Category Archives: Green

Out With the Old, In With the New

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Well, it’s finished. Quilted on my trusted 780, which is no longer as trusted as it used to be. I think it needs to see the doctor.

I’m not sure why, but suddenly, one of the knobs is not functioning properly. So that is the first problem. Second, the machine just stops sewing from time to time. When I’m embroidering I have to push the button again to restart. It’s not a nightmare, but clearly, I’m in need of some replacement electronic boards. (Yikes, because that is not necessarily the easiest or cheapest fix on a sewing machine.)

Whatever the problem, I was able to finish this quilt along with a quilt label. And now, the quilt will head off to a friend of my Dad’s who has been very kind to him. And the machine, well I’m afraid it’s going to the hospital. Or at least a trusted tech.

And that’s all just fine.

You know why? Because I’m starting a new project which I’m sure can be done on my other machine. (I don’t know about you, but I have at least 3 sewing machines and a serger…or two. Because the instant one goes to the shop, I just HAVE to sew something. Immediately.)

So I keep spares.

But the exciting thing that I’m participating in this summer is run by Modern Quilt Studio. They have a “Summer Camp” that is a mystery quilt. All that I know so far is that we need a cohesive palette that contrasts from a background fabric. The fabrics should not be high contrast. Solids or tone-on-tones preferred.

If you are interested, go to their website, and click “Shop”. The Summer Camp project is listed there for $25. You can use your stash, as I am, and can participate on their Facebook pages. They also have a Youtube video announcing the project. See below.

I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve been curating this collection of colors for awhile without any purpose for them. I tend to do that with my scraps…put them in bundles that look good together. So this is where I’m starting.

The Summer Camp starts June 1, when we’ll find out more about fabric choices and see the first video. Then it skips two weeks and then every week after that for eight weeks. Check out the video here:

So what’s my palette?

Here we go:

“Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose…” As James Taylor would say.

As we go and as we learn more, I’ll add or subtract. For instance, I have some concerns that some of the shades are too close to each other. Nevertheless, I’m gonna go for it. That navy-ish blue in the back is my contrasting background color. It’s not a true navy, it’s much brighter.

Now.

Since this pattern and whatever it will be, belongs to Modern Quilt Studio, I won’t share anything else on this pattern until the end, where I’ll share my finished quilt.

So I invite you to join on their website.

In the meantime, check out the video, check out your stash, and get on the bus for Summer Camp!

Dig Out All Those Old Fatquarters!

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It’s that time of year where we start to clean out our fabric collections. This time, I dug deep and was ruthless about not “saving” these fatquarters for something else. The time for saving is over. Now is the time for using. And NOT purchasing.

If they weren’t slated for a project, they were open season to be made into grocery bags. My commitment this year is to avoid as much in single use plastic as I possibly can. Those pesky grocery bags were something I got away from a few years ago, and then along came COVID, and we worried about what we’d be bringing into our homes.

Now, we know it’s much more likely that we will breathe in the virus, and not as likely to get it from touching something that touched something else that might have had COVID sneezed onto it.

At any rate, it was time for me to stop with the plastic bags. Again. Fabric ones are easily tossed in the wash, reused, and if nothing else, I like them. At one time or another I purchased the fabric because I liked it. So there’s that. And, if along the way, I can avoid a tiny bit more in the landfill, then that’s my goal.

I shuffled through my collection of odds and ends of fatquarters and gathered twenty-five of them. Twenty for bags and another five for the handles.

It took me two days to make them all because I only worked about an hour a day. I lined up all the fabric and partnered each fatquarter with another that *could* be compatible. And I sewed them up on three sides.

On a serger, this just zipped right through.

The one thing you want to be careful about is having finished seam allowances. These will be washed over and over.

Next I made a bunch of handles that could be mixed and matched on the bags.

This type of sewing is really a lot like therapy. In these dark days of winter, sometimes I don’t have the energy to take on a tough project. Or to start something big. Or to work on that monotonous thing I committed to do, but have lost interest in doing. This stuff’s not hard. It’s not serious. It’s fast, it’s colorful, it has a purpose, and therefore satisfying.

And when you’re done, you have something practical and a little fun.

So get those old fatquarters out of hiding. You know you’re never going to make something with that bundle you just HAD to have. Or maybe if you look around, you’ll find the fatquarters you didn’t even know you had. Or possibly, you have leftovers from some other project.

Use them!

And make it fun and easy. Next week you can start that complex thing. You know.–the one that requires you to do THIS, before you can do THAT, and so on and so on, until you do nothing, because now you have to spend all your time looking for your good scissors.

I’ve been there.

It’s been a rough couple of years.

Do something simple and practical that will never be in a competition or on display or will never be judged. You’d be surprised at how freeing it can be. And those pretty fatquarters you’ve held onto for years? Or even the not-so-pretty ones you’ve also held onto for years?

Now they have a job.

My Newest Website Addition–green.edgestitch.com

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I’m launching a new website called green.edgestitch.com. You can access it from the top menu on edgestitch.com or visit green.edgestitch.com. Of course, I will continue to post on edgestitch.com for sewing and art related topics.

But in addition, just as it sounds, I have decided to curate some content around Climate Science. Now I know that plenty of info is out there. That’s the problem. As folks who are going around in our everyday lives, we don’t always have the time or the energy to search for good data in a million different places.

Furthermore, I think we are all in for some changes. Ready or not, climate changes are affecting our lives in ways we could not have imagined years ago. And the changes will continue. This will not end with most of our lifetimes. It will continue to the next generation, and so on and so on.

Yet, if we are to preserve so much of what we hold dear in this ecosystem, (say, for instance, our food and water), we must make big changes. And this is very likely to cause anger, uncertainty, upheaval and fear.

I don’t want to go through that alone. I want to do it in community, with the help from experts and truth tellers.

I don’t think most of us are prepared for what’s to come.

So in an effort to get through this trying time together, I am sorting through information, presenting it with as much clarity as possible and backed by science and data from reputable sources.

I’ll meet you there.

As a start, Here are a few links. I’ll be adding more content as time goes on.

—green.edgestitch.com

–Introducing the EN-Roads Modeling Tool

–Plastics are the New Coal