Kitchen Sink-ing

Wheee! After going through the “orphans and extras” bin, as told here, I moved a bunch of the larger blocks to the design wall to see how they might anchor a Kitchen Sink top. Played around a bit, then took them all down and put some back up on point, much more interesting:

Ribbons pinned to the design wall reveal that once again I’m aiming for a large top, to be quilted in sections. (Yes, I know, I was going to be halfway through quilting World Traveler by now, but truth is I’m a hopeless project slut.)

Things sat like that for a few days while Mr. de Hilo and I took a brief beach getaway to the sunnier side of the island. Sunday morning I dug out a huge and aging heap of “ugly HSTs”,found the stack of unused scrappy log cabin blocks that had eluded me previously, set the strip-scraps drawers on the sewing table, and started creating a happy mess:

Which went from messy to messy-and-wrinkled when this happened:

That certain look in Cosmo’s eye you see here means, “Try to move me and I will draw blood.” I let him stay there until he got bored and wandered off, because his teeth and claws are sharper than mine, and he’s more willing to use them. Cosmo is generally amenable to being handled with one exception: once he decides where he wants to nap any attempt to relocate him is vigorously deflected.

Putting this top together was interesting, because every time I focused on a block or section I ended up doing something different from what I’d had in mind. Things moved, morphed, and rotated again, and by the end of Day 1 of manic sewing things were looking like this:

And by the end of Day 2 it had evolved to this:

This counts as “done” because it will stay in these sections for quilting.

It’s amazing how quickly a large top can come together, or come together into sections, when big pieces of it are already in blocks. Even so, this was a full-tilt two-day sewing effort. Once the end was in sight I became determined to get it done last night. The tally:

• 90 “ugly” HSTs, now looking pretty good
• 7 scrappy/wonky log cabin blocks
• 5 pinwheels
• 4 improvisational scrap-pieced blocks
• 3 16-patch checkerboard blocks
• 3 Block-a-palooza blocks left over from early 2011
• 2 Block-of-the-Month blocks that never became pillow covers as originally intended
• Lots and lots of little strips pieced and sliced into made-stripe strips
• 10 flying geese
• 1 little wonky star

Not one of the Scrappy Trips extra blocks made it in, and the Orphans & Extras bin is not as empty as hoped. I’ll get to the rest of it in the next one. In the meanwhile, here are some closer looks at the fun that was had around here the past two days:

Yes, I do like to put frames and borders around squares. Don’t know why it’s so satisfying, but it is.

I’m particularly happy with how this part came out, as the original block is rather bland. BTW, all those nice sharp points on the HST sawteeth are miraculous as no effort was made to aim for them while seaming. Plus, the original HST units were not exactly uniform in size, and were never “squared up.” I will do almost anything to avoid squaring up a big pile of HSTs, including sacrifice points and live with wonky seams and wobbly sections that refuse to lie flat. Up close you can see that most of the HSTs are not lovely, but as a recurring theme I like them a lot. I might even make more…

Okay, I’m off to clean up the sewing table (and couch, and ironing board)  and get set up for quilting. (And then I really, really, really must spend some non-sewing time at the desk, taking care of other business).

 

 

 

Tagged as: improvisational piecing, Ktichen Sink quilt, scrap quilts, stash projects