Scraps, continued

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I have been diligently cutting leftovers.  Above are the pieces cut for piano keyboards.  Below are 5" squares.  Not sure what to do with them because nothing in this pile really goes with anything else.

Below are 2" strips, too short for keyboard but will get cut into 2" squares.

Below are 1 1/2" strips to be cut into 1 1/2" squares.

These are the leftover pieces unyet sorted and cut.

And this is my growing crumb pile.

It doesn't look like I've done a lot but I feel I have.  I hope to have all the cutting finished by Friday.

Then I will sort and sew the keyboard pieces into 12" ish long groupings and trim to 5" width.

After that crumbs.  And finally the 2" and 1 1/2" squares.

It's meditative and theraputic, so that's my story and I'm keeping it.
 

Scraps and Other Projects

It may take a while until I do something new.  I am trying to use up my scraps and this is where I am.

 I sewed the strings onto 7" pieces of phone book paper.  Yesterday, I removed the paper (went quickly and easily) and now I have to decide which block goes where in my 4 across 9 down configuration.  Then I will sew them, finishing the centre of one quilt.

I organized all of the 2 1/2" x 7 1/2" strips and then randomly chose 3 for each block (dark, medium, light).  It appears I have a lot of dark burgundy which are all differently patterned but pretty much read the same.  Most of them came from Quiltmakers on Avenue Road when they were liquidating.  A cautionary tale to buy fabric for projects you plan to make and not fabric just to have because I have had those burgundys for years.  Also a fair number of fabrics I used in baby quilts.  And some I have no idea where they came from.

These are the groups of 3 fabrics, waiting to be sewn together.

And these are some of the sewn blocks.  Right now it looks chalooshesh (literally, sickly, weak) but figuratively, eh or as we say in Yiddish, feh.  But they may look better when finished.  At this point I don't care.  I just want to finish them.  I am thinking rail post pattern.  And if I have enought, perhaps also a coin quilt.

These are the two small bins of leftovers.  None of the strips are long enough for more string quilts, but there are varying length strips which can be sewn into piano keys.  Pieces two short for piano keys will either be cut into 2" or 1 1/2" squares and the rest will become crumbs.

I find the piecing and cutting meditative and enjoyable.

I also mentioned that I have a large bin of needlepoint yarn.  My googling shows that this type of yarn is not suitable for knitting clothing.  I have started crocheting some whitish yarn. 

My plan is to crochet a square and see if it will felt in the washer on high temperature.  If yes, I will try embellishing with needle felting.  If you, I will try weaving with the yarn.

So several projects on the go and the process will be long and perhaps not so interesting.

Scraps, continued

I am not doing anything earth-shattering.  Just continuing to piece together scraps.

I am making a quilt up as I go along.  This is where the design stands so far.

 I am also in the thinking stages of felting the tapestry yarn I inherited.  Not sure how or what to do with it.

 But in the meantime, I still have scraps to process.  It's pretty mindless so I'm OK with it for now.

I did, however, "invent" a thread cutter.  I see on youtube that when sewers chain piece, they have a thread cutter to snip the threads instead of scissors.  I saw a great one which uses dull rotary cutter blades.  But I had a small cutter for embroidery which can be worn as a pendant.  I bought it when I was doing air travel and couldn't take scissors.  I found that if I put the pointy end into a spool of thread so the blade part is facing up, I can use it to cut the chain piecing threads.  Yay me.

 

Score!!

 I have already completed one goal in my declutter challenge: the bits and pieces of my batting, either sewn into 12" or 15" squares for art quilting, or chopped up into little bits to stuff a pillowcase which will go to the animal hospital as a pet bed.

My next goal is use to use up the remaining bits and pieces of quilting scraps.  So far I have used the strings to make these 7" squares:

 

I went through my scrap pile and ironed all of the strings, cutting them down to widths as wide as the strings would allow, but not more than 2" wide.

Since I have exhausted my longer strips (I need 10" strips for the centres of my 7" squares),I am now sewing the shorter strips together to make "piano keys", also totally scrappy from what I have.

 

I will also sort the cut-offs of the 7" squares to sew the smaller bits together to make these 2" squares, to go with other 2" whole squares I have already made. 

 

I like putting them together.  It's like a jigsaw puzzle.

And why Score?  A score is 20 years and I am making a quilt from over 20 years of quilting.

Stuff

So I used the Timtex to make a heart, embellished with ribbons and beads.

I then mounted it on homemade paper I made well over a year ago.

So these are the three pieces I made using the homemade paper and bits and pieces.

Back now to scraps and more scraps.
 

How to waste time when I should really be doing something else

In one of our POM Lunch and Shmooze meetings, Elaine shared where she finds hearts everywhere - in art, in nature, in architecture, in shadows, etc.

Shirley challenged us to find or make hearts ourselves.

Thanks to Inbal's, Amit's, and Doron's detritus, I have this stencil with hearts.

Thanks to my buy nothing (hoarding) mentality, I have this box of cut off pieces of Timtex (stiff flexible stabilizer) which were thrown out after a POM workshop several years ago. 

 

So I am now left with think narrow strips.  I zigzagged three together, and then another three together, cut out same-sized hearts from each of them, on one the zigzag is horizontal on the other - vertical.  I will adhere fabric fabric crazy-quilt style to each of them and then attached the two together.  By having one vertically pieced and the other horizontally, I assume the Timtex will not bend on the joins.

Let you know if it works out.

And now to do what I have been procrastinating on - my Yiddish homework.

Choosing Yarn for the POM Mazal 18 Challenge

This is the bin from which I chose the yarn skeins.

 These are the 36 skeins chosen.

These are the skeins at the bottom of the bag, waiting to be chosen randomly.

This is the needlepoint canvas with grid marked and numbered.

These are the numbers to be attached to the skeins drawn randomly from the opaque bag.

I think I will do a basic tent stitch and then revisit the finished tapestry to decide whether to do the dice part and add beading or some other embellishment.

 

Fabric Scrap Management

 I don't have as many fabric scraps as some but I want to use them up before purchasing any new quilting fabric which I will only buy when the current fabric is depleted or if there is a special occasion purpose for quilting.

So I have started sorting my scraps and sewing bits together.  It is a slow process.

I made one 7" string block but am not enamoured of the colours.  I think I have to sort and trim all of my scraps so that I can have better control over strip placement.

I am also trying the two bits, four bits, eight bits, sixteen bits method.  See how that works out.

Last Weaving for Now and Needlepoint

I finished another weaving yesterday.  

 I still have several snow-dyed pieces but I am giving the weaving a rest for the moment.

I also got started on my "Mazal Finds Us" challenge piece for the POM guild.  The challenge is to use dice or casting of lots  and the number of 18 (or a multiple of it) to create a piece.  I am going to do needlepoint, mainly because I have a bin of tapestry yarn and a large piece of needlepoint canvas.

The needlepoint canvas has a pattern marked on its back so I am using the flip side.  I will make a grid of 36 squares, 6 X 6, each square 3".  I started marking the grid and then decided it wasn't necessary.  If I mark off the middle square and stitch in it, I will then know how many rows and stitches are needed for each square.

I first have to chose 36 yarn skiens and place them in an opaque bag.  A second opaque bag will have pieces of paper with the location for stitching on the grid (e.g. A3, F5, etc.  I will draw one skien attached the paper to it and said skien will then be stitched in the canvas' corresponding grid location.

Here's the grid partially marked.

Solvy Part 1

So. as I said, I had started putting this together with Solvy a few years ago.

I had started free motion "scribbling" on 3 of the squares.  I used the wrong thread and didn't like the outcome.  This morning I unpicked the stitches, reconfigured to 3 rows of 4 squares and decided to use one of the machine's embroidery stitches instead.  I liked the stitch but after I had put in the stitches, I realized the shape of the stitches not on the fabric had nothing to hold their shape.  So I stitched over them with a straight stitch (because it wouldn't unravel when the Solvy got washed away).  Not totally enamoured of it but here are the steps.

Stitched on Solvy.

Solvy washed away and drying on paper towel

Hanging to dry.

Note to self, don't used variegated thread on this type of work.

Doubt if I will get to the weaving segment today but every day a little progress is not bad.

This week's recap

I had been working on a piece using little bits and pieces of dupionni silk.  I finally finished it.

Finished size approximately 12" square.

I made a silk scarf for Maya using trimmings from the silk tie project.

I will now attempt to do a weaving using those same trimmings.

I have had this fabric sandwiched in solvy for a few years already.  I plan to complete the stitching and make something from it.

Off to stitch, weave, organize.

A little of this and a little of that

 I was at a wedding last night.  Always lovely to celebrate joyous occasions.  My cousin's granddaughters were there and I invited them over for a "play date" (did I mention that they are 15 and 12?)  We will be cooking silk scarves.

So to get in the mood, I prepared one to cook later.  It uses very thin strips of the leftover silk ties.

I will show the results when it is done.

Now for weaving.

This is a piece I snow dyed, fused to lightweight interfacing, with 1/2" slits for the warp.

 

And this is silk, not sure from where, which I will use for the weft, also fused to lightweight interfacing, and cut into 1/2" strips.

And this is the woven centre for my next piece.

Now to find a fabric for the borders.

Almost There

Finished "outlining" the dupionni squares with brown trim.

This is the proposed layout:

I would continue but I gummed up my iron not realizing that the Timtex had fusible on both sides.  So I need to clean my iron using dryer sheets.  My studio is on the second floor.  The dryer sheets are in the basement.  When next I go down there, I will bring some up and continue.
 

Unpicking

 Spent the better part of the morning unpicking previously ziagzagged squares.

Have blank slate again.

Tried something new for the squares.

Still have to decided if I like them framed with trim.