Square Root is Done Done

I took three quilts along on our car trip this weekend that needed to have the binding hand sewn. I'm giving each of them their own posts so that I can link them to my finished quilt list in the margin. The finished quilt list in the margin is one of the things about my blog that makes me happy. Concrete proof that I have accomplished something tangible.
Square Root was made out of shirt purchased from the Goodwill clearance center. The total cost of the fabric going into this quilt was $5.73. It also makes me feel happy that I could still make quilts even if I couldn't afford to go out and get new fabric. It uses a combination of 4 and 16 patches along with the fabric of 9 shirts, which explains the name.
The back was a nice stripe from the donation pile, stretched out with the extra squares from the front. I quilted it with a freehand topographic spiral pattern and pink thread.


So, 16 hours, 1 round trip and a big celebratory WOOOHOOO! I love crossing things off the list. Now I get to go and find new things to put back onto the list to take their place.

Drive by Binding

8 hours in the car is very good for getting binding done. I've got one and a half quilts done and one and a half quilts to go. It's been a while since I've been caught up on binding. No pictures yet, but as soon as they are all done I'll do a celebratory photo shoot. Woohoo soon to come.

In a Bind

Today I was ready to be bound and tied. No, I really was just ready to sew down binding. This is my highly scientific method of figuring out whether I have enough binding made. I cut two strips for the long sides and one for the short sides and then throw in an extra just in case.


And here are the three quilts that are now ready for the hand sewing stage. Square Root is on the bottom, followed by Crumb Cake in the middle and Four Square on top. I should have plenty of hand sewing for the next few evenings.

Square Root Needs Binding

Added to the ever growing "needs binding" list, here is Square Root. The sun shining through lets you see you back at the same time as the front. Maybe I should hang it backwards to I can shoot from the other side of the pool?

Here is a shot of the back so you can see the quilting a little bit. it kind of looks like a topographic map to me. I just cut up a pile of binding strips, so I guess I will work on that a while. There was a Royal Pains marathon on TV while we were away, so I have entertainment for hours of handwork just sitting in the DVR waiting. I think the main goal for today though is to get my sewing room organized a bit more. I have a bunch of those plastic drawer organizers that I am going to use to hold precut strips and squares. They are in bins now in the laundry room, but I thought they might be more accessible sitting under the quilting frame. There is certainly a lot of room there. I guess whatever it is I'm going to do, I'd better get started. Have a happy Monday, it should be a nice three day weekend for those in the U.S. that still work during the summers. For me it looks a lot like yesterday which will look a lot like most days for the next 5 weeks. Sigh, summer is half gone. I'd better get busy.

Square Root Quilted

I decided to go ahead and finish the quilting tonight. Tomorrow is still officially a holiday so I can sleep in late. I was trying to decoratively drape it over a chair to get a picture, but Lizzie wouldn't budge. So here is a non decorative picture with a little extra personality. I guess binding will be the job for tomorrow. I think I still have two more on the list.

Lizzie Helps Me Quilt

I was going to do a linear sort of water type pattern on square root. It seemed too tight in the border though, so I switched to a bigger wobbly sort of spiral pattern. I'm trying to keep the quilting lines about finger to thumb width apart. I think it's going pretty quickly. Lizzie came in to keep me company. She isn't allowed in the quilting room, but I had to take a quick photo before I kicked her out.



I've just gotten far enough that all the batting is up off the floor and I'm trying to decide whether to go and finish it up tonight of come back to it in the morning.

Happy 4th

I hope everyone in the US is having a happy holiday. We were at a neighbors pool party and barbecue this afternoon. The kids had lots of fun swimming and water sliding and playing soccer. We had planned to go north to watch the fireworks like we do every year, but it is very rainy right now. I'm sure it will stop eventually, but it is a bit of a drive and then you have to park and walk quite a distance and it just doesn't seem like much fun in the damp. Honestly, after just getting back from a trip, I'm not in a hurry to go anywhere right now.

I managed (eventually) to get square root onto the reassembled frame today. Ask me how many ways there are to incorrectly load a quilt onto a frame-- I am now familiar with them all! I don't know why I found it so difficult to get everything going in the right direction. Maybe my mind is still on vacation. I think all is well now. I'm watching Wipeout with the kids right now. Some actual quilting will done as soon as they head to bed. They've made a tent in the toy room and are planning to sleep there as consolation for the missed fireworks.

Post Vacation

5 empty suitcases, 5 loads of clean laundry, 3 sleeping children and 1 dog who is happy to be home. Life after vacation is getting back to normal. Sydney got a book on making towel animals as a souvenir, so maybe a little bit of vacation will carry on for a while. So far she has made us a dog, a bat and an elephant.
I emptied the camera, but we didn't take that many pictures while we were away. Most of the shore excursions were wet, so we didn't end up bringing the camera along that much. I did get this one of the boat as we went from the waterfall to the dolphin cove on Jamaica. We had a waterproof camera while we were climbing, so hopefully some of those will turn out.


I took this one as we were leaving stingray city in Grand Cayman. The kids had enjoyed the stingrays so much when we took them on a cruise three years ago that they wanted to go again. This was basically a big sandbar in the middle of nowhere with lots and lots of stingrays. Again,we carried a waterproof camera, so we'll have to wait on those photos. Now that I think of it, I've got pictures on my phone as well, so maybe I'll get those off tomorrow and try to cobble together some sort of cohesive story.


I can't have a post on a quilt blog without something quilt related somewhere, so here is a picture of square root which has its borders on now. It doesn't show up much in the picture, but the border is a blue and white stripe. I didn't want to mess with trying to miter the stripes or cut them so they would match up. Instead I just made some cornerstones. The extra bits and pieces are sewn together to make a little stripe for the back. I will get it on the frame in the morning as soon as I get it all reassembled. Everything got put away for company before the cruise. We were traveling with Kurt's family and they all came to spend a night here before we departed.

Spare Change

You may have noticed that I have been on a bit of an organizational kick these days. It happens every summer. Trying to make up for chores that get neglected during the school year I suppose. Finding space in the study/spare bedroom for the quilting machine has been an ongoing process. One of the small items of furniture that needed to find a new home was a wooden two drawer filing cabinet. After consultation with Kurt, we decided that it could become his nightstand, replacing a rickety table that has been serving the purpose. Today I cleared off the table and in my pattern of slightly obsessive organization, decided that all of the change that he keeps in a basket there needed to be sorted, rolled and deposited at the bank. That of course led to a collection of all of the loose change in the house and an entire morning of work. Guess how much there was? It was frightening really.
I think since it was "free" money, that I should be able to spend it on something fun. I'm trying to talk myself out of getting an Accuquilt. I just got a darned Handiquilter, I shouldn't buy anything else, but I'm being very tempted.
Speaking of my charmed life, I talked everyone into going to volleyball with Kurt tonight and got my Square Root top put together. I found some possible fabrics for borders and backings in my ongoing cleaning today, so maybe I will get it ready to quilt before we go on vacation. No quilting for me in the next couple of days, I "put away" the quilting things today in order to turn the room back into a guest bedroom again. Never fear, I still have plenty of regular sewing to keep me going for a while.

Blocks Ready to Go

I just finished off the blocks for my Goodwill shirt quilt. I used the highly scientific method of cutting the shirts into strips and then sewing them together until I was out of shirts. I was alternating sixteen patches with four patches until I ran out and then I finished off with the four patches around the edges. I may have enough left in the scrap basket for some sort of border, but it seems to be about the right size now. The blocks are 8.5 unfinished and it looks like they are set 7 by 10. Now that I think about it, a border would make it nicely twin sized. I'll have to see what I can find. It is called square root because it is made of 16 and 4 patches. It was going to be perfect squares, but using the word "perfect" seems to be a little ostentatious. I'll move the blocks around a bit to even out the color placement and then get it up and pinned so I can sew the blocks together in the morning. I'm waiting for Kurt to get home from the airport now, so I'll putter around until he gets here. I'm thinking of quilting it with pink thread in a free motion water pattern. Again, the highly scientific reason is that I'd like to try it out and I have a cone of pink thread.
I took Sydney and Ryan both to get haircuts today and we played board games in the afternoon. They both wanted to sleep in the toy room and Lizzie has been snoring in a pile of fabric I pulled out to iron and put down in my chair. I'm working my way slowly through the stuff from the study. It is nice to have summer to be able to get things like that done.