Welcome to my blog! This is a sketch book of things I'm drawing, photographing, writing, or just thinking about when I'm not busy designing fabric.
wendyslotboom@gmail.com
www.inthebeginningfabrics.com
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Tuesday morning. The race to finish my Frolic quilt continues. When I left last night, the quilt still needed to have sashing rows and block rows sewn together. Which I did first thing this morning.
Here are the remaining quilt pieces. From the left: binding, outer border, inner border.
I added the inner border to the quilt.
(It became more and more difficult to take pictures as the quilt got larger. Quilting paraphernalia started to encroach. It lends authenticity to the whole project though. Like, I am not just making this up! I am really making this real quilt!)
Finally, the very last step. The outer border was sewn to the quilt.
Here’s the top half of the quilt without so many distractions. It’s done, done, done!
Tomorrow, I’ll package up the quilt top and ship it off to our long-arm quilter. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have one day next week to bind the quilt, then the following day it will fly off to Quilt Market.
And I will collapse in relief.
Monday morning. Where was I? Oh yes, I was planning to sew a bunch of strips into strip units. No problem.
(The angle of the photo doesn’t really get across the idea that there are 21 strip units there. 21! It’s all well and good to say “no problem,” but the fact is, those strip units took a while.)
Next the strip units had to be cut into pieces. The long pieces will be sashing units. The small pieces will become ninepatches.
Cute little ninepatches were made.
Ninepatches and sashing units were sewn together in six long strips.
And…sashing units and blocks were sewn together in rows.
Whew! Tomorrow, I’ll need to sew the six long strips and the five block rows together. Then, the inner border goes on. Then, the outer border. It can be done. Yes.
I ended up working on my Frolic quilt over the weekend after-all. I was spending all this energy worrying about the time-frame for getting the quilt done, and it turned out that it was a lot more productive to go in and work on the quilt, rather than just staying home and worrying about it.
The progress so far: all 20 blocks are done.
Next up: I have to sew these strips together.
I hope that by tomorrow evening, I’ll have stacks of strip-piecing to show off. If this is not your thing, I’m planning to return to posting pictures of cats later this week. If cats are not your thing, I finished a UFO and will try to fit it in somewhere. If strip-piecing, and cats, and UFOs…if none of these things are your thing, then…then…who are you?!
On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!
The sample yardage of Frolic arrived at work on Thursday afternoon. The question: could I piece the quilt top by the following Wednesday morning, so as to ship it off to our machine quilter, and get it all finished in time for Quilt Market? The answer: Easy! Except…I wasn’t going to work on it over the weekend. That left three days: Friday, Monday, Tuesday. That meant, no time to waste.
Let’s do it! On Thursday evening, I took fabric home to pre-wash. On Friday morning, I returned to work with this.
That’s the stack of fabric for the quilt, a picture of the quilt (Photoshop version), and my instructions. I started ironing the fabric and I realized that I love it. I felt very un-humble, on one hand, loving my own work. But, on the other hand, it’s nice to still get thrilled whenever I see my designs actually turned into fabric. I’d hate for that feeling to ever get old. But, can’t dwell on that, because this fabric needs cutting!
Done! Now it needs to be sewn.
Here are the first six blocks. Still 14 blocks to go. Plus the pieced sashing and teeny-tiny nine-patch blocks. And the borders. Ack.
I woke up this morning (Saturday) and wondered if I should maybe go into work…because there is still so much to be done. But I somehow convinced myself that working on the weekend would result in me getting the Swine Flu and then I’d be no good to anyone.
Plus, I’m committed to working as long as it takes on Monday and Tuesday. May the force be with me. (And with everyone else who’s rushing to get things done for Market.)
Last Saturday morning, while I was trying to fix breakfast, Emma got a little too interested in the radio’s electrical cord (which required my intervention). Then she jumped up onto the counter to see if my cereal was ready to eat (which also required my intervention). Then, back on the counter, she checked out my juice. Finally, after being lifted off the counter for about the umpteenth time, she glared at me, then raced across the floor, grabbed a throw rug in her mouth, charged across the room — dragging the rug — and ran head-first into the door.
She does things like this all the time. As she dropped the rug, and shook her head as if to clear it, I thought: You raised a litter of kittens? Really? She must have been the most fun of any of the moms on the block is all I can say.
Wednesdays Are UFO Days
I thought I might actually have a Finished Object today because, after I first posted this project a couple of weeks ago, I Had An Idea. All fired up, I went shopping and bought some supplies (black nylon cord, lining fabric, magnetic closures).
And then things didn’t go quite as quickly as I’d planned, because I’ve got another project to work on in my spare time (fabric design! top secret!) which, as I keep reminding myself, takes precedence.
Still, when something has been sitting around untouched for months — seeming like it will be a UFO for all eternity — in those circumstances, any progress feels like good progress.
So. The crocheted part is completely finished. Ends woven in and everything. Now I need to conduct a big search for interfacing, which I know I have somewhere. The interfacing is necessary to reinforce the lining fabric in the spots where the magnetic closure will go.
The lining fabric…I had one of those “That’s it!” moments as soon as I saw it. But now I’m wondering if the scale is way too large for my purse. It’s possibly a poor choice, but at this stage I’d rather consider it a daring choice, and I’m moving forward with it. I’m also concerned with the slinkiness of the fabric and my ability/inability to sew two pieces of it together without it becoming a slippery mess. This is where years of sewing, almost exclusively, with 100% cotton fabric will get you. Fear of the slippery. I figure if worse comes to worse, I’ll just pin the lining to death, and hand sew it together.
Whatever the technique, I’m hoping that by this time next week my purse will have become an FFO (Fine Finished Object).
EXTRA!
I found out today that a quilt block I designed will be included in Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks from Today’s Top Designers. The magazine will be on newsstands in early- to mid-November. There will be a blog tour of participating designers and…count me in! I’m participating. That means there will be a happy moment in time when this blog actually focuses on quilting and fabric — two things that are driving forces in my life but, strangely, are rarely mentioned here. Well, that’s about to change.
After finishing my felted cat, I knit up a bunch of trial pieces for my next felting project. I was pretty sure I was going to need more pieces, but I decided I better see how these felted up, before I got too carried away. (Points for being sensible!)
So, here they are. Felted. (Except for the burgundy i-cord in the top picture, which I saved for the next batch of felting, as I was afraid of i-cord entanglement.) I’ve already decided that some of the pieces will become another critter. Maybe a cat, maybe not. And…I definitely need more pieces.
That was one good thing about our failed yard sale: I had plenty of time to knit. I now have four tubes ready to be felted. Plus, the burgundy i-cord. I know that lots of people think that making i-cord is a giant pain, but I like it. It helps that my personal i-cord instructions are: cast on for i-cord. Put movie in DVD player. Start movie. Begin knitting i-cord. Knit until end of movie. Cast-off. Since I don’t know exactly how I’m going to use the i-cord, the finished length isn’t that important…which is why “as long as the movie lasts” works fine for me.
So, the next step: felt up this second batch of knitting, and see what I’ve got. A third batch might be necessary. (Actually, I’m counting on it…because of felting being addictive and all.)
And! A note about the yarns used, because I always wondered which yarns felted best. My experience is, as long as it’s 100% wool, and hasn’t been treated (for instance, “superwash” wool won’t felt), it’s all been felting really well. My expectations, on the other hand, are not all that refined. So, in summary, I’ve been using a variety of brands, and I’m happy with all of them. Shown in these pictures are: Crystal Palace Yarns “Fjord,” Lamb’s Pride Worsted, Lion Wool, Patons Classic Wool, and Sensations Licorice. They all have Emma’s seal of approval as well.
The whole crown molding UFO episode reminded me that the crown molding had actually spawned a second UFO. That hardly ever happens.
Sometime after we realized that we sucked at home improvement, I decided that if I couldn’t fix it in reality, I would fix our house in Photoshop. Then I’d write a book about it, because surely there were lots of people who, while they might be unable or uninterested in home repair/rehab/remodeling, would nonetheless love to have stylish photographs of their homes to show to their friends or to post on their blogs.
(If you fix your house in Photoshop though, you can’t invite anyone over, because they will call your bluff. “I thought you had hardwood floors! I thought you had a fireplace! You went on and on about collecting the river rocks and building it yourself! And that picture of your cats on the non-existent deck that you supposedly built! You probably don’t even have cats, do you?!)
So, my book was going to be called, “I Fixed My House in Photoshop.” In fact, here’s how I pictured the title.
The type is at a slant, because that’s how it was going to appear on the book cover. There were going to be photos on the cover too, but that would come later.
Next, I was going to show two sets of tools. Like this.
On the left: Photoshop’s toolbox. On the right: Our wall of saws. Compare and contrast. Choose your tools. I would choose Photoshop.
Then, I’d get to the substance of the book. For the first project, I was going to show a photograph of our living room as is. That would be the “before” shot. The “after” shot would show our living room with crown molding. Which I was going to fake-install with Photoshop.
So far, so good, right? Except, I couldn’t do it. My Photoshop skills weren’t up to the task. Forget adding the crown molding. I couldn’t even fix the glare of the lights reflected in the windows. That was pretty depressing. I couldn’t fix my house in real life OR in Photoshop. Plan A and Plan B: both failures. And I didn’t have a Plan C.
Plus, there went my great idea for a book. I just read this question somewhere: which is more important, the idea or the execution? The answer, apparently, is a no-brainer. It’s execution, all the way. That’s why I’m doomed.
Wednesdays are UFO (UnFinished Objects) Days
When we bought our crown molding a number of years ago, we didn’t anticipate that it would be something that we would one day be trying to get rid of. All house projects are born in hope, right? A desire to beautify? But we never got around to installing our crown molding because, at some point, we came to terms with just how lousy we are at house projects. We stored the crown molding in our basement and tried to forget about it.
Which was fine, until we needed to have a new furnace installed. Mike, the man who came to install our furnace, noticed our stack of crown molding right away. “Hey!” Mike said, “Last Saturday, my wife and I bought some crown molding. I got it all installed on Sunday! Looks great! My wife loves it!” Tom and I looked at each other. It was like someone bragging about their honor student when your own kid is a delinquent. On the bright side, the furnace installation went smoothly.
But then, a few years later, the furnace stopped working. We called the plumbing place, which was a large company, and they said they’d send someone out the next day to have a look. Tom stayed home from work and waited for the furnace repairman. That afternoon, I got a call.
“The furnace is working,” Tom told me.
“Great!”
“You know who they sent?”
“Who?”
“Mike.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And he remembered our crown molding. He was surprised that we still haven’t installed it. Because installing crown molding is so easy.”
Long pause. “Well, easy for some people maybe.”
Fast forward to Friday evening, when I suggested to Tom that Saturday’s neighborhood sale might be the ideal opportunity to sell our crown molding. Since crown molding doesn’t have enormous curbside appeal, we decided that we needed to find a few more things to sell. So, we rounded up a few books, a few CDs, and some PVC pipe. Also, I found a jar of paste that I was willing to part with.
We had everything set up at 8:30 a.m. We sat with our stuff, dreaming our capitalist dreams, and gradually learned that we did not have the right stuff. People would pull up in their cars, look out their windows at our crown molding, and drive away. At 12:30 I could feel myself reaching a snapping point. It might have had something to do with watching an episode of “Hoarders” last week, where people were practically buried in their stuff. Anyway, for whatever deep psychological reasons, I felt like shrieking “Here! Take my crown molding! Take my jar of paste! Just take it! TAKE IT!”
But…we still have it. No one wants it. They don’t want to buy it. They don’t want it for free. It’s so sad. I dread the winter. What if our furnace breaks down? What if Mike comes back? This is my worst UFO ever.
…we adopted Emma. To put this look back in Toby’s eyes. He’s about to chase her all over the house.
(I always go overboard with the tape on Toby’s photos. It’s like he expects it.)