasn't thrilled with either choice, nor did I vote for either...and that's all I'm saying!] and didn't get up until 8:30 this morning. Once I gathered myself from the dream, I got a cup of coffee, read today's Scripture, and then headed to my laptop.  I knew today was the expected release of part 1 of the mystery quilt. 

Along with general dilly-dallying, I've spent the majority of the day browsing through all the comments everyone's been posting on Bonnie's Quiltville's Open Studio Facebook page.  Seeing the fabrics and even alternate color-ways has been a delight.  From reading the comments, there are a lot of newbies, both to quilting and to the mystery quilt.  The excitement is amazing to see.  I love the mystery quilts.  

I remember back in the late 1990s watching Alex Anderson's quilting show on HGTV and having seen Billie Lauder as a guest explaining mystery quilts.  She presented them as "The Case of (whatever)".  I took an all-day class from her once for one called The Case of The Mysterious Voter.  I enjoyed the process, and really liked the resulting flimsy...it's still waiting to be quilted.

Design Wall Monday - 21 November 2016 - Week 47

There's no change on my design wall, or at my sewing machine, from my post on the 19th showing my borders temporarily pinned next to Allietare.  

Border review

I keep thinking I need to just stand up, grab my tape measure and use it, and at least get the inner border's strips sewn together and cut to length...but have I?  NO.  I still need to clear all the genealogy piles of my cutting table!

Linking up at Patchwork Times.

Stash Report Sunday - 20 November 2016 - Week 47

While yesterday was productive in finding a magenta fabric for En Provence, I'm not entirely sure I'm 100% in love with it.  Having visited three different stores out of town, not to mention the Joann's, Hobby Lobby and a fabric-carrying craft store in my town, I found but two that seemed to match the choice given us (and I had a piece of the actual fabric with me so had the true color in hand) and that I liked. I purchased one of the two. I may still change it out...I have one other small piece of a different fabric that's close to the original, so maybe I'll have two different magenta pieces to make up that "constant".  Of the original, I have only the equivalent of about 1/3 yard.

Magenta?

In the above photo are the fabric Bonnie Hunter used, and the one I purchased.  Also shown are her paint chip (center) which she said was too light, and subsequent chips that are much closer, though light from the flash absorbs into the fabric, but bounces off the paint chips so thus the difference in their color.  I'm thinking my fabric is just too intense, compared to all the other fabric colors, it seems it would really pop...maybe it's supposed to. 

Purchased since my last report.

Also purchased yesterday were the lavender in front since I was low on lavenders, and the dotted/striped fabric that I thought would make a cute binding for some other quilt.  The lavender in back was purchased a couple weeks ago.  All of this is only 2.75 yards.

Used This Week: 0 yards
Added This Week:  2.75 yards
Used 2016: 0 yards
Added 2016: 19.85 yards

Linking at Patchwork Times

Saturday Plans

Nick will be headed off to the rural home of his Auto Shop class teacher's home to learn to drive a manual transmission, something he's wanted to do for a long time.  In exchange for the teacher teaching him, he has to work on the man's property for four hours.  He may be 18, with two years driving behind him, but my Mama's heart still frets when he ventures out to unknown-by-me places.

Marty left before dawn to go to Yosemite with his friend for some photography shooting relaxation.  

That gives me the complete day weekend to play :)

Panda will be picking me up (or maybe I'm driving, we haven't decided that yet) around 10:00 so that we can go to another town to look for the elusive magenta-colored fabric for Bonnie Hunter's 2016 mystery quilt, En Provence.  There are at least two quilt shops in the area we'll be headed, and who knows, we may travel even further.  We'll have lunch out as well. 

I've not sewn the borders onto Allietare yet, but I did pin the chosen fabrics up to one edge so that I could get a picture of how it will look together.

The black fabric is just the folded yardage, not yet cut to correct size.  I think it really adds a lot and pulls out the black star points and small squares.  

Only a few more days until we get our first instructions for En Provence.  I'm glad it's not a race to see who finishes first, because while I'm anxiously anticipating it, I'm thinking I may end up just about as slow about doing it as I was Allietare.  There's a whole lot of genealogy still occupying every flat surface in my Creation Station and I can't get to my cutting mats without moving it.

At the Border

Allietare is ready for borders - as soon as I trim the white rectangles that extend off the sides.  

Allietare

And on a side note, I was craving a slice of a quality bakery cake after having watched an entire season's marathon baking challenge but there are no such bakeries around that I'm aware of.  I needed sweet and cake and icing, so....next best thing: boxed lemon poppy seed muffins (Krusteaz) with cream cheese frosting flavored with lemon, almond and vanilla extracts.  I enjoyed two of them before they had time to cool off.  Hit the spot!! and craving is gone, but I still have more to enjoy :)

lemon poppy seed muffin with cream cheese icing

Getting Closer

Flame is happy that I have half of Allietare finished, folded and tossed onto the ironing board.

The other half is pinned and ready to be sewn.  I won't get to it until tonight though. 

Buttons & Rips

Yesterday yielded no further progress on Allietare, but late in the evening, Marty came to me to show me a pair of shorts he wears a lot, and he was complaining that the button came off.  What he was really doing, was "asking" if I'd put the button back on.  He said he wouldn't know how!  Here, let me show you, lol.  No, I didn't say that, but sure wanted to.  Marty and I both have added a few (?) pounds this past year, and these shorts seem to be rather snug on him.  Maybe it's time for him to find some with elastic waists.

When I set the button down to take a photo, I realized I'm going to have to find a new button.  It isn't just that the button needs to be sewn back on, the whole center of this button is gone.  Elastic's looking better!

And while I'm having to do mending...something all quilters love (said NO quilter ever!)...I suppose it's time to fix this small tear in his denim pants.  It's probably been a couple years since he handed them to me, but I couldn't find my iron-on denim patches, and finally remembered to buy some just recently.  He has a tendency to get hung up on barb-wired fences when he goes out to the Sierras to shoot photography...this isn't the first pair, and won't be the last.

I'm off to find a replacement button.

Design Wall Monday - 07 November 2016

These weeks are passing far too rapidly!  Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and Christmas will be right behind it.  I told Marty a couple days ago that we should encourage Nick to work on Thanksgiving if the day is offered to him, and then we'll go to that restaurant for dinner...and I won't have to mess with kitchen duties that day.  Not sure that idea took off.

So, on my design wall today is still the same as last week, but I have made progress.  Half, plus the central row, of Allietare is sewn into two-row segments.  Who knew pinning to get the points just right would be such a time-consuming factor.

Here is the corner section after pressing.

Two more seams to sew on this half (above) for this portion to be done.

My chief quilt examiner says "do you like my hat?".  She was seriously inspecting those blocks just moments before.

Housework, and taming clutter is still calling...how did it get so far behind, and what do I do with all that needs to go?  Trash, recycle, donate, sell...it's all calling.  My aunt will be here in January, and I'd like to have made substantial headway by then.  

Linking up at Patchwork Times.

Slow Flight to France

Hah, no, I'm not really taking a flight to France, but I decided to finally post my potential fabrics for doing this year's Quiltville mystery quilt, En Provence (see sidebar link).  Flash photography causes the colors to 'change' and show differently on fabric vs. paper...these fabrics really do match the paint chips better in real life.  We (Panda & I) found the paint chip cards with variable shades as well.

The magenta pink.

I have a piece of the same magenta pink fabric Bonnie showed.  She stated that she chose the paint chip Hibiscus because her Lowe's didn't have a chip that was as dark.  Hibiscus is the upper left chip.  Looking in the gradient cards, we found Very Berry (lower left) and Adored & Very Cherry (center two on right) that matched the fabric quite well.  I still need to go find and purchase a pink because I don't have enough of the one shown for the constant.  I have one other same-color piece but even if I used both, it wouldn't be enough.

Flame

Look who's joined me while I'm preparing this post.  Flame has curled up nicely on the freshly washed, not yet folded, fabric I purchased to use for the backing on En Provence.

Impulsive

In the photo, the one purple looks more blue, it's iffy, as is the one directly beneath it which is a little dull or brown to my eyes.

Garden Spot

My greens didn't photograph well either.  The ones that look lighter, are actually closer to the tone of the chips than those darker appearing ones.

Afternoon

I can say the same about the yellows.  Some of these are iffy - one possibly too lemony.  The one on the left second from the top looks like one in Bonnie's image, so I'm leaving it in for now even though it doesn't look remotely close.  Afternoon is the lightest color chip shown.

Neutral

My neutrals are becoming scarce without cutting into actual yardage.  Working towards the goal of eliminating as many smallest to largest scrap/chunks/pieces as possible before cutting into yardage, if I can.  Frankly, I'm getting real tired of the same-o, same-o neutrals, so will be really happy when they're gone and I can work with fresh fabrics.

Magical

I have very little in the way of any shade of lavender, and this is the sum total of my lavenders including yardage!  And again, the photo doesn't reflect the true colors.  I may have to add to this collection.

There you have it - my fabrics in contention for En Provence.  I'm looking forward to this.  Depending on the final reveal, I may turn it into two smaller quilts rather than leave it at the posted size.  These aren't "my" colors, but I'm up to the challenge of being pulled from my comfort zone, so will stick with them, and if I really don't like the end result, I know who those are of my family and friends who love purple and pink and it may become theirs...or a donation to the local guild perhaps to use as an opportunity quilt.

While I'm waiting for the first clue, I have plenty to do yet on Allietare, and with my aunt still planning to come down for Road to California in January...I have a house to get in order!