The Process Pledge ... and the Stashbuster Club

I've seen The Process Pledge on one of my daughter's blog about her knitting projects and when I ran across it this morning I decided to do it for myself with my quilting. I got the button, which you can now see on the right margin, from Rossie Blog. I like the general idea of blogging about the process, and try to do that some because I think of my blog as a digital diary for myself about my quilting adventures.  Here are her thoughts about it and the pledge itself (highlighting is mine):

I have made a process pledge. The goal of the process pledge is to create a new sensibility in quilting blogs where we don’t just show finishes or occasionally confess about our moments of indecision, but chat openly and often about our works in progress, our inspirations, and our moments of decision. I know that many of us are already posting about our thinking on quilts and the processes involved from start to finish, let's do more! And let's post about quilts as we work on them. I want to see more half-done quilts, not just the finished thing with a journal entry about the process.


I think part of the reason I really like the blogs from quilting bees is because a lot of the process gets documented...from original concept, to raw materials, to each block in turn, and often a few drafts of the final layout. It's awesome!

So, without further ado. Here's the process pledge. Take it, shake it, make it yours.  


I, ________________, pledge to talk more about my processes, even when I can’t quite put them in the in words or be sure I’m being totally clear. I’m going to put my thinking and my gut feelings out there.

So, the first thing I'm going to blog about the process of is the Stashbuster Club. I have been going to most of the Busy Needles guild meetings in my new town since August but I've not gotten to know anyone very well. With encouragement from DH, I visited my LQS, A Scarlet Thread, to check out the classes they offer there. The one that appealed the most to me is their Stashbuster Club. It is taught by one of their employees, who is also in the guild, so I signed up for the class. It meets the 4th Wed of each month, so tomorrow is the first meeting for me. Here is the quilt we will be making. . Since it is a "stashbuster" I didn't want to have to buy any fabrics - just wanted to shop my stash. So then you have the question of what fabrics to use. The possibiities included:
1. Christmas - I still have lots of Christmas fabrics, but I am already making the Scrappy Mtn Majesties quilt with some of them
2. Butterflies - I have lots of butterfly fabrics but they all seem to be to big a print to be seen in the fairly small pieces of this quilt
3. Veggies and fruits - turns out I don't have as many as I thought. The small size of this quilt requires 20 7+" squares and I think I want them all to be different
4. Florals - I have a gagillion because I bought a lot to use in my Grandmother's Flower Garden, but I want to have a border that colors inside the quilt can coordinate with and I couldn't find something that I thought worked for that
5. Blues and yellows - my old stand-by colors, but I wanted to try something a bit different
6. Green, blue and purple - I have enough for a border of this fabric from the Eric Carle Very Hungry Caterpillar collection, and I found a bunch of greens and blues and green/blues that I thought would go with it. Also decided on a purple from the same collection as the inner border.   As you can see from the sample, these fabrics will look a lot different when all the white gets in there. I still have a difficult time visualizing it, but by this time tomorrow I should be pretty far along with it!

OK, so green/blue/purple - white with little white flowers for background - need 80 3 7/8" blocks for that - cut them last night. Then I looked over the 30+ fabrics that I'd pulled out to go with the border and eliminated all but 20+ - 10 mostly blues and 10-12 green, blue/green or green/purple. Not so sure about what to use for the centers. In the sample the centers of the blocks are the same as the outer border. That might work for some of the blocks in mine, but I don't think there would be enough contrast for some of the others. What about the outer border fabric for some of the centers and the purple inner border fabric for some of the others. I've cut more than 10 of each to take to class, along with some extra fabric of each. Just spent the last 2 hours cutting the 20 big blocks so I think I'm ready to pack up my stuff in the morning. The class is from 10-3, and I may be the only student, or maybe one of two. It is a busy week quilt-wise in ATL - Shop Hop is Thursday - Sunday. I came down from VA for this 2 or 3 years ago and took a bus that one of the shops arranged to do all 11 shops in 2 days. Sadly, this year we are planning to be back in VA for DH to run in a race and we'll be leaving Thursday afternoon, not back home until Sunday or Monday. So no Shop Hop for me this year. One of the reasons I decided to participate in the Stashbuster Club was to meet other quilters - that goal won't be met tomorrow, but I expect I'll get to know Mary, the teacher, a lot better! We will be using a new ruler I've not heard of before - the Flying Geese X4 No Math ruler - sounds good doesn't it? And she will be showing how to make Y seams - something I've done very little of.