Feet hurt, Heart happy

In honor of National Quilting Day some good girls got to go to AQS Lanaster. It's possible we did some shopping.


(editorial note: there are four people's worth of insanity in that photo. Yes, it's still a LOT of stuff but per capita it was perhaps merely "obscene" as opposed to "GNP of Burundi")

Are we embarrassed by our own rampant consumerism?



We really really are not.

Debrief and more later, for now I have to go put a cold compress on my debit card. Poor guy seems to have strained himself somehow.

The sincerest form of flattery..

I had been looking over at Nicole's blog at Sister's Choice and saw she'd been saying that she wanted a quilt like the Schnibbles called Madeline... only bigger! Then she had the inspired idea to skip finding one like it and just make a big version of Madeline. It was "all grown up" as she said. Nicole always blows me out of the water with what she does. The colors played so beautifully and she even was super helpful about how to measure and cut the setting triangles for the sides. And then she sent us over to see what Thelma had done and I was a goner.

A few of you may be familiar with Thelma over at Cupcakes and Daisies. She's amazing and her work is just breathtaking. I love how precise her work looks and how she's not afraid to fiddle with a pattern to make it work for her. She liked Nicole's big Madeline but needed it to cover a king sized bed. More blocks or a medallion in the middle? Medallion in the middle was her choice. Again the inspiration fairy struck and Thelma realized that the stars and layout of the Good Fortune Schnibble would fit perfectly in the center if she modified the border just a touch.

Presenting, Madeline's Good Fortune, is it not stunning? It just took my breath away. I though "I must have that quilt." It's bigger, more complex, and requires more precision than anything I've ever done before, but I figured I could maybe make it work if I took it easy and did it in bits and started with the big blocks before getting frustrated by the central medallion with its wee little fiddly bits.

Like some kind of glorious twist of fate, about a week later an online quilt shop I frequent got in almost all of the Rouenneries collection at $4 a yard. What I did next could be politely described as "overbuying" and might more accurately be called "losing my fool mind." I substituted some dark reds from other French General collections and got some of the pearl fabrics from Lumiere de Noel and then surveyed my hoard.

Yeah, I bought like twice as much fabric as I needed. The good news is that I'm now set for another project! Anyway. I knew I wanted to use the Fit to be Geese ruler I'd gotten for Christmas so I had to modify the pattern cutting requirements. I did some math and figured out what I needed and sat down and spent the better part of an evening cutting everything out and putting it in labeled bags. I was positively anal about the bags and it totally paid off.

So, long story short (too late!) I finished the top last week. The border fabric I'd originally picked ended up not working, the scale was just off, and the one fabric I'd really really really wanted could not be had for love nor money unless I spent $24/yd and ordered it from Australia. I'll pass, thanks. I let Steve pick out which fabric he thought would work and he was right, it's great.



Is it perfect? No, certainly not.



Point on the far right? Lovely. Point on the far left.... not quite so lovely. But A for effort, eh?
Rather than pick it out and make it super perfect I'm loving how I can see improvement from one block to the next, this quilt is big enough that I can watch my skills evolve across it.

These pictures are pre-border:




On the design wall it looks a little too brown. It also looks a little small but that's because there is absolutely NO way this whole thing was going to fit on the wall. So I did just enough to see how things would play together and then laid the rest out on the kitchen floor.

Here it is, sans borders, basking on the lawn:



And here's one taken today with the borders on. I really must get a taller place to take pictures.


I really could not be more pleased. Thank you to Nicole for wanting Madeline to be bigger, to Thelma for wanting it to have a medallion, and to Carrie for giving us the Schnibbles that made it all possible. I am so inspired by my fellow quilters, they make it possible for me to reach for things I thought were impossible just months ago.

WOE! The battery for my beloved camera (I'm not kidding, I love it, it's called My Squishy) just stopped recharging right as I had a bunch of things I wanted to take pictures of, so bear with me on the phone cam shots while I wait for the new batteries.

Now, first things first, my new quilting BFF:

















(is it not obscenely sexy?)


I only took up quilting about a year and a half ago, but I've been sewing one thing or another for twenty years. Mostly medieval reenactment clothing and bags for armor and archery equipment, but the occasional more structured item would sneak in there.

For those things the throat space on your machine isn't a big deal. And though I occasionally got frustrated with lack of power and the tendency to burn out the motor 2ft from the end of satin-stitching a 25yd hem skirt (about which I am STILL bitter) I managed to get by with $98 Wal-Mart Singers and steel-head mechanical machines from my youth. Okay, from my mother's youth. But man those things are like old Volvos, they just go and go and go until you get too big for your britches and think you can fix something yourself and snap the belt on the 1977 Viking.

Hypothetically.

Honestly, I still have three of those old steel-head machines in my basement. The snapped-belt Viking, a semi-industrial Singer from the mid-60's that still runs like a top, and a Pfaff which we call "haunted" because of a short in the power cord. You might not notice such a short in the cord until one day when you're alone in the sewing room and you finish sewing a piece and you turn around to iron it and the machine suddenly takes two more slow stitches. At which point you will REALLY notice, and possibly scream like a little girl.

Hypothetically.

When I took up quilting I did fine on my existing machines until I decided to try free-motion quilting at which point I bought a Brother that came with the right feet and could actually do the stitches, more expensive than any machine I'd bought so far but still less than my average electricity bill. Lately though I've been having trouble with the power. When going over a seam it would loose oompf and dodge to the left. The resulting seam allowance can best be described with the technical term "hinky."

I sat and thought about what I wanted in a machine. Two decades and two separate hobbies that involve sewing mean that spending some actual money on this machine wouldn't be a waste of money. Even if I gave up quilting (gasp, wheeze) I'd still have to make garb for reenactments and frankly, I just like sewing.

I thought about my actual BFF and the machine she bought (a Pfaff 4.0) and how much she loved it, how much the technology actually helped her. I thought about how much I loved the Brother when it was new and the motor still had some balls to it. I thought about the phrase my friend Jeff uses when playing cards with me - go high or go home.

And I bought the Janome Horizon 7700. Going from the Brother to the Horizon is like trading in your asthmatic old Geo Prism for a Rolls Royce. It's just completely changed my sewing life.
Eleven inches to the right of the needle, 5 LED lights, 254 stitches, dual feed 1/4" foot, it's like someone read my mind. It's possible that I pet it lovingly as I walk by.

Hypothetically.

Next post it's back to the actual quilts with pictures of my finished Apple Pie (it's getting binding finished today!) , my Schnibble salute to Spring, and hopefully my finished quilt plagiarism project provided the border fabric gets here tomorrow or the day after.

Jam and Jelly Joy

A mysterious fairy dropped a jelly roll of Breakfast at Tiffany's on my doorstep. (Okay, it was just a really good sale, I'm weak.) And I'd been meaning to try the Jam and Jelly pattern from Fig Tree Quilts for a while. So this seemed like fate.

The color choices were the hardest part, really. You want them to "go" but still have contrast which means some combinations you're really attached to won't work. Once I'd gotten them picked out the sewing was a breeze. Sorta. Who's got advice on how to sew and press jelly roll strips without them curving?

And now, a quiz! Which of these two blocks do you think the pattern calls for?



That's right! Block two. Now, which one do you think I made six of without noticing? Yeah. Sometimes I'm not the brightest.

Still, after some unsewing and resewing and a very small amount of swearing I was back in the game. The blocks actually went together really quickly and I was totally tickled to get them all up on the wall.































But I liked it even more after I got the sashing and border on it.































I took it to the shop where I rent time on the longarm and did a truly mediocre quilting job. But it was almost all freehand, so that was cool. I even did freehand feathers in the borders. They're a hot mess but they were a good learning experience. I finished putting the binding on it last night and today I just need to do about an 8"x8" spot of quilting where I had to tear out some of the longarm stitches (hot mess, remember?) After that it's into the washer and dryer and hopefully I can spend some time this evening curled up under a quilt I made myself, something I've never actually done.

Next? Pictures of my new quilting BFF and my enormous act of theft.

Worst. Blogger. Ever. I have had like 5 projects going since my last update but I've just never been working on the computer that has the ability to read my sd card without an adapter. And I'm too lazy to go get the adapter. Or the computer. Really, I'm just lazy full stop. But not with my quilting!

The big Plan C is still in the state we left it in last time. I think I'll finish it up this coming week and I think I've decided to go with the big piano keys border. Not sure what I'll do with it after that. In the mean time I started and finished Miss Rosie's "American Pie." Only bigger. I had this grand notion of putting it on my bed and having it be a lovely kind of vintage picnic feel but I learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes making something bigger makes it even more awesome, sometimes it just makes it a busy mess.

I went with 30's reproductions just like on the pattern cover.


And it looks fantastic like this. If it had stayed this awesome the whole way through I'd have been happy but it didn't. I just got finished quilting it this afternoon and I'll put binding on and take another picture to show you but take my word for it. Busy mess. My mother loves it, so I'll put it on the guest bed and she can enjoy it while she's here.

In the mean time, I think I have a pretty decent scrap project brewing because each of those blocks resulted in corners being cut off. Many corners. Possibly in the 1200 neighborhood. Did I toss them?


I did not.

In fact:


They work up to 2x2" and they are adorably wee. They will probably be sewn as part of other projects instead of scraps to help deal with the big mess of thread you get at the beginning of each chain-stitching round. (I am offically a Leaders and Enders gal now, I guess)

What else? I finished my oldest UFO ever! EVER! It's a fantastic two-color half-square-triangle quilt that I did featuring every red and white fabric I could find that I loved enough to put in. The ambitious part was quilting it with strawberries. They're something of a kindergarten-art-project strawberry but do like you'd do with your kid.. tilt your head sideways, smile and say "Oh honey, it's lovely."


I swear, if you say one word about my kitchen floor being dirty I will weep like a baby. Instead notice the pretty quilt. And how my cabinets are white because I totally ballsed up and painted my cabinets! Ahem. Where were we? Oh yes, kindergarten art class strawberries..


Here's the back, I particularly like the back for some reason.


Oh! And I totally freehanded feathers on the borders:


I know, some are a bit wonky, but I was totally tickled. I did them freehand on the longarm down near my mom's too and I liked how they turned out there as well.

Okay, I'm going to save some of the projects for my next post (which I'm going to go write now). And perhaps it will be time to introduce you to my new bestest sewing friend ever. I don't want to give it away but if you're on the beach looking out to the ocean what's the farthest thing you can see?

Later!

Most Productive Weekend Ever.

I got off my butt and decided to bust some stash and finish up some UFOs. I love my stash but it's prettier on a bed than it is on a shelf. And goodness knows my UFOs are prettier on a bed than they are in plastic boxes.

The first thing I did was get my Bear Paw box down (had two done) and finished up the rest. I had the bits cut so mostly it was a matter of just actually doing it. I have to admit that it was so fun to see it coming together. This is a Moda Bakeshop pattern and works up very easily. I made one modification, though. The original pattern involves a jelly roll so the blocks are surrounded by 2.5" strips and corner posts and then sewn together. I had yardage of my background fabric so instead I left the blocks borderless and put 4.5" sashing and blocks between them instead. It looks much the same but it was easier on my brain. And since I'm hand-quilting it I'll appreciate having fewer seam allowances to work around.

Yay! It's so pretty! And when my husband looked at me and said "Now who is this for?" I was able to say "It's for right there on our couch."

I finished the bear paw on Saturday night and then thought rather than go finish up any other UFO I really wanted to start something new. I wanted to do something fast and easy with big blocks. And stars, I wanted stars. So I pulled out my Schnibbles Times Two and looked at Plan C and voila! It was perfect. I've also done a bunch of darker and more "masculine" colors so I wanted this to be light and much more girlie. A quick hunt through the stash and I settled on my cuts from Tanya Whelan's "Darla" collection. Perfect.


What's that? What did you say? Oh, yes. That is, in fact, a 3ft. stuffed T-Rex over on the left. And yes, that's also an inflatable minion from "Despicable Me" in the upper right. The joys of having a three-year-old in the house. (Actually, the inflatable minion is mine and Steve's. We just let Chloe play with it.)

These blocks are ginormous, the flying geese are 4x8 and so it worked up SUPER fast. Just perfect. It needs borders put on still but I'm happy leaving it like this for a while while I decided whether or not I want to use the piano key border listed in the book or get a little more yardage (or some from Delilah) and do a solid border. Thoughts?

When it's done it should be okay to throw over a double bed. I'll take it down to Michelle's (my mom's local quilt shop, they rent time on their long-arm and I LOVE working on it) and give it a nice all-over soft flowy pattern. Plus there's enough fabric left to do some fun pinwheels for a baby quilt if my co-worker turns out to be baking a female in there.

And Steph? Be careful. If you compliment this one it's coming to live at your house. I sincerely doubt Starfish Dude would take kindly to big girly flowers on the bed. :)

Next time we move on to my current insanity, Miss Rosie's "American Pie" pattern and the first time I didn't have a heart attack at the phrase "cut 720 of these." I think this hobby has stolen my brain.

Normally I blog about my own quilting and I'll get back to that with the next post, I'm sure (or maybe it'll just be cute pictures of my kid, but how can you blame me?). This time, however, I'd like to talk a bit about the kind of quilting that inspired me. My mother has always had her grandmother's quilts displayed and used in her house. the bottom of each of the guest beds has a quilt across it and the rest are on this wooden quilt rack. I'd like to show you bits of my favorite. It's hte one across the bottom of my bed when I sleep there and I like to think of it as generations past keeping me warm at night.

It's this one, a hexie flower patch. Each of the flowers has a patterened outer circle, a solid middle circle, and the same color center piece for each flower. I love the color choices. They don't "match" but they "go", y'know?

The most amazing thing about it, and the thing I hope you can see in this yellow one, is that not only are the flowers hand-pieced hexies, but so are all the white pieces. Thousands of them. Every single one of them has been hand pieced together and then hand quilted in a 1/4" echo quilting stitch around the center. The amount of work that went into it just amazes me.

Another block showing the quilting detail:

So, how do we do at our reproduction prints? How do those whimsical prints look next to the fabrics they're trying to mimic? You tell me:


Circus elephants playing ball? Check.

Also fabulous florals with background checks and other fantastic motifs. I feel like our repros are understated if anything. The fabrics from this quilt are late 30's through late 40's so they cover quite a range but if the colors still look like this after thousands of washes imagine how they must have gone POP when first made.


There's a terrific Sunbonnet Sue hanging on that rack as well but we'll leave that for another time. For now I'll leave you with the fantastic blanket stitched applique from my other favorite of my great-grandmother's quilts: