My Creative Journal
May 1
Building buildings
I'm making good progress on the quilt so far. I drafted the pattern and I'm starting to piece it together. The way that I usually piece my house quilts is with paper piecing. That is that you draw the pattern on paper and sew the fabric directly on the paper. It gives you very exact shapes without having to measure exactly oddly shaped pieces of fabric or use templates. This method gives me a very precise result. I want to be more free with my piecing and have my buildings look more abstract. I decided to not do paper piecing this time. I'm just going to print out the pattern the finished size of the quilt and piece it without sewing on the paper. That means that I'm going to roughly measure the shapes and sew them together. After all, it is mostly rectangles. How hard can it be? Wish me luck.
May 2 Return to top
Lights in the Sky
Today I tackled the sky. I gathered all my fabrics and scraps that are dark blue/black and have little specks of white or gold. I cut them all up into little pieces and randomly sew them back together to make the illusion of lights in the sky.
Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. have a perfectly good piece of fabric, cut it all up and sew it back together. That's what quilters do.
This method for creating the sky combined with my new way of piecing the buildings is very time consuming. Not the best idea when I have a close deadline. But I'm going to power thru because it is looking good. If I don't make it to the deadline, there is always next year. Hopefully.
May 3 Return to top
Stringing me along
Now that I have more sky sewed together, it is not looking like Christmas lights. It looks like a starry night. Which is nice and still looks good but it is not what I want to convey. My Mom is visiting from Puerto Rico for her annual Mother's Day trip. She went with me to the craft store to see what we could find that would look like Christmas lights. It needed to be a string of something...
I got in my head that what I needed was a string of really small pom pom trim. Luckly, I found it! My Mom looked at it disaproving. She didn't like it. She keep looking and found a string of rhinestones. I wasn't too sure about them. Especially when I saw the $10/yard price. I needed about 10 yards! Of course my Mom would find the most expensive thing. I can't say no to my Mom so I got a yard of it to try it out.
I tried both of them out and Mom was right. Now I have to find a cheaper place that sells strings of rhinestones.
May 7 Return to top
Catceañero
I admit it. I am a crazy cat lady. I don't go as far as celebrating my cats birthdays every year but this year my cats turn 15 so I HAD to celebrate it. Good thing I have fun friends and family that go along with my silly ideas. I don't know how much the cats enjoyed it.
May 10 Return to top
Starting the Other Side
With all this other obligations, I have lost steam on my quilt. I finished one side of the street and now I'm starting the other side. For some reason, I'm not that excited. I know it is looking good but I'm kind of lazy about it. Maybe it is all the distractions. My Mom is visiting, I had to plan a quinceañero, and next weekend I'm driving to Conneticut for my niece's graduation. Lot's of life going on so not too much sewing.
May 11 Return to top
Switching projects for today
Since I'm not too excited about the Christmas lights quilt, I'm going to work on the DC Metro bag project. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back one month. I made some thought bubbles. They need some filling and a wire. Now back to my regularly scheduled quilt...
May 14 Return to top
Graduation Weekend
The day is finally here. My youngest niece is graduating college. Hopefully I won't have to go to any ore graduations. We drove 6 hours to Conneticut and 6 hours back in heavy rain, avoided some Covid close encounters and made it back home safe and healthy. Now back to sewing.
May 19 Return to top
Another building
I'm loosing steam. Getting a little bored but got to keep pushing thru. I'm afraid I used colors that are too bright for this building. It doesn't look realistic. Reminds me of a fairytale house but maybe that's not bad. I don't want it to be too realistic anyway.
May 21 Return to top
Sister's Birthday
Today is my sister's birthday so I'm taking a break from sewing. We went out to eat with her friends and like good Hispanics, we ended up dancing in the middle of the restaurant.
May 22 Return to top
Who's there?
Since I'm getting a little bored, I added an unexpected person in a window. There's no reason for it, just adding a little interest/mystery to the quilt. A little surprise to those that look more closely.
May 23 Return to top
Almost there...
I finished piecing the buildings. Now I need to finish the sky and the road. The road is going to be two big pieces of fabric. but this sky is taking forever. It is looking good but it is so slow... It is made up of small scraps of nany blue and black fabrics randomly sewn together .
May 30 Return to top
One more seam
Just. One. More. Seam. This has been like a sewing marathon. So tired I only have one seam to finish the quilt top nd I'm too tired to do it tonight. This quilt top is heavy! Those little pieces in the sky add up! Its funny how the electric outlet is sticky there in the middle like I planned it
May 31 Return to top
Finally the quilt top is done. I need a break from this quilt and any serious sewing for a bit. Probably a week ago, I realized I'm not going to make it to the exhibit deadline I was trying to enter this quilt. So I,m going to take it easy from now on with this quilt. It is looking really good. Everyone that has seen it likes it so I'm going to try to do a good job with it and not try to hurry to finish it.