Work in Progress Wednesday - #9

First off, please check out Tami's blog to see everyone participating in this fun "Work in Progress Wednesday."

I finally got back to the project I am now calling "Trapezoid Strip Quilt." Basically, I got a packet from our guild's "Make a Quilt for SAFE House" kit program. The stars of my kit were these blocks:

I knew I didn't want to make more blocks, especially after I saw the really impressive hand piecing:

So, then, on one of my long walks (where I do my best thinking), I got the brilliant idea to split the blocks, so I did this with six of the blocks:

I enclosed the blocks with long skinny strips. Between these strips, I am going to create some long "brick" strips using these blue fabrics:

 I'll also add strips with this fabric:

This quilt is really making me think and plan and stretch - it is SO outside of my comfort zone in terms of colors, but I think I can make something to be proud of, and it will warm a little kid whose world has been torn apart by domestic violence, and that matters to me, too.

I'll be going on a quilting retreat October 15-17, and I'm planning to finish this quilt that weekend AND quilt and bind Peppermint Candy. Here it is, all pinned and showing the binding fabric:

I chose the backing fabric because it had some pink and green in it, and there was enough that I needed to make just one cut and make one seam. (I know, LAZY!!) I have decided it will also be a SAFE House quilt.

Next, I have been working away on Abby, but as you can see, the yarn I'm using is not appropriate for a "lacy" feel. I was fiddling with it the other day and realized that it would make a really warm and pretty hat, so I've started decreasing it with that end in mind. I'll have enough yarn left over for a warm and skinny scarf.

Finally, because none of you has ever seen a cat, I present pictures of three of mine. First up, the shyest, most skittery of the bunch - we had to take her to the vet for shots on Saturday, and it took two of us to trap her in the bedroom, where we had to upend the boxspring, and haul her out of the springs. Poor little thing. Here she is, shedding her white fur all over one of our black chairs:

Next up, there are times when it's really hard to climb the stairs around here!

He's fifteen-and-a-half, going deaf, and as cuddly as can be.

Finally, when I'm in the sewing room, I have a friend, the Brat Cat, who occasionally shows why we let her get away with all of her brattiness. Tell me you wouldn't let this face get away with everything.

I've put up a couple of pretty heavy posts the past week. I'll simply say that I was really influenced by a poster I saw in college with a quote attributed to Bob Dylan (please pardon the sexist language - it was a different time), "He who is not busy being born is busy dying." I've lived my adult life by that statement.

Work in Progress & What I'm Reading Wednesday - #7!

This is WIPW/WIR#7 - thanks, Tami! (For more great blog posts on these topics, see the links at the bottom of Tami's post.)

Last week I mentioned that I had some cotton yarn on order for a sweater for my great nephew. Here it is all dyed up:

(It's for a baby, but these are seriously his parents' favorite colors.) Here it is "cooking" in the hot sun on top of the garbage can:

I've done enough dyeing to know that heat is my friend. Finally, here is the tangled mess I pulled out of the dryer last evening that I'm winding into a ball. There'll be a few knots in this yarn as I work through it. It was a good evening project after a frustrating day at work.

Now, for Peppermint Candy! Hubby Dearest looked at this and said he thinks the top is done. It's smaller than I want it (by a few inches in each direction), but it does feel done to me. I still think, though, I'm going to swap out those strips of odd fabric (the gray green fabrics that leap out of the quilt).

Next, I wanted to show you that I had helpers when I was setting up the yarn outside:

I also had a guard kitty in the sewing room:

This is the creature who woke me up at 2a this morning by sprawling on my shoulder (I was sleeping on my side) and purring loudly and then grandly accepting petting before leaning over and licking my face - this is why she still has a home despite her bad moods!

In terms of what I'm reading, a couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that I've got a real hole in my knowledge regarding the history of China - of Asia, really. At the big booksale that weekend, I looked for books on the topic and lucked into John King Fairbanks' The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985 (published in 1987). I say "lucked into" because it turns out that this man is one of the great American scholars about China. The book is readable, engaging, thought-provoking, and causing my little brain to whir. Here's a tidbit from page 10:

Something over a billion people live in Europe and North and South America.

These billion-odd Europeans and Americans live in about fifty sovereign and independent states,

while the billion-odd people of China live in only one single state.

Okay. In two sentences in the introduction, I was hooked.

I'll be selling raffle tickets for the quilt guild at the American Sewing Expo in Novi, Michigan, this coming Saturday afternoon. If you're at the expo, stop by the booth!

Peppermint Candy

I went into the sewing room on Saturday with no particular project in mind other than trying to bring order out of chaos; since early May, I've had multiple projects going on with attendant deadlines, and messes had gotten out of hand. I made some serious headway in rearranging piles and doing some serious thinking about projects. Wanting to do something fun, I pulled out a bag of scraps from the bureau. This bag was given me back at the March quilt guild meeting by a friend I will simply call "Enabler." Enabler is the person currently in charge of trying to get people to take piles of donated fabrics home and bring back at least finished quilt tops, if not completely done quilts. Well, at the meeting in question, Enabler came up to me with a grin on her face. "I have some scraps that are right up your alley, Liz! They're leftovers from a project I just got done. I KNOW you can do something with these." Here they are:

Okay. I was sunk. I took them home and put them in the aforementioned drawer. It seems that there were several blocks in this bag; blocks that looked like these:

There was also one that looked like this:

When I got this one on the wall and measured it against the other blocks, I added that last round - the one with the ferny fabric on one side and the deep magenta on the other side. After moving the blocks around a bit, I hit on this general plan:

I didn't take pictures of the yellow/green blocks, but there were also several blocks with white centers and yellow/green surrounds. When I got this up, I realized that I had a really fun layout, and I also realized that I needed to make a lot more blocks. I started ransacking the stash for super-pale yellows and greens so that I could make more of those blocks. I also made up a bunch more green and pink blocks. Here is the current layout:

I really like the way this looks. I'm going to have to trim a half inch off each side of the log cabin block in order to make it fit right. By my math, once I sew these blocks together, I'll have a top that is roughly 40" x 50". I may have to dye up some super pale greenish yellow fabric in order to make more rows or I could just use the pale olive green with some pale yellow I have in the "to-be-dyed" pile. I want to think about this a bit more.

There's no big artistic statement here, but it sure felt good to be moving blocks around on a wall again.

Finally, there's some nonsense going on in my world right now, and I've been reciting portions of this piece to myself over and over as a way of keeping sane.  I first discovered this when I was a teenager and remember using a long bus ride as an opportunity to memorize it. It has been a comfort and aid to me in a great many circumstances.