Feeling watched

From 2 fox blocks in 6 hours last weekend, the cookie sheet of piles of cut fabric pieces

turned into 13 more foxes on Friday, bringing me to 15. All those eyes, looking up at me…

Someone asked me whether Mr. MmmYarn wore only blue-and-white shirts. No, he had variety. But these are the shirts I kept, mainly because they are 100% cotton.  

Making multiples at once was such an efficient process that I cut 10 more sets of shirt fabric on Friday evening and used it up, bringing the count to 25 complete foxes by this morning. My piece alignment continues to improve, although challenged by using fabric from many-times-washed shirts, which is a bit warped. Gripe: cutting is so time-consuming! I cut tall piles of green, white, and navy eye/nose fabric last week and have gone through it all. [Uh, let’s see… 14 x 25 = 350 pieces so far, not counting the discards. Yeah, that’s a lot of cutting.]

The biggest assembly efficiency is continuous chain piecing: chaining until I have some 10 pieces hanging off the back of the machine, cutting off the last 9 and pressing as needed, then continuing to chain until all straight lines are sewn (you also waste far less thread chaining than sewing them one at a time). Chaining doesn’t work for the diagonals on my machine, but I learned I can lift the foot to pull a completed diagonal back an inch-and-a-half, and as long as I lift the needle to the point where the top and bottom threads are completely separate, I can stick in the next diagonal, saving thread and aggravation. The separation is important; slightly crossed threads jam my machine each time because they get caught on the point of the diagonal.

My quilting friend recommended I use “a fairy” to start at edges. Maybe it’s spelled “ferry” because it’s ferrying your project fabric’s edge under the presser foot. You stitch on a scrap of fabric for just a few stitches, at its edge closest to you, and then you chain piece it to your project fabric. I learned in October to stitch an inch on a scrap at the start of every machine sewing session just to verify everything is threaded and tensioned correctly; it didn’t occur to me to keep going with the scrap.

Those sly 2 foxes are actually piles of 5 blocks each

This afternoon, I assembled the pockets for the Casey Skirt (using the scrap fabric trick so my stitches could start right at the edge; bliss!) and began hand catchstitching the interfacing to the inner waistband so I can maybe finish that tomorrow. And I snuck in another hat as knitting relief throughout all this cutting and sewing. Busy, busy. Fortunately, no one is watching what else is (not) going on around here because there were compromises. The laundry is done, plants watered, and bills paid; the floors and other areas may be wanting attention. Ahem.

Watchful snowy egret, about to nab a fish

Friday update

I realized with surprise it’s mid-afternoon already, which means I have been hard at work for over 6 hours. Furlough Fridays are for crafting, but it really is time for a break. Here is what I have been up to today:

In the background is the navy skirt with its coral lining, still in progress. I have the front, back, and side seams sewn and all 8 properly finished (so much hand felling!), and the zipper is in, although I see it’s crooked at the top 1.5″ on one side, so I have to unpick and re-stitch that bit. Next is pockets and waistband. And a big hem…

After taking a knitting break for the entire month of January (??), I made a little hat the last few nights. Actually, it’s one I made in December, but I didn’t like how floppy it got after a wash, so this week I unraveled and re-knitted it with needles 2 sizes smaller. This left enough yarn at the end to make an i-cord at the top, and, just for fun, I tried a 2-color striped i-cord. The fabric feels good after a wash, so I’ll weave in the ends when it dries.

I spent most of the day on Fancy Fox practice. Recent fabric shopping went well. I got green batik and off-white, which I cut up this morning, along with an old shirt of mine, into piles of different-sized pieces, then got to assembling. The first two blocks I pieced are in the unpicking pile because they’re lined up about as poorly as the practice block was. I learned the reason: my sewing machine’s presser foot’s edge is a little more than 1/4″ from the needle and that makes a big difference when a section is 5 pieces across! For the two blocks in the photo, I ran the fabric along the edge of the feed dog slot instead and got nearly perfect 1/4″ seams. I’m not aiming for precision blocks that look as though they were made by a robot, but I need them close enough to the right size so I can actually make a quilt top with them.

Where else did the day go? I spent time on triangle research. You can absolutely piece triangles but they’re fiddly. While I’m a beginner still trying to get pieces lined up properly, I will stick with squares cut on the diagonal line after stitching. I carefully unpicked the shirt before cutting, taking notes on shirt construction as I went. And after a lovely fabric-and-thread snarl around mid-day the sewing machine’s timing got thrown out of whack again, so I spent a while with a screwdriver and reading glasses, cautiously adjusting until things were working again.

It feels like two fox blocks isn’t a lot to show after a good crafting session, but all I learned — more efficient cutting, lining up that 1/4″, chain piecing, drawing the diagonal line in pencil on all to-be-triangles pieces in one go, sewing machine repair — means the rest will be easier. I also made design choices while tinkering. The shirts I’m cutting up are striped. I want the fox forehead to have a horizontal stripe and the rest to be vertical stripes, so I have to be a little fussy about cutting, but I am not going to worry about matching ears or cheeks along the stripes. If I had a vertically-striped forehead piece, it would bother me when the ear and cheek stripes didn’t line up; this way, with that horizontal break, I’m fine with it.

 

A vulpine venture

After work tonight, I rooted through the box of fabric scraps and cut out the 14 pieces needed for a practice Fancy Fox quilt block:

Less than 45 minutes later, a finished block looked up at me. During assembly, I found I cut the white fabric the wrong size so changed those out for yellow/white pieces:

Oh, dear, I am rather hard on the eyes.

Positives: I only put in one piece upside down (one moon is doing a headstand), and only had to unpick one seam that I sewed together the wrong way. The two triangles at the bottom are supposed to overlap exactly as they do.

Negatives: I am certain I had all the pieces the right size and stitched with 1/4″ seams, yet the lower part of the block came out narrower than the top forehead/ears part. I have to re-measure tomorrow with fresh eyes to see if it’s me and my cutting or stitching, or a typo in the piece measurements given in the pattern. Getting all pieces lined up exactly will come with practice.

I am glad I did this because… I have to shop for fabric. Again. The project requires 4 types: I have a pile of shirts to cut up for the faces and a dark swirly navy for the noses and eyes; I don’t have a pale fabric for the cheeks or anything for the background. I planned to stitch the blocks and shop for background fabric further on, but I learned here that the background (purple) is required for block assembly. You can’t add it later. Binding and backing fabric can wait.

Research question, also for tomorrow: When piecing, is it usual to cut squares when the goal is triangles or trapezoids? It seems a waste of fabric to cut squares and sew them together, then cut off a chunk to get your diagonal line. Though thinking about sewing a triangle’s edge on the bias makes me cringe.

Tomorrow is Furlough Friday, during which I will spin. I joined the “Spindlers” Ravelry group’s monthly challenge of spinning a skein in a month (see last post’s end photo) and tomorrow’s the 15th and I am not at the halfway point yet, so some serious twirling is in order. Whee!