Well, in the days leading up to the Antique and Artisan Fair, I managed to finish quite a few WIPs, as well have a few unexpected start-to-finishes. (I clearly need a handy nickname for those – STFs, perhaps? They so often crop up and are rarely weedy… 😉 I’ve been busy uploading and labeling pix for the last week or so, as well as a few other things that deserve their own posts.

So, first WIP is this wall hanging – “Random Thoughts,” so named because I think it is a fairly accurate representation of the mix of stuff going on in the back of my mind at any given time.

Random Thoughts 36″ x 56″ Wall Hanging/Throw, 2013

Patterns forming and juxtaposing in the shapes, colors and contrasts.

Motorcycles, birds, flowers, flashes of bright; dark patches, quiet, grayed colors and soothing repetitive (hypnotic?) curves.

A tessellated pattern of sorts, all 4″ HSTs (half square triangles), perfectly traditional except, perhaps, for the seeming lack of disciplined organization to the setting. This is one of a series of recent experiments with HSTs, started last Fall as I began making the quilt I gave to my mate for Christmas.

One of my boxes of stock squares contains 5″ squares and the HSTs I often make. A bunch of 5″-ish squares trimmed from whatever scraps I’m reducing/managing currently, pair, cut in half from corner to corner, sew on diagonal, press and trim to 4.5″ squares. The possibilities are endless and I had quite a few of those HSTs made.

The quilt I intended to make wanted Autumn colors, so (as I usually begin!), I started separating all the HST’s by color family. first into warm and cool, and, as I moved through, the ‘discard pile’ evolved into more piles such as pastels, jewel tones, brights. etc. This happens often when I sort stock shapes, and the little collections of color spark all kinds of ideas.

When I was done, I had two piles of blues, purples and greens – it’s hard to define exactly how they were different, except that one pile was a bit more vivid, a tad more saturated, a little lighter. The other similar pile were all the ones that were less so, that didn’t quite fit in that other pile. There were quite a few ‘other’ piles, too – a lot of pink-and-grey, pastel/Spring-y, some ‘real brights,’ black/white/grey/reds, blue-and-white, etc.

I looked at all the little collections of HSTs, thinking of all those possibilities, and I decided to start with sewing 16-Patch squares of HSTs in no random order or pattern. I started with the “more” pile of blues, and starting with the number of blocks I could make from that pile, divided that pile into smaller piles, one for each, trying to make sure that there were no or few fabric repeats among the HSTs in each block pile.

Once divided, I laid out one block in no particular order or pattern, tweaked the arrangement a bit, then sewed it together. I liked the way it looked, so I made more blocks. I went back and forth with the “other” blue pile several times, switching out squares, until I had 9. I liked it so much that I started sewing that “other” pile into squares the same way. That yielded 15, and they looked ok mixed all in together, but I didn’t have enough for one more block, and I wanted to do something with them now,… In the end, I settled on a throw/wall hanging with the 6 and a bigger throw/wall hanging with the 9. That larger one is still a WIP called Wildflowers Don’t Care Where They Grow awaiting quilting, but the smaller one became Random Thoughts. The more I looked at it, the more fascinated I became noting how the pattern of shapes and color flowed (or didn’t), picking up the common themes of some prints and how they sometimes appeared in clusters or just as individual islands among others.

While I was waiting for my tags to come, so I could finish a bunch of little stuff for the fair, I looked for something I could finish that wouldn’t require more than the 3 tags I had left. Random Thoughts was in the quilting queue and I grabbed it. Quilting HSTs is usually pretty fun and I got it done and labeled in time to take it with me.

Several of those other piles of HSTs became pillows, both last Fall and more recently. Altogether, I think I made over a dozen, although I used the more traditional Flock of Birds arrangement for them.

Again, it’s been awhile… With the Easter holiday and Spring Break, my time at the computer has been limited. This is the latest finish:

Chasin’ the Blues Away – 2013, 47″ x 54″

The working title for this one was the Russian Doll Quilt. I had gotten bits of the Russian doll print in a bag of other scraps, probably from Etsy. Not having any other particular plan in mind, they went into a box to be cut into stock squares. (I routinely cut scraps into whatever sizes of squares they’ll accommodate. I always have these squares on hand to use when needed.) Last Spring, I was rummaging through the 4.5″ stock squares box trying to put together a baby girl quilt for a custom order shower gift. I separated out the pinks and reds for the girl quilt, and started weeding through the blues, thinking I’d set some aside for a boy quilt or two as long as I had the box open anyway.

Among the blue squares, I found two focus fabrics that would work for boy quilts, denimy blues, one with yellow and the other with red and black. (These became the two Denim Baby Animals quilts.) I also found 5 squares of the doll fabric, but decided that the colors would not mix well with the two previously-chosen focus fabrics. So, I set the doll print aside. I quickly sorted through the remaining prints and discovered that most of the prints that did not fit with the two denimy quilts were ones that went remarkably well with the doll print – the purples, purply blues and browns, olive greens and teals, beiges, etc, In fact, I quite liked the effect of all those colors and prints together, although it was a color combination I probably wouldn’t have considered absent that doll print.

I was a bit concerned that 5 squares would be a bit few to consider a focus fabric, but, they seemed to hold their own in the mix as I rifled through them. So, I decided “why not? I counted squares and, with the addition of a few others here and there, I had enough for a 10 x 12 rectangle – with a border, it would be a decent-sized throw or crib quilt.

Over the next few months, the squares were sewn together, a border with 4 matching squares for the corners was added. I found a piece of flannel for the back – a lovely lavender tonal print with birds and butterflies. (The same print, different colorway as the back of The Anarchist.) This piece wasn’t quite wide enough, so I used strips of two differnt purple non-flannel cotton prints down either side – one is lavender with a touch of pink (the same fabric as the 4 corner border squares), the other is purple on white. Standing back, both prints blended well with the flannel, so I went ahead and basted it.

Chasin’ the Blues Away – Detail of Back, Variegated Thread

Once basted, it moved pretty quickly up the queue for quilting. (I do not have much room to house basted quilts, so, unless I hit a real snag with the quilting plan, this is not a place where WIPs linger for long.) I debated briefly over thread and finally settled on a King Tut variegated thread of blue, purple and teal (the other choice was a Gutterman variegated in purples). A binding fabric I had used on another quilt (The Tropics) called to me, so I used it on this one, too. Made the binding, sewed it on by machine, moved it to the hand-sewing pile for finishing and there it sat.

This was one of my portable hand-sewing projects for approximately 4 months. That’s not usual – by this time, I’m usually more than ready to get stuff finished. But, there were custom orders that took priority and other little hand-sewing projects that got snuck in. Plus, I started finishing more bindings by machine. (Finishing all the bindings by hand was creating a logjam and, for some things, a machine-finished binding really is more suitable.) I finally finished it this weekend on our trip to Albany for the holiday.

Oh, and the title change? As I was finishing the last of the binding, my sister, my mother, my niece and I were watching Easter Parade. It had been awhile since I had seen it and I had forgotten about one of Ann Miller’s dance numbers in it, an Irving Berlin tune called Chasin’ the Blues Away. That song has been running through my head to the point that I’ve been breaking out humming and jiving (Ann Miller style, of course) at odd times while fixing dinner and sewing for the last four days. When it came time to sign this quilt and write it up, the title change seemed to be a natural fit… 🙂

As for the rest of the past week or two, sewing-wise? This is what 3 dozen mug rugs look like:

Now, on to the dozen plus bibs and baby blankets I need to finish for the upcoming St. Lawrence County Historical Association Antique and Artisan Fair on April 27th. After that, I need to work on pillows.