I finished my crayon quilt on Saturday, one hour before it was due at the store. With commute time, I got it there with 20 minutes to spare. That was exciting! We'll look at the quilt tomorrow.
In the meantime, it got me in the mood to dig out my crayons and coloring books, which I hadn't done in WAY too long. I was disappointed to discover that during one of my purging fits over the years, I kept the crayons but had gotten rid of all but one coloring book. That wouldn't do, so I went shopping yesterday and today to freshen things up.
I already had a lot of crayons, but it seemed like the colors were dreary. So I bought this package of 120 new ones. Much more colorful, I'm glad to say.
New plus old gives me a total of 248. I'm not storing them like this - I have a new plan that is fun and it just might be something to look at next Monday.
The new crayons came with a sharpener that reminds me of my Mr. Peanut cup.
These are my new books. The two on the right (Despicable Me and Puppy Hugs) were a deal - I got them both for 32 cents. I more than made up for that savings by going overboard on everything else, including a gorgeous book of Disney stickers (not shown).
Because some of the books have illustrations that are relatively small and detailed, I bought this 50-pack of markers with fine tips. I'm looking forward to the intense colors that crayons just don't have.
For my first page, I chose a dog, and used crayons instead of the markers. (This coloring book has newsprint pages, so crayons worked better.) I colored the dog to look like a Goldendoodle and used multiple layers of colors on most of the objects, something I tried for the first time today.
I noticed that many of the coloring books sold nowadays come with stickers, a new concept for me. I think it's a brilliant idea, because as far as I'm concerned, you can never have too many stickers in your life. So I added some stickers from my old stash.
I looked at lots of adult coloring books at Barnes and Noble, having read a few articles lately on how they're a big fad. But I much prefer the children's books - they're vastly more playful.
Gosh, this is a fun quilt to make. I just wanted to stop in for one quick photograph and a progress report.
Yesterday I finished my words, one of which is shown above.
This morning I cut out my crayon bodies and paper pieced the crayon tips. For the tips, I made my own paper-pieced patterns that were 3.5" square (the width of the crayon) with an isosceles triangle superimposed on top. I made one as proof-of-concept to be sure the measurements worked out OK as far as the pattern and the amount of material I cut, then I mass produced the rest.
Now I need to make crayon labels, which will involve hand embroidery.
I have some surprises yet to share with you:
- the other word that goes with crayons
- the labels (they WON'T be the names of colors)
- the layout (nothing like you see here)
Yesterday I started my paper pieced letters. The reason I'm making them first is because their finished size is going to determine the size and number of crayons and hence the overall dimensions of my quilt.
This is what I have so far - 17 letters that took 6.5 hours. They took a lot longer than I thought and I still have some extra fiddling to do. I
wouldn't recommend them if you're trying to make a quilt in a hurry.
I was as efficient as I could be:
- when scanning them, I left them at 100%
- when I had more than one of the same letter, I made them at the same time
- I (usually) cut extra generous slices of fabric to make sure I had more than enough for the 1/4" seam allowance needed on each seam and around the outer edges
Here's why I said I have some extra fiddling to do. I assumed when I started, that once I pieced a letter, I could make a word. But one needs to add extra fabric all over the place:
- at the top of the letters that descend (like p and y)
- at the top and bottom of letters that don't stick up or down (like c and o)
- at the bottom of letters that ascend (like b and t)
And that's after I pull all the paper off the back. Sigh. Oh yeah - then I need to add spacers in between each letter. I'll be spending three days on these letters before I'm done. I just don't think this quilt is going to get done on time. Maybe I should stop blogging and keep sewing.
One more thing before I go. This is what I use for paper piecing. It's really inexpensive and nice and light, just like newsprint.
A local quilt shop is having a bale challenge (a bale is a role of fabric, usually fat quarters). The rules are pretty liberal: basically you buy a bale from them, make a quilted wall hanging, and turn in your entry no later than this Saturday. There are minimum and maximum dimensions, but you don't have to use the entire bale and you get to add up to three yards of additional fabric.
My bale consists of the brights on the perimeter of this photograph. My additional fabrics are the black crosshairs (center top), a mixed print (center), and a nice nubby cream-colored muslin.
All these bright colors reminded me of a box of crayons, so that's going to be the focal point of my quilt.
The design is my own, but I'm going to use these two books for some help. I'll be using Quilt Talk for paper pieced letters.
I'll use Quilt As-You-Go Made Modern to guide me on my initial effort at the quilt-as-you-go method of quilting. Since I don't have much time, I thought the quilting might go faster if I quilted it in small pieces. I have a friend who uses this technique all the time, and she gave a really good and detailed presentation on it during one of our quilt guild schoolhouse sessions. But that was a few years ago and I lost her directions. I've always been scared to try it, but I think this might be the right time.
It took me ALL day yesterday to reconfigure my sewing room. Therefore I didn't start on this quilt yesterday, like I hoped. But the room is super cool and inspirational, so I'm looking forward to some marathon sewing days coming up.
Off I go...
I bought a display board in March, drawn to it because of the "clotheslines" on it.
It looked like this for nearly five months. I leaned it against the bottom set of cubbyholes, losing storage space, but it looked like a built-in hutch, so I didn't mind. I kept thinking I would make micro quilts, one a month, and hang them on there with all the cute little clothespins I've been accumulating. By last week I admitted to myself it wasn't going to happen.
Remember
my two vintage postcards we looked at last week, one of skyscrapers and one
of a bridge? At first I had them each in their own little frame, and
they looked puny.
So I went back to the antique store, bought seven more, and this is how it looks now. Much more colorful and happy. I moved it to the "skyscraper" room, freeing up the bottom set of cubbyholes. This all set off another round of multi-room rearranging, much to my glee.
But why am I procrastinating on that quilt that's due Saturday and which I haven't started? I will start it, as soon as my sewing room gets its finishing touches, hopefully later today.
Just squeaking in at the end of Skyscraper Week, here's my third and final skyscraper project. On Monday we looked at a painting I bought of what I call Parisian Skyscrapers. Wednesday was my Skyscraper Quilt.
Today, one block, framed without glass. The block is from Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, volume 6. It was designed by Pippa Eccles Armbrester and she named it Reflecting Cityscape.
My block is similar to her's in that I used solid colors, but because of the size frame I had, I added an additional building and black borders on the right and left sides.
If I had made the block exactly like her instructions, it would have looked like this.
I have all three of these (painting, quilt, framed block) hanging in one small space, along with those two vintage post cards that appeared with my Skyscraper Quilt. Nowadays, whenever I'm out shopping, I'm keeping my eyes open for skyscraper or building accessories. One of these days they'll show up.
I sure like decorating and redecorating. Now I've got an itch to redo my sewing room for the millionth time. But first, I need to make a quilt and turn it in next Saturday. More about that next week.
A few weeks ago, we looked at six options for my one-block quilt, which was a challenge from the modern quilt club I belong to.
This is the option I chose, and this is the block I took for show and tell. I thought it was going to be the whole quilt, but when I got home, it felt unfinished and too scrappy. Luckily, all I had done was the top, so it was no problem to modify it before making the sandwich and quilting it.
The skyscraper fabric is probably my favorite fabric in the whole world, in my entire lifetime. I wanted more of it in the quilt.
It inspired a trip to the antique mall a few days ago, to shop for vintage skyscraper postcards.
And the bridge fabric ranks right up there, too.
I found this vintage bridge postcard at the same time.
I added right and left borders of the skyscraper fabric, and a bottom border to match the top. Then I called it quits.
The finished quilt is 42" wide and 39" tall.
Black and white binding ties into the mostly black and white back.
And as usual, good old straight-line quilting.
This is a section of the back. The fabric on the lower right is used on the front borders. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but that fabric is on my all-time favorite list, too. It looks exactly like fabric from the 1960s. I had just a little bit of it left, so I thought it was a good opportunity to piece together the many black, white, and red fabrics from my stash.
Here's the complete back. I was happy to get all that fabric used up.
My label is boring, because I was in a hurry. I think the chevrons look like the angles of skyscrapers, and I convinced myself that's why I didn't have to do anything more complicated. The border fabric on the label was pure black on one side, with gold dots on the other. They look a little like stars.
Now I'm off to start the other skyscraper project I promised to finish this week.
