February Block Finished

The second block for my silk crazy quilt is completed:

This time I deliberately chose colors I don't usually put together in a piece, in hopes of challenging myself to step outside my comfort zone. The red white and blue theme could have been very Americana, but adding some other colors in the embellishments kept it from going all Uncle Sam on me -- and I think that worked well.

I didn't snag any of the silk patches this time, and watched my thread tension to avoid puckering.

Using a rayon embroidery thread for the circular stitching helped keep the fabric flat, too -- I discovered rayon slides easily through silk, although the thread itself tends to twist a lot.

I like how the Paris patch came out best. I love the effect of scattered seed beads condensing around an embellishment:

I didn't let myself look at the January block again until I was finished the February block and then put them side by side for a pic. That was when I noticed that I used the same circular embroidery stitches in the top right patch on both, which made me chuckle:

Second block down, ten to go. Now I'll take a break again until March 1st, when I start block three.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

Just beautiful Lynn! Truly.

February 21, 2020 at 11:53 AM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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