Design Wall Chaos

The design wall in my quilting room is not a huge one, but I certainly get huge use of it. Generally, it contains a conglomeration of projects, ideas, false starts, and ephemera. Rather than finishing some of the items hanging up there, I just layer on more projects on top. The result after about 10 years, looks like this:

This is the full view of the design wall. Some might have difficulty dealing with a mass of chaos such as this, but I am quite comfortable having all these various projects pinned up before me. The items out front are the more current projects, and I tend to use the left side for "storage" while the right side is more likely to be cleared for actual designing purposes.

If we just concentrate on this more current portion of the wall, you can see several projects that are currently on my radar.

The 4 red and white blocks at the top right the newest additions to this wall. For the quilt they will be used in, I need 16 of those blocks, so I will steadily work my way through those in the coming days.

Hanging off the bottom is my scrappy version of Spring Dreams for the sew along we are doing. I will share more about it on Monday when we do our first weekly update.

Behind the red blocks and the scrappy sew along are the 4 blocks I made with Kaffe Fassett blues. They are delightful to look at, and it keeps the plan for making this quilt very much in the immediate plans. I will get the red and white one done first, then turn my attention back to blue KF stars.

Everything else tacked to this wall just needs to have a purpose. I make random blocks just because, sometimes, and then I put them up there and just look at them. I ought to devote a month to finishing some of these things, or at least, to figuring out a way to use the random blocks.

Some are ready for finishing, like the table topper behind the sew along topper. Some are leftovers from quilts I have finished, and for whatever reason, had extra blocks - the churn dashes and the blue and white star are two visible examples. Random single blocks round out the variety. I get an idea, make a block, and then look at it on the wall. A couple of the stars up there are really awesome looking, and ought to be going into some equally awesome.

I wonder how many quilters operate like this? I would like to think that this is somewhat normal.

It's a pretty day here, and we are going to get outside for awhile. Hope you are having a wonderful Saturday!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

 

Evidence of a Scatterbrained Quilter

I remember a chat I had with my dear late grandmother, who was not in any way a scatterbrain. We were talking about quilting, a hobby that we shared, and she spoke of having several quilts going in various stages of completeness. She said she liked being able to decide to work on what she happened to be in the mood for - piecing, quilting, binding, for example. She was such an organized and orderly woman, she would be totally unnerved by all the chaos going on presently in my sewing room. I cannot imagine that she ever had as many quilts going at once as I currently do.

For the life of me, I have been completely unable to focus on one project lately. This month, especially, I have been all over the place with the projects I want to work on. Consequently, my design wall looks like a pre-school class has had a field day with fabric and blocks.

Let me try to make some sense of this chaos for you.

The large navy star blocks are for Summer Nights, a quilt that is on my goals list for this year. Read about it here, and see a pic of the pattern. I need 18 stars for the quilt, so I am halfway there. Then I need to make the setting blocks. I am so motivated to work on this! The stars go together so fast, and I love getting to use all the navy fabrics from my stash. I could make them chain-piecing style, but doing each star individually has been fun. I am laying each star out and planning the placement of the various fabrics.

At the top center, you can see a tangent I went on with the same star pattern. I had been cutting out the baby quilt I need for a baby due in less than 2 weeks. I will show you a picture of it soon. Anyway, the cutting was finished, and I hadn't yet put away the remnants. It occurred to me that a star in those gray and yellow fabrics would be interesting. So, right in the middle of all the navy and white, I made a gray and yellow star - tangent complete.

Then in the center of all those stars, you see the scrap-busting effort I shared here. I have continued to cut 2.5" and 2" and 1.5" squares, but have not done any more sewing. I am super-motivated, though, so when I get the blue star quilt done, and the baby quilt done, I will return to this.

The aforementioned gray and yellow baby quilt has yet to be shared, but it is upcoming, for sure. I made that top today, and it's now ready to be loaded into the longarm. Yet another tangent. But a necessary one to have moved to the top of the to-do list because - 2 weeks until delivery!

Don't think that I have forgotten a WIP (work in progress) that I began before Christmas - Diagonal Madness. It is always hovering in the back of my mind - that's a tangent I am anxious to get back to.

Is it any wonder that I feel like a scatterbrain?I wish I would have inherited some of Grandma's organization tendencies! *wahh*

Now, do you notice how I "layer" my design wall?? That, my friends, is further evidence that I lack focus. I make a random block, or I play around with leftover bits, then pin them up and look at them for awhile. I have so many orphan blocks that I need to make use of - but I wait for some inspiration to strike. They can hang there and adorn my space in the meantime. Some things hanging there have been pinned up for at least a couple of years, I'm sure.

I will never run out of quilts to make.

Hope you are getting things accomplished! January is almost gone!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Village Progress

It hasn't been an overly productive week from the quilting room, but I have continued to work periodically on the houses for Village. It has been a week since meeting Carrie Nelson for her Village session at Old Town Fabrics, and from the 11 houses I made that day, I am now up to 29. Minimal progress, but progress nonetheless.

I spent a productive hour or so one afternoon cutting lots of parts for houses. Finally, I have dipped into the 3rd line of Corey Yoder charm packs, Flower Mill. The variety will be wonderful, and I expect the house-building will continue for some time.

Speaking of variety, take a look at this design wall. Gracious! I removed half of the Prairie Vine blocks to make room for Village blocks. Now Village is growing around the remaining Prairie Vine blocks. I really ought to maintain my focus a little bit better. I think some telltale parts of other projects are evident to the left - yes, I admit to having a tendency to flit from one project to another all too often.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

C'mon Into My Sewing Room!

I devoted the summer of 2007 to making my own sewing space and took pictures to record the event.

The pictures were taken in 2007 upon completion of my room, and are small because they pixillate too much if made larger. Back then, I had a different camera. Maybe when you click on them, they will look better.

The room was my son's bedroom, but it was evident that he truly was grown and gone on his own and that saving his stuff was unnecessary. Also, we had begun that terrible habit of putting stuff we didn't exactly know what to do with in his room! To say that it had become a major junk room would be putting it very mildly!! So, with Kevin's much needed help, we cleared the room. He painted the walls and steam-vacced the carpet. I made some very pretty curtains and arranged a workspace that has served me quite well.


A month or so after taking these pictures, I added a design wall, which is in use below. This is a current photo with a newer camera.
 

 I bought 2 large pieces of wall insulation and used duct tape to hold them together. Then I took lengths of batting to cover it entirely, then covered the batting with white flannel. I used straight pins to secure the batting and flannel to the insulation, pulling them around behind to hide. Figuring out how to attach it to the wall was initially a challenge, but we (Kevin and I) eventually just pounded about 4 nails into the wall and pushed the insulation foam wall onto the nails. The nails were the kind with very little "head," so they pushed right through the insulation. It's been up going on 3 years now, and I've had no trouble with it.
 
Those 3 photos above are from when the room was brand spanking new. That was then; this is now:
 

It's a good bit more cluttered now, but this is clean by today's standards. The way I see it, the more one works in a room, the more that room must adapt to the habits of the worker. Having necessary "stuff" around me makes me a more efficient and productive worker. (That's my theory and I'm sticking to it!).

I do love my sewing room, and do count my blessings that we have the space to allow such a grand indulgence. I have, of course, dreams of improving it further, but if I never do another thing to it, I will be able to work out of this space for many years.

What's on your design wall right now?

Last week when I was finishing up the Cheddar Cheese doll quilt, I took a photo of it on my design wall. I worked really hard to position the camera so that the rest of the items on the wall were not visible in the picture.

But I decided to take pics of the whole thing anyway, post about it on my blog, and see if anyone could offer suggestions about what to do with the blocks and fabrics I have had up on the wall for months and months.

Here is a shot from one angle:

There, in the foreground, is my doll quilt. Beside it is a panel I bought last June at the quilt show in Columbus. It is from the Minnick and Simpson line called Flag Day Farm. I had no plan for it when I bought it, but thought it was pretty and would make a nice center block for a medallion quilt, which I've always wanted to make. Lately, I've toyed with the idea of anything patriotic, perhaps with a few (or a lot) red stars.

The red floral above the doll quilt is a piece of Liberty of London fabric actually purchased in London. My friend Kay bought it for me when she went there in 2001, so that tells you how long I've had it! I hate to cut into it, so I'm thinking that I ought to use it in large chunks. Center of a star? Setting blocks for some simple design? I am just not coming up with anything that inspires me, as yet. Maybe some blog friends have ideas?

Here is a shot of the design wall from the other side of the room:

The two Churn Dash blocks in the foreground are meant to become pillow tops for a friend of mine who has this design on her barn. Our area's Historical Society has had an ongoing project to put blocks on barns, and it has resulted in some stunning sights. I made a boo-boo on the first one I did, so I made a second, thinking that I'd just keep the one with the boo-boo for myself. :-)

The smaller block above the Minnick and Simpson panel, is another pillow top, and is on another barn - my neighbor's, actually. It will need a border or two to make it big enough to become a pillow top, but that is my plan for it at this point.

I really need to get those pillows made and out to their intended homes. They'd be 3 really fast UFOs to get crossed off my list.

Back to the design wall.. .the jumble of stuff that remains ... Up at the top are 3 paper-pieced blocks. The two larger ones are from the Kaffe Fassett scraps left over when the girlfriends made my retirement quilt. The smaller one is a little block I made on a whim just to be doing something. I like the color combinations, and the simplicity of the block-within-a-block pattern. What that might someday become??

So, my questions to blogland:
1) what's on you design wall? and
2) what suggestions have you for my Libery of London fabric and my Flag Day Farm panel?