Tags
Barbara Brackman Grandmother's Choice, birdhouses, circles, design wall, folded flowers, handquilting, jewelry, kanzashi, Oldies, placemats, quilting, Sewing Space, Spirographology
This week I folded up my design wall.
I have very limited space in my apartment, so my “design wall” is actually a 3 yd x 72″ piece of felt I bought at JoAnn Fabrics with a 50% off coupon.
Usually I keep it folded in half and pinned to my bedroom wall behind the door, but Spirographology and Oldies were both so big, I needed to unfold it so I could see what I was doing. When I do that, I pin the felt to the back of my door. When the door is closed I can see the whole quilt, and when it’s open, my project is out of the way.
Now that Oldies needs only one more “seam” to have the central part done (I seldom design borders using the design wall), I have decided to indulge in small projects for the rest of the year.
The first project is to finish my initial row for my Guild’s Row Robin, due in a couple of weeks. I decided on the theme of “In My Backyard” and started out with a row of birdhouses.
(I am thinking of writing directions for a similar bird house block (actually a bit easier) and posting it to my Guild’s web site. If you are interested, please let me know. I hope that will give me the motivation to do it!)
I will, of course, still be indulging in Barbara Brackman’s “Grandmother’s Choice” Block of the Week, as well as my Guild’s Block of the month. I will also, I hope, concentrate on finishing my Fallingwater applique block since the “only” thing that has to be done is the border (a fancy cutwork with oak leaves and acorns.)
The “biggest” small project I’m looking forward to is some placemats I’m making for my mother. These are going to have circles all over them of different sizes and kinds. She wants 6 of them. I am planning on making them all different.
I also have kanzashi to make. I will be selling these at a craft show I’ve signed up for in December along with my regular jewelry and the folded hexagon flowers I had last year. I will use both cotton and silk for these since you can’t really wash them anyway.
This is me, clearing “the decks” to actually quilt in the winter months. I hope to finish Spring Fling, start My Heart is in the Work (which I will be hand-quilting, so don’t expect it to be completed this year. After all, I am not Tim.) and, maybe, one or more other quilts, if I can appease the Long Arm Goddess.
It’s going to be a cold winter and I think I’ll need more quilts to keep me warm!