Big Wheels Rolls to A Rest

Tags

60 degree angles, Big Wheels, cats, circles, edison, Hexagon, hexagons, quilting, Sunflower Lattice

I finally got an opportunity to take a picture of the completed Big Wheels top.

There’s been lots of construction going on around my apartment building. Today they seem to be filling the Pit of Despair (sinkhole in the parking lot) just beyond my porch. Last week it was the balconies OVER my porch.

I was able to sneak outside yesterday morning (between construction crews) and snap a  photo of the finished Big Wheels top.

It’s a wonder I get any quilting done at all… Maybe I should go back to handquilting.

It’s very different from any other quilt I’ve done…light and airy where I usually use dense, saturated colors. And, I’ve actually planned for the quilting in some respects (as opposed to making the top and determining how to quilt it after, which is my usual M.O.)

The quilting will emphasize the faint green stars, and the circle patterns will almost certainly be stitched “in the ditch.” I will continue the circles in the border with quilted circles and arcs and filling patterns.

But, for now, I’m setting it aside.  All my quilts must rest, it seems, before they are quilted.

The sunflowers quilt has grown and now has a name: Sunflower Lattice.

I’ve been working on more Sunflower blocks since last week.  Once you get used to the seams being on the bias, the block is actually quite easy.

I had planned to write the instructions, but it seems that I should include information on cutting out the pieces since not everyone knows how to work with the angles on the ruler. That part of the task is daunting. I’d rather write about the sewing.

Sunflower Lattice is actually easier than you think it is, because there are no inset seams.  The only tricky part is making sure the points meet.  In square/rectangular blocks, if you line up the seams, you can tell where the seam will cross the other seam.

I almost always pin and mark the intersections when working with 60 degree angles.

In quilts using other angles, I end up pinning and marking the intersections.  If you were to match the seams on the edges, the points would be off because the seam is at an angle.

First I match the intersections by putting a pin vertically through both, lining up the fabric the way I want it to be sewn.

Then, I make a tiny mark on the seam allowance where this intersection is.  That way I can “aim” my sewing machine at that dot and I will be sewing in the right place.

Finally, I pin the fabric flat so that it won’t shift (if you have several seams to have to match, you want to make sure that, even if you lose the vertical pins, the fabric stays where it’s supposed to be.)

It takes a bit of practice, sewing dot to dot, but it’s much, much easier than continually ripping out your seam when you don’t get it right.

Put One Foot In Front Of The Other

Tags

barbara brackman, Barbara Brackman Grandmother's Choice, Big Wheels, cats, circles, edison, machine quilting, piecing, Row Robin, Sunflower, UFO. WIP

I finished Big Wheels, but Ed won’t let me show it to you…

I seem to be starting all my blog entries with apologies lately.

I haven’t felt much like writing.  Everything I type seems to come out disjointed and uninteresting.

But, it’s been two weeks, so I guess I’ll show you want I’ve been up to.

Grandmother’s Choice Block 34 (I think.) The handle is a bit small for the size of the cup. If it was a “normal” size, I bet that cup would hold a gallon of coffee!

After a long, frustrating slog, I finally finished Big Wheels.  I decided to keep the border plain except for the corners because I had some really great ideas about quilting circles filled with “filler patterns” in them.  Originally I was to insert half-circles in pale green and pale yellow.

I think leaving the border minimally pieced and playing with the texture by quilting it could be very cool and “modern” -looking (even though I don’t style myself a “Modern Quilter.”)  See, Angela, I’ve started to introduce “negative space” into my quilting. (Well, actually you can’t see, since I haven’t photographed it yet.)

Grandmother’s Choice block 35. I could make one more and stop here. Hmmm.

I caught up on Grandmother’s Choice, but I didn’t like this week’s block (Sunbonnet Sue), so I am skipping it.  I will either make another block probably from Dear Jane or one of my other “block books.

I played with some of the left over squares from the charity quilt I showed last time I posted.  This time I am working in half-square triangles and quarter-square triangles.  Nothing about it is exciting me about this project, though. I might just abandon it to someone else’s care eventually.

I finally finished the row for the final month of my Guild’s Row Robin.

The final row of my Guild’s Row Robin. It’s bright for me, and I think I overdid it with the background fabrics. I should have kept within a narrower color range, but whoever gets it can rip it off of her quilt and toss it, if she desires.

This Sunflower block is twice the size of the ones for to Row Robin.

The nice thing about the  strip I did (the theme was “Summer”) is that I decided I really liked the sunflowers if I could “free” them from the too busy background. I made the block in a bigger size and will be putting together an entire quilt of them.

I will also be writing instructions on this block (which has NO inset seams!) It’s not that terrible, once you realize that sewing on a 60 degree angle is not much different from sewing on the straight of grain as long are you are   careful not to stretch the bias.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to.  I’ll have to wait to take a picture of the finished Big Wheels until the construction on my patio is done since that’s the only place I can hang any quilt of size and get far enough away to take a picture!

I will leave you with Miko’s Words of Wisdom for today:

 

 

Making Projects My Own

Not a pink person, I, nevertheless, unearthed some pink fabrics in my stash for the Block of the Month raffle by my Guild.

Sorry I didn’t post on Thursday as scheduled.

Some days, though the sun is bright, the air is warm and things are green and sprouting, Prozac is just not enough to get me to do anything more than is absolutely necessary.  Not even a kitten’s purr or crisp, cool sheets.  Or fabric.

Yes, I fell into one of those cap-D Pits of Despair and I’m just now climbing out of it.  It happens.

Lately I’ve been contemplating how I make quilts and it occurs to me that for the last several months, I’ve been working on other people’s quilts and have not been happy about it.

First, of course, was the Quilt That Shall Remain Nameless (which I still can’t show you.) For that one, of course, I was testing pattern directions, although I did get to choose my colors and fabrics.  I believe all I did was whine about it at the time. (I like it a bit better now, but still don’t think of it as one of my quilts.)

I’ve been steadily working on my Guild’s Block of the Month raffle (make a block, pretend to put your name in the bucket (but don’t), and then, when they draw a name pretend to be a little disappointed it wasn’t you.) This is pretty mindless as they give you a pattern, sometimes some fabric, and, usually the colors (or a range of colors.)

I’ve also been trying to keep up with the Guild’s Row Robin and have not liked any of my contributions.  I just don’t think they fit in. This one was supposed to be foundation paper-pieced, and I am just not a fan of that technique. I felt I had to use one of her fabrics, it it turned out to be way too busy.

It’s hard for me, even given all the blocks and fabrics, to make a quilt like someone else, I guess.

Monday, I picked up a plastic baggie filled with blocks from the Comfort Quilts people at my local Guild. The note attached said: “This is a UFO (maybe 2!) See if you can get a top out of this.”

Well, it was filled with squares, mostly 5″, some larger, some sewn together in strips.  I thought I could just put them together as they were, but that was boring.  I couldn’t make that other person’s quilt exactly as it had been furnished.

So, I added some yellow and gold fabric from the file I have designated “Get Rid of This Fabric…Pronto.” And now, it’s not someone other’s person’s quilt.  It’s mine.

I don’t understand how this since none of the fabrics in the quilt were bought by me, it just looks more like something I’d make than some of the other stuff I’ve worked on this year.

I don’t know why the Comfort Quilts quilt is more mine than the Row Robin (which I picked the patterns and most of the fabrics) but somewhere in the course of framing the 4-patches this quilt became “mine” as the Country Fair quilt row and The Quilt That Shall Remain Nameless never seemed to be.

Rollin’ On With Big Wheels

Tags

barbara brackman, Barbara Brackman Grandmother's Choice, Big Wheels, circles, Circling Geese, Dresden Plate, putting together a quilt top

The last of the Big Wheels blocks was paper-pieced,

One of the cool things I didn’t post last week was that I finished the center of the top of Big Wheels.

I think I left off with appliquéing down the Traditional Dresden Plate block and needed one more block, which I based on a paper-piecing pattern I found on the internet: Circle of Flying Geese.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I tried making it as it was drawn, but the result was too big for my circles.

So I redrew it.

I also “contained” the colors (since  one of the things I didn’t like the first time was the “scrappiness” of the background, which would have been okay if the “geese” had all been the same color to contrast with it.)

I don’t know where the drawing is going from here, probably to my friend, MaryAnn, since she asked and since I rarely make the same block twice (and if I need to, I can always redraft it.)

The center of Big Wheels is completely pieced.  All I need to add is the borders.

Anyway, all the blocks are done, so I put them together.

I ended up with just enough of the tan to complete the sashing, and, actually, a 4″ x 10″ piece of the light green left over.

Then, I started mulling over the border. I can’t show my concept for the border because it’s still in the drawing/drafting stage, but, ultimately, the corners will be rounded and the stars on the edge of the sashing will be “completed.”

I’m still thinking that the blue block draws the eye a little too much, and the white is a bit stark (even though it’s a print.)

But, you know what?  I’m not going to take it apart and replace those blocks!

Other than finish the inside of Big Wheels, I did keep up with with Barbara Brackman’s Grandmother’s Choice. Here are the blocks:

Block 31 from Grandmother’s Choice.

Block 32 from Grandmother’s Choice.

Block 33 from Grandmother’s Choice (backwards, as it turns out… I cut the block out from the back. *sigh*)

…And Now For Something Completely Different…

Tags

fixing sewing machines, mechanical, motor, sewing machine, Singer, Singer 99, wire

Barbara, sans motor

I quilt in a teeny, tiny space.

And because of this, I have to move my machine from the table to the floor when I want to press or cut fabric.

With the Singer Merritt, this is not a problem since it has a handle on the top, but when that one is being used as for quilting (which I set up in another room), I press one of the other machines into service.

I like the 99 (which I have named “Barbara” after Barbara Feldon from “Get Smart.”) She has a nice hum and a nice “action.”  I was heartbroken when she slipped from my grip while I was moving her from the table to the floor.  I pressed the foot pedal and she didn’t work. I thought it was her motor, so I put her away.

New and Old motor (notice the bottom of the old motor (right) has been broken on the bottom.

When I took a class from Harriet Hargrave on machine quilting, she mentioned that some sewing machines appeal to some people because of the tone of their motor.

I immediately thought of Barbara.  I figured, “she’s a mechanical machine, how hard can she be to fix?” So, I decided to save up my pennies and get her fixed at the repair place near me.

To brace myself for the cost, I cruised the Internet looking the price of a motor for Barbara. A new one went for about $35, which started me thinking that I know enough basic wiring that I could fix her myself.  The problem was that if the reason I liked Barbara as a machine was the tone of her motor, buying a new motor might change that.

So, I bought a used 99 motor on eBay for $10.

This is the wire that leads from the motor to the foot pedal. Obviously, the source of the problem, once I found it.

I took of the bracket off the machine, and removed the motor from the bracket, and then had a thought: what if the motor still works?  Do I throw the old motor away?

That was when I discovered that it was NOT Barbara’s motor that was the problem. It was the motor housing…AND the wire between the motor and the foot pedal.

So, off to the hardware store to buy some new wire.

New vs. old wire.

The problem, of course, is that the new wire available does NOT look like the old wire.  The new stuff is thinner because the insulation is actually more efficient than the old. It took me two hardware stores and four or five employees before I found one that could honestly say that the new wire would work the same as the old.

I had already taken the wire off the motor to test both of them (they both worked!), so it was simply a matter of figuring out how to take the bottom off the foot pedal and replace the wire there…without wire strippers or a soldering iron. I had a Leatherman multi-tool (well, I also had a bunch of jewelry tools.)

The underside of the foot pedal was easy to access. I split the wire with the knife part of my tool and used the pliers for most of the rest of the work.

That turned out to be very easy.  Just two bolts on the bottom of the foot pedal and it popped right off. The wires were not soldered on, but twisted into a hook and screwed into place (although the person who originally wired the foot pedal had coated the raw part of the wire with solder to keep the multiple copper threads of the wire together.)

The wiring itself was easy, but I am still not satisfied that I had to use what was essentially a “wad” of duct tape to keep the thinner wire from slipping back and forth through the hole.  I will probably revisit the pedal some day after I figure out a better solution.

The new wire was thinner than the old, so I needed to add a wad of duct tape.

In the end, it turned out easy to attach the new motor.  It doesn’t matter which wire you connect to which side of the motor, just so long as one goes to the power cord and one goes to the foot pedal (and, in turn, one side of the foot pedal cord connects the motor, and the other attaches to the power cord.)

So, now I am almost finished repairing Barbara.  The motor works, the foot pedal works, and the only thing I need to do is clean her, since, when I tested her, I had trouble with her tension.

New motor and foot pedal wire, all ready to reconnect to Barbara.

There are lots of videos on YouTube which deal with sewing machine repair and cleaning, especially of vintage machines, like Barbara.

It turns out that you don’t need a lot of fancy tools to fix vintage mechanical sewing machines (although a wire-stripper would have made my life much easier.)

They are also very easy to understand, and repairing Barbara myself gave me good insight into how sewing machines work. This, in turn, has me itching to return to the long arm, which cannot help but work similarly (except for the computer parts…)

Failure to Launch

Tags

barbara brackman, Barbara Brackman Grandmother's Choice, Big Wheels, cats, March-A-Along, piecing

Since the circles are so striking, I’m trying a more subtle approach to sashing Big Wheels.

For the past couple of days, almost a week now, forward progress on my quilting has slowed to a crawl.

The first and foremost reason is that I had to do my taxes.  Taxes strike terror in the hearts of freelancers everywhere (or maybe just me.) I thought they would be easy this year because I’ve only had one job and it paid on a W-2. To try to alleviate some of the stress, I purchased some software to help (it was on sale.)

Long story short: it took me longer to get the software up and running properly than it took to actually DO my taxes (including the sorting/filing/adding things up part!) So now I’m mad at myself for wasting money on it (even though it was a good deal) that I could have spent on cat food, or (more probably) fabric.

Oh well, they’re done now.

This block was supposed to be the last one for Big Wheels, but if failed on many levels: it was too big to work with the other circles, and I ran out of the mossy green fabric and had to add others.

Another reason for the lack of progress was the sheer frustration of not having my final block of Big Wheels turn out as I had envisioned it. The lighter fabric I used because I ran out of the mossy green background did not “sparkle” as I had intended.  I think the problem was that I had 12 yellows of various intensities.  If I had only had just one, I probably might have been able to get away with the multi-shaded background.

Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

But, the Festival of Medical Attention is almost over and thus my driving all over northeastern Massachusetts to a different doctor every day  I passed my physical. No one has cancer. And we only have two more doctors to go (Peg’s neurologist and Miko’s vet.) Yay.

Shhh. Don’t tell Miko she’s got an appointment with the V-E-T on Monday…

So, I guess it’s time to restart my quilting progress.  I’ve pulled fabric for the Guild’s block of the month, Barbara Brackman’s Grandmother’s Choice, and a remake of block 12 of Big Wheels (which will be similar, but actually a size that fits.)

I’ve cut out and pieced all of the sashing for Big Wheels, AND did not run out of any of it (although I only have one 4″x 12″ piece of the light green left.) I was worried mostly about the background fabric because I cut two of the circles wrong, and that muslin is at least 20 years old. (It says “Peter Pan” on the selvage! Are they still in business?)

So, even though I am no longer “Marching A Long”, I am hoping to get in a bit of sewing each day and actually see things come together soon!

 

I Fell Off the Wagon

Tags

applique, barbara brackman, Barbara Brackman Grandmother's Choice, Big Wheels, circles, Double Wedding Ring, handquilting, kanzashi, March-A-Along, piecing, quilting, Sailing Ships, Sashiko, Starina, The Quilt That Shall Remain Nameless, UFO. WIP

This is how block 10 of Big Wheels turned out. (Last week I posted the drawing I worked from.)

Remember how I told you I wasn’t going to buy any more fabric after the end of February?

Well, that didn’t work for me.  At the March meeting of my Quilt Guild, the stash of one of our members (now deceased) was being sold off with the proceeds being donated to several charities, including out Guild’s operating expenses.

I did not go crazy, but I did buy 3 pieces of yardage (total of about 10 yards.) This, of course, led to me contemplating my projects and realizing I haven’t actually finished anything so far this year.

Starina before the applique on the border was completed (early in 2011)

Now, of course, I have what I call STAGE finishes (i.e. The Quilt That Shall Remain Nameless is in the finished top stage) but no new quilts lying on my bed (or anyone else’s.)

So, I’m going to take some of my new yardage, piece a back, and set Starina up for hand-quiltling.

The reason I decided to hand-quilt Starina is that each of those stars has a folded flower at the center, and each folded flower has a button in its center.  I figured I’d go insane trying to keep from running over a button with a sewing machine or a long-arm.

Now, this, of course, does not mean I am putting away any of my other projects.  I am still working on the last block and the applique for Big Wheels. I have even started the sashing (keep your fingers crossed that I have enough fabric to finish what I want to do with it!) I have done my Grandmother’s Choice blocks every week (although last week, I didn’t do the one on Barbara Brackman’s blog. I substituted a ship block which didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked.)

I should have chosen a fabric more contrast for the sky when I made this block to substitute for week 29 of Grandmother’s Choice.

At the Guild meeting I got the Block of the Month (which is a pin wheel) and the Box Row Robin (paper-piecing this month…I am absolutely stumped on what to do.)

I also started a sashiko piece that I bought at the Guild sale (and, subsequently discovered I was doing it wrong…oh well, no one will ever know when I’ve finished and backed it.  Right?)

We’ve been having, what I now refer to as a “Festival of Medical Visits.”  Most of them are for Peggy, but I have one coming up and so does that might mouse hunter, Miko. I’ve scheduled one for each day, and we will be completely done by the 8th (I hope!)

Block 30 from Grandmother’s Choice.

Other than that, this week is when I finally sit down and do my taxes. I feel kind of guilty that I didn’t work on my jewelry business more last year, but I lost the entire month of December and didn’t “resurface” to consider anything until just this month. (I’m still trying to decide if I should reopen my etsy shop and sell the kanzashi I started working on late last year.)

I guess I’ll work off that guilty feeling by squeezing in some quilting!

Do I Choose Colors, or Do They Choose Me?

Tags

Big Wheels, circles, color strategy, Grandmother's Choice, March-A-Along

Pulling fabric for Big Wheels block 10. My “color strategy” was to make the circles gold and the background green.

I have to admit I’m one of those people who doesn’t ordinarily struggle with color.

I usually pick colors or fabrics based on what I feel like working with. And, up until recently, I didn’t limit my palette… all colors and fabrics in my stash were fair game.

A couple of years ago, my Guild had a challenge to use fabric based on the color of crayon you drew and either black or white.

Since then, I’ve been picking three or four colors that “make an overall impression” to use in my quilts.  This, of course, doesn’t mean only 3 or 4 fabrics…

I think limiting my palette works especially well in “album-style” quilts were all of the blocks are different design.  (I find it a bit too confining, and, dare I say, boring, when making a quilt where all the blocks are the same design.)

Big Wheels Block 8 is based on a Double Wedding Ring, but based on the “Improved 9 Patch” by Nancy Cabot Lodge

These days I’m working in blue/grey/gold/white (Grandmother’s Choice) and green/gold/beige (Big Wheels.)

I chose the colors for Big Wheels because I started it February and wanted green around me.

February in New England is kind of dreary which is why I chose a light background (also because I found a really nice piece of yardage in my closet that I thought would work well.

I had used up most of my yellows and golds on The Quilt That Shall Remain Nameless, so the yellows and golds I bought to replace them were just begging to be used in something…

Big Wheels block 10 is based on a New York Beauty block.

And that’s how I chose the colors!  How vague and general? How arbitrary, right?

But, having that palette makes it easy to pull fabrics for a particular block.

After I draft the block, I color it. (I don’t always do this, since the colors of my pencils are limited, but my fabrics are much less so.) What I am doing with the color pencils is coming up with an overall strategy for the block.

In the case of Block 10 of Big Wheels, I wanted the outside triangles to be green and gold. I worked outside in pulling fabrics to keep the points and adjacent pieces contrasted enough to see the pattern.  The center yellow is the same fabric as the outside yellow, pulling it all together.

Ed likes green, but he thinks I have enough now…

Of course, how I work with color is mostly based on my stash (which is not as extensive as some) and what is in my stash is based on how I buy fabric.

In as few words as possible, I buy fabric based on what I like. This is not to say that there are not ugly fabrics in my stash, but, to me, they are interesting ugly fabrics (and usually end up being the most useful.)

I also “review” my stash periodically for “balance.” If I see that my “oranges” are low and the ones that are there are reddish-orange, when I go shopping, I’ll concentrate on buying  oranges that sit more towards yellow on the spectrum.

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Note for the March-A-Long: I spent most of my last week drafting blocks, although I did complete the two Big Wheels block down, and another one from Grandmother’s Choice.

Beware the Ides of March…

Tags

barbara brackman, Barbara Brackman Grandmother's Choice, Big Wheels, Design, Drafting, Jinny Beyer, March-A-Along, UFO. WIP

Half way done with Big Wheels blocks. I suppose I could have made this Mariner’s Compass block more complicated…

Actually, this post has nothing to do with Ides, or much to do with March, or even anything about “bewaring” anything.  I’ve just always wanted to use that line and it’s never been appropriate.

It’s not really appropriate now, I suspect, but I am posting on the 15th (having been delayed in posting this week for many trivial (mostly) non-quilting reasons.)

Anyway, I have been a bit more prolific this week than last.  I now am past the halfway point with constructing blocks for Big Wheels and have “discovered” that the round blocks come in about three or four “categories.”

There is the “Out From The Center” category, which I consider to be the first couple of blocks I made (and the Cyclone block of last week).

I have named the next category, the “Double Wedding Ring type” because they have the four “football” shapes on the outside like a Double Wedding ring.  The Pickle Dish, I made a few weeks back (shown in the bottom left corner of the photo of Big Wheels on Lost Time) is included in this type.

Circling Swans in a block that didn’t make it into another quilt I was working on, so I just cut it down to put in a circle for Big Wheels. Is that cheating?

“Concentric Rings” really only applies the Bull’s Eye block I completed on DaGM20: Day 10. I guess I could also include the unnamed Block 3 (seen in There and Back Again) which is really a marriage of both “Out From The Center” and ”Concentric Rings” types.

The last category I can think of off-hand is “Pieced in a Circle.”

When I tried to come up with twelve blocks for this quilt, I struggled over including these since they weren’t technically circular blocks (and this one in particular isn’t even green), but in the end, I thought I wanted to include both this one and a paper-pieced one (which I haven’t made yet) just to give the quilt some diversity in construction techniques. It still slightly bugs me that it’s blue, but I think I can get myself over it.

I’ve been using Jinny Beyer‘s The Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns as inspiration to draft my circle blocks for Big Wheels. I still want to be her when I grow up!

The rest of the blocks will be in these categories (or, like Block 3, a combination of these categories.)

So, other than piecing these blocks, I’ve been drawing new blocks.  More drawing than piecing this week, actually.

And I did fondle fabric as well. I rearranged my stash and put fabric I had been using away, but I still can’t fit all my purchases from the Guild UFO Auction last week into the space reserved for my fabric, so I’ve pulled the Christmas fabric and all of the non-animal “conversationals” and put them in a box. I either need to get cracking on using up some fabric or get a bigger box.

Grandmother’s Choice block for the week (with the original green replaced by blue fabric!)

In other piecing news, I did finish my Barbara Brackman block for this week on Wednesday. I must have been confused because I ended up with a white, yellow and GREEN block (just as I ended up with a BLUE block for Big Wheels.)

In the end, I ripped out the green (since it was just on the corners) and put in some blue instead, but if anyone has some idea of where I have put my brain, please email me and let me know.

All this and we had some lovely weather in the 50s for a few days so getting out and about was a real temptation (and I yielded to that.) Now, however, the temperatures have plummeted (still relatively bright out there) and it’s less of a lure.

The “Joys” of Perfection

Tags

ArtBin boxes, barbara brackman, Barbara Brackman Grandmother's Choice, Big Wheels, curved piecing, cyclone block, piecing

The fifth wheel (sorry I couldn’t resist!) in the Big Wheels quilt.

I think part of the reason why I’ve been late in posting for the past couple of weeks is because I have been somewhat frustrated with my piecing.

Part of my frustration stems from the fact that I’ve been quilting for over 20 years and I expect quite a bit from myself.

Maybe too much.

So, it seems to me that lately I’ve been ripping things apart more than I’ve been sewing them together.

Admittedly, something like the Cyclone block (number 5 in the Big Wheels quilt) is a difficult block. Twelve curved pieces come together at one point… and I’ve elected to do the whole quilt by machine. One mistake in drafting, taking a seam allowance that’s too big or too small multiplies and causes big problems the more pieces you put together.

Coming on the heels of my attempts to make a New York Beauty block (in the round, instead of just a quarter of it), I was feeling very poorly about my skills.

Block 27 in Grandmother’s Choice.

As quilters, we regularly see flaws in piecing and quilting that others (“the muggles” as Frances of The Off-Kilter Quilt calls them) don’t.

I think it’s mostly because we live with the quilt day in and day out at “close range.” It’s much easier to see problem areas that way.

So, even though I strive to get everything together and looking good, it looks like I’m not immune for “perfection-itis.”

I’ll have to work on that because putting blinders on and focussing on what is wrong with my piecing is making quilting a bit less enjoyable for me.  It’s draining my happiness and satisfaction. It’s making it a chore instead of an escape.

Even playing with colors and patterns only seems to bring up the dread that when I cut them out I’m going to ruin the fabric and have to throw away  the block. (Actually that should be “give away” because I’m of Scottish heritage and, genetically, disinclined to throw anything away.)

I guess we all go through those phases when we realize how much we have to yet to learn, even though we think ourselves skilled.

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I use these ArtBin boxes to store both completed projects and blocks that are too big for my metal boxes.

On a completely different note, I found a good source for template plastic. “Free” (ish) template plastic.

I am notorious for leaving my projects at the “finished quilt top” stage, so I have been storing them in these ArtBin boxes. (This one is a shallower one, but I have several deeper ones.)

They are meant for paper crafts and scrapbooking and are about 12″ x 12″ in the interior.  I usually get them on sale or with a coupon at craft stores (JoAnn’s, her brother Michael’s, or their cousin A.C. Moore’s.)

Anyway, they usually have several plastic dividers which (because I have trouble throwing anything away) I have been storing with my template plastic.

It just occurred to me to actually USE them as template plastic, and they are great!  They are perfectly see-through (although some are translucent) and have a rough-ish side that makes it easy to keep the template from sliding.

The only caveat I’ve found (so far) is that they don’t take marker well.  Maybe it’s the wrong kind of marker (regular marker will bead, and Micron works, but takes a few minutes to dry.) I haven’t tried my fine line Sharpy yet.

Anyway, I thought if there were others out there buying these boxes as storage and just tossing the innards, I’d suggest you use them as template plastic. After all, if you’ve bought the box, you’ve already paid for the innards!