Raise a Ruckus Mystery Quilt

Archie, the cat, has taken an interest in this project -- he sits amongst the in progress pieces...

And before we start -- some of the actual fabric measurements given in my intro post on the subject of this New Year Quilt was based on very loose calculations, in fact the amount called for the border fabric, could be somewhat exagerated, for the lap size quilt which I am doing the main instructions for, but should be fine for the double sized quilt.

Mainly this project is meant to come from your stash.  If you bought fabric for this project -- you may just be adding to your stash!

Again, I would like to offer a project to you my readers that can be done in just a few hours -- not a long drawn out process that takes months to complete.  This quilt is meant to be done in a couple of concentrated days and it is simple, but requires accuracy.  It is excellent practice for a beginning quilt maker, young or old -- I would say this is just the project for Gramma to teach grandchild!  For those of you experienced and familiar with quilting, this is an excellent, quick to make donation quilt for your favourite charity.

Cutting your fabric

I am planning to make the smaller size quilt top, which will measure about 48 inches x 63 inches but that does not include the outside border, which if you add a 5" border all around will give you 58 x 73 or thereabouts (notice I try not to be too exact case I could change my mind before the end -- I usually do!)  I will put into brackets the requirements for the larger size quilt which will nicely cover a twin or perhaps a double bed at 63 inches x 78 inches and with a border it becomes 73 x 88.

For myself, the smaller size allows me to quilt the layers using my own sewing machine, I can manoever the layers reasonably well, but larger than that it become a struggle and sometimes a large quilt top will simply sit in my linen cupboard awaiting the energy to complete the quilting of the layers.

So as I showed you in a previous post on the blog, the colours below are what I finally decided to go with

You can of course use multi scraps as long as you keep to the general description of light, medium, dark and bright fabrics.  In my case I have chosen to use two light fabrics, and two medium fabrics along with one bright (the red) and one dark.  So I have 6 different fabric, where kept to a minimum you can further simplify and use 4 fabrics.  In this case I would suggest that if you plan an outside border that it should be a Medium colour value.

Step One

So to begin, the least used fabric will be the Bright, so you will need to cut

20 - 3 1/2 inch squares {30 - 3 1/2 inch squares}, so cut 2 strips from the width of the fabric that are

 3 1/2 inch wide then cross cut to make the 30 squares needed { 3 strips 3 1/2 inch width of fabric - with left over that you can then cut down to 2" wide for the smaller squares}

Then

You need 48 - 2" squares, which will need two strips the width of the fabric cut at 2 inches then cross cut to make the squares. { 90 - 2 inch squares will require 4 strips cut 2 inches wide for the width of fabric, plus the left over from the previous 3 1/2 wide strips that you already cut down to 2 inches wide}

Step Two

Cut your Light fabric

You will need 31 pieces to measure 12 1/2 inches x 3 1/2 inches. {49 at 12 1/2 x 3 1/2}

From your lightest fabric or fabrics cut 11 strips width of fabric at 3 1/2 inch wide, then cross cut the strips to 12 1/2 inch long {16 strips}

Now in this case, if you are using a small print, or even a solid, you could sew the leftover parts of the strips into one long strip and use the sewn pieces in order to have less waste -- for example, since you can only get 3 - 12 1/2 strips from each width of fabric you will have about 5 inches left from each strip, so if you cut 9  strips from your fabric you could sew the leftover ends together and that should give you enough length for all the needed pieces.  That is if you are very frugal -- otherwise you don't need to fool around with those bits and save them for a future scrappy project!

Next, also from your Lightest fabric you need to cut

48 - 3 1/2  inch x 3 1/2 inch {80 - 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch squares}

This requires at least 4 strips of fabric cut 3 1/2 inch wide for the width of the fabric and you will again have some fabric left over, as you should get 12 cross cuts from the regular fabric length { 7 strips in order to cut 80 - 3 1/2 inch squares}

Step Three

The Darkest Fabric

For the darkest fabric you will need to cut the same number of squares as for the lightest...



48 - 3 1/2 inch x 3 1/2 inch {80 - 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 inch squares}

This requires at least 4 strips of fabric cut 3 1/2 inch wide for the width of the fabric and you will again have some fabric left over, as you should get 12 cross cuts from the regular fabric length { 7 strips in order to cut 80 - 3 1/2 inch squares}

Step Four

Medium Fabric

For your medium fabric you will be cutting 6 1/2 inch squares, so you need a total of

24 - 6 1/2 x 6 1/2 inch squares {40 - 6 1/2 x 6 1/2}

Your piles of fabrics should look somewhat like this

 if you are using 4 fabrics only you will have 5 different size cuts -- the bright will be cut in the two sizes - 3 1/2 inch squares, and 2 inch squares, the dark will be one size cut at 3 1/2 inch squares, the medium fabric will be all 6 1/2 inch square and the lightest will have two different size cuts,
 12 1/2 x 3 1/2 and 3 1/2 squares...

See you tomorrow for the sewing together -- then on Sunday you can put it all into layers and quilt it...  Maybe...

Happy New Year!

PS. for those interested, I will have the printed instructions for this quilt project available as a PDF  via email sometime next week... now if I can just figure out how to connect it to paypal for a small fee in exchange for all this sitting at a computer on New Years eve...

Year End - What's left over?

This happens every year...

I think it happens to many of us.

There are things we meant to do - check back to see what your New Year Resolutions were...

I meant to get a stack of UFO's completed...

Actually, I should say, I meant to get quite alot of stacks of UFO's completed...

I didn't.

I got a few done, but I went about creating more - stacks that is.

I have alot of odd bits, so I did cut dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of 2 1/2 inch squares and strips, just about as many 3 1/2 inch squares and strips and a mighty lot of 5 inch squares.  The raw material is there.  The first steps are done in alot of cases...

Now, I just have to not hide them in drawers, where I can easily forget about them and guess what? Start a new stack!

These stacks of blocks have been sitting in corners for months...

Today, I was going through what was done and what was still left to do.

The left-to-do pile is bigger than the got-it-done pile...

I am thinking that I will just keep pluggin' along, finishing some and making new piles.  I have decided that this coming year is not a year to make resolutions or set specific goals as to where I intend to be at the end of 2011.  My aim is to keep on, keeping on, and that's it...

Raise a Ruckus Mystery Quilt - two weeks

The last couple of weeks have been somewhat busy in my household and I feel that I have been negligent in updating Things here on my blog.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the days can roll past and how things you intend to do get pushed back to another day, then another day and sometimes even to another day. 

Little jobs around the house, though important sometimes get glossed over and you realize it has been a week since you thought about it.  I have one of those little water coolers in my kitchen -- we do drink alot of water so it is a useful tool, EXCEPT when we discovered that it may not be functioning as it should.  Well, at least a week ago, I realized that it never stopped it's cooling cycle.  I meant to get the instruction book out and read through -- but it actually to me FOUR days to get the booklet out! Then it took me another day before I read through and found no helpful hints to answer why it  just keeps running all the time.  Well, now my solution is to turn  the machine off every night -- the instructions don't give me any other solution.  We have only had this machine for a little bit over a year.  It is frustrating to purchase an appliance and have it turn into garbage in such a short time...  It sits in the back of my thoughts wondering what I should do about it...  No wonder there is so much stuff in our landfills!  No wonder people tend to put stuff on shelves and in basement corners -- you just hate to throw out something that really should still be working and you hope that sometime, someday a solution or a fix-it technique will appear from over the horizon and the item will again be useful...

Well, now, that idea took me off on a tangent, didn't it?  I had no intention to write about broken water coolers -- but then, of late I have been somewhat discombobulated... (now there's a word not often used anymore -- tho I heard my maternal grandmother use it often -- it means confused, or out-of-sorts!)

Now back to the Raise a Ruckus Mystery for the New Years Weekend... I have been wavering back and forth as to what my choice of colours for this quilt will be.  I thought turquoise and pink with that brown as my dark and the cream as my light and that almost fuchia pink as my bright.  Then I did promise, that the quilt I create will go to Quilts of Valour Canada , and even though there are women in the armed forces, these colours are very feminine, so pulling out colours and a variety of combinations, I finally decided that for my own quilt for this mystery, I am going to go with one colour in different shades -- a harmonious quilt, you might say...  I think a better choice that will appeal to a more wider range of people.

So my final choice of colour is a selection of BLUES  all from my stash (even though I went out and bought a couple of meters of green, thinking that would be good)!   I actually chose two lights in this case.  One will be the light to be used as the main light colour and the other as the contrast to that really dark. In the description of the colour choices for this quilt, it does mention ONE LIGHT, so I am using two, but combined they will act as the Main LIGHT...   My Bright turns out to not actually be so very bright, but is a strong standout from all those blues, so even though it is a dark, being Red it should "act" the same way that a Bright would in this particular quilt.  

I have been working on the Mathematics part of this quilt too, so that you may be able to choose whether you want to make a large single size quilt, which will measure somewhere around 75 x 90, or the lap/comforter size of about 60 x 75 -- now that is not a promise of two sizes as yet -- just a possibility...

Now, as to what has been keeping me busy when I should be thinking about fix-it chores and other mundane daily type things, here is a picture of my christmas preparations.   I don't often do much in the way of decorating for any holidays, but my Niece in Winnipeg has an infectious nature and a joyous attitude so some of her wonderful enthusiasum caught hold of me and I did make an effort to brighten a corner of my house...  That little tree did need a bit of TLC as it had not come out of the back cupboard in a few years and it was sorely lacking when it came to ornamentation...  And now, it looks like the cheery christmas tree it is meant to be, though small, so with a child's imagination, I can see it in a cosy cottage somewhere on the backlot of Santa's Workshop estate where a worker elf goes home to after his day is done and he/she is satisfied with a job well done...

Christmas in the Neighbourhood

I bought a camera a couple months back, a point and shoot as they are called, but this one has a 14x zoom and a few other features that makes it where I feel pretty good about most of my photos.  I am far from a pro when it comes to picture taking, but over the years I have picked up a few useful tips, I think...

Every year we go through our neighbourhood and say "Wouldn't it be nice to have all these colours and designs up all the time?"  Well, finally I am able to capture them.  Mind you I have taken at least a hundred night time photos in the last couple of weeks as my neighbours put up and turn on their christmas displays...

As I get older, I have discovered that I most appreciate the gift of these lights around town, more than most any other presents given to me!  There are so few things that I need any more so this wonderment of lights and colour and design is special to my eyes...

Some are purchased forms or those air filled statues, some are lights on the trees and shrubs, some are the talented owners own creations.  All are amazing and wonderful to see...

Little Things

This past week I have been keeping busy, though at the same time being quiet mostly and reminicing.

A few weeks back I saw this toque online at http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2010/11/how-to_knit_mike_nesmith_of_th.html  and I had seen it on another blog too, {edited in -- Polka Dot Cottage is what actually sent me off on this toque making spree]and caused me to become somewhat envious that I didn't have one and had never before made one! 

 My version is slightly different as the pompom on top is slightly bigger but looser.  I followed the online directions -- very simple -- using Red Heart Super Saver yarn, and still have most of the skein to use somewhere else. 

 Now, I have been crocheting for many years, and I was taught the basics of knitting even more years ago than I was taught how to crochet, but, I don't think I ever before completed a knitted project!  I do believe this is my first. 

This hat was part of the past weeks reminicing -- Mike Nesmith who was one of the 4 Monkees wore this type of toque in many of the episodes of the TV show and probably in just about every publicity photo.  Mostly though, the hat he wore was a odd sort of green -- I could not find a yarn in just the right green, so I opted for this dark blue.  Now Mike Nesmith was not MY favourite in the group -- that was Mickey Dolenz...  One thing that I always wondered though was how did he manage to have his hair curl in that particular way?

My other project during the week was creating these little ribbon ornaments, crocheted with an acrylic yarn then starched.  I managed to finish up almost a dozen and may make up a few more.  I will enclose them in the christmas cards that I send out this year for those I know put up a tree and hope they like them.

These little ornaments can be found at http://www.favecraftsblog.com/meet-and-make-an-ornament-from-phyllis-serbes/  these are so very quick and easy to create and take very small bits of yarn.   Not being a particularly speedy crochet-er these take only a maximum of 20 minutes each to make.  I found that I was doing them while sitting in the car when my husband was driving about town doing deliveries.  So I was keeping track of his next stop where it was and what was getting delivered and at the same time hooking the loops to make these ribbon type ornaments...

Now, today's project is to work on sorting and cutting into strips fabric from a box I have been filling up for a year or more -- and I mean a boxfull -- the box is about 24 inches by 24 inches by 24 inches and is absolutely full of scraps from all my quilting projects. 

Enjoy, all your Christmas preparations, they are often as much fun as the big day itself...