My Absense

Pardon me, friends, for I have been away for a few days to Greensboro, NC watching her skate to gold at the US Nationals. This was a Christmas gift from my husband. It might have been more appropriate a few years ago when I really skated a lot, but he was definitely trying to give something I'd like. Seriously, what was wrong about sending me to Houston or Paducah though??! The trip had ups and downs, too many to really count. If you get the chance to watch the mens competition (I believe it may be shown next weekend, but it may have been on yesterday afternoon), it's the best of the events. The guy that won the event is a total riot, and spectacular skater too.
Obviously I don't have much but my hopes and dreams to show you for my quilting for this past week. I did some handwork and lots of sketching, mostly drafting the applique that will go on the new quilt I have started below. I'm using the kaleidoscope blocks as a watercolor backdrop for some magical applique. I may even do it on the machine, who knows. These are all batiks, and they are so much more vibrant in person.

Lastly, here's a couple of blocks for a swap...the last of the committments for my monthly block swaps. It feels good to have those done!

We're in for yet another mid-week snowstorm on Wednesday. I just cannot get a sewing morning while all 3 kids are at school whatsoever. I am behind on quilting work because of it. I may have to do a few evenings after they go to bed to get caught up. I'm sick of snow. We probably have 18" on the ground and they are predicting at least a foot more! At least I escaped it for a few days for slightly milder 40's and 50's!

Tuesdays are Just For Me

Seems that I have been a bad swap girl lately. I kind of let my monthly block making slide when things got really busy last month. Over the weekend, I pulled out the packages to discover that there were blocks due from September - gasp!...I got busy. I don't know who each is for, or which month or even which specific swap at the moment - just have pics to show.
I despise making modern-style blocks. The strips that came were all the wrong lengths or widths; I nearly ran out of fabric. I hope that these play well enough with her others.

These are 2 8" strings made from vintage sheet fabrics.

Two spider webs which are unironed here. It's a poor pattern, in that she will soon find that it results in at least 16 layers of fabric at each point! That would not be my friend to quilt :-)

Here's a 24" nice and simple HST block.

Over the last year I participated in the Quilt Block round robin on Flickr. It is a good group of ladies I have swapped with several times/years before. It all was going well until Lynn decided to steal 3 or 4 packets of people's blocks, and not send them back. I consider myself lucky to have gotten mine back. Clearly, I chose trees. They were all supposed to be done with a white or tan background, but I think it will be fine as is. Maybe next year I'll get this assembled as a Christmas quilt!

Or maybe I will just sell it - who knows!

And alas, a glimpse at the last and simplest border that is being assembled for my Italian floor quilt. I seriously thought that this would take me no time whatsoever. Again, I am the idiot. Underestimation ought to be my middle name. I have all the parts assembled - 4 corners, 260" of that striping, and 4 of the mini checkered units. It was all great until I discovered I was short a few inches of that damn black fabric! It is currently on order, along with some nice 108" wide backing and I will put this aside for a few days and focus on more pressing issues. Like Christmas, or a couple client quilts! Or how in the world I might quilt this beast. So many thoughts, so little time.

Happy Tuesday.

BTW, For the nosey and inquiring minds out there...my daughter's spree of mischevious behavior has not really lessened. I have gotten smarter, though, and at the very least removed her chair and all ointments. Oh, wait, she used all of them up on Sunday. I did find her a little while ago emptying her drawers in search of swimsuits to try on. The mess was manageable, but seriously, I am sick of cleaning up little messes everywhere!

List of Completion

I most happily retrieved my LA from the annual servicing yesterday. I am quilting rather slowly on a custom quilt right now, with hopes of having it mostly done before the end of the weekend. Not sure if my luck will hold out though. Here's some of the putter-stitching I did in the last week, in my feeble attempt to chip away at my To-Do list (below).

This block went out to Leanne in Canada, for the Bees Knees. It was due last month, but, hey, better late than never.
Here's one of my September blocks for the same Bee, it went out to Marlene in KS today (I think!!). She wanted paper pieced spider web blocks. They are not yet stitched together. The batiks are prettier in person than in picture.

Here's the entire set of blocks headed to Carol in the Quilt Block Round Robin. Mine are the pink and plum ones. Again, more batik blocks.

and here's mine. Nothing too crazy here; just needed to get them done, and be sure they were of correct size.

Jaclyn asked for these circles. It's a crummy method for making circle (not her method), if you ask me, unless the background fabric is dark. The way they are made forces the seam allowance to the outside of the circle, and the damn blue circle fabric shows through on the lighter one. Oh well..the fastest circles I have ever made at any rate.

And shall we see how I did at my weekly list?...

1. piece two tops, twin sized, commission jobs - Both are in 2 large pieces, and were awaiting the border fabric, which arrived today. Sometime in the next 8 weeks I will finish and quilt these.

2. quilting bees...Blocks are all caught up (see above)

3. piece backing for one of my own quilts - NOT DONE, but I did piece one backing for the commission quilts instead.

4. finish paper piecing on my Italian floor quilt (this is only a personal goal - there's no pressing deadline here) - Done...see previous post.

5. piece the next rows on this quilt top so that I have it available for hand appliquing when on trips or at appointments. In progress...

6. Plan the quilting for a sweet pink & white custom quilt that I must do as soon as Mr. LA is back home. Planing done; quilting is 25% done.

7. Figure out how to get out of making 3 Halloween costumes. If you have read this blog long, you know that despite loving to sew, you know I hate to make costumes. Goal: Make one lamb costume and buy 2 boys costumes, somewhere, somehow. Bought one bunny costume at consignment store. It needs bunny removed and ears/tail modified. Not completely effortless, but simpler! I also found parts to one Dracula costume for middle man. Could this be true???...no Halloween costumes to sew?? (Ha HaHa Ha~.....)

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Next week's Agenda...

1. Finish Pink Pinwheels quilt currently on LA

2. Quilt one of my quilts that I will bring to the retreat

3. Quilt (or start) another customer job

4. Finish the row of hand appliqued ribbons (#5 above)- all but 3 corners are done.

Have a great weekend!

A week of puttering

I have been mostly either doing things this week that I am not prepared to show yet, or treading water (politically correct way to say "unproductive"!!). This morning, after I was just sick and tired of working on a very large and very not flat quilt, doing a fairly boring pantograph for 102", I decided I'd better get these blocks out and bordered. They were cut a couple months ago with the intention of making a quilt for a Project Linus book-blanket challenge which is barely over a month away. Do I hear, "E-Gads"??? A month away and it is only 8 blocks?? Yup. That's right. I have a ton of work to do so I am doing my darndest to simplify this so a completed top can be done in a relatively short amount of time.

As I am sure you figured, the book I have for the challenge is an Olivia book. It is not the Olivia's Christmas book, but I stumbled upon a piece of Olivia stocking panel fabric for a couple dollars and couldn't refuse. The quilts will be distributed closer to the holiday season so I think it is ok. Below is a close up of this. It's pretty cute, in a novelty-ish sort of way.
This week, my brother's family has been here. They just moved back to the states after 2-1/2 years of living in Italy. As a result, I had 3 days with next to no sewing. It is hard to knock down the backlog of quilts at that pace :-) Back in the spring, I made my SIL a quilted bag with indigo batiks she had. I failed to photograph it back then, so here is a heavily loaded picture. She loves it. It has a couple pockets inside, and a drawstring top that is tucked inside.

I have knocked out 2 of my Bee blocks. These are heading to Emily (of the Fresh Comfort Bee). I'm not exactly sure that they qualify as "Drunken Love", as she requested. Perhaps I should have had a glass of vino before starting them. I do like how the larger owl is eyeing the one in the corner though!

And one sneakie peek of a very cute sampler quilt that is nearly finished up. It's off frame now, and being bound. I am doing the entire quilt & finish job on this one. It is the Tisket a Tasket pattern and is so darn adorable!

I am tasking myself to do several quilts this week. My boys are off at camp 2 full days and I plan to take advantage of it. I have a CW repros quilt on frame now that is for a local guild. It's given me fits from the start. I've had thread battles, backing size inadequacies, and the general gamut of unflatness issues. I'm most ready to get this large beast off!

Buzzing with Activity

I am participating in 3 online quilting bees. One is technically a block round robin, but it's close enough to a bee. I just won't get all the blocks until the end of the year.

February has been my month for the Fresh Comfort II bee. I designed a wonky log cabin block and sent out an assortment of brown and aqua fabrics. Some of these are not trimmed yet so disregard the variety of sizes. I am still awaiting 8 blocks so that this can be larger. I can hardly wait to quilt this one...have some very radical thoughts for the quilting and interesting threads currently on order too!

I am also participating in The Bees Knees quilting bee. My month is April, which is really right around the corner considering I have to have fabrics sent out in 3 weeks (and a block plan finalized prior to then!). I have gathered pretty fabrics for months. My plan was to do one bee quilt more modern and edgy (above) and do one more traditional (this one). I have 4 yards of the Martha Negly floral below. Most of this will go on the backing, but all of the other materials were selected to coordinate with this. I stumbled into a great thing last month...Mardens (a legend if you live in Maine) had MANY of the coordinating prints in stock at $3 per yard. I bought more than a few. I think that the large floral backing was also only $3 a yard at Whittles too. That is a great online store if you have not heard of it!

I love the set of coral/orange prints And there are several different greens as well.

And I have 4 small pieces (under a yard each) of finger paint fabrics - for those interested, they are FingerPaints by Stephanie Brandenburg. I thought they'd be nice for small accents on the blocks, since I cannot send a ton of any to all people.

The stripe at the top is likely for the binding and maybe for a small accent border. I probably won't send it to anyone in the Bee.

Now, the problem is that I cannot settle on a design. Wanna weigh in your thoughts?... please....

Here's one thought (created with EQ6, using pictures of the actual fabrics). Note that this will likely NOT be the background fabric for the stars, however....It is fairly traditional. They'd be 12" blocks, and each person I think has already agreed to make 2. I'd supply a tutorial for a block. The fun thing about this block is that color placement can drastically change how the star looks. It can look like a flower or a star or even a twisted friendship star. Interesting, but not my favorite. I am currently polling the Bee members to get a sense of their abilities and whether or not they want to create their own design or follow a tutorial. Stars and triangles are easy for me, but I'm not sure how the masses feel about keeping every point!
Concept #2... A little more radical and modern. I love flying geese. And I love circles...I really love when the geese fly in circles, if you catch my drift! I'd probably make instructions to a few blocks available to those that are not comvortable making their own, and then hope that I did not get 20 blocks that are all the same! These would also be 12" blocks.
The thing with a 12" block is that it does not allow for too much detail, or the beauty of these larger scale prints gets lost. So, I am also contemplating an option where each swapper makes just one 18" block. It's the same area as 2-12" blocks approximately. Here's just one concept. I made one of these blocks last year for a round robin in an 8" block (if you can believe how small some of those pieces were!). It was largely paper pieced. I think I can print off the pattern pieces for people and that size won't be that hard to make. My only concern...people that don't paper piece much can be very wasteful using that technique, and the thought of wasting this gorgeous material... ... I'll likely redesign this larger 18" block, but you get the idea. I'd send "x" number of fabrics, specifying a desired background fabric, and let people pick and choose how they wanted to color their blocks.

So, what is your recommendation for the swap block(s)??? My inquiring mind wants to know :-)