Rainy Days and Mondays...

Granny D here.  It's a dreary, rainy Monday here in Virginia.  Maybe that's why I focused in on this beautiful blue and sunny yellow combination.  As you can see, the front of the bag is already pieced.  The straps have been cut from the navy.  The back is going to be that navy Majestic fabric we have in the eBay store...I think...

As you can see, after a little contemplation, I'm still having an argument with myself.  Should I make the lining out of the navy and the back of the bag out of that yellow?  I'm thinking practical here.

 The yellow will show dirt quicker (these can be washed, by the way) but who wants to wash their bag every day or every week for that matter.  However, the interior might be even worse.  Lipstick comes open, pens leak.
Sigh.
As Jimelle posted earlier today, oh, the possibilities.  Well, at least between blue and yellow.
What do you think?
 

So Many Possibilities!

I don't know about you, but I spend my Sunday afternoons drinking coffee and deciding what kind of quilt I want to make this week. I choose simple quilts, partly because I'm new at this stuff, but also because I really, really need a sense of accomplishment by the end of the week. My other "job" is writing novels, and, as much as I hate to say it, I just can't finish a novel every week. So I turn to quilting to get my 'finished' vibe.

This week, as it turns out, is a pretty hard decision. I have loads of gorgeous fabric! I have apparently been collecting teals and blues to the point that my sewing room looks a lot like the ocean. I have a Lily & Loom layer cake for two kid quilts in purple and pink, but I'm just not feeling those candy colors this week. Also, thanks to Joann Fabrics BOGO sale last week, I have two new jelly rolls to play with. Sigh. Life is good.


I'm still fascinated with jelly roll strips, and I love the symmetry of coin quilts. So I picked out these:

and these:

I have a pattern in mind, something like a mix between a coin quilt and window squares, but I'm not going to bother posting it today because I know - FOR A FACT - that I will change my mind sometime during the piecing process. It's happened every single time I try to follow a pattern.

Do you follow patterns or make it up as you go along? Maybe a mixture of both?

Two Tone Tuesday

I think that what attracted me to quilting in the first place was the vast and delicious fabric colors. Giant swathes of rich color, in any medium, are my thing. Paintings, quilts, clothes, it doesn't matter. I love love love color, and I'm so happy that new fabrics offer jewel tones and crisp pastels.

My love of color is how I ended up with this:

My first real quilt!

I just put together all the colors I loved and went with it. (You'll notice that I have no idea how to take a proper quilt picture). 

Since making it, I've found that lots of times, I have color paralysis. Even within the same color scheme, there are SO. MANY. CHOICES, and the problem is that I like every single one. I stare at fabrics until my head hurts and then I just have to stop looking before I drive myself crazy.

Then I got to nosing around and found this:

This is a very helpful way (for me, anyway) to decide on color, especially when I'm stuck with too many choices. I don't always follow it, but at least it gives me a starting point.

How do you use color? How do you decide, when there are so many gorgeous fabrics out there that you just have to have them all?

Make It Monday - Patriotic Tote Bag

Granny D here.  I love, love, love making tote bags and purses.  You'll see some that I made in our eBay store soon.  But I thought it would be fun to show all of the piece parts that go into making one of these totes.  They're really simple, and I can't tell you about the pattern except that it's just ideas I've pulled from here and there and perfected after trial and error.  You know, I'd make one and then decide the straps were too short.  So, I'd adjust.  Then I'd decide it needed more pockets so I'd add those to the next one.  Sometimes I'll sew a piece of ribbon on the inside with a D ring attached so your keys will be available and not get buried in the bottom of the bag.  I use interfacing and batting to make them sturdy and yet soft.

So, here goes.

This first picture is the pieces of the outside of the bag, the pretty stuff everyone sees.  I love patriotic themes and colors, especially for summer and thought this would be fun.  So the front is pieced from a jolly bar (5"X10") pieces and 5" squares.  The back is just solid denim (Remember those curtains I posted about a little while back.  Yeah, it's a curtain but the denim is just heavy enough without being too much.)  The straps are from the same denim and that red dotted piece will be the flap that comes over the top to button the bag closed.  I'll probably use a silver button.

 The second picture is the lining.  It's a nice cotton fabric we found at a really good price.  It's a pretty navy (the pics don't do it justice) that pairs well with the denim and the outside of the bag.  The smaller rectangle near the top and to the right is a small pocket.  The piece to the left is another larger pocket that will run the full width of the bag, sewn in about 3 4" sections.  I think with this one, I'll sew a smaller section in the smaller pocket to hold a pen.  That would be handy.

And here are all the parts together, ready to sew.  You can see that it's really just rectangles of different sizes, doing different jobs to make this patriotic tote.  I've already filled a bobbin and threaded the machine with navy thread.  I can't wait to get started on this one.

What is your favorite thing to sew?  If you haven't tried making a tote like this, do it.  It's not really difficult at all and I like that they are practical and pretty at the same time.

Geometry and Quilts and Birthdays

I'm new to the whole quilting thing, and someday I'll post my first finished quilt - affectionately known at my house as "The Worst Quilt In The World". I can say that I learned A LOT making it, and I can't wait to finish piecing the two(!) I've got stacked in my sewing room right now.

But for now, I thought I'd share something pretty cool. At least, I think it's pretty cool. I hope you do, too. It's this:

I like to design quilts almost as much as I like making them. The color choices, patterns, and shapes are like puzzle pieces in my head, and I love love love that the possibilities are so endless. I started out doodling on graph paper, but this weekend I found myself with time to kill and no graph paper. I did have my laptop, however, and a free program called GIMP. It's neat, but there's a heck of a learning curve. I know just enough to do a few things, and I'm nowhere near as proficient as some other folks.

Anyways, I decided to play around and try to come up with a quilt design template. That's that thing up there. I count each block as a 5" square, just because my brain likes that number. That makes every numbered row a 10" block, perfect for charm packs and layer cake...packs? Stacks? Slices? I dunno, but you get my drift.

Why was I doing all this, you ask? Well, the Big Man's birthday is coming up, and I had a few ideas for a quilt. Unfortunately, I need to see geometry with my eyes. It won't work in my head. The circles roll away, the triangles are all sharp and pointy, and the squares fall flat. It gets dangerous in there. So I either doodle the patterns, or in this case, use that graph up there.



For the birthday guy, I chopped that thing up there in half and used this:

to make this:

The man loves peppermint candy. 

I numbered the rows differently and played around with it, and it was a lot of fun. However, I still love my graph paper and pens, so I'll probably print these things out and use them in the real world. The basic "peppermint" block wasn't my idea, but the placement was all my own (I think). Pay no attention to the numbers at the bottom - that's my own weird system of figuring out what fabric I'll need.

Feel free to use anything on this page. Just right click and save any of the images you like. Print 'em, play with 'em, have a ball.

Which do you like better: pen and paper, or software?