Saturday, February 22, 2014

Kaffe Scrappy Log Cabin Top

I've been fighting a nasty bug for a few days. I would have much rather been behind my sewing machine than on the couch.  I have have felt a bit bad passing this beauty hanging on the curtains. Today the sunshine came out and backlit my beautiful Kaffe top. I felt inspired to get up and get sewing. I first had hubby take it outside so I could get a proper photo.
He loves crazy socks and can't wait to play in his now super muddy garden.

It needed a bit of yellow. So border went on with mitered corners.
I think I need a bit more energy to tackle the batting, backing and binding. I am exhausted just thinking about it. Thanks for coming out sunshine, its been along while.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Snow Makes Me Want to Crochet

Over the last 4 days the PNW got about 6-9 inches of snow and  1-3 inches of ice, all depending on where you live, of course. I love the snow, however, I HATE ice. I have been seriously injured in the ice. Therefore, I choose not to leave the house when there is even a threat of ice. For two days I didn't leave the house and instead choose to be crafty.
Kuma, my precious one, loves the snow. She, like her non-furry mom, also hates ice. This is her on the second day of beautiful fluffiness. All she wants to do is play. She did not understand the picture taking. She just wanted me to find her bone for her that was buried in the snow and play with her. 
Snow doesn't really make me want to play anymore, maybe I am too old or jaded, instead it makes me want to pull out beautiful bright colors and be super crafty.

When the freezing rain started, I settled on the couch to make something pretty. Kuma followed suit, napping under my feet.
 I ve got a large bag of clothing donations next to the door and tub of yarn next to the couch, so the rug seemed natural. I have recently drooled over handmade t-shirt crochet rugs I have seen on Pintrest. I cut up a few t-shirts from the donations bag into long strips. Then started sorting through the HUGE stash of bamboo yarn I have hoarded for years. Most had been used for an awesome crochet granny square blanket. I have long since decided I don't want to make another crochet blanket and need to use up the left over yarn somehow.  So the crocheting began. I love the mindlessness of crocheting, especially the single stitch. I watched a movie and a few hours of Olympics and determined that the scrappy looking rug is exactly what my colorless dining room needed.
Obviously, Kuma thought otherwise.
I worked on this rug all morning and left it on the floor while I made lunch. I came back and Queen Kuma had claimed it as hers. Out of all the space in my huge house to lay on, she picked this rug, seemed very very intentional. I might have to give into that sweet face. The rug still has a long long way to go, but I love love it!

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Kaffe Log Cabin

I have started a quilt. I have many unfinished quilts. I feel conflicted about starting a new one. I was totally inspired by the new Kaffe fabric I purchase and how it fit into my current stash of Kaffe. The colors are so consistent. I have been purchasing 1/2 yards for going on 5 years now. I have a nice collection. I really wanted to use up some of the scraps left over from the Kaffe Quilt and Scrappy Embroidered pouches.
I started with the mulberry shot cotton scrap. I cut 24 random smaller squares in varying sizes anywhere from 2''-4 inches.
Then I spent the majority of my time organizing my scraps. I wanted 4 color sets, so I could create a stair step pattern. I ended up with orange/burgandy, blue/green , then lights and darks.
Kaffes colors makes this process easy. After sorting my scraps into colors, I then sorted them into sizes: tiny, medium and large. I was looking for strips over 1 inch wide. I knew I could always cut the bigger pieces down as needed. I ended up surveying my scrap selection and then cutting strips off my 1/2 yard stash to fill up my piles. I have a nice selection of patterns; large florals, stripes, small organic patterns and other geometrics. I didn't get too caught up in cutting certain sizes since I really wanted a scrappy look. Setting up the scraps made the piecing part rather mindless. I just tried not to put the same fabrics next together.
I set up the stacks of scraps by size to work through to build the block. This quilt is a scrap buster and I wanted to have all the small pieces available to use when starting the block so. I didn't want to cut off the big long scraps to start off.
I also wanted to make this quilt to come together quickly. I utilized my chain piecing skills, I lined up my blocks to sew at one sitting. 

Everytime I chained pieced I would cut them off the sewing line and keep them sorted by color. Since, of course I wasn't using a pattern per usual, I had to keep myself organized in someway.
The orange/burgandy and green/blues got paired in blocks and then the darks and lights. I don't use pins when sewing much. I just paid a lot of attention to the colors, and laid all my blocks the same direction to make sure I was sewing the correct sides together.

Here's a nice stack of 10" squares. I am trying to decide if I want them bigger than this.
Stay tuned to find out.




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