Laboring away for Labor Day!

      The summer always ends with my birthday-- appropriate since I love this time of year, when my two favorite seasons blend together. We've been having crisp, foggy mornings, then blazing hot afternoons with the bluest of skies, followed by incredibly clear nights with all the stars out over the meadow.

     For my birthday, I got this-- exactly what I wanted!

     Yes-- the entire family brought ALL of the remaining boxes out of the attic, and my DD helped me empty them, all day. There is something to be said for dibble-dabbling away at a project, but at some point, you really need to just git 'er done. So there's still a lot of putting away to do-- good news, if I move all my books downstairs, we are mostly fitting. And this is just putting stuff away right now-- at some point, I want to do the UBER-SORT-- where all the like things are together in their most logical spot. I'll dibble dabble away at that over the winter!

     Instead of a cake, I asked for birthday ice cream lunch. We drove just down the road to our nearest ice cream stand. They love ice cream in Maine-- GIFFORD's is the brand-- it's always nearby, however remote you may be. My thing is the Peanut Butter Cup Blizzard. It only comes in one size-- gigantic-- so there's no guilt in ordering.

     I uncovered some really fun attic treasures you will get a laugh at-- here are my three oldest UFOs. It's like visiting with the me of 20 years ago. xox.

     First up, my Craftsy Block-of-the-Month from 2013. Many of you remember Craftsy-- the craft video site that offered classes of all types of sewing, baking, knitting, and everything else content that would be OURS TO KEEP AND VIEW FOREVER!! heehee. Well, there's a sucker born every minute, and I was one of them-- they went bust after a very short time. I think YouTube did them in. Somewhere, our paid for content is still out there, but not without signing up again and giving a credit card. No, thanks. Anyway, every year for a couple of years, they did a block of the month for free-- I SO looked forward to this one each month-- I even finished it!

    This was well before I had a fabric stash of any sort to speak of, and I bought a set of Kaffe Fassett fat quarters for next to nothing, on clearance from Fat Quarter Shop, of course, not really knowing what it was. How I enjoyed picking and cutting the fabric for each block every month! They also had a forum where you could post your project and it was wonderful to see what everyone was doing. I bet I have my progress shots on my hard drive somewhere. Yup-- here is one of them!

     This is the kookiest, craziest quilt I have ever made. It's quite the mix! My current day perception is, that yes, it's busy, but sew fun to look at. I think I need more of this wild spirit in me, again.

Around this time, I became enamored of free-motion quilting on a sit-down-- yup, Craftsy was full of content for that, too. So I got about half way through the quilting-- I was doing an aces's job-- I even see some specialty stitches from my sewing machine in there.

     It's now in my "TO BE QUILTED" box, and I'd love to finish it up soon. I could make short work of it on the longarm. I doubt I currently have BLACK quilting thread, though!

    Now, we're even further back in time, twenty years earlier-- this UFO from the early 90s. I saw the "Cardinal Feathered Star" quilt made up in my local quilt shop. The pattern came with two designs-- when I saw the "other" one, I was even more in love!

    "Country Threads Christmas" was for me. I got this far-- probably stopped dead in  my tracks when I realized I had to applique! I also had a big question in my mind-- why the heck did they have you piece these tiny 3" blocks only to cover most of 'em up! 

    When I look at it, I just want to hug myself. No OCD on star points, whatsoever.

    I loved it so much, I decided I wanted it for an all year wall hanging. So I drafted up some bluebirds on a peach tree instead of the Christmas tree. I ran across a big printout of this a couple of weeks during my unpacking, as well as a bluebird novelty print I bought, so many years ago, for the backing.  I'd love to finish it-- my applique skills are killer now, and hand quilt it. Look like it's gonna be a busy winter! 

    This piece makes me realize how fun it was to pick fabrics at random-- instead of using "collections" as a crutch all the time. It looks very original. So I've also made progress committing to selling off many of my kits-- with whatever time God grants me, I'd like to finish a few of the more meaningful pieces. This is one of them.

     And I saved the best for last! Now we are back to about the 1980s. I was working my NYC graphic design job and getting back to sewing after getting through college. I always liked the artist Escher-- he made these tessellating patterns that fascinated me. I'm sure you'll know in an instant to whom I refer.

That piece is called, "Day and Night." It's one of my favorites. Oh, yes, and "Three Worlds." 

   I decided to try my own tessellation-- I drew FISH going back and forth, and I did it!-- yes, these fish, in theory, would match right up to each other! This is the first these fish have been free of their plastic box in many years-- I have 28 of them.

    I picked the craziest fabrics I could find at Jo-Ann Fabrics at the time-- there were no fat quarter bundles, then, just a lot of dress fabrics. Out of each fabric, I made one left and one right facing fish. Then I made scallops for the scales and top stitched them down to muslin-- the eyes just make me laugh. Karen Kay Buckley perfect circles or Applipops weren't invented yet!

    You bet I would like to finish this, too-- what might happen to it when I'm gone? Who would ever, ever have the ambition or knowledge of how this was supposed to go together? And, I'd love to finally discover after these 37 years-- do those fish really fit together?

    Now back to the present-- I actually have had a couple of finishes. Occasionally, I decide to do some good in the world beyond drawing up crazy interlocking fish-- I finished up two baby quilts.

    And then I started a wedding gift. This is the "Moda Love" pattern-- it's free-- have you seen it?

    Basically, it's a Carpenter's Star, but the cool idea is that you can make it  with a layer cake, charm squares, or even mini charm squares. I'm going with the largest size and it should make a nice big quilt-- it says 72" x 72." I'm using the partial layer cake that came with the Sew Sampler box this month, but I'm having to add some. You only get 1/2 a layer cake with the boxes.

 

 Pretty, huh?

    So that's what I'm up to this weekend-- a little putting things away, a little sewing, a little outside time-- the weather is amazing. The official sewing season is about to begin, and it's a great time of year to reconnect with your old self and make plans for creating this fall. Hope you can follow along, and we'll do it together!

xox

Carol