Quilt Messing Around

Non-quilt stuff

2009-11-10T16:32:00.003-05:00

I've been busy lately, but not with a lot of quilting things. Here are some of the other things I've got going on.
A new (to me) bike! She's a 1984 (I think) Schwinn World Tourist. The fenders are a bit banged up, but it was manufactured by Giant which has a stellar reputation. It rides like a dream and has a nifty gear set that lets you shift while coasting. Love it! It takes a place among all my other vintage things. It's newer than my Viking sewing machine (circa the early 70s) and my Dodge van (1982). Sometimes older is better.
Next up: a new cat condo for the cat. We dumpster dived this from some neighbors who were just tossing it. Nothing wrong with it (no smells and just a bit of dirt), and the cat loves it. We've trained her to stand on top of it when she wants to be brushed or petted. She also sometimes sleeps on the first floor and snores very loudly.

I don't have any pictures of all the apple butter I've put up lately. I've got probably 10+ pints of Apple-Cinnamon, Apple-Peach, Apple-Cranberry and just plain Apple Butter. I think I'm done with apples for this year.

Finally! Another quilt finished!

2009-11-08T13:31:00.003-05:00

Finally! For the first time in ages...
This was from a pattern I bought on a trip to NYC in early Oct. It's going to be a gift for our host and hostess who kindly let us stay with them on our trip.
The sunset background, water, and borders are all pieced. Then the buildings, lettering and apple are raw edge, fused applique.
It's not quite finished. I need to stitch the hanging pocket down on the back and add a label. I also need to add some very fine detail to the Chrysler Building (the tall green building) and the Statue of Liberty. Once I get it completed finished, I'll post some better pictures.
In the meantime, you can see a bit of the raw-edge applique in the picture above. I love how the Guggenheim turned out. This was such a fun quilt. The pattern is from Zebra Patterns, and she has some for other cities/states. The cutting and fusing takes a long time, but once that part is done, it goes together very quickly.

Swap blocks

2009-08-24T17:50:00.003-04:00

These are some blocks I've been making for a swap I'm in. They're ready to mail off now, so I feel safe posting them.

There are 12 people in the swap, so I should get 12 new tulips in return sometime in Oct. I made 12 red tulips and 1 green on for the hostess of the swap.

It's a fun old-timey block. I can see them set on point with alternating squares of something. Maybe muslin with an intricate quilting pattern in them.

Mini Pantry

2009-07-30T09:29:00.004-04:00

This is a small test quilt that I did in preparation for a much larger jar quilt.

I have tons of "food" fabrics and have been wanting to try a jar quilt for a long time. This was a small version of a much bigger project.

In particular, I like the quilts that look like an actual pantry with different sized jar and bottles. So some of mine are jam jars, quart jars, etc.

I made this with scraps I had on hand. That explains the two colors of black. I used some scraps on the jar corners and then accidentally used a different black on the background. Doh! Other people tell me it's not noticeable, but it drives me bonkers.

I ended up giving this one away to some friends. Very appropriate since they had just canned figs the week before.

I also tried outlining a lot of the fruit with my quilting. I discovered I am very bad at following the lines. The quilting on the black background is a very tight stipple, and the brown wood around the outside has simulated wood grain quilting in it. Here's a closeup of the quilting on the purple grapes.

Sneak Peak

2009-07-28T08:20:00.003-04:00

A sneak peak of my latest obsession. It's a dark picture, but it will give you the idea.

This is such a fun block to sew. I'm using the great tutorial by Bonnie Hunter over at Quiltville. It's a good feeling to clean out the scrap bucket and use up a bunch of office paper that was also destined for the bin.

Sunny Delight

2009-07-25T11:46:00.003-04:00

Finally! Something to show off. This is a quilt I call "Sunny Delight."

It's for a co-worker's upcoming baby. It's made from two charm packs of Sandy Gervais's Fresh Squeezed line of fabric. This line of fabric has been out for awhile so I happened upon the charm packs on the clearance rack at a local quilt store. It is very bright, very loud, and very happy. Reminds me of Florida. You can see the great citrus prints in this picture:

It's a simple disappearing 9-patch pattern. I put the charm squares together into a very large 9-patch block and then went at cutting and rearranging. The resulting quilt is about 35"x35".

The quilting is just an allover meander. Nothing fancy, but it helped it wash up into a gorgeous, crinkly quilt. You can see the backing is from the same line of fabric.

Row Robin Swap - Sudi Laura's Row

2009-06-16T19:39:00.001-04:00

Next up this weekend was a row for Sudi Laura. She wanted an alphabet quilt. Her first row is still with the previous person in the rotation, but I went ahead and started her row. I was scheduled for the letters F-J. Here it is (pinned badly against the neighbor's fence).

Here's a closeup of some of my favorite fabric. I just love this pink fern fabric. I have a pretty big piece of yardage of it, and this was a perfect opportunity to use some of it up.

This was a fun row to work on because there wasn't a lot of preplanning (other than choosing the fabric out of my stash). I just went at it making wonky letters. It was a bit hard to adjust the size up and make bigger letters (this row is 12" tall, I think) but it came out pretty well, I think.

Row Robin Swap - Darlene's row

2009-06-14T19:22:00.003-04:00

This weekend I finished up a row for Darlene in NZ. Her original row was lost in the mail, so these two rows were made me and Sudi-Laura. Darlene's theme was "stash buster" and she wanted it to be classic blocks. I ended up doing 9-patches interspersed with a batik. I love 9-patches, but I think they need something to set them off (sashing, etc) or they just run together.

In the setting sun, it looks a bit Christmas-y, but in natural light, it's a deep red-pink and the green has a lot of blue mixed in with it.

Here it is with Sudi-Laura's row.

More Wonky Words

2009-05-18T13:10:00.000-04:00

I really enjoyed making a trial run of wonky letters a few months ago. Sadly, life has intervened and I haven't had a chance to do anything with them.

However, just a few weeks ago, Lazy Gal Tonya put out a call for free pieced words for her "Halloween Noises" quilt. I figured this was a good time to make some words with a purpose. I originally signed up to do a word in a "rounded" font. After a couple of trial runs, I figured out I was trying to fly a bit too high and should stick with what I know. So here's my Halloween noise: "Hoot". (Unfortunately, these are horrible pictures since it's raining outside; they don't do justice to the cool orange animal print.)

I put huge, neutral borders on it because Tonya has plans to hand quilt this and I wanted to leave her lots of room to do whatever she wanted with it. It looks very tiny in the below picture, but the word itself is almost 10" across.

T for Tristan

2009-05-17T11:04:00.005-04:00

Last weekend I whipped up a quilt for a friend who just had a new baby.

It's all scraps from my scrap bag. I had been wanting to play around with colors and shading/gradient effects for a while, and this was a small scale project around that.
I outlined the rainbow section and the "T" and then stippled the outer, muslin border. I didn't prewash anything and love how much the muslin shrunk up.

I also did a pieced back using up some of the small scraps that I had leftover after cutting the strips on the front. Then I miscut a piece of muslin and, being unwilling to waste anything, added another colored strip to make it all fit. Not sure all the effort was worth it, but hey, fewer scraps for me!

Felt Food

2009-05-04T10:57:00.004-04:00

Due to a swap I'm involved in, I ventured off the beaten path of quilting and tried making some felt food. There are a lot of sites devoted to making felt play-food for little kids and some of it is astoundingly creative. I stuck to making strawberries because they were very easy and (in my opinion) adorable.

I used this wonderful tutorial from mrmonkeysuit/Auburn Studios. It's a great tutorial (although I left off the yellow seed embellishments because I'm lazy. As you can see, it makes a pretty realistically sized berry.

For the swap I'm in, six of us are exchanging different items. Each person will get 4 berries from me. At the end of it all I should also end up with ravioli & tomato sauce, carrots, beans, burger w/ bun, lettuce and tomato, a Popsicle and other assorted goodies. While I don't have kids, I think this might be perfect for my little cousin and his play kitchen. All in all, this is a really neat idea and I'm glad I tried it out.

Aqua Flowers

2009-03-29T19:07:00.005-04:00

Finished! I've been trying to post this entry for a week, but we've had nothing but rain for a week.

I really wanted to get pictures of this one outside in natural light. I ended up running outside during the evening, so the pictures and colors are a bit warmer than in reality, but at least they weren't taken inside.

This was made using the templates from Kellie over at Don't Look Now. She has several wonderful tutorials including the one for the pillow that this wall hanging is based on.

I didn't use Kellie's technique of raw-edge fusible applique. Instead I just did some needle turn applique. I had never tried it before, but I figured what the heck. I was watching a ton of basketball (yay for the NCAA tournament!) and needed some handwork.

I loved the splash of red from the little birdie and incorporated a piece of the red into the pieced border as well.

I used 2 layers of batting to try to get the puffy look on the flowers and leaves. I did a random meandering quilting that was much smaller than anything I had tried before. It worked beautifully.

Liberated Pie

2009-03-24T13:42:00.000-04:00

This was an experiment in no-pattern, liberated piecing. I just started with some fabric that reminded me of strawberry pie filling and went from there. It turned out remarkably well for just an evening of experimenting.

I'm thinking of pairing it with Tonya's teacup and teapot
tutorials and making a small kitchen wallhanging. What more could you want than tea and pie?

Sneak Peek

2009-03-23T13:36:00.000-04:00

This is a sneak peek at a project I've been working on all weekend. I needed some handwork to do while I was watching waaaaay too much basketball. So this is my first attempt at needleturn applique. I'm quilting it now, so hopefully it will be finished this week.

Asian UFO

2009-03-21T09:58:00.003-04:00

I finished a top to another UFO. This one had been sitting around with the blocks mostly done for about 4 years (or more). For some reason, I was thinking I had a lot more work to do on it. But when I dragged it out of the closet, I realized that it was a lot closer to completion than I thought. So I finished about 20 blocks and then put the top together.

It's done in an Asian theme, so there are lots of black, red, and gold fabrics. It's a large project at 84" x 84". I'm trying to decide how to finish it. I could put a border on it, but I think it's going to be difficult enough to quilt without adding anything more. It's going to be a real challenge to quilt, so I'm going to set it aside for awhile. (Plus, I'm out of batting and waiting for a good sale to buy more.)

My Town BOM (February)

2009-03-20T16:03:00.001-04:00

I'm a bit late posting this, but I swear I did it during February. This is the February block from Forever Green Quilt's free BOM.

This was a series of 4 apartment buildings, but I thought they looked more like row houses. So I made them brightly colored like the row houses I remember from San Fransisco. I reversed some of them to give it a bit more variety. This quilt is going to be another scrappy quilt since the blocks are small and well suited for using up scraps. I've almost got the March block finished, so I'll post that soon.

Row Robin - Row 1

2009-03-19T13:04:00.000-04:00

I finished up my row for the Row Robin swap that Tab is hosting over at Enjoying Life's Journey. I've decided on a theme of "Green Christmas" for this one. Hopefully, you can see the green Christmas candies in this block. I did a poor job of choosing the background fabric and the candy wrappers blend in a bit more than I'd like. I think I can correct this with some careful quilting, but I wish I was better at choosing colors and visualizing how all the colors would work together.

It's a 12" finished block with a 6" finished "candy" in the center. I started out with a much larger center, but realized that was a mistake. I was making up the pattern as I went. I had seen the idea somewhere else (done in red and white) but couldn't find it to recreate it. I'm pretty pleased with how it all turned out, but would choose a different background fabric next time.

Now I just have to get it packaged up and sent out. I can't wait to see what comes back. Hopefully, I'll have a gorgeous, green Christmas quilt to display for Christmas next year.

High School T-Shirt Quilt

2009-03-18T12:38:00.001-04:00

Finally! One of my UFOs can be marked off my list. I've been working on this one for at least a year or more. This is a collection of t-shirt from high school.

I've been carting them around every time I move and I'm very tired of that. So about a year ago, I dragged out the box under the bed, washed all the shirts, and cut them up. I read a bit about making t-shirt quilts first, but really, I kinda winged it. I wanted an irregular quilt without uniform block, so I just cut up the blocks to match the designs on the shirts.

The borders around the block are all flannel scraps leftover from numerous rag quilts. This quilt was completely stash. Even the binding, border, and backing. I had some sheeting size flannel in cream that is on the back. Between the t-shirts, batting, and flannel borders and backing, this is a very heavy quilt. But the upside is that it is wonderfully soft and cuddly.

I quilted it in a large, 2-inch grid pattern.

If I had my good machine while I was quilting this one, I might have been more ambitious and tried echo quilting or free motion quilting it. But the grid worked pretty well for this quilt. Now I just have that box of college t-shirts under my bed...

Happy Houses

2009-03-17T11:10:00.004-04:00

I finally finished a baby quilt for a cousin-in-law. And I'm done early!! The baby isn't due until May (I think...)

It's from a pattern found at a Project Linus blog. It finishes at a 12" block, so it goes quickly. It's great for using up scraps.

Here are closeups of some of my favorite blocks.

I found this purple in my local quilt store's scrap bin and couldn't resist. For some reason, I really like it.

I love the yellow fabric and blue stripes of this one.

Here's a closeup of some of my free motion quilting. I'm slowly getting better at it. I got my new (to me) machine back from servicing recently and it does a magnificent job. I found a vintage Viking 6430 at a thrift store. It needed an overhaul, but it's a tank. I had it serviced by Glenn out at Hillsboro Sew & Vac and he did a phenomenal job. Very professional. I love the machine and have put my Kenmore away for a while. It was driving me nuts and the tension was a mess constantly. But I'm back to happily sewing now.

Candied Tangerine Peel

2009-03-01T15:54:00.001-05:00

When I made tangerine marmalade, I ended up with far more peels than what I needed for the marmalade. Last Christmas I had seen a recipe for candied orange peel, so I decided to try it out.

Since the tangerine skins are pretty thin, it only took about 20 minutes of cooking in the simply syrup (3 c. sugar dissolved in 1 c. water).

After I drained them, I dumped them into a small tray (from my toaster oven) loaded with about 1.5 c. of granulated sugar.

I mixed them around just enough to coat them in the sugar, not so much that the extra sugar dissolved.

Then I spread them out on a dehydrator tray and let them dehydrate at 135 F for about 2.5 hours.

You can do a bunch of things with them. They make great edible garnishes for desserts. They can be eaten straight as a sweet snack. Or you can drizzle chocolate on them! Yum! Gotta try that. This is a great thing to package up and put in a gift basket.

Also, the simple syrup can be used multiple times, as long as you refrigerate it between uses. It becomes very infused with the oil from the orange peels. I think this would be great for making sweet tea! I should brew a pot of tea and try it out.

Interlude for food

2009-02-28T14:58:00.006-05:00

Instead of quilting, I've been messing around with food. I love canning and preserving in all its forms, but its usually a spring (strawberries!), summer (peaches, blackberries, tomatoes, corn, etc) and fall (apples) activity. Not much going on in the winter.

Last weekend my husband and I headed down to FL to visit some family. My family has owned an orange grove for about 100 years. I freely admit that I'm a citrus snob because once you've eaten real, fresh oranges out of the grove you'll never go back to store bought. There is simply no comparison.

At any rate, we ended up coming home with a bag of grapefruit, a bag of navels and about two and a half bags of tangerines. I section and supreme the navels and grapefruits and we eat bowlfuls for breakfast. Great stuff! Usually, I just peel and eat the tangerines for lunch and as snacks. But this year, our favorite tangerine tree had a bumper crop. Actually, it appeared to have double, overlapping crops. We've been eating tangerines since about Nov. The tree has been unbelievably loaded. I sometimes eat up to 5 tangerines a day, but I'm not even making a dent in what we brought home with us.

Today it struck me that I should make tangerine marmalade. So I did. Below is a step-by-step guide, but at the end I'll mention what I would have done differently.

Step 1: Collect and wash citrus. Since we're going to be using the peels, it's very important to wash throughly. Mine were covered in grove dirt, so I soaked, washed, and scrubbed these. I started out with about 14 tangerines. Our tree is about 60 years old and we don't spray it, so the tangerines may look blemished and small compared to grocery store fruit. But they're completely ripe.

Step 2: The next step is to peel the tangerines, discarding the blemished peel and buds/buttons. Eventually, you're left with peeled tangerines, a bowlful of peel, and a handful of scraps.

Step 3: After you've got all the tangerines peeled, the next step is to cut up the peel. These tangerines have very little pith (the white stuff on the inside of the peel) on them, so I didn't worry about scraping them much. I found a pair of scissors to be very useful in cutting the strips of peel. There's no reason you can't use a knife or food processors and just chop them up; I just like the look of the long strips in the marmalade. You only need 1 c. of peels, so you can stop when you get that (it will only be maybe 4-5 tangerine's worth of peels) or you can snip them all up and use the rest for candied orange peels.

Step 4: Put 1 c. of peels in a saucepan and just cover with water. Bring to a boil and boil about 8-10 minutes while you move on to Step 5. When the peels are done cooking, just drain and rinse them and then leave them to sit until you're ready for them.

Step 5: This is the very laborious part of tangerine marmalade. Section the fruit and remove the pith, membrane, and seeds. This take forever. The easiest way I found is shown in the 3 pictures below. I would rip the small vein out of the center of each section, much like stringing green beans. Then I would peel both sides back and almost turn the section inside out. This preserved much of the fruit for each section. I didn't worry overly much about getting all the fruit away from the membrane, particularly for the smaller sections. The goal isn't to get every last bit, so I would occasionally just squeeze the juice out of some recalcitrant section and move on. By the end of Step 5, I was eating the smaller sections so I didn't have to deal with them.

Step 6: Take a break, have lunch and contemplate the lovely bowl of fruit you have. The smaller red bowl behind the large glass one contains the pith and membranes. I did a couple stirs of the larger bowl and picked out seeds and bits of pith.

Step 7: Finally ready to make marmalade!

1 c. peels
all fruit segments and juice
7 c. sugar
3oz (half pouch) of liquid pectin

I'm going to assume people reading this have canned before and know how to prep jelly jars, lids, etc. and know the basic routine.

Put peels, all fruit segments and juice, and sugar into a large pot. This jam foams up much more than any other I've worked with, so make sure to use a big pot. Don't skimp. Slowly bring it up to a boil being careful not to scorch the sugar.

A lot of recipes add water, but I don't. When you first start stirring, it will appear to be a solid mass of sugar. Don't worry about it. The fruit will break down and release plenty of juice. Once it's at a rolling boil, stir in liquid pectin. Process until jam is ready (people determine this in a variety of ways; in my family, we use the fork test: when you dip a fork in the jam and it coats between the tines on the fork and doesn't break up, it's ready). Ladle into hot, sterilized jars and seal.

As you can see, when you first process the jars, the parts of the oranges that didn't break down will float to the top. It's pretty, but not what we're used to seeing for marmalade (my husband kindly pointed this out to me). Flip the jars upside down about about an hour and then rightside up after another hour. This will help distribute the peels throughout the marmalade.

Step 8: Make fresh bread and enjoy. My opinion is that this marmalade is much more intensely flavored than store bought. The tangerine taste lingers in a very aromatic way. I like it, and I'm not normally a fan of marmalades.

Lessons learned: Tangerine marmalade is really, really labor intensive. Mostly because of the sectioning of the fruit. Tangerines don't section nearly as nicely as other citrus fruits. In the future, I think I would make this with some of the juice oranges we have on our property rather than tangerines. The tangerines do have a lovely flavor, and the bright orange skins make a beautiful presentation. Tangerine marmalade is probably best for a nice gift rather than for everyday eating. But now I have about 8 half-pints ready for the rest of the year.

Broken Stained Glass

2009-02-16T19:27:00.006-05:00

This quilt is titled "Broken Stained Glass" because that's what it reminds me of.

It was made as a Christmas gift for one of my favorite people. It's just a crazy nine-patch with a bunch of larger remnants of fat quarters. After I put it together, I realized it had a lot of orange in it. I used a small black and white polka dot for the backing and purple stripey fabric from my stash for the binding.

It was also the first large project I tried free motion quilting on. I didn't pre-wash the fabrics, used cotton batting, and quilted the bejeebies out of it. After I washed and dried it, it crinkled up in the most wonderful way. I really adore that look in quilts and am definitely going to do more of it in the future.

Computer Quilt #3

2009-02-09T16:56:00.005-05:00

This was the last computer quilt I did (although I plan to do some more in the future) and I branched out into a laptop.

The proportions aren't quite right, but I was pleased that it was at least recognizable. I backed it with some red fabric from my stash and put on a 1/4" gold binding. The quilting is free-motion stippling in the larger background areas.

This computer has a TrackPoint ala the IBM laptops. I love the little red dots in the middle of the keyboard and hate trackpads with a passion. A couple of little green lights for status indicators were my other embellishments.

For fun, I tried my hand at putting words into my quilting. If you look closely in the photo below, you can see the word "null" spelled out in cursive. The photo's a bit dark, but I think it shows the stitching a bit better.

All in all, the "computer quilts" were a lot of fun to do. There are so many possibilities with just a simply layout of squares and rectangles. These could also be great fun to play with applique or 3-D embellishments (beads, yo-yos, etc).

Computer Quilt 2

2009-02-06T09:22:00.000-05:00

This is the 2nd in the series of computer quilts. It's largely the same as the first, but with the addition of a mouse. The mouse was appliquéd with fusible webbing and then satin stitched along the edges.

Again, I adore this fabric of the bouncing cards we all know from the Windows solitaire game. But observant people will notice that the cards are bouncing the wrong way! My mom (who loves her solitaire games) noticed immediately. But no one else did. Go mom.

This was also one of my first forays into free motion quilting and stippling. It worked pretty well, but there was a lot of trial and error to get the tension adjusted correctly. But I love the effect on the red fabric with the red thread.

The non-background parts of the quilt aren't stippled. I quilting along the key rows to make the keys "pop" out of the fabric. I added general swirls and zigzags on the circuit fabric. I mostly left the cards alone, and just quilting around the cards.

The backing and binding are made out of the same fabric. Turns out the polka dots are too big for binding. Lesson learned: use small polka dots if doing a narrow binding.

Computer quilt 1

2009-02-05T09:08:00.000-05:00

Last year, I did a series of small computer quilts. Again, the motivation was the need for some office wall hangings to make my office less generic. I'm a technologist (of a fashion) and I kinda like this mixing of quilting into my day job. It makes me smile every time I see it. This one was the first I finished.
It's a very simple design. Just squares (or rectangles) of fabric. The monitor "surround" has mitered corners and the red knobs and "disk drive" are appliquéd on for detail.
The quilting on this one is pretty straightforward. Just straight lines done with my walking foot. I used a cheap black fabric that was a bear to work with. Never again. The printed fabric is what really makes this fun. The keyboard fabric is by Timeless Treasures and is still available (I think). The others are also by Timeless Treasures but they're out of print now. I bought them about a year ago and carefully hoard each little scrap. The code on the monitor is the TCP/IP stack from what I can tell.

Wonky Letters

2009-02-04T12:30:00.000-05:00

Lately, I've been struck by the art of free pieced quilting. I'm a bit fan of the look and style as well as the variety of things you can create by putting words/phrases/letters into a quilt.

This weekend, I sat down and started experimenting. I used Tonya's wonderful tutorial for free pieced letters as well as Brenda's mini-tutorial on how to make the letters more uniform.

I was going to do letters in multiple colors but quickly realized that for a first try, it was much easier to do them all one colors so I could reused units and use a little bit of strip piecing to make it go faster.

You might notice that I didn't do many angles. All letters that could be pieced without them were. Hence, my "m", "w" and a few other letters aren't quite what I'd like. but it was certainly easier that way. In fact only 4 of my letters have angles: "k", "v", "x", and "z". The K and V were easy (and I love how the K turned out!) but the X and Z about killed me. I have a hard time visualizing how seam allowances affect the piecing and ended up ripping several times when I realized the finished letter was going to be about .5 inches wide by the time I got done with it.

All that being said, I really enjoyed this exercise and was extremely chuffed with how they came out. My husband doesn't like them as much as my normal, non-wonky pieced work, but I predicted that. He's a very orderly, likes-things-in-their-place type of guy, so I was not surprised that the wonky letters offended his sensibilities. However, I loved them so much that I just laughed it off. I did a couple of trial layouts with some blocks I have but didn't like it enough to make it into a top. So for now, they are on my design wall (piece of batting draped over my office door).

Cats and Quilts

2009-02-04T08:58:00.001-05:00

I have two cats. Roo and Limpy. Roo is so named because her brother was a big orange tomcat. So we had the brother/sister duo of Tigger and Roo. I've had her for about 11 years now, so she's a grand old dame.

Limpy is so named because I was crazy enough to ask my husband what to name him. (Boy, that's the last time I make that mistake!) Limpy was a stray who showed up at our back door occasionally. My husband is allergic so we really couldn't adopt another indoor cat. We tried to shoo him away for quite awhile, but one day he showed up with a hurt back leg and was (you guessed it!) limping. When I saw that, I was a goner. I can't stand to see a hurt animal. So we fed him. He was very skittish, but he wasn't feral. We think someone dumped him when they moved out of the neighborhood. So we fed him, made friends, took him to the vet (boy, you should have heard the vet techs snicker when I told them his name was Limpy) and got him shots, fixed, and patched up. But we still don't really consider him "our cat." He comes and goes throughout the neighborhood and I'm quite sure he drops in on a few other ~~suckers~~ families for snacks and pets.

At any rate, I've been working on a couple of quilts and have had them spread out on my design ~~wall~~ floor. Invariably, Limpy wants to sleep smack dab in the middle of whatever quilt is on the floor at the moment. This is all well and good, but like I said, Limpy is an outdoor cat. He often comes in sopping wet, dragging leaves, after having walked through the red, southern dirt (he looks like he's been eating Cheetos with his paws!). I really have no problem with cat fur (which can be removed with a good lint brush). But I draw the line at a cat gunking up an almost finished quilt with red clay.

I don't pretend to understand the motivation that cats have, but I do know that if there is fabric or paper on the floor, they MUST sleep on it. Loll on it. Heave contented sighs as they knead it to death. I can't fight a cat's determination. They'll win every time. The solution (obviously!) is to make each cat their own quilt. So here's Limpy with his own personal cat quilt.

Houses BOM 1 Complete

2009-02-03T09:40:00.000-05:00

Forever Green Quilting has a great free block of the month up. It's called "Come on Over to My House." It's a series of houses with one house per month. I always admire people who are willing to freely share their patterns and ideas and this is a great example of that ethos. Joanna also shares photos from people who have completed each block and it lends a little bit of the "quilt-along" atmosphere. I really enjoy getting to see other people's take on the house and the fabric styles they chose.

I'm usually a bit leery of BOM clubs since I feel like it puts a deadline on my quilting and if there's one thing I don't need, it's stress from my de-stressing activity. But I spent about two hours busting this one out on Saturday. It's a great opportunity to use up some scraps from my overflowing scrap box.

This is a really cute series and I've always loved the "around the town" style of quilts. I've also heard them called "around the neighborhood" or "around the square." Here's a great example of one from Flickr by jbdigiuseppe. So I decided to give this BOM a shot with the hopes of generating quilt that has a similar layout to those. I also enjoy quilts that tell a story too. I'm thinking I'll change some of the blocks slightly to make some of the iconic buildings in a town: the courthouse, a barn, a school, etc. in addition to just houses.

Quilting Resolutions

2009-02-03T09:39:00.000-05:00

I was supposed to make New Year's resolutions. That is the thing to do these days, isn't it? I've seen lots of stash busting resolutions on the blogs I read, and while I agree wholeheartedly with the goal, I don't think I have it in me to count the yards of fabric I have and keep a running total. So below are my goals for this year. Or "starting this year" I should say. It seems to me that the whole point of a resolution is to turn it into a habit or persistent state of being. Like "stop biting my fingernails." You don't plan to do it for a year and then stop. Or "lose 20 lbs." You certainly don't plan to keep it off just for a year. So with that in mind, this year I want to start:

Actively set aside guilt free time to work on my sewing and quilts.
Document what I do. This includes labels for each quilt (I'm really bad about this), photos of each quilt, and this blog.
Be creative. Try new things. Experiment with color combinations and techniques I'm scared of.
Finish UFOs. Off the top of my head, I can think of many that need to be completed: 25 patch pinwheels, red-black-gold, Happy Houses baby quilt, and come over to my house BOM.

Everything else is gravy.

Wonka Forest

2009-02-02T13:22:00.001-05:00

This is a small quilt I created in an afternoon last summer. (I really need to get my camera and take better pictures of it.)

I needed a quick office decoration so it had to be reasonably sized and it had to be cheerful. This was an experiment in applique. The trees are cut freehand, then turned and machine stitched down. The binding was a pain (especially since I usually do continuous cut bias binding), but I have to admit, I really like the effect.

I then did some echo quilting around the outside of the trees and trunks and some shape quilting on the inside of the trees.

This piece was inspired by this one by -syko-

Debut

2009-02-02T12:41:00.001-05:00

A lot of stuff happened last year. I had a job I adored for 6 months. But it was temporary and ended in Dec. I had a lot of time to myself, but moreover, I had a job that did away with the guilt. At my current job, there's a constant pressure to be working 24-7. If I'm not working on the weekends, I feel like I should be. That way I would get ahead. It's a maddening way to live and for 6 months, I remembered what it's like to be a normal person with a job that requires reasonable amounts of work. I rediscovered my love for quilting during my time at my dream job and I'm trying to hold onto the feeling of enjoying creating and making something without the guilt looming over me.

I'd like to document my projects and give my Mom something to read in her spare time (hi Mom!). So let's get this show on the road.