Paper Piecing and PhDs

I don’t post here very often, I admit. I also haven’t been sewing very much lately. But I have a good reason!

I am aiming to graduate this spring, which means that I need to write this whole dissertation thing, which turns out is kinda hard. Not that the writing is particularly hard (some of it is) but mentally, this thing is like facing a brick wall and being told to disassemble it with a toothpick. It’s a bit intimidating.

However, to keep my sanity I HAVE been sewing a little bit. I am working on a log cabin quilt for my housemate/colleague/friend who was recently married. Hopefully this sucker will get done before their first anniversary. :O I’m still working on cutting out the 1088 1.5″ square red pieces for the hearth of each log cabin block. Ha ha ha ha! *thud*

In other news, I was recently surfing the blog-o-sphere when I ran across a paper pieced star that I just HAD to try. I’ve wanted to try paper piecing for a while, but hadn’t been moved by anything yet. When I saw this star, I printed out the template that very night. The template I’m referring to is the Lone Starburst. That link takes you to a blog post that includes the template.

Paper piecing is a little mind bend-y. A few tips:

#1. The first piece goes face up. Every other piece goes face down, and so by the time I’d get to the next block, I’d automatically put the first fabric piece face down. I can’t remember how many times I did this, but it was a lot. Seam ripping with paper in the mix is kinda a pain.

#2. Just cut the piece of fabric overly big. Every time I’d try to fit it closely, I’d end up under somewhere. It was really annoying. Again with the seam ripper.

#3. Seams should either start by being reinforced or sew a bit before and past the actual line. Yah, I won’t be giving this to anyone, some of those seams are not reinforced at all.

On the whole though, I absolutely LOVED it!

My first paper pieced adventure

I think I’m going to put a border on this, do a bit of hand quilting, and make it into a mini. There’s enough mistakes in the seams that I don’t want to give it to someone else, which means I get to enjoy this lovely thing myself! YAY.

In other news, I’ve been learning arashi shibori. Shibori is the Japanese style of tie-dye, and arashi shibori involves string tying the piece around a cylinder. When left to dry, it creates this beautiful pleated pattern, with the underdye still showing in the base of the pleats (where the string resists the overdye) and the overdye at the peaks. I am learning a lot, but have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Black Cherry Shibori

This is my favorite piece so far. It is underdyed the deep red color, and overdyed with black which ended up looking a bit purple-y because I didn’t make the black super concentrated.

Hopefully as my dissertation wraps up, I’ll have more time to update my blog as well as do things to update my blog with. And after I graduate, I’ll be creating a startup focused on quilting, more details on that as things get finalized!