New and Improved and Now In Michigan!

Yes, I’m excited. We have moved into our home in Michigan. My husband has already found a new job and is working daily, with overtime even. I’m still trying to fit everything into a house 1/3 the size of the old one.  Something has to go!

Before we left Missouri we had a garage sale and sold quite a bit. Once we arrived we found a lot more had to go and had another garage sale! Now I’ve got an ad on Craigslist, looking for a local quilting group that will use donated fabric for charity quilts. I know there is no way I can make enough quilt tops with my stash to make a dent any time soon.

I’m looking for work, and meanwhile I found a little time to work on the maze quilt. This is a baby quilt, for a player to be named later. It’s simply a design I wanted to challenge myself to make.The “entrance” is on the left, 10th row from the top, and the “exit” is on the right, 16th row from the top. Yes, a reading teacher cannot do it otherwise, left to right is the rule. I just need to make a “go” symbol for the entrance, and a goal or home symbol for the exit, and incorporate them into the border.

I am so happy to be in Michigan, and if a job doesn’t show up on my horizon soon, I’ll be happily quilting here.

 

Busy three months

I know it has been more than three months since I posted. My life has gone into overdrive.

• School ended, which meant I had to pack up all my personal belongings from the classroom to bring home, and all the rest for the summer. My teaching job has ended in favor of a big move to Michigan!
• I took online classes for enough credits to renew my long-expired Michigan teaching certificate, just in case.
• We have made two more trips to Michigan with loaded trailer: at the end of May and at the end of June. Now that most of our things are in Michigan, we know there is just too much for a small house.

I did have time to work a little bit on the maze quilt in June, posted here. I was able to get two more rows done, and work on another, before I had to pack up my whole sewing room and put it all on the trailer. Talk about withdrawal!

In March 2011 we had an auction. Here are some of my lovelies that had to sell at that time.

Several of my sewing machines

Three of the four you can spot in this picture actually ran well enough to be used daily. The one in the blonde cabinet was from 1927 or thereabouts and once it was oiled it worked very well. I’m a sucker for old, mechanical machines without electronics.

treadle

To the left of the hide you can see a treadle machine in cabinet.

treadle

Here is another treadle machine, electrified. I believe the same gentleman bought all the sewing machines.

Now I am trying to sell one more. It’s clean and a beauty, but I really have a very small sewing room where I’ll be living.

Singer 99K from 1955

My next blog post will be as a Michigan resident. I promise some updated pictures on the maze quilt soon. I’m anxious to get it completed!

Pictures so far: Maze quilt

I was able to carve out a couple of hours to work on the maze quilt this weekend. I didn’t actually keep track, but I think it was between 4 and 5 hours.

Here are some of the strips sewn into sets of two.  I had some extra lengths that I left as is, and some small pieces that will do a single block where needed.

Next I sewed some of the two-sets together, to make four-sets. These will be a shortcut for the places I need four colored blocks in a row.

Then I cut the four-sets in half, so that each row of four is now the correct width.

The white fabrics I will leave as strips in the places I can sew a longer piece in, or cut as needed. As I sewed, sometimes I needed the equivalent of one block, two pieces, three, or four. Fewer seams that way.

Here is the top row completed. All the blocks are sewn together. You can see I have neon green sticky notes telling me this is row 1, blocks A-F. I have 9 rows total to do.

Here is the total progress as of Sunday evening! I’m so pleased with it. I was afraid the walls, with darks, brights, and lights in prints and solids, wouldn’t look so much like walls. I think it looks great, and I’m looking forward to making more rows, as I can.

Coming up, though, more of all my other projects going on right now.

• Circle quilts for my friend’s daughters – she’s getting more of the embroidery patches done for me.
• Plus sign quilt for my next grandchild – a girl who is coming anytime from early to mid-March. The top is complete, but I have to quilt and bind it.
• Doll clothes – I’m starting to get an inventory, but a few more outfits and samples are needed before I can open the Etsy store.

My full-time job sometimes gets in the way of my hobby! I’d much rather be sewing.

More thoughts on making a maze

I am delving deeper into designing a baby quilt with a maze. I found the website Here and Above with a handy rectangular maze generator. I input different numbers until I came up with a maze that I thought I could duplicate in fabric.

I wanted the walls and paths to be equal widths, so I can use a postage stamp-like piecing method. In fact, the more I thought about it, I’ll even use strips of white for the paths, so there isn’t quite as much cutting and sewing to do. I’ll make the walls from brightly colored scraps from my stash, which I’m still trying to whittle down.

Here are some mazes generated:

left entrance, right exit

I think I like this one best. Each time I hit the “back” button I could generate a different random maze, so I did several more.

top entrance, left exit

left entrance and exit

I think that one will not feel balanced. I like the chevron effect in the lower left portion, though.

top entrance, exit

All I could think was, why go through the maze when the goal is next to you? Again, I see a bit of design in it, this time a Grecian key effect.

I’ll have a wide border of a single fabric around the maze, and at the entrance point will be the “thing” and the exit point will have the “goal”. What should they be? Frog and a lily pad? Princess and a castle? Race car and checkered flag? Puppy and a ball? I’m thinking baby quilt, so I’ll take any suggestions you may have. I may like yours better than any of mine!