Beautiful weather

beautiful slightly-rainy, very windy-yet-warm weather today so I took George for a stroll just before noon, hoping he'd fall asleep for his nap. We switched from the infant carseat to the convertable this week (Britax Marathhon, what kind do you have?) and I'm still feeling a bit helpless when it comes to naptime-- driving him around the neighborhood had been my go-to nap routine for the last 2 months. Thankfully it wasn't too cold today and he didn't seem to mind the 3 raindrops that fell on him. We made a loop from our house down to the main street, checking out Halloween decorations and watching the grade-school kids play soccer in the schoolyard. He fell asleep in less than 10 minutes. Great, but what am I going to do when it starts snowing?
Once inside I thought, "Blogging or sewing?"
I chose sewing because it calms me, lets me find my place in the world (which has seemed a bit chaotic lately).
I trimmed up the triangles for 4 new spiderweb blocks that I pieced last night. Then I cut more paper templates and light blue kites. I also drew up a 2nd draft of the potential layout.. this one calls for only 30 blocks with light blue background, but 26 blocks with medium blue background, which I don't have in the stash. I was hoping I could go through the rest of the year without buying fabric (ok, without buying anything really), so we'll have to see how far I get. I'm now up to 15 blocks and still loving it.
I thought this pattern was supposed to make a dent in my scrap stash, but it hasn't really. Scraps beget scraps, right? No complaining. I'll find the ideal scrap-busting project one of these days. Suggestions welcome, of course~
I find that piecing the spiderweb units has helped me sort through my scraps with a fine-toothed comb. Any strip more than 20" long gets set aside for another strip quilt project. Chunks and triangles get tossed into the triangle box for the corners. When I find squares, I separate them and toss them into the square drawer. This part of the project has been very satisfying. Sure, I love sewing and quiltmaking, but I think what I love more is playing with small pieces of fabric. Just touching them, sorting them, moving and collecting them. And when I trim up a triangle the trimmings have to be really small for me to part with them. I've started a pile of "too small to sew with but too pretty to throw away"-- greeting cards maybe? We'll see.

Scraps, huh?

At the Silver City show and also at Portsmouth Fabric Co. I was drawn to the scrap piles, as always. Is it bad that I collect other people's scraps? What if I was contemplating posting an ad to buy scraps off of other quilters? Yeah, that's taking it a bit too far i suppose.
For the huge sum of $18.80, I came home with enough scrap fabric to keep me busy for quite a while.
When we got home from the trip (two weeks ago already?) I didn't have the chance right away to start sewing stuff-- first i sorted the new scraps into 3 piles for the laundry. then i contemplated the quilt in my last post for a couple of days. I did a load of scrap laundry & sorted it. thought about new quilts some more, sorted through the existing scrap-stash, and finally, started sewing..

I have wanted to make a spiderweb quilt for about a year or so, I guess. I've had the background fabric set aside for one since last winter. I'm using 2 of Costas' Ralph Lauren button down shirts. Using Bonnie's Method with 8.5 x 11" paper foundations it's actually pretty easy and a hell of a lot of fun. The only trouble so far has been removing the paper-- on the first few triangles I guess I used too much gluestick..

I'm up to 8 blocks so far and I just starched the remaining pieces of the first shirt to keep the threads under control when i cut the kites. It's so much fun to play with my scraps-- i had several bags of bits/strips set aside from past projects and going through each one brings lots of memories. I'm also getting a lot of pleasure from organizing my small scraps. Now I have one bin for triangles and as I wade through bits of fabric I'm pulling out anything that would be too big for this project. Why cut into a 3 x 4" brick when I really just need 1" x 4" or smaller? And believe me, i think I have enough small bits and strips to get this done. I'll be surprized if I actually need to cut fabric for this quilt. I wonder if I'll even use up all my bits and crumbs..