{Throwback Thursday} Double Irish Chain -- the First One

It always surprises me how little my taste in quilts has changed over the past decade. The kinds of quilts that make my heart go pitty-pat haven't changed all that much.

Which is nice, because it means that I still love most of my early projects.

I finished the top for this quilt back in 2009. pin basted it a year later, then procrastinated for another two years before I worked up the nerve to quilt it. It was, and still is, one of my absolute favorite quilts and I was afraid of ruining it with my beginning attempts at free-motion quilting.

In hindsight, it's probably a good thing that I waited.

There are at least twenty different brown prints here, most of them purchased just for this project. I did a lot of shopping and searching for just the right colors, which may make it one of the more expensive quilts I've made to date. I don't plan many quilts like that these days. If I can't pull most of it from my scrap bags, it probably isn't going to happen.

procrastinating and making excuses

It's almost a little hard to believe that this one is done. I started piecing it in early 2009, right after discovering Bonnie Hunter's leaders and enders page and decided that I wanted to make pretty much everything there.



I had the top finished by mid-March, less than two months later, but once I did, I was paralyzed. I didn't have the skills to quilt it myself at that point and even after I did have the skills, I was afraid to touch it. I finally broke down and pin basted just before Christmas 2010.

Then it sat. And sat. Even thought I'd decided how I wanted to quilt it, it got moved from my sewing corner in the dining room out to the sewing room and back inside and back outside quite a few times. I started to worry that the safety pins might have rusted, but I was afraid to check. Then I thought about quilting it but didn't have brown fabric for the binding, and if I couldn't bind it, what was the sense of quilting it? When it comes to this quilt, I'm good at making excuses.

Even after I pulled out and and decided to get it done, I kept putting it off. It was going to take days and days to quilt. And days and days to bind. I had other projects I could get done faster.

It took two days to quilt and two days to bind. And now I can snuggle up under it.



I did finish a whole lot of other quilts while I was avoiding this one. I think 2009 was the year of the 20some quilts I kept. And 2010 was the year of the almost fifty baby quilts. (I don't want to talk about 2011 -- that year doesn't count.)

What have you been putting off that you could finish and enjoy if you just set your mind to it for a few hours?

This post is linked to Finish it up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts, Sew and Tell, and Can I get a Whoop-Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

I spent the day Sunday helping a friend pickle brussel sprouts, so I'm sure it's okay that my retreat spilled over into this morning. And my entire list of things to do is DONE!

I pin basted the quilt I'm making for my friend.

All of the borders are on the thrifty quilt.

The Double Irish Chain is assembled. I'm not sure how that part took as long as it did, but it's done and I love the finished quilt top. Now I've just got to figure out how I want to quilt it.



I'm really loving this controlled-scrappy thing. There are about twenty different shades of brown here, but I think it still has the feel of a two color quilt.



I'm wondering which of the other two color patterns I can play with this way -- maybe Robbing Peter to Pay Paul?

I finished a bunch more blocks for the red quilt, and now that I can see more of it laid out, I'm no longer afraid that it's a waste of fabric.



And I got my spring postcards done. I've been really hung up about these, since all of the ideas I had were for applique and I wasn't sure I had the time or talent to pull them off. I'm sure I can do it, just not that I want to do it with a deadline.

Then I remembered how intrigued I've been by Chinese Coins lately and figured out how I could fit two panels of them onto a postcard. There are five strips in each row, measuring 1/2" each. It's by far the tiniest piecing I've ever done.

And the cards wound up measuring 4 x 5 7/8" -- I should have known to make them bigger than 4x6 and then trim them. I thought they were going to be bigger, but they weren't. It took me a while to figure out how to make them bigger without ripping out all four borders, but I did it!

With the Glittering Gems top done and the Birds in the Air top ready to assemble, I had to step back and see what else I was working on before those two projects, and Mountain Majesties before them, took over my quilting life. I know there's the cat quilt (of course!) and the spool quilt, but beyond that, my memory gets a bit hazy. Don't ask what's on my knitting needles -- I'm not even sure where those are.

A few months back, I bought about eight of those plastic 12x12 boxes that are made for organizing scrapbook paper. They have got to be my best quilting notion/gadget/thingie ever! Assuming that I actually use them, I can put in the blocks and the parts of blocks and the pattern, snap them shut, and stack them up in the sewing room where they'll be sitting there safe and sound when I get back from whatever crazy detour dragged me away. I love my plastic boxes! If they ever go on sale that cheap again, I think I want a dozen more.

I was going to unstack the boxes last night and see what was in them, but I got pulled away by a cardboard box full of dark brown scraps that's been perched on top of my treadle machine for I-don't-know-how-long. Inspired by that Leaders and Enders page on Quiltville, I'd pulled the fabric and bought tea-dyed muslin to go with it and done the math, and then life got in the way and I never made it any farther.

So I did some cutting. And some sewing. And now I've got a pretty decent start on a scrappy Double Irish Chain --



It was so much fun I wanted to play with those blocks all night, but my body gave out on me at about 11:30. Stupid sleep deprivation -- won't let me quilt, but even though I'm too tired to stay upright, I toss and turn until 3am. I'll be so glad when we're all healthy and stop waking each other up. It has to happen sooner or later.

It's funny -- just about everything that was wrong earlier this week is still wrong, but I'm getting used to it all. The post office delivered the mailing label from our missing schoolbooks today. Just the label and a bunch of forms for me to fill out so they can try to find whatever it was attached to. It seems like the tracking number is still attached to the package, so hopefully that's intact and they can get us our books!

They also delivered some goodies --



That's twenty-two spools of thread from Connecting Threads, lots of neutrals and some colors for applique and quilting. I've been meaning to order more neutrals for a while now, since I'm going through it so fast and then I realized that I need red for Leif's chicken quilt. That's the first time I actually did the math and compared this stuff to the quilting thread at Joann's, even on sale. Wow, it's a huger difference than I ever realized!

So I ordered the bunch of neutrals I'd planned on, and the red, and some colors I think I'll need for upcoming quilts.

The book is Knitted Lace of Estonia. I haven't had a chance to do more than look at the pictures, but WOW!