Monthly Archives: April 2012

Jelly Roll Race – madness

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If you haven’t been hiding under a rock or in a cave for the past year, you’ve heard of the Jelly Roll Race quilt pattern. I don’t know who originally came up with it, but it’s flippin’ brilliant, and I sure hope he/she got the credit they deserved. It is made by sewing about 40 (width of fabric) strips together, end to end, mitered or not, and then sewing that insanely long strip together lengthwise several times, until you have a quilt top.. Well, of course, like everyone else out there in quilt blog land, I made one. I didn’t exactly have a real jelly roll, so I gathered some 2.5″ strips from my scrap bin in the desired colours (these happened to coordinate with a Yellow Submarine Beatles poster) and started sewing. I used more than the prescribed 40 strips and my version came out a bit bigger than the pattern says.. all the better..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can tell from the picture, I used lots of different lengths in my strips.. I used the scraps I had. If I’m going for scrappy, the different lengths actually helps a lot to break up some of the blocks of colour that can happen with this method,

 

Here’s what I am wondering… Has anyone come up with a method of controlling where the values go when using WoF strips? (width of fabric)  I am no good at math or geometry, or telekenesis.. whatever it would take to figure this out.. But I wonder if there is some formula, like one dark, one light, one dark etc.. To have it turn out a certain way.. With all the lights on the left and all the darks on the right of the quilt top, for instance.. It’s not that I don’t like the random scrappy way these come out, in fact, I do like it very much. But I think I’d like to have more fun with this method. I know that I could simply put my strips on a design wall or floor in the layout I want, and then sew them all together.. but that isn’t as fun as creating that LONG strip and then doubling it up again and again. I’m just curious if anyone has made several of these and noted the way it turns out when they vary the order of their lights and darks.. If you have a clue, drop me a line so that I don’t have to sew twelve of these race quilts, taking notes the entire time :-P

I am a cranky bitch

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Yeah, you read that right.. and if that language offends you, BY ALL MEANS, turn around NOW.. because it only gets MUCH worse from here on out.

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Still with me? Ok, so I need to rand a little about people who do not appreciate the value of handmade things. I consider myself a pretty generous person. I realize it’s not very attractive to toot one’s own horn, but beep beep! It’s the one thing I LIKE about myself. (that and the naturally curly hair) I always have a project going for someone.. In my mind, every special person I know needs a quilt.. made by me. So when someone is sick, or getting married, or reproducing, I make a quilt. I enjoy it. I love giving quilts to people. I don’t ask for much.. I don’t even expect most of them to say thank you (although it’s nice when they do!) I don’t expect a card, and I certainly don’t expect the quilt to have a place of honour, hanging above the mantle. But the one thing I do expect is that the damn thing doesn’t end up on their floor in shreds with bits of dog excrement clinging to the edges of it! I mean really….And that’s exactly what I saw when I recently visited a family member. Really? I mean REALLY!? I’m not a dog hater.. (except for the idgit next door, and even then, it’s the people I can’t stand.. not the poor pooch’s fault) but I don’t want my handiwork to become their snack/shit pad!

Call me judgmental, but in the last 12 years, I have sort of come up with an evaluation and thus a bit of a mental list of the family members who will NEVER get a quilt gift from me unless they buy one..

Which brings me to my next point of rant.. Why do people think those who own sewing machines have the time and resources to work for free? Because that’s basically what someone is asking you to do when they convo you on etsy, asking how much it would cost them for you to make them a queen size quilt.. and then react with shock when you quote them a reasonable price for your time and materials. It reminds me of when my father was working as a carpenter and a lady actually thought he could build her a 20′ x 20′ porch for $100.. She said she’d throw in some brownies.. She was shocked when we told her that wouldn’t even pay for the wood and nails.

Do people REALLY not get it? Do they honestly think that because walmart sells cheap chinese crap quilts for $29.99, that they can commission a talented quilter to work for them for WEEKS, and get something made with quality supplies and pay them $20? People want quilt shop quality, at a walmart price.. That shit ain’t gonna happen. I understand the economy is in the shitter.. and things are tight everywhere.. But that especially means I can’t afford to work for nothing! I had a cousin who asked me to do this for her.. Design and make a quilt for her daughter’s room and she would “give me $20.” And she said it as if that gift of $20 was some act of charity on her part.. I told her there was no way I could do it for $20, but if she paid for the fabrics (I would supply the thread and batting) that I would be happy to make her the quilt. She thought I was being unreasonable. I asked her if she was smoking phucking crack. Oh, and I forgot to mention that was the first time I had heard from her in over a year, and haven’t heard from her since.. Good Riddance.

It’s a fine thing when I voluntarily make someone a quilt as a gift, out of my own pocket.. And I often do.. THAT’S the generosity of quilters.. It’s what I love to do.. We’re good people, (even though many some of us curse like sailors when we prick our fingers, drop our scissors, or spill our wine)   That’s the love of quilting.. But, don’t take advantage of people… don’t expect someone to work for free..! Would you want to?

Getting my ducks in a row

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I finished up the baby name quilt commission. The binding is a kelly green, but the light makes the bottom edge looks blue.. weird. This is the 13th finish so far in 2012. I feel like I should have more done so far, though. In my head I know that I have made a lot of progress..  but I also know that I’ve been lazy these past few weeks, and I haven’t gotten much sewing or quilting done. I sorta lost my mojo this month, not sure why. I just haven’t felt like sewing. I’ve not been sick, really, just not feeling like myself. Whenever I get the blahs like this, I know that one thing that helps is to get outside, into the sunshine, and DO something. I went down to the lakeshore last week, and took pictures of ducks in the water. It seemed to help, but then I came home to my atrociously messy sewing room, and was blah again. SO, the next step is to get my sewing room organized. I have a real plan on how to organize my scraps and get them cut up into usable sizes. It will likely take weeks to get all the cutting done. Too bad I don’t have one of those nifty Go Cutters.. meh. Dream on, lol. They are way too expensive for my budget. I am lucky if I can afford to replace my rotary blades in a timely manner. I will not tell you how long I have had the same blade on my cutter, because you would be appalled. But, I will put on a new blade for all the scrap cutting I will be doing. because I know it will help a lot with reducing fatigue in my wrist and shoulder.

For anyone who is curious, I basically use Bonnie Hunter’s guidelines for my scraps. She suggests cutting them into usable sizes, that play together well. You can read more about Bonnie’s ideas on scraps at her Quiltville site. I cut my scraps into 1.5″, 2″, 2.5″ and 3.5″ squares and strips. I don’t cut 3″ because they don’t play well with the other sizes. I also cut “bricks” in 2.5″ x 4.5″

So in my plan to get my sewing room organized, I took a couple before pics, just so you can see how bad it was. I will wait to show you those until I have some after pictures to compare it to. Otherwise it’s just too embarrassing.. :-P