"I Can See Clearly Now. . ."

 I guess we all find places for our stashes, depending on what's available, what is convenient, maybe even some place that won't get discovered by someone else!  I wasn't a quilter when I moved into this house, which has a very nice linen closet.  The door that you see below opens into the hallway near the bedrooms, and on the back side of the linen closet, a door opens into the laundry room.  Perfect for placing clean linens into from the laundry room, and accessing them from the other side.

But, who really needs a linen closet!!??!!  I found places in the bedrooms to stash the extra folded sheets and towels and blankets.  So the linen closet has become a fabric closet.  And it works really nicely.  The only problem is that it's quite dark inside.  This hallway isn't very bright either.

So I bought this head lamp on Amazon, and it makes all the difference!  I can put it on my head and see really well into the fabric stacks.  The light can be slanted up or down, and it can even blink.  I know, a blinking light isn't very helpful when choosing fabrics!  (And neither is the red light, which is also available on this head lamp!)

Isn't this quite dorky looking?!  Do I look really weird wearing it?  Of course, I do!!!  But do I care?No!  Not as long as I can see into my fabric closet.

Quilting the Blues!

I started work on a new quilt top.  This one is all blues--lights, darks, and mediums.  I made a quilt like this in red fabrics way back in 2011.  The quilt top consists of six-inch columns which are pieced with a 60 degree angle seam.  Below you can see how I have the fabrics matched up to sew.  They overlap just a tad bit on each side with a small triangle that sort of doesn't matter when you sew it.

They are all ready to be sewn now.

And I only made one or two mistakes!!  Those mistakes were in cutting the angles incorrectly.  You see, I thought the two pieces below would get sewn into a straight line, 6" wide column.  But nope!  Do the little thought experiment in your head.  Look at those two pieces of fabric placed together, and envision them sewn together.  Okay.  Now think about how they will look when they are sewn together, turned out and pressed.  Do you get it?  It becomes a very nice angled strip.  Not a straight strip at all!

From then on, my mantra was "If they are a crooked line when I'm ready to sew, they will become a straight line column when they are done.  If they look like a straight line to start with, they will get sewn into a crooked line!"

Here is one of the strips all sewn together.  This one consists of three pieces of fabric.  Some strips have two pieces, and some have three.  All of the strips are about 70" long.

One of the seams. . .

. . . and the seam at the other end.

This is a very quick quilt top to piece.  And it is a good way to use up some of my fabric stash.  If one color stack in my closet gets too high, this is a good solution!