Year of 22 projects - Project #1

I wanted last year to be another quiltwrapup year, a year in which I "wrap up" one unfinished quilt a month. That didn't work out too well. I finished two quilts, which is great, and I made some progress on a few more, but I didn't come close to finishing one quilt a month. So of course this year I'm going to be even more ambitious and finish 22 projects. They don't all have to be quilt projects, and I'll include projects that I abandon forever. Abandoning projects is very unusual for me, so that's a legitimate rule. So here is project #1. It's pretty awesome, and we've been sleeping under it all winter long. Soon it will be time to put it away. It's a crocheted granny square afghan using acrylic yarn, joined with the continuous flat braid chain by Cypress Textiles. I started it in 2021 even though I had vowed not to start another afghan until I found a job. I had an interview with Amazon in October and I didn't make the cut, so I drowned my sorrows in yarn. To add insult to injury, I set a goal of creating and joining ten squares a week. This made the process stressful. But my bedroom looks like a beautiful storybook now, so it was all for the best.

Color Cube (rotate me!)

First Quilt of the Year

 

Here we go! I wanted this to be a special quiltwrapup year like 2011 and 2016. Maybe it still will be. But January, February, March and April quilts are still in progress. This is the May quilt. I haven't chosen a June quilt yet, and it's already June 22! But this one is finished. It's a queen-sized quilt for my kid Carter, for the future when she has a bigger bed.

Face mask with slits

This mask has a slit on top for a piece of wire that can be folded to conform to the nose. It also has a pocket on the reverse side to insert a filter. This is a simplified version based on the one in this video.
This face mask is not as safe as an approved medical mask, but not everybody can get the more effective ones.

Cut a piece of tightly woven fabric, 7"x17". Cut a piece of bias binding 2"x7" and two pieces of binding 2"x36". The strips can be cut straight (as opposed to bias cut) if necessary.

Finish the short edges with a zig-zag stitch or a serger.

Fold the fabric in half and then fold center up to 3/8 inch below raw edges, and press. Bottom fold will be the top of the mask.

Press sides to center of short strip, then fold in half and press.

Line up folds and pin.

Top stitch the edge of the binding closest to the short edge of the fabric. Leave the other end loose for now. Fold the fabric in half with the right side facing in.

Sew 1 1/2 inches in from either end, 3/8 inch in from raw edge.

Turn inside out, open out seams, fold back open edges, and press.

Fold top and binding along fold lines and press.

Fold in half and place pins half an inch away from center on either side.

Pins should be one inch apart.

Top stitch along the edge up to the first pin. Backstitch and skip to the next pin, backstitch and topstitch to the end. There will be a gap in which a wire will be inserted to conform to the nose.

Turn the fabric over. With the bottom edge on the top, pinch up a 3/4 inch pleat slightly below the slit.

Fold upwards and pin in place.

Make similar pleats above and below, and pin.

Sew 1/4 inch along raw edges.

Fold short edge of long strip in 3/8 inch and press.

Fold long edges towards center and press.

Fold in half and press again. Turn over and press, using steam or spray bottle. This will help keep the strip in place for the next step.

Fold strip in half and align mask with center.

Open the binding and tuck the mask up to the fold.

Pin in place. Top stitch the entire strip from start to end. Turn the mask over and make sure the strip was stitched down on the back. If not, stitch the back part of the strip.

Cloth Face Mask

These directions are for a simple cloth face mask lined with flannel. The cloth face mask is not as safe as an approved medical mask, but not everybody can get the more effective ones.

Start with one piece of tightly woven fabric and one piece of flannel, 7x9 inches.

Also cut two strips of bias binding, 2 inches wide, 36 in. long. (The strips can be straight cut if necessary.)

Sew the fabric and flannel together, right sides facing, along top and bottom only (short side). Turn inside out and press.

Pinch up a 3/4 inch pleat slightly below the center line.

Fold it up and pin both sides.

Make a similar pleat above, and pin.

Do the same thing below.

Sew 1/4 inch along the raw edges. Set aside.

Turn in both ends of one 2"x36" strip about 3/8" and press.

Fold sides to center and press.

Fold in half and press. Turn over and press using steam or spray bottle. This helps keep it folded while sewing it down.

Find the center of the strip and align it with the mask.

Tuck the mask into the strip and pin it in place.

Top stitch the entire strip closed, starting at one end.

Stitch along the entire strip.

Important! Turn the mask over and make sure the other end of the strip was sewn. If not, topstitch the back part of the strip. I have to do this about half the time.

Repeat on the other side; trim threads.

2018 is about to end

Well this blog has fallen by the wayside, but here's one post for 2018. I ramped up quilting the last couple of months, but the project/photo/blog link has languished this year. I've been so busy. But I have been making quilts. I see that my last post was early last year, so almost two years ago. I talked about ending my leadership of the charity quilt project at church. That has turned out so well. The woman leading the project now is great, the project is going along just fine and best of all I'm still participating and totally enjoying it now. Life is even more well organized, aside from blogging.

So in 2018, I made this for my friend Peter Golden:

It's called Navaho block.

Then after the election, which occupied me for most of 2018 (I ran a ballot drive for Dan Fishman, Libertarian for State Auditor, and worked on the campaign), I made the following quilt in a frenzy (and wrecked my back):

It's a Boston Common design using Kaffe Fassett prints. My back got better.

After that there was a quiltathon, the event that the charity project puts on three times a year. I was so inspired, I made two quilt tops and rehabbed two more, joined them and quilted them on the longarm. Two have binding finished and one has binding attached. Then I cut up a two-year-old little mountain of scrap fabric and made five more tops, also quilted on the longarm. Hopefully I can post some pictures of the whole bunch. But here's a detail of one of the tops. I've quilted the inside and cropped out the non-quilted border. I had exactly 36 squares of pseudo-solid fabric squares left over from another projects, and these are them:

So bye 2018.

Labels

No pictures today, just a narrative.

Today I am putting labels on a bunch of quilts. I haven't been too bad about doing this overall, but not great. I'm thinking about half of them have labels. There was probably a time when I knew the year in which I finished the quilts that I had made, but that time is past, so I'm going to have to dredge through blog posts and file folders to figure it out.

Being organized

I should probably post an update on being organized. I was going to make this blog an ongoing narrative of how I organize my time and space, but let's just call that a little fail. On the other hand my time and space are becoming more organized, I'm just not blogging about it.

Time

I have been limiting, planning, and making better use of my crafting time. If I spend entire days doing crafting then other parts of my life suffer. So balance is the key, and planning is the key to balance.

There isn't much magic to it, just occasional restraint, being aware of when my crafting time is so I can focus on it, and prioritizing what I want to do with that time. Some days I make a written plan. Deciding to let go of my "leadership" roles in charity quilts has helped in this respect. I'm not quite sure how much credit I can give myself for making that decision, because it wasn't working out at all anymore.

Space

Getting rid of the charity quilts has made a huge difference. Soon the materials for the Power of the Quilt Project will be stored at the UUAC church in Sherborn, which is where the project is carried out. All of the materials for the Rhododendron Quilt Guild are out of the house. This was a concerted effort of mine during the first two months of the year, and I'm really happy to say that chapter of my life is behind me. It was not something that I was capable of doing. The only thing I can give myself credit for is not second guessing my aversion to doing that job. Guild people were donating materials that were very difficult to sort and use, but the new coordinator doesn't seem to have a problem with that. I've given her three quilts, a giant roll of batting and a bin of kids' fabric that PQP doesn't need.

Other improvements I've made in my space are removing all yarn from the sewing room. Finishing quilts helps too. Unfortunately I'm now starting to accumulate finished quilts. I need to start getting rid of finished quilts somehow.