quilt blocks complete!

Lately the scheduling elves at work have not been giving me full weekends off - lots of Friday/Saturdays though, so which feels like a weekend so I really can't complain. It also gives me the distinct pleasure of having the entire house to myself until about 6pm ... which is a) nice for my introverted self to recharge and b) allows me to turn the main floor of the house into a quilting-prep work station.

The other week my day off got spent photographing a number of piles of new fabric (thanks for my giveaway win, and the delivery of my Black Friday purchase) and doing so very much pressing and trimming and marking and cutting. Why, pressing what you might ask?

Working on these babies, of course:

35 of these, to be exact

Because somehow along the way I actually got all the blocks pieced. And laid out and now I'm working on sashing them. I'd been starting to get sick to death of this project, mostly because I didn't allow myself enough variation in fabrics. What was I thinking making a double quilt with only five fabrics, and one of them is white? The oddball blocks have helped relieve that tedium, though, and putting together my final layout and having a photograph of the finish line to refer to has helped.

It also helps that my niece and sister in law are super excited about it, and I'm getting update about new décor for my niece's room that are designed to go with the quilt. That's motivation: so if February 12th being the birthday on which I am aiming to gift this.

random blocks

Those three blocks where I've been much more random with the fabric placement completely allowed me to enjoy working on this project. Even thought it's just three blocks and it's colours and prints that are already in the quilt anyhow, they gave me some breathing room.

the layout!

The lighting on the layout picture is really crummy - the black and dark purples blend right into each other but really I took it more for my own reference than anything. The final quilt will look a bit different, just because of sashing, but now I have the blocks ready and a plan in place.

plodding along

Since Blogathon Canada is hopping through my part of the country today (uh, not quite today but better early than late) I thought that just maybe I should come up with a sewing post. Sound like a plan? Good. Next week I'll tell you about the book(s) that have sucked up most of the past two weeks of my life and taken all my sewing time. But now, sewing.

 

so many things to iron

I've been busy as a bee sewing away at these blocks. Thirty five blocks. If I'd been thinking I would have added in a lot more fabrics - sewing primarily the same five prints and patterns has gotten more than a little bit repetitive. But finally, finally I'm getting to the point of being able to see and end in sight.

they look a bit better after some pressing

The pile of blocks up there? I spent the better part of my Tuesday afternoon pressing seams on those babies. Then I moved on to the dining room and marked some seam lines on them (that is one extra step that hand-piecing requires that I could do without).



all ready for trimming and marking seams

At the moment these here are my favourites. Probably because they're my contrast blocks and thus they don't look exactly like the other thirty two things I've sewn. I'm looking forward to placing them in the actual layout and seeing that bit of pop. I'm also looking forward to figuring out what else I can make in the future with the black damask.

The most exciting part is that I've finished block #1. About thirty of them I just have one more seam to go, but there's about five with more significant work. Then sashing. Then backing. Basting. Quilting. This is kind of the forever project, or at least it feels that way.

finished block!!

Q4 Finish A Long Goals

Two posts in one week? And both about sewing? Do I maybe just need to make a quilting blog? Decisions don't need to be made all at once. (There's also maybe a sewing post or two that's due for next week ... so warnings in advance if the sewing stuff isn't your cup of tea).

Since participating in the last quarter of the Finish-A-Long was so much fun (and I got to see so many beautiful quilts!) clearly I'm going to have to have another go around this time. Q4 is a bit ambitious for me as I'm really not sure that I'm on track to get anything done completely but setting a goal or two never hurt anyone.

1 - Cameron's Quilt

First off on the list is the quilt for my niece. This is the project du jour, really. I'm working on it pretty much on a daily basis, and I have almost all of the blocks at some stage of in progress.

excusing the crummy ironing board, here's a sneak peak

I've actually come a fairly long way since this picture was taken, and I do have an update planned to share for you soon. Just need to actually get the pictures off the phone and onto the computer.

Optimistically I'd like it done for Christmas. Which - three months? I'd like to say it will be done by then, but there's a long way to go and it's a biggie so we'll see. Realistically I expect it to be done by her birthday in February.

2 - Pillow Covers

 

 

I probably won't make much progress on this, as it's not a focus of mine, but hey it doesn't hurt to put on the list. Eventually these blocks will end up as pillow covers to co-ordinate with the Scrappy Trip I finished last month, but they're not serious sewing. I'm just using leftover scraps and backing fabric to make them and mostly they only get worked on when I'm testing new bits for new blocks. Right now I'm testing out some flying geese, so they are still slowly growing.

 

I feel a bit silly setting two goals and not really feelings that I'm likely to accomplish either, but hey, I'd rather aim high and "fail" than not even try!

 

 



new project time: for my niece

Now that the Scrappy Trip is finally finished I've had plenty of sewing time to devote to the newest project in my lineup: my niece's quilt. It's my biggest project so far, as its designed for her double bed but the actual block construction is very, very simple. It's inspired by the Labyrinth quilt, though I've done up my own pattern and it's got a much more controlled colour pattern than the original.

All in all I need 35 blocks, plus sashing. The blocks themselves are fairly easy to construct, and I've been doing so in an assembly line fashion. I've got the square-in-a-square sections all in various states of doneness and am working on getting up my required number of those before I move any further. This is the fussiest part of the blocks, with all the little half square triangles and 3" seams - later on there's long seams and strip piecing. These bits are coming together quickly, so it's not completely unreasonable to imagine that the rest of the quilt will.



Blocks in Progress

Nearly Done Blocks

I'm also feeling like I need to rethink the colour scheme just a little bit. Not much, just throw in maybe a grey or a lighter blue to give a little more contrast. Right now my pattern calls for strips of the two turquoise prints to go right beside each other and I just think the whole thing might have more impact if I add in a little more oomph to the colour scheme. I also might do a couple of random blocks where I reverse the colour orientation.

So now I'm plotting yet another online fabric purchase, because I want to use blacks or greys from the same line as the original fabrics. And since I'd only need 3/4s of a yard or so, and I'm paying for shipping anyway it just seems like I should plan a bit of a stash spree. There are some eggplant and green prints I've been eyeing, and there's a quilt I'm planning for that I need to start acquiring non-floral red prints for and I could use a few yards of solid fabrics ... and apparently there's a 20% off discount code that's active for another month. Yeah, this is dangerous.

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday. Why not play along, right?

Scrappy Finish

It's done!!! Done done done. I started working on this quilt back in January and it's been a long process with lots of updates along the way. I could have declared the blocks finished back in April, but decided to make just a few more (and I'm glad I did). After that it was basting the quilt, which I hated - my sore back and knees didn't thank me. Then there were the hours upon hours of hand quilting to make the cross hatch pattern. Then this past week I put the last few stitches in the binding and now it is done. And somewhere along the way I discovered a camera. (Next time I promise I'll give better update pictures, really.)

This quilt is seven months of my life. Zoning out and sewing on weekends and days off. Sewing a good hour each and every night while watching crappy tv and snuggling with Bunny. And each and every last stitch is done. You'll have to excuse all the pictures, I'm rather proud of it.

It's not as "scrappy" as some Scrappy Trips. It's made all with one fabric line (that I got at Walmart, so I'm a little short on details) - two jelly rolls and four fat quarters. Because it's not a line of quilting cottons specifically some of the fabrics (particularly the fat quarters) come at different thicknesses. The fabric doesn't have the give and glide of a quilting cotton, but I still have a companion quilt planned, featuring log cabins.

This is a fun pattern to work with, and because of the strip piecing it's perfectly suited to my style of quilting involving hand piecing, Doctor Who and maybe a glass of wine and I'm sure that once I find myself with a sizeable scrap pile I'll revisit this pattern in a true scrappy fashion. It's also a great beginner pattern, and helped me build up a lot of confidence.

Because I used the same 14 fabrics over and over in this quilt I wanted each square to lead into the next. The way I've achieved that is living up matching fabrics in separate blocks to create a more continuous movement. Colour placement on the blocks themselves was fairly simple as I gave each block I worked on a "theme" whether it was to be mostly one colour (like the green block in the bottom right) or to be mostly bright fabrics and it came together quite well into a cohesive whole.  Also, there is a my side and a Bunny's side on this. I'm picky like that.

The sunlight in this one makes the colours look a little deceptive, but you get the best view of the texture. I cross hatched the quilting here, going through each square on a diagonal in both ways.

Every single stitch of this baby was sewn by hand. I made Bunny buy me a cake when I finished. A hand made quilt deserves a cake, no?

so close to done!

That quilt there, on my kitchen table (please excuse the mess), that looks done, doesn't it?

 

Except it's not. One stretch of the binding is still only pinned on in the back. You can see some of the pins in the next picture, but if I'm being honest there's not much left. It just feels like a lot. Which would be why you're not actually seeing the quilt top - since I haven't shown proper pictures of this yet I feel like after making you wait since January you can handle another week to see the whole thing finished.

I'm so close it almost hurts. I've probably got another two or three hours of sewing left, which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Almost six months of working on this, sewing about an hour a day most days (some days not at all, some days off for hours on end) every single stitch done by hand and I'm almost done. This last bit is driving me absolutely bonkers. I just want to be done already!!!

Luckily, how close I am to being finished this makes it a perfect candidate for an August entry to a "finishes" contest on a blog I follow. Getting the binding done on this and getting this washed and then finally usable is my August entry to the "Lovely Year of Finishes". If I can't finish this by the end of the month I have issues, really.



Also this hopefully means that soon you can get a peak at the other project I'm working on right now, the first bits of my niece's quilt. This one is exciting, though there are some design and fabric choice elements I'm rethinking. Buying more fabric does not need to happen, but it just might. Would that be so terrible?

For now, though, have a gratuitous picture of my dog. Because he's awfully cute isn't he?

what I'm working lately

It's been awhile since there's been an update on my sewing projects. I've got a couple more things on the go than usual - finishing up my Scrappy Trip (the end is finally in sight), turning some test pieces I'd made with fabric scraps into pillows, and the start of my newest project - the quilt for my niece is underway.

Since I've got all these things on the go, I'm also going to do something I haven't before and link up with the 2013 Finish-A-Long. I've been following this the first half of the year, and figured that since I have a few projects on the go I'd join in this round myself.

First, the Scrappy Trip. I've been working on this since late January-ish, when I started piecing the blocks. Finally a month or so ago I finished up my quilting and just the other week I got the binding cut and pinned on. The binding is half on the front, and I'm just working on stitching it on now. This should be an easy finish in the next month or so.



I don't really want to show too much because I'm so close to being done and can't wait to give you a big reveal. So far I'm adoring this quilt and I can't wait to get it in our living room and eventually have it on our couches. I'm also scheming the specifics of the co-ordinating quilt, which is the next start on my list.

Next up, and this should also be a fairly easy finish, is to make a couple of pillow covers for some blocks I made up as testers for the next quilt. I'd completely gummed up my math on making a square in a square, so I'm glad I did. It took no less than four tries to get the block right. Luckily I had scraps left over from the Scrappy Trip quilt, so I'd done the samples up with those. They already co-ordinate and I'm going to do them up into pillow covers, so they don't go to waste.

Finally - and I think I'm most excited about this - I've started the next quilt on my list. This is for my niece, and has the most delicious fabrics in it. I'm keeping the colour palette very limited, at the moment I'm only using four. Because of that bad math I might end up needing to pick up some more, and if I do that I'll probably throw a twist in with the fabrics. This is the first time I've used proper quilting cottons, and compared to the fabric I was buying before they've been a dream to sew with.

There's lots to do, and it's a stretch that I'd even be finished the quilt top (or all the blocks) by the time the Finish-A-Long deadline comes up, but the bit I've sewn so far I've been loving this sewing. This is only the first bit done - cutting for a few of the blocks and just barely starting on the piecing, but I'm enjoy the process.







Edit: I'm also linking this back to the Season by Hand series. This quilt has been entirely handmade, from piecing to quilting to binding and luckily enough the timing seems to overlap just right.

quilting update (with pictures)

The past few weeks every scrap of spare time that I feel like being 'productive' has been eaten by the Scrappy Trip quilt. Watching Community? Time to quilt. Hanging out at my mother in law's? Time to quilt. I miss my index fingers (they tend to disappear in this process under callous) but oh my am I excited. And I just passed the halfway mark.

Here's a little tease:

Even more of a tease, here's what a little corner of the front looks like so far:

Bunny chose the fabric on the back there, and I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it. Kind of wishing that I'd stuck to my guns with the brown or orange, based on our couch colour, but it's growing on me. I've got all the diagonal lines going one way, now I just need to go back and cross hatch them. So far I've done one little corner in the opposite direction and it immediately increased my love of this quilt a million times. Which I wouldn't have believed was possible, but what do I know?

I also forgot how flat the batting gets during the quilting process. I spent a good two or three days all sad that the batting was so compressed and felt so thin before I remembered that the best part about washing the baby quilt was the fabric puffing all up.

Speaking of teasing pictures, I may have also come home to real mail two days this week. A wedding invitation, which was lovely but expected. And a fabric order I'd placed but wasn't expecting to see for another two weeks or so.

These lovely patterns here are for my niece's quilt, which is my next project. I can't wait to get these chopped up and start stitching. I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I found a damask-esque pattern, and in turquoise. Those had been her two big requests: turquoise, and damask. It's going to be a fairly repetitive quilt, but I think it's going to be beautiful when done.

I also may have snuck these into the order. Just because. And apparently I buy in pairs. I can't decide whether I'll make myself something out of them, or if I'll be gifting. They've already received rave reviews from my mother in law, colour wise. I just don't know but they are so very, very pretty.

This fabric buying thing? It's becoming dangerous.

annoying part, done

This weekend we set out to do shopping, and shopping we accomplished. Bunny and I ran about a million little errands including stopping at one of the local quilt shops to pick up batting and backing fabric for the quilt. Sixty dollars later I have pretty much everything I need to turn this from quilt top into quilt.

Plus, there's a lot of leftover fabric and batting. So much leftover, actually, because my quilt is slightly awkwardly sized I needed to buy 108" width fabric so I've got a good half yard of leftover. Which is fine, it will all turn into another project later I'm sure.

In fact, I'm down to just the actual quilting and binding of this baby because I have successfully pin basted the thing. Which is, hands down, my least favourite task. Two hours bent over trying not to pin the quilt sandwich to the carpet, trying not to get so dizzy I'd pass out and trying to keep everything orderly. Not my favourite part - but the payoff later is worth it.

After all that? I'm ready for a nap.

my scrappy quilt has a top

I'm being mean today. There's no photo with this update, mostly because I'm trying to save it for the big reveal at the end. But hey, I finished the quilt top. I have this big piece of scrapped out quilt top hanging out over a table in the basement waiting for me to collect some binding and backing fabric and get sandwiching. Once I get that done the quilting process will be a lot quicker than the piecing process. (Good thing, because I started this one back in January.) Bunny and I are also devising a plot for the big reveal picture. (And I still need to get a picture of the baby quilt, too, I know.)

I did end up ripping out that seam I was talking about, by the way. Even though it was just a minor scuff up, I knew it would bother me pretty much forever so I just bit the bullet and gave it a do over. Still not perfect (a lot of the seams aren't) but it's no worse than any other matched seam I've given a pass.

The rest of this week is twiddling my thumbs, really. I've pulled out my old orchid cross stitch for busy work for now, as I won't get a chance to work on the quilt again at least until the weekend. The long arm service/quilting store I was planning on buying my batting from (I have a gift certificate) was closed when we went on Sunday so I'm at a bit of a dead end right now until I can get my hands on batting and then buy some fabric for the back. I'm thinking maybe I might just use a sheet? I haven't decided, fully.

Finishing that has also given me the opportunity to work on the design for the next round, a quilt for my niece. The design is done, and I have my fabric requirements now it's just a matter of shopping. The solids will probably come from my local Fabricland (it's hard to mess up simple black and white solids, no?) but I can't find turquoise prints I like in person so I'll be ordering online. There are a couple of possibilities, I just need to hurry up and choose what I like and then order it, so I can get started cutting and sewing.

Also, I lied at the top. You get a picture. Mostly because my cat was being cute this weekend and I had to share, but you can see the back of part of the pieced quilt here as well.

So much for clean clothes.

seamingly annoyed

It's amazing how quickly the quilt top is progressing at this point. I'm working on piecing together the last of the rows and then it's just four long (long! seams) and this will be over. I've sewn a lot of seams here, and needed to make a lot of points match. All told there are 319 seams I'll have sewn in the finished quilt. Now if only I could make all my corners match.

Which is what's driving me nuts right now. I got ahead of myself this weekend and joined the top two rows ... and the seams don't match as nicely as I'd like them to. It's nothing major, and I'm probably the only person who will notice but it bothers me. So I'm considering ripping out a four-foot seam and starting that part fresh. I like for my corners to match.

Excusing the fact that the lighting in these pictures sucks (basement overhead lighting is not designed for picture taking) what I need is more of this:

 

 

And less of this:



Granted, that is probably the worst matched seam in the entire quilt top so far, but I'm not happy with it. And when I'm not looking at it super close up it's not nearly so noticeable, and Bunny didn't see it until I pointed it out. Even my good seams perhaps aren't perfect, but I'm decidedly ok with them (especially considering that this is 100% hand sewn). But these ones bother me, and thus I have a decision to make. Stick with the crap seam? Or rip and re-sew.

Once this is done comes the next fun part: shopping! I need batting and backing and at this rate I will be ready by the weekend.

scrappy update

So this quilt I'm working on? I just passed that milestone moment when I can say all of my quilt blocks are complete. (Even the extras.) It's taken months to reach this stage, and while I've still go plenty to go (piece the top, create a backing, sandwich and then actually quilt and bind the thing) the biggest part is done. This is what I would consider the halfway point to be, and I'm there!

What does the halfway point look like, you might ask? Well, it looks an awful lot like this:

That's twenty 12" blocks all good to go. I've also finalized my layout and while I do have pictures of that (for my own records, in case I screw up) I think I'm going to hold off on sharing that. A finished quilt picture would be more exciting, I think.

Unlike the baby quilt, deciding on my layout was not quite so easy this time. While each block has an identical design, they're all just that little bit different with the colour choices and the overall feel. Some blocks are punchier, some more subdued. Those bright blue and orange fabrics are kind of a bitch to work with, to make sure they don't take over the whole quilt.

So I had to decide how I wanted the overall quilt to come together. Did I want the colours kind of evenly spaced throughout? Did I want stark contrasts. Bunny seemed to like the idea of "colour zones", where different sections of the quilt are more heavily one colour than others. I love how using the 14 fabric patterns has come together - the blocks lead into each other, without being obviously matchy.

Now I'm left with this to contend with:

Five rows of four, ready to be ironed and sewn together. This is coming together!

block 19 and musings

Still no pictures, due to some technical difficulties in camera purchasing (we'll try that again, next weekend) but I'm getting excited about the Scrappy Trip quilt. I'm on my second-to-last block and just blowing through it quickly which means that pretty soon it's on to choosing a layout and piecing this baby together. This time I'm actually done - there will be no going out and buying more fabric to make the quilt just one row bigger.

There's still so much work to do, but it's on to the work that goes the quickest. Piecing the blocks into strips and then a whole quilt top is when things start to fully come together and I get a full feel for the quilt. I'm super excited to be able to curl up with Bunny under this thing when it's done.

At this point in the game I'm also mooning over the next project, which is for my niece. There are about a dozen different things I could do for her, but I think I've finally settled on a pattern that I like. She gave me a specific wish list: turquoise, white, black and perhaps some damask if I can find it and I'm thinking I want to make a fairly straightforward quilt for her. Repeating blocks, using the same fabric over again rather than do anything slightly scrappy. The block I've been drawing up (based on a gorgeous pattern I found online) is nice and geometric, and just a little bit modern. Now I'm just doing the math for a double sized bed and figuring out how much fabric I need and start looking for prints. Then, goodbye money hello project!

For now, though? I've got to get through these last couple of blocks.

still tripping

Over the weekend I put the final stitch in block sixteen of the Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt I started back in January. Which was supposed to be the finish line but the fact is these blocks are addicting to sew. They're just easy straight sewing, and come together so beautifully that it's hard not to enjoy them. Plus, I had almost enough fabric left over to put together another four blocks and it was all in strips so it seemed just perfect to try and use it up. And then once I laid it out I really liked the idea of going a bit bigger, and Bunny agreed.

Which is how I ended up with another fat quarter, sewing away on block seventeen. It will probably be another two weeks now until these babies are done, which is just as well because it gives me some time to plot out my next project. My niece is next on the list, and I have a very clear idea what I want to do. I just need to plan out the blocks do up some math and figure out how much fabric I need to be buying for it.

I'm also trying to decide just how much money I'm willing to pay for batting for a living room throw blanket. My local quilt shop has some gorgeous wool and bamboo batting that I'm mooning over, but I can get cheap and decent batting for about a quarter of the price elsewhere. It is a dilemma. When I get around to making us a proper bedroom quilt I'll spend some money on the batting ... but this project I'm just not sure.

Speaking of bed quilts, I've also been slowly collecting fabrics for a project for Bunny and my bed. It's slightly mismatched, and I've decided on a colour palette of pinks/purples/blues for it and I'm trying to buy the fabric a little bit here, a little bit there.

off track

You know those weekends that roll by in a blur, and while you get lots done and probably enjoyed yourself, but you're not quite sure because you haven't had enough time to process things? This was one of those. We did make a point of having a dinner date (poutine!) on Friday night after work, which has to count for something.

Around the house stuff got finished - laundry put away, kitty litter cleaned, I tidied up the basement and such.

Saturday consisted of my second driving lesson (turning! I can turn! and it's fun!) and a couple of miscellaneous errands in the morning, followed by the baby shower. A couple hours filled with lots of people and kind of centred around, well, babies. I officially said goodbye to the baby quilt (though I will go back and get a photograph of us, and it's just living next door) but it's definitely on its way to a good home. After, we went back to my mother in law's and spent some more time with the family before running away to get some quiet time ... and some Doctor Who.

Sunday was out of town errands. Nowhere excessive, but we needed to get out to the flea market for some nicotine fluid for Bunny's e-cab and made a stop in at the quilting shop in the town nearby to price out batting and scope out fabrics for my next project. Then it was home so Bunny could get some solid hours of freelance in (and I got a bunch of around the house stuff done).

We did have some relaxing time. I got some sewing done and officially decided that I'm going for 20 blocks on the Scrappy Trip quilt which just leaves these last four to go, and means I'll be working on it awhile longer. We also stopped and checked in for Doctor Who on Saturday night and took an online visit to Jerez, Spain for a GP race. We'll catch up on the rest of the classes over the rest of the week. Thank goodness I was gifted a surprise three day weekend from work with how crazy everything's been.


Tomorrow it's back to the grind for the last full week of the month at work. It's all cylinders go there, and this time of month there's a lot of pressure with sales targets and no chances to make up for a bad day. Time is just zipping by lately.

what will the next project be?

As I was doing the finicky work of finishing the baby quilt (it's done! I made it!) I'd been rewarding myself with what I call my project in waiting, the Scrappy Trip quilt for our couch. It's reaching a near critical mass, with 12 of 16 planned blocks completed. If I happened to have more of the fabric line I'm using for it I'd be looking at making more, but really 4 feet square should be big enough for this puppy.

Last night I laid out the blocks on the bed just to play with the layout a little and it's looking good. I'm trying to decide how I feel about the colours. Last time it was looking a little overly blue and not very green or orange, but I've definitely balanced out the orange with these few blocks. The question is really how much more green do I do - it's going on a green couch, so I don't want there to be too much green. Tonight will be spent with some fabric cutting the next four blocks and contemplating.

What's dangerous is that instead of just being proud of what I've accomplished (a blanket! an honest to goodness blanket!) and a second, really cool, almost finished quilt top I'm starting to think about what comes next. Because even though I've still got layering and basting and quilting and binding I'm thinking of what's next. I got some fabric for Christmas, but I'm not really that crazy about it. I'm wanting to go buy more more more. I need a plan for the next one, though.

Of course I'm basically drowning in options. I'm planning a log cabin quilt for the love chair to co-ordinate with the scrappy one I'm working on, done in the same fabric line but a more traditional/less scrappy layout. My niece needs a quilt (I've been eyeing either hourglass blocks or a star sampler), my brother in law is begging for one. I've been eyeing the Swoon pattern online lately, and thinking that I eventually want to do a medallion type quilt for our bed. I just want to do them all and all now. Plus I also want to have about a million and one fabrics, although that's not sensible. I'm trying to keep the expenses reasonable, here.

I'm also starting to look more favourably on the original quilt. It's kind of hung up over a bedframe, and I see it every time I'm in the laundry room ironing and I'm starting to warm up to it, a bit. I don't like it per se, and there's a lot that I would do differently if given the chance (most of which I did do differently on the baby quilt). It's simplistic, the scale is off, there are some stupid planning mistakes and I just feel like I could do better. The thing is that I need to find someone to give it to, someone who I know will love the pink/silver/black colour scheme and who isn't as detail OCD as me to get bothered by odd sashing and I can't quite bring myself to buy backing and batting for no reason. Although maybe I'll use it to practice some more complicated quilting patterns? I don't know.

finish line, crossed

Maybe, just maybe, it's time for me to go out and buy a camera. I've been wanting one for awhile so that I can bore you with pictures of the food I'm cooking and crafts in progress and take pictures when I'm doing fun/exciting things in life. But mostly? I need a camera because I'm pretty sure I promised pictures of finished quilts.


And I definitely finished the baby blanket. It's done!!! Down to the last little stupid stitches on the binding (which I learned a lot about, by the way) it's done. It's been in the wash and crinkled up and everything. Seriously. I made a blanket. It feels pretty awesome.

Washing it for the first time rather terrified me, and I had to take it over next door and show it off to my in laws first, just in case the laundry machine broke it terribly somehow but everything came out just fine. In fact, it was somewhat magical the way the blanket was all a little bit stiff before going into the washer and came out of the dryer all in one piece and soft and in some areas a little puffier and just about the same in others.

I made a blanket. Life goal accomplished.

quilting update: the scrappy trip

While the baby quilt sits still unfinished, I'm taking my time with the last steps. Binding is one one of the longer sides, and prepped and pinned to the other but it's really not a part I'm enjoying. I've got till June, technically, to get it done though I'm aiming for the baby shower in April. It's plugging it's way along and I'm comfortable not putting too much time at once into it right now. A picture will come when it's finished entirely because I'm proud of this baby.

Instead I've been putting my time into the Scrappy Trip Along the World quilt I mentioned awhile back. Ever since this surfaced online late last year, many beautiful examples have started to surface online. Mine's made mostly from the same 12 fabrics (although only six colours go in one block, and each is made with a different combinations) and a couple of other co-ordinating prints to match.

Each block is 12" square finished, and I'm aiming for a final size of probably 16 blocks (so four feet square) although I may stretch it out to 20, but I doubt it. At this point I'm working on finishing up block 8, and I have the fabrics for blocks 9 and 10 pre-cut. I'm starting to get a real feel for what my Scrappy Trip is going to look like.

When we move back out, this quilt is to go on our sage green couch and with that in mind I picked fabrics that match the pillows I'd already sewn. It's an interesting line of coordinating patterns in a mixture of greens, blues, oranges and with brown accents thrown in there that Bunny especially likes. Each block I've been trying to choose a "theme" - so I've got blocks based around each colour, blocks of the brightest/most solid prints, blocks where I'm trying to use each of the three main colours evenly.

When I cut the material for that block I mostly only have the block I'm working on in mind and I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to get a real feel for how this quilt is coming out. Half of my blocks currently are blues, with the rest being an even mix of themes. I'm trying to focus on making a few more orange blocks and a few more mismatched, and I'm trying to remind myself to keep the greens to accents. Given the couch colour I don't need too much green in the quilt.

This is an exciting one, and it's the first one that I'm intending to finish that's entirely for Bunny and I. It's also a project that's let me identify more clearly what it is exactly I'm not liking about the first quilt top I worked on - the simplicity of the blocks compared to the scale of the sashing bothers me a lot, and I would have made better choices in how to run the sashing doing it a second time. I may actually end up finishing it entirely later down the road. If I can find someone who would actually want the quilt given the pink/silver/black scheme and the simplicity I probably will give it a finish. I just know it's not going to be overly used around my home and don't want to put any more time and effort into it because of that but if I know it will be used it would be another story.

project roundup: mild apathy

The past week or two have not been very productive for me. Only little bits of cooking and baking here and there, and very little has been accomplished project wise. A little bit of project ADD has me perhaps trying to teach myself how to crochet, because clearly I need a new project skill and I need to further divide my time. Right? Although at least with crochet that's something I can do during downtime at work and I'm not in any way intending it to be a "home" type project.

The past two or three days though, things have started to get done. I've gotten started on the binding of the baby quilt. This is the tedious bit, I've decided. Sewing the binding on the front is easy enough, but the back with all the slip stitch that's required? Not only is it tedious but it rather scares me to death. I'm afraid of mucking it up entirely, by which I mean doing a crummy job and having all the binding come off in the wash. Because of that I think the binding is going to be the most time consuming bit, although I may find that next time it's the bit where I give in and borrow a sewing machine.

I've also finally gotten started on more of my Scrappy Trip blocks, and now that I'm going again there I'm just zipping along. I'm about halfway done block eight which puts me at about halfway done piecing the blocks. This is the sort of relaxing slow sewing I like; it's easy to sit down with some strips and watch the Walking Dead while I sew. Even the cutting/trimming has been fairly easy as I'm using a jelly roll for the fabric, though I often find I need to trim the sides up.

Catching a case of the project blahs really sucks, but I'm glad I'm working my way out of them. Getting things done and getting productive makes things start to look up. I'm feeling more myself when I'm getting some stuff accomplished, even if it's just in bits and pieces here and there. Plus, starting on the last bit of that baby quilt has me excited. Woo!

baby quilt: so close to done

A few days after my last update it happened. I put the last few stitches in the quilt top of the baby quilt. I could go back and do a more detailed quilting, but I don't really think it needs it and I don't want to take away from the piecing and the fabric patterns so I'm declaring the quilting done.

There's not much left to do. I trimmed off the excess batting and backing fabric, and now all that's left is to deal with the binding. Then that's it. It will be done. I'm a little bit in awe of this, and even though it's just little it feels like a major accomplishment. Making a blanket has been on my life list since I was tiny, and I've almost done it.

Of course even though I'm nowhere near done this guy, my mind has already started jumping around to other projects. I want to finish up my Scrappy Trip top that I've been slowly plugging away at in the meantime. I'm working on block seven, and I think I'm aiming for 16 blocks for the completed top so it's four feet square. It's just a little throw quilt to go on one of our living room couches, so I think that's a decent size. My mind is also a little preoccupied with a traditional log cabin quilt I'd like to make with two of the same fabrics to go on the other couch when we finally move out. And I'm vaguely planning a quilt for my niece, as that seems only fair.

Then there's the orchid cross stitch that simply needs to be completed. Given how slow work has been lately, I just might take it in to play with on the downtime. Unless things pick up soon that will probably be a good call. I also need to finish up the pillows, but that's not really pressing as they have nowhere to go at the moment.