So I've had pictures for a while but the only working SD card reader is at home and for the past week I've been ready to just fall down, not get online and deal with photos. But now it's Friday and work today is data entry and so... picture time!

The scrappy circle quilt is finally finished. I need to pick out about 8" more of stitches from the failed decorative stitch but by Monday it will be ready for Steve to give to his department head, the proud new mother of a baby girl.



I pieced the back with a row of patches left over from the front fabric. I love working with this white, it's so soft and it has that lovely worn feel.




For the binding I picked a fabric that doesn't show up anywhere else in the quilt but it made me happy just to look at it, and I figured that was reason enough.



The other thing I finished last weekend was my baby pinwheel quilt with prairie points. I snagged the pattern from the Moda Bakeshop and picked A Breath of Avignon for the fabrics. It's like this great summer pop. I love it. It's on the way to live with my friend Ronnie.

No in-progress pictures because I whipped it out really fast. Steve and Chloe were having some time with Grandpa and I was home with my favorite sewing buddy and we just moved really fast on some stuff. I guess that's what happens when you're not responsible for wiping someone else's butt. ;)



Can you tell that I love these fabrics?




This weekend we're house hunting so I'm not sure how much sewing I'm going to get done, but I love this pinwheel so much that I want to make it out of every fabric I have. My next one will be all oranges. We'll see how it turns out. If nothing else I can use it to stop up the draft under the door.

I had a very nearly perfect weekend. Saturday there were hugs and cuddles with Chloe and then a whole afternoon and evening to MYSELF! Sewing! Cleaning! TV shows no one else likes!

I pulled out the Breath of Avignon charm pack that came last week and decided that the colors just made me too happy to put them back in a box. So I started cutting for one of the Baby Pinwheel quilts from the Bakeshop. They came together so fast! By Sunday night it was done with the binding ready to fold over and sew down. Should have it ready to go to it's new owner on Wednesday. Pictures to come!

At some point my bff showed up at we went shopping. Not girlie shopping, we're not that type. Home Depot shopping. I love how that place smells. We picked out some MDF and a nice thick dowel rod for Operation Make My Own Extension Table. While we were out we also test drove sewing machines for BFF. She and I have the same problem, we've done all our sewing on old (extremely reliable) mechanical machines. I think until I got my new machine in January neither of us had a machine younger than us.

I got to drive the Bernina 820 on the Inspira frame. BFF drove the Aurora 440QE. To be honest? We didn't like them. The BSR got in my way on the 820 and wouldn't let me move as fast as I wanted to, and the action on the Aurora wasn't as nice as BFF wanted. Plus? We currently are using our kidneys and can't sell them to pay for either of those machines.

Across the street from the Bernina dealer is a dealer who sells both Pfaff and Viking. There were test drives of the Sapphire 850 and the Grand Expression 4.0 QE. She walked out with the Pfaff. Well researched, well deliberated, and money well spent. She kept giggling as she tried out new stitches.

The one thing I didn't get done was the templates for my mariner's compass blocks. I had the absolute joy of taking a class on hand piecing that block from Jinny Beyer. What a lovely delightful woman. It was snowing like crazy during our class and she kept reassuring everyone that she had plenty of crash space. Plus, she had the most sympathetic look ever when she told me I'd sewn two of my pieces on upside down. Nothing warms your heart like hearing your idol say "I hate to tell you this, but they're upside down." :D

Anyway, I have plans for a quilt with hand pieced blocks and I keep not getting my templates cut out. Maybe tonight. The blocks I'm going to make are versions of the local Quilters Quest blocks from last year's quest. With 12 blocks to choose from and include the finished quilts are gorgeous. Here's the one hanging at Jinny's shop:



I love it so.

Ok, time for work so I can do binding at lunch. Pictures of pinwheels later!

Quilts in progress: The Scrappy Circle Edition

Chloe's been getting a touch too big for the quilt she uses at daycare so I wanted to make her a bigger one. I went for scrappy, machine quilted, and fast because I know that this will get serious use and some amount of beating up. She's a toddler, they're not known for being delicate with their things.

I dug in my scrap boxes and found some of the girliest, sweetest stuff I could. The border is kind of a random piano keys thing. I took leftover bits from after I cut the circles and made them all 2" wide and then just however long they wanted to be. So all the pieces of the border are different lengths. I think it both adds to the scrappiness and pulls it all together. This isn't a masterpiece but it makes me happy to look at it and I know that Chloe will be warm and cozy underneath it.

I've been bringing it to work to pick out the decorative stitch I put around the narrow pink border (mistake! mistake!) so I took the opportunity to get some pictures of it even though it's not bound yet and so the batting is hanging all over the place.

Here it is lounging around on the conference table, basking in the afternoon sun. It's so -OMG the glare! the glare! I have to quit taking cell phone pictures with direct sun shining on white muslin. Yikes.



Here's a decent shot of the borders and the basic loopy quilting. I love that pink paisley, it's so stinkin' girly.

But this one, this is my favorite. I don't know why but something about the juxtaposition of the kind of formal stripes with the bright pinks and yellows just floats my boat.

Ah, here's our darling out of the direct sunlight. I ended up draping it over a railing in the office and all the coworkers are like "Have you lost your mind?" Possibly. Quite possibly.

But I've enjoyed every moment.

I enjoy the designing (or tweaking of others' designs), I love picking colors and piecing and I even love binding. Quilting is calming and meditative and cozy. But the real reason I do it, is so that at the end i can see this:

A most productive weekend.

We planned ahead and managed to get ourselves snowed in with S&C. Their house is more comfortable, their cable is more plentiful, and their company is superb. It was a great decision. And as thirty inches fell over the course of Friday night and Saturday, C and I worked on quilts, bags, pillowcases, layouts, playing with our machines, you name it.

Which means I was able to knock three UFOs off my list. My lovely sister-in-law's table runner is finished and ready to be mailed. My girlfriend's daughter (and my adopted neice) is getting a pillowcase for college and it is ready to go in an envelope as well. I finished the first of my shopping bags and I'm ready to go for more. The red and white HST quilt I'm making for myself (we nicknamed it Strawberry Parfait) got a backing and got basted and ready to quilt last night.

Also, the circle quilt I made off of Make it a Wonderful Life's tutorial is finished with the piecing. I measured it so I can decide on a backing. It's going to be my daughter's summer blanket for daycare so as much as I like the texure and feel of things like Moda's Snuggles or a good soft flannel, I'm wondering if that's too warm. Bah! I am unable to make a decision. Thoughts?

So with that I've knocked off at least half of the unfinished items on my list and I am free again to buy fabric! Just in time for payday on Friday and the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show on the 27th.

I'm thinking of rethinking that trip. I'm going to check the vendor list against the Lancaster show in March and do the math on whether a trip to VA Beach is worth it. The bus ride isn't cheap, but it is just a daytrip and I could be in my own bed that night. Decisions decisions.

Anyway, I started some new ones as well. (Because what I needed was more projects in the works) I started on a remake of the Moda Bakeshop bear paw quilt that was put up last week. It's wonderful and easy and perfect for my husband. He's a traditionalist when it comes to quilts and he likes his fabrics even more traditional. I found a fat quarter from the Neesha line and he loves it. I'll get a couple more FQ or half yards from the line to finish it up. Luckily the blocks are big so it works up very fast.

I've added a simple circle quilt done with the Delft Remix green prints I got for Christmas. They were calling out for a design big enough to show off their patterns and I think this fits without being too visually overwhelming.

I also am trying my hand at needleturn applique for the quilt I'm doing for my daughter's room. It's going to be long and involved but it'll be exactly what I want when it's finished. I held her up to the computer so she could see what it looked like and i said "What's that?" She answered "A qui-ult." With two syllables and a tone of wonder. She is made of awesome.

Strawberry Parfait Part 2

Where were we? Oh yes, all the little lovelies all ready to go. I put them in a bag and shook it up and randomly pulled them out to sew on. I only put one back if it was exactly the same as one touching it. The randomness turned out really well.

Here's the first of the blocks assembled. The place where it looks like I accidentally added in another white triangle instead of a red (upper left of the center diamond) is really a white with red stars on it. It's reading really light but it's not a problem. I may embroider around it. I may decide I just don't care and anyone who is close enough to see and critique it is close enough for me to punch in the nose.

And here we are all laid out on the "design wall" (large piece of felt hung from my living room bookcases, but hey, it works!) and looking so happy. this is just the top half, the rest will go on soon. I'm so pleased so far. And I promise, after this, no more cell phone pictures on the web!

Summer Coins

I got inspired by the baby coin quilt recipe over at Moda Bakeshop at decided to try one of my own. About the same time Connecting Threads sent out a nice update about one of their new collections. The "Sip of Summer" line looked just like the kind of thing I needed to see in the depths of winter. And I had a gift certificate left over from Christmas. Clearly fate was speaking to me.

I futzed some of the original measurements to get to what I needed, but the concept is the same. Here it is all laid out on the Emergency Backup Design Wall/Primary Basting Surface/Living Room Floor. See, don't those colors just look so happy??

Plus! It gave me a chance to flex my new freemotion foot. I got lots of hairballs and lots of eyelashes but I also got some good learning points. Like, for your first quilt don't pick a design that stops and starts all over the place, you're just asking to accidentally get it knotted around your rings.

Also, and this was the important lesson: You can joke about sewing through your thumb all you want, but when you *actually* sew through your thumb? It's time to go to bed.

Here's the mostly-finished product out for a field trip on my office conference table. It's casually draped over the edge but don't let that fool you, it's nervous and just trying to look cool.

Another first, my first pieced back! I wanted to finish it off in a yellow (my favorite color) but the fabric I had was only 45". So I put in a row of strips leftover from the front. I LOVE the result. I was doing the hand part of the binding at work. One of my co-workers came around the corner and said "Oh! I saw the blanket and I thought you were asleep back here!" Hee!

Strawberry Parfait: The saga begins

I started working on a quilt just for me. I fell in love with a red and white HST up at (I think) Cluck Cluck Sew and I thought "I must have that." Coincidentally I had grabbed a FQ pack from my quilt shop earlier in the year. So I sat down and got to work.

Here are all the white squares all measured, marked, and ready to go.

God bless chain piecing.

Ahhh! Pile up on I-95! Call the - oh wait.. a little tug from behind and all is well.

The bad part about HST? Squaring up every. single. one. At this point the quilt very nearly ended up being about 3 squares wide and about 2 squares tall. Just because I hate squaring up so much.

Dad's quilt

Click here to view these pictures larger

This quilt was a Christmas present for my father. My second quilt ever, so I stuck with paper piecing and hand quilting. I loved it when it was finished. It's got a nice masculine color combination and it's very very soft. He uses it every night when he's watching TV, you can't ask for more than that!

Butterfly quilt

Click here to view these pictures larger

My very very first quilt. I wanted to start small and easy, even though I wanted to dive right into some thing really hard. I chose the smart way and did this simple square-in-a-square paper pieced design. I fussy-cut the butterflies before I even knew what fussy-cutting was. It's backed with a super soft muslin and hand-quilted with a simple outline stitch. I did an outline of the butterflies as well and I think it really helps them *pop* off the quilt.

It ended up being a Christmas gift for my mother-in-law who loves and cherishes handmade things. I said it was for my daughter to use when she came to Camp Grandma and I think MIL was quite pleased. A success, yay!