The red quilt is done! For an "accidental" quilt, this one came out great.

Does anyone else have quilts just happen like this? I saw the pattern in a magazine at Mom's house, thought of all of the red scraps I'd been passing over when I was picking fabric for other quilts, and realized that I could probably make it. My mental line between could and should is a very thin one. So the pattern came home with me and, after a few of months of doing nothing about it, I started pulling fabric.

By the time I started running into concerns, I was committed. And by the time I tried to assemble the top and found out I was six blocks short, I had too much time and effort into the project to even think about turning back. Even though I thought I wanted to.



I had some doubts about the pieced back, but now that the quilt is trimmed and bound, I really like the way it looks. I may start piecing backs on purpose, even if I'm buying the fabric.



I sat down tonight and updated the list, which has gone from 26 WIPs down to 12. With only two and a half weeks left of the ten I'd planned to stick to, I'm thinking it may be nearly as short as it's going to get. I could possibly cut it down to nine, but I'm really itching to start some new projects.

• Bento Box -- top is done
  
  
• Simple Pleasures -- top is done and ready for the longarm
  
  
• Lover's Knot -- no new progress, still need to cut and piece a ton of blocks
  
  
• Courthouse Steps -- 5 out of 35 blocks pieced
  
  
• Chicken Kit -- no new progress
  
  
• layered squares -- still need to pin and quilt
  
  
• scrappy cats -- more blocks to piece
  
  
• flower baskets -- no new progress, but I've got ideas to simplify it
  
  
• my own Scrappy Mountains Majesty -- need to finish quilting
  
  
• Cheery Buzzsaws -- need to get the binding on
  
  
• Glittering Gems -- need to prep for the longarm and quilt
  
  
• North Pacific -- no progress
  
  

We played with bleach this morning. I've been wanting to try this technique ever since I saw it on Simply Quilts. When I saw the episode, it was pouring rain and there wasn't a leaf to be found in my yard. The sun came out, the leaves grew back, and I never found the time until today.

It wasn't anywhere near as complicated or scary as I'd expected it to be.




Not all of our results were great, but we were just playing around and learned from our mistakes and next time we'll actually accomplish something permanent.

My favorite experiment is this guy, who I traced onto freezer paper and pressed onto the fabric before spraying the bleach --



I've been meanig to post the revised list list (which is getting SHORT!) but that will have to wait until I have more time.

It's starting to warm up again. I'll try not to complain, not after the unseasonable and quilter-friendly temperatures we've been having.

My weekend wasn't as painful as I expected it to be. Thursday night, I got three quilts pin basted. The red quilt and Scrappy Mountain Majesties had pieced backs. Cheery Buzz Saws had pieced batting. I pinned and found pleats repinned and pinned quilts to the carpet and pretty much made myself crazy. Then I folded them into a neat stack on the treadle and started to figure out when I might have time to get them quilted.

The red quilt is bigger than the rail fence, which was the largest I'd done on my Janome so far. I was pretty sure I could manage the extra seven inches. The rail fence took me three days, so I figured that the red quilt might take four. The buzz saws and scrappy moutains would probably take a day each.

The only problem was that I wanted to see them all done and I wanted to see them all done soon. Because if I left them in their pin basted stack they might spontaneously combust or something.

Can you feel the pain in my hands starting?

I quilted the red quilt -- all of it -- on Friday.

I quilted most of the buzz saws on Saturday morning and finished it yesterday.

I started Scrappy Mountain Majesties this morning.

I handstitched the binding on a different quilt, and handstitched 2/3 of the way around the red quilt.

And my hands aren't hurting yet.

Now I remember why I never got those cat blocks pieced even though I had all of the pieces cut out. They're tedious! Not difficult, just very boring.




I finished two this afternoon before I decided that I'd rather be doing someting else.

They went back into the box and I pieced backings for the red quilt and my Scrappy Mountain Majesties. That one didn't photograph well -- my camera didn't like all of the light little flowers on the dark background.

Quilting makes me giddy. I've been running out of piecing projects on the list, getting down to the ones I don't really want to be working on, which is why they've sat so long and why they're on the list in the first place.

The buzz saw blocks were done, but really not anywhere near square. And I wasn't sure how the light and dark sections were going to play together and didn't want to try putting them together and find out that the whole thing was a disaster. The more I've got invested in the fabric, the more I start to think like that.

So, in an effort to avoid that disaster, I finished the last six squares for the red quilt and got the top assembled.



Now I'm facing the challenge of how to quilt it. I'd planned to do this one on Mom's longarm, but there are two other tops in line ahead of it. And it's only five inches bigger than the rail fence (which I'd decided was as big as I wanted to go on my Janome.) I've got just barely enough red backing fabric if I don't use the longarm and need that five extra inches on each side...and I want to quilt this thing NOW. I guess my lack of patience makes my decision for me.

Today was supposed to be a stay at home and quilt day, but I had to drive into town for carrots and celery and barley, so I decided we might as well stop at the thrift store which had an "all clothing 2/$1" sign out front. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate to parallel park in the van? And how many places there are down here where that's the only way to park?

I almost didn't bother because I knew the sign has been up since at least yesterday and thought there wouldn't be anything good left, but I fought the parking space and won and there were eight very nice plaid shirts to be found. That's after I was picky and put back the ugly ones and the ones that weren't 100% cotton.

And at WalMart, after picking up the veggies and a new smoke detector, I found this:



I've been wanting one of these since I saw Mom's, which is almost identical except hers has a spinning base. And hers was twenty dollars more. I can pick up and turn mine. After putting in my little acrylic rulers, and rotary cutters, and pigma pens and extra gadgets, I don't seem to have enough to fill it up.

Oh, and the buzz saw blocks went together okay. I'm not going to claim that it lays flat (I actually haven't looked close enough to know if it does or not) but who's going to be able to tell when there are a couple of little boys under it?

Quinn doesn't like dinosaurs anymore. He wants me to give this quilt to grandma. I'm not sure if that's part of the "all quilts are for Grandma" belief that he had after I finished her log cabin last Christmas, or if he thinks she really does need a dinosaur quilt.



Heath wants it (and to be absolutely honest, I did buy the fabric intending to make a quilt for him -- when he was a lot littler), but I've been reminding him that he's getting a quilt made from the seal fabric he convinced me to buy on a shop hop a couple of years ago. This is why I don't plan in advance which quilt is for which kid.

Whoever winds up with it, I'm very pleased with the way this one came out. Doesn't it almost look like I had a plan for the fabric when I bought it? I used what didn't fit in the front for the back, combined with a yard of cheap clearance fabric from Joann's. Or that's what I thought when I was piecing it -- now I realize that there are a couple of fabrics I had set aside for the back that didn't make it in. And I'm sure there are another two book pages that I was saving for the back and lost.

If that stuff ever turns up, I'll work it into a baby quilt.



I'm going to run out of tops to quilt soon -- not sure if that's good or bad. It certainly can't hurt to be caught up, but I'm having so much fun playing around with the free motion and the walking foot I'd hate to have to stop now!

This afternoon I dug out my red fabric and pieced the six blocks that were missing
when I laid out the red quilt. With a little luck, I hope to get it assembled tonight and find enough big hunks of red fabric to piece the backing.

Leif's snails are quilted!



Back when I was having such trouble with my free motion quilting, I thought about stitching in the ditch around each snail and leaving the wide border unquilted. Some nice online friends convinced me that would be a bad idea, and I wasn't about to try free motion on the border and couldn't figure out what else to do with it, so it sat.

Last week I saw a segment on a quilting show about channel quilting and decided to follow the diagonal lines of the blocks, but didn't give any thought to when I might actually do it. I got the quilt pin basted earlier this week, using the boards I talked my husband into buying me.

And last night, I found myself quilting the top. I don't remember deciding to pull out the walking foot and get started. If I had any tentative plans to sit down and quilt something, it was to meander the dinosaur quilt.

The diagonal lines went fast, so fast that I remembered a recent discussion on Stashbusters about how baby quilts should be heavily quilted to help them stand up to frequent washing and I decided to put in another set of lines down the middles of the blocks so that they'd be two inches apart instead of four. And my movie still wasn't over, so I meandered the border.



I am so happy with the way this quilt has come out. It's another splurge project -- Connecting Threads had a great sale and I think I spent a whole twenty bucks on the fabric for the top.

Today I'm meandering dinosaurs.

Bagsket!

I've been avoiding this project for a while now. As soon as I saw the bagsket tutorial, I knew I wanted to make one. Then I found this fabric on sale at Joann's and for at least long enough for me to go home, find out how much I needed, and come back for it the next day, I was convinced it was the perfect choice.

Until I had it at home and really thought about cutting into it and deciding which fabric to use for which part, and realized that I could have made this project with stash fabric. I started having second thoughts and put it all away until later.

It would probably still be tucked away if I hadn't made the list, and if I hadn't put the bagsket on it. With so many other projects I forgot and left off, I'm not sure how this one made it, but I keep rewriting the list and instead of just crossing off that line, I decided to pull out the fabric and get started whether I felt like it or not.

I was still excited about making a bagsket, just not with the fabric I'd splurged on. And since I had splurged (even if it was a little one) I was stuck using what I'd bought.

The fabric looked much cuter than I remembered when I pulled it out this morning. Has it always said "all nighter" and "on a fabric binge?"

I started cutting after breakfast and had the whole thing done this afternoon, even after taking time off to make lunch and go to the grocery store and make dinner. The tutorial instructions are easy to follow, although I admit I ignored them and did my own thing a couple of times.

It's even got pockets on the inside!



Instead of buying bias tape for the edgings, I made my own binding with the extra fabric. Cheaper, didn't require another trip to the store, and it matches the rest of the bag better than I think purchased stuff would.

I'm so glad I finally tackled this project! If I'd known how quick and straightforward it was going to be, it never would've sat for so long.

I've been having fun.

The temperature has dropped about thirty degrees, so I no longer have to schedule my quilting around the weather. Hooray! Even better, I've had time to get some quilting done.



This morning, I started quilting the blue bargello on Mom's machine. The plan was to do clamshells. I got about a third of it done before I realized that my arcs were too wide. I finished it with tinier shells, which are just what I had in mind in the first place. But when I went back to requilt the first part, the machine started fussing. I guess I'll be trying that on my Janome tonight.

Once that's done, I'll be cutting and pressing binding because I got the strippy lattice quilted yesterday in the two hour stretch after we got home from the river and before I had to start dinner.



I'm getting happier and happier with my free motion quilting on the Janome. Now I've just got to quit trying to sew through the safety pins before I break my machine!

Estate sales fascinate me, especially the ones we have down in this neck of the woods. Who actually goes through the house with a roll of masking tape and puts prices on everything that doesn't get out of the way?!

I would love to have been there at the opening of the sale we went to on Sunday. It was in an old trailer in the woods. I wouldn't have even turned up that road if I hadn't had my husband with me. There was a sign out by the highway, and a couple of guys standing outside, but no signs of a sale. If I'd turned onto the road alone, I definitely wouldn't have gotten out of the van. But I trustingly followed my sweetie.

There was some stuff arranged on tables and a lot more stuff sitting where it had been when it all became an estate. We opened an old lunch box to see if there was a thermos inside, it still held packages of cookies and the old guy's prescriptions. That creeps me out, and also makes me wonder if anyone actually took a good look at what they were selling.

I bought the old iron that was still on the ironing board and "was probably working in September when he died" for a dollar. It's much nicer than the cheap one I bought at Walmart a couple of months back. Now I'm wondering which is older, the iron or my trusty wooden ironing board.



I also bought the old-fashioned pencil sharpener off of the wall for a quarter. I've been trying to find one of those for a couple of years now. That's the one "classroom" thing I was determined for my kids to have -- mostly because they work so much better than the cheap little plastic ones. And if I bolt it to the wall, they can't lose it!



I still can't get over the bird house, which was sitting out under what had once been an awning and cost us a whole two dollars. I'm always looking for birdhouses for our yard and deciding that what's in the stores isn't quite what I want. This one is absolutely the most perfectest birdhouse ever!

The thermometer did win for a while, but it's supposed to drop back down into the mid-eighties this week. That's warm enough to take the kids down to play at the river, but not so hot it'll melt my brain -- works for me!

I did get some more quilting done once the temperature dropped into the nineties. Not the productive binges of creativity that I wanted to be doing, but enough to keep me from whining about how quilt-deprived I've been.

It's been five weeks since I made the list. Except for one project that wasn't on the list but should have been, I haven't started anything new.

And the list has dropped from twenty-six projects down to twenty! The Weed Whacker, the Cat Baby Quilt, Birds in the Air, the cat bed, Dot to Dot, and the tea pot quilt are done.

Bento Box -- top is done

Simple Pleasures -- top is done

Lover's Knot -- 250 blocks left to piece if I make it the size the pattern calls for. I don't want or need a quilt that big, so I'm thinking it'll only take another hundred or so blocks

Courthouse Steps -- I've been cutting strips, but not started piecing

Chicken Kit -- cut all of the wool pieces and got the cotton background pieced

Bagsket -- need to find the thing!

Dino Quilt -- is pin-basted and ready to quilt

rail fence -- one side of the binding left to stitch down

layered squares -- the border is on, need to quilt

red quilt -- finish last six blocks and assemble

scrappy cats -- more blocks to piece

lattice strippy -- top is done

flower baskets -- lots of applique, which I have no intention of doing anytime soon (why is this one even on the list?!)

A's Scrappy Mountains Majesty -- sew down binding

my own Scrappy Mountains Majesty -- quilt

Leif's Snails -- quilt

Cheery Buzzsaws -- blocks are pieced, need to assemble and start on pieced binding

Glittering Gems -- quilt

Blue Bargello -- Quilt

North Pacific

With all of the recent craziness, I'm surprised at how many of the projects I've managed to finish and how many more are looking finishable. The list was definitely a good idea. I'm ready to start a few new projects, but after six finishes, I'm going to need some new WIPs.



This is the one that wasn't on the list but should have been. I bought fabric for it at the beginning of July (actually I turned Alex loose in Joann's and had her pick it out) and it's been sitting next ot my sewing machine ever since because even though I used to sew a lot of clothing, I was intimidated. Not to0 intimidated to buy fabric and commit myself, just too nervous about making a mistake to actually cut into it.

I followed the Spring Ruffle Top Tutorial, which was easier than I expected. I'm not sure I did the pleats at the top the way I was supposed to, but it worked.

strings are fun!

It's a good thing I like string quilts, because I've had literally bags and bags of pretty little fabric strips fall into my lap over the past couple of months. That's in addition to the strings I cut myself when I first got excited about string quilts.



The front and back sections of Alex's cat bed have been pieced for a while, but I decided that quilting them to some heavy batting would make the whole thing more durable. I'm still having fun stippling, so that plan worked out just fine. (Note to self -- remember to put the presser foot down after you lift it to shift the fabric!)

And at some point during the process, I decided that it would be a good idea to add a zipper to make it easier to take out the stuffing and wash the cover if disaster struck. Would've been a perfectly reasonable idea if I'd put in a zipper during the last twenty years, or even remembered how to put in a zipper.

My google search for zipper tutorials only turned up results for installing invisible zippers into the sides of skirts. Skirts are the deep dark root of my secret zipper hatred. I found a tutorial for adding a zipper to a bag, but it told me to follow the directions on the package, which my thrift store zipper didn't come with.

So I borrowed the zipper foot from my twelve year old daughter's machine and winged it. The zipper is attached. She's been warned not to ever ever unzip it unless there is a laundry emergency, because I'd rather trash the entire project than try that again.

The cat, of course, wants nothing to do with her new bed and spent last night sleeping in the bathroom on a wet towel.



I also got the string blocks for that baby quilt assembled. Now I need to figure out what I can back it with. I really want to find some more cheap thrift store sheets!

Today's quilting was derailed by a migraine and a hundred mile drive to replace a water bed mattress with a split seam -- just what I felt like dragging four kids along to do when it was 102 degrees out there! On the bright side, my migraine meds did work and we caught the leak before it flooded our bedroom too badly.

I've got higher hopes for tomorrow!

The lengths I'll go to to preserve my quilting time...

It's going to be hot today, hotter tomorrow, and hotter than that the next day, going on for at least a week. We don't have air conditioning, but the house is shaded by trees and if I'm careful to keep doors closed and drapes shut it stays a decent temperature inside.

As long as I don't use the stove or oven or anything else that'll heat things up -- like my iron. The whole thing is a ridiculously delicate balancing act, and last year or the year before I would've put up the quilting and knit a sock. This year, though, I refuse to let go of my current quilting binge.

If that means I've got to get up really really early and use my iron while it's still cool outside and I can have the windows open...well, that's what was doing at dawn this morning.

My first plan was to finish piecing the buzz saw blocks, but I don't need the iron for those so I set them aside for later and finished piecing a bunch of string blocks for a baby quilt. Those went together quickly enough that I was also able to press the Layered Squares top and would be pin basting it this afternoon if I hadn't decided that it needs a border so the binding doesn't hit up against the edges of the squares.

This afternoon while I'm ironless, I'll finish the buzz saw blocks, or start quilting the cat bed, or trim the strippy blocks and see about putting them together into a top.

My list of twenty-six WIPs has shrunk to twenty-one. And I'm making a list of new projects to start soon. This morning, I found two more at Mel's Own Place. I'm absolutely definitely going to do Bread and Butter and All Abuzz. I'm printing a stack of patterns as I type this.

Including an absolutely fantastic rooster quilt. The pattern (which for some reason doesn't have a picture) is here. I need that quilt on my kitchen wall!

After three days of what felt like endless meandering, my rail fence (which has been waiting its turn since November) is quilted and the binding is machine stitched into place and it really shouldn't take all that long to get it hand stitched down into place.



This is the most densely quilted of my quilts. The purple thrift store sheet I used for my backing isn't terribly photogenic, but can you see all of that wonderful texture? It's making me a bit giddy.



In an unusual example of using what I've got, I used thread that came in a gift pack with my sewing machine. It's a funky shade of purple that actually blended nicely with the color of the sheet. Until I ran out and had to switch over to charcoal, but the quilt is so busy that I dare anyone to find it without serious searching. And it's a utility quilt -- if I can do a scrappy binding, why not use my thread the same way?

I probably would've had enough purple if I hadn't made the quilting so dense.

What really surprised me was the amount of lint left by the obscenely overpriced thread that came from the Janome dealer. It actually gummed up the machine's needle threader.

Makes me feel much more confident about the thread I usually use -- Essential from Connecting Threads. I've always been happy with it, but I keep hearing stories about how linty it is. There's lint when I clean my machine after a lot of sewing, but nowhere near as much as the "good" thread left.

I thought I was tired of meandering and reading to switch back to piecing for awhile, but now I'm not so sure -- this has been fun!

I got the top done this morning and it wasn't nearly as tedious as I expected it to be. Simple Pleasures isn't an example of precision piecing, but it's a completed quilt top.

And the thing is HUGE.



I could have easily have made it a little or a lot smaller, but I didn't realize how big it was getting until I'd already picked out oodles of different prints and I wanted to use them all, and to use lots of pieces of each one...and the pattern told me to make it 70x86... Reading a set of measurements and then picturing what size quilt they'll be is not one of my talents.

I suppose we really do need a few bed sized quilts along with all of the throws.

and diet Coke is on sale at WalMart!

Our phone rang very early this morning -- early enough that when it woke me up, I thought it was still night and someone in the family must be dead or maimed. Maybe some people might want to consider that making last minute car pooling plans at 4:44am isn't the best phone etiquette? I had planned on getting up early, but not quite THAT early.

I did get myself motivated enough to finally assemble the Bento Box top. And I finished piecing the blocks for Simple Pleasures, so if my luck or motivation or whatever holds out, I hope to get that one assembled tomorrow morning before the kids are out of bed.

Bill is back at work after two weeks of vacation and when it's just the kids and me at home, I can chase them out of the front room to lay out blocks and pin rows and do all of that other less-than-fun stuff that you have to slog through if you're ever going to finish a quilt.

This stretch of vacation was very low key -- we rattled around the house and made a few day trips. Yesterday's was to take the kids to the fish hatchery near Sisters. I could never get quite the camera angles I wanted, but it was so cute watching Leif toss in a couple of little pellets of fish food at a time and then jump and clap his hands every time the fish went after them.



The diet Coke? I really needed the caffeine today and it was on sale cheaper than I've seen it in ages. Now there's enough in my kitchen to last quite a while. I'm happy.

This might work

I took another look at the fabrics I'd decided not to use in the buzz saw quilt and picked out the two that might possibly work. The others are either too light or too pretty to use. Why sacrifice the gorgeous dandelions if they would be in little strips that butchered the print?

My current plan is to finish the center blocks with what I've got and decide from there if I need the extra fat quarters or not. They're halfway done already and if I lose my momentum, I'm afraid this'll be another red quilt.

I am furious with myself!

Last week, I cut the pieces for the cheery buzz saw quilt I've been planning (I can do that -- it's on my list!) The fabric was a bundle of fat-eights that I got on sale from Connecting Threads -- not expensive, but I really love that fabric so it was too special to mess up. I'd pulled out twenty-two of the fat eights and got all of the pieces I needed with some tiny scraps left over.

Today, I started piecing and discovered that three of my 6 1/2" squares were 6 1/4" along one side. And of course I couldn't remember where I'd put the fabric I wasn't using in the quilt, so I had to totally ransack my sewing room. But I found it!

I thought that saved the situation, but it turns out that I don't want to use those fabrics in this quilt. That's why they were put away back in the sewing room and not part of the quilt in the first place.

I can't piece scraps to make the squares I need. I could order three more fat quarters, but I'd wind up spending half as much as I spent on the sampler I started out with and buying far more fabric than I needed. Did I mention I got it on a really good sale? I could splurge and buy enough of the yellow tossed dandelions for the backing, but again, that would cost a ton.

What makes me the whole thing so darn aggravating is that I brought it on myself with one little mis-measurement.

What if I bought one yard of gorgeous yellow dandelions for the back and surrounded it with a wide border of the muslin that's left over from the front? And bought three fat quarters to make up the missing squares and used what was left from those for the binding? That'd only cost around eleven bucks...

I need to piece some blocks and see how much I really like this quilt.

More than half of the Simple Pleasures blocks are done and I've had a chance to lay them out. My concerns about this quilt are rapidly disappearing. The only one left now is how I'm going to quilt it!



As great as that is, it's left me without a leaders/enders project, which is slightly annoying. I've got a thousand or so two inch squares that need to be randomly sewn together for a quilt I fell in love with and then abandoned a couple of years ago, and the best part of using leaders and enders is that they help you slog through endless piecing like that, but I keep losing the bits I've sewn.

I'm looking for a container with a lid that'll sit next to my sewing machine and keep them together. I actually bought one at Walmart last week, but when I made it to Target without kids yesterday, I checked out their plastic storage stuff.

They had the perfect little storage thingie, with three compartments that snapped one on top of the other so I could've kept the squares in one and the pieced units in the others. It was only three-fifty.

I don't have one sitting by my sewing machine.

Because I stepped to one side to see if it came in different colors and got distracted by the flat plastic bins that are just a hair smaller than the twelve-inch square containers I use for current projects and less than half the price.



I bought half a dozen of the big plastic containers when they were on sale at Thanksgiving and thought at the time I had more than I needed. Once I realized how wrong I was, I couldn't find any more good sales on them.

These little boxes have enough room for a magazine or book and whatever else I need to keep together as long as the blocks aren't huge. I really need to go back to Target and pick up a few more -- and the neat little thing with the snap compartments -- before they get rid of the college stuff.

I've also decided that those Zip Loc Big Bags are perfect when I have to lug quilts around to use the long arm or play show and tell. Why it took me so long to figure that out, since I've been using them for yarn for ages, I don't know.

binding and binding and binding

At five-thirty this morning, the printer started running. I thought the cat had stepped on the copy button or something, but it seems to have spat out an ad for HP products all by itself.

I couldn't go back to sleep, so I slipped out of bed and headed for the dining room to cut the binding for Birds in the Air before the house got too warm to use the iron. Got that cut and pressed and some more 2 1/2" squares for Simple Pleasures cut, and no one else in the house had surfaced yet, so I decided to take the risk that the noise of my sewing machine would wake someone up.

I got the borders machine sewn onto the bird quilt, AND the teapot quilt, AND Dot to Dot before Quinn finally bounded out into the kitchen a few minutes after nine, followed by the rest of them. That was my quilting goal for the entire day!

Dot to Dot and the teapot quilt have been sitting quilted but unbound for months because I couldn't figure out which fabric to use. Then, a couple of days ago, I went up to the sewing room to get backing for my rail fence and absolutely perfect fabric choices, fabrics that won't work in anything else I'm doing or plan on doing, were staring right at me.





I've got so much binding to hand stitch! And it just hit me yesterday that every quilt on that looooong list of WIPs is going to go into this same pile. Judy sent me a great link to a tutorial for doing it by machine, but my last attempt at that was such a disaster I'm not trying again until I have a quilt I'm willing to take chances with. In the meantime, I'm telling myself that a stack of quilts ready for the hand stitching is better than a stack of quilts waiting for me to cut and machine stitch the bindings so I can get to the hand stitching.

Dad has always been tremendously supportive of Mom's hobbies and mine. He's the one who bought my Janome as a Christmas present when I already had a working machine packed away someplace.

Yesterday, he went above and beyond by offering to take all four kids -- including the four year old who has been an absolute screaming terror for the past couple of weeks -- to the park so that I could quilt Birds in the Air. It's the first time he's taken all of them anywhere, so I had my fingers crossed that they wouldn't drive him nuts before I could get the quilt done.

On a good day, they'd all play happily and my daughter would keep the little ones corralled and they'd just need an adult there because kids can't play at the park alone. It hadn't started out as a good day, so I wasn't optimistic.

But Grandpa did it! I hear there was one tantrum, but he survived it.



It is SO much easier to get good results without a preschooler wrapped around each ankle. I always had a hunch that it would be, but this was my first chance to actually try it.

Birds in the Air is one of the tops that I've been hesitant to quilt because I was afraid to ruin it. I've been waiting until I got more practice, but while I wait the pile of "too good to learn on" quilts grows...

I'm so glad I took the plunge with this one. The quilting is exactly what I wanted it to be, better than the triangles or the applique!

I know exactly which quilt I want to throw on the long arm next, but it's going to be at least a couple of weeks before Mom's schedule and mine mesh again. While I wait, I've got the rail fence (another "too good" top) pin basted and ready for another attempt at meandering on the Janome. I'm getting a little better at that.

I've tackled the list! Two sides of the Weed Whacker are sewn down. I got the background of the little chicken wall hanging pieced and the bits of wool felt cut out. I also got the baby cat quilt finished --- not as nicely as I'd hoped, but it's done. I'm not sure if done really is better than perfect in this case, but I'm not trying to pick out the quilting and redo it.



I was going to start quilting Layered Squares the other night when I went over to keep a friend company while she started a new project, but it turned out that the yellow and white gingham I'd planned on using was really nasty. I don't know if I'd never looked at it closely, or if I'd hated the quilt so much I didn't care how bad the fabric was, but when I finally got ready to pin, I couldn't make myself do it. So my friend and I went shopping and now I've got a very nice purple and white print to use.

And I've got a date with the long arm later this week -- hopefully Birds in the Air will be ready for binding soon!

mustn't start anything new....mustn't start anything new...mustn't start anything new....

That's the mantra over at Stashbusters these days, and although I'm not sure I agree with it, it might just be possible that I should come up with my own variation. While Bill was in Safeway picking up some stuff for dinner and I was stuck in the car with the kids (because sometimes it really is much faster to do it that way than for all of us to go in and trek through the store)I made a list of my WIPs. Not UFOs, projects that I'm really working on and expect to finish. Just the ones that I could list without really thinking too hard.

There are twenty five of them.

That might actually be a lot.

Weed Whacker -- needs binding sewn down

Bento Box -- blocks need to be sewn into a top

Simple Pleasures -- lots of piecing left to do - but the snowballs are done!

Lover's Knot -- 250 blocks left to piece

Courthouse Steps -- I've been cutting strips, but not started piecing

Chicken Kit -- gotta make sure there's enough wool

Bagsket

Dino Quilt -- need to piece back and quilt

Cat Baby Quilt -- need to quilt and bind

rail fence -- need to quilt

layered squares -- need to quilt

red quilt -- finish last six blocks and assemble

scrappy cats -- more blocks to piece

lattice strippy -- 13 more blocks

cat bed -- quilt and figure out zipper

flower baskets -- lots of applique

A's Scrappy Mountains Majesty -- sew down binding

my own Scrappy Mountains Majesty -- quilt

Dot to Dot -- choose fabric for binding

Tea Pots -- choose fabric for binding

Leif's Snails -- quilt

Cheery Buzzsaws

Glittering Gems -- quilt

Blue Bargello -- Quilt

Birds in the Air -- Quilt

North Pacific

And, as if that wasn't bad enough, there's another list of projects I can't wait to start, which I probably can scrounge up the fabric for. (Aren't scrappy quilts wonderful!)I might feel guiltier if I hadn't just finished three other projects.

So my thought is that if I try to finish at least one project from the list each week (based on my husband's weekly work schedule, not the actual calendar that the rest of the world follows), I can start new things from my stash without guilt.

Even keeping it up for ten weeks would make a huge dent in the list. Not counting whatever new projects I add while I'm at it!

Although I love the way that snowball blocks look in finished quilts, I'm not all that excited about piecing them. My latest pet project needed eighty.

Eighty is a lot of something you don't really want to piece. The corners snag on my quarter inch foot. But if I use the foot that doesn't snag, I can't alternate the corners with other things. But, as of tonight, I don't have to worry about that until I decide to make another quilt with snowballs.

Because my eighty blocks are done. Now I've got to piece together about seven hundred little 2 1/2" squares to make the sashing that goes between the snowballs. Sound like excellent leaders and enders to anyone else?

I laid a few out to see if it was really going to look anything like I had pictured in my mind. Controlled scrappy quilts still make me a bit nervous, especially when I have firm ideas about how I want them to turn out.

I think I've got what I wanted --



And I know I've got what I wanted here --



Last night, I cut the last of the fabric for my Bento Box and got the lights and darks paired together. Tonight, I sewed the last twenty blocks. And, given my recent track record, I had to lay them all out to reassure myself that I'd counted right and that I really did have all sixty-four.

I'm torn between the urge to assemble the top right now and getting it quilted as soon as humanly possible and my reluctance to sew the blocks together because then the layout will be permanent and there's no more shifting things around. I'm also not sure what I want to back it with. Unlike most of my other quilts, this one is mostly quilt shop fabric. Maybe I should try to find some nice (and affordable) fabric for the back.

I tried piecing letters today, inspired by the fantastic ones at Lazy Gal Quilting. Doesn't that Halloween sounds quilt make you wannt to start one of your own? There are some directions for pieced letters here.

Just the thought of machine quilting has been making me skittish. Using the machine at all makes me a bit nervous. Not enough to keep me from quilting, but still -- I guess piecing the tip of your little finger back together with steri-strips will do that to you.

My quilting opportunities have been too limited to give up, but I'm very aware of that rapidly moving needle and what it's going to do to me if I don't keep my fingers out of the way. I've never had to concentrate on that quite so much. (On the bright side, my two preschoolers have received a very graphic illustration of how the sewing machine can hurt you and why they should never touch it. Leif was helping me sew this morning by standing there and reminding me not to sew my little finger again.)

I'm not sure if my new semi-phobia had anything to do with it, but assembling the blocks of my Weed Whacker took a lot longer than I expected it to. The blocks weren't going together quite right (my blocks rarely do), and I had a feeling that I was going to wind up trashing the whole thing. That feeling's been with me through most of this quilt.

It took two nights to get it sewn together and then I decided to pin baste it while I still felt the slightest glimmer of hope. It looked good, but the thing wasn't anywhere near flat. (Most of my quilts aren't.)

I got a sheet from the sewing room that I thought wouldn't clash too horribly, and some of the polyester batting I bought on sale a while back, and my pins, and crawled around on the floor. And it came together. It smoothed out enough to make me content and the backing actually went with the front, and the next thing I knew I was clearing off the table around my sewing machine and looking for my darning foot.

I did half of the quilting last night and the rest this morning. I'm not about to show it to any experienced machine quilters for fear that they'd laugh at me -- or try to convince me to rip it out and do it again -- but it's so much better than my last attempt I can't believe it.

I decided to use the leftover sheet for the binding and got that cut and machine stitched on and it's all ready for me to snuggle up and do some hand-stitching.

I think I've been afraid that if I turned my back on this one, it was going to fall apart on me. (I really thought I'd wind up tying the thing and shoving it into the boys' room where I could pretend it didn't exist.) Now that it's done, I'm almost giddy.

I liked this Mountain Mist batting more than I expected to. Not as much as Warm and Natural, which I absolutely love, but it's considerably cheaper and if I'm making utility quilts for the kids out of scraps, it'll work. As long as it holds up in the wash.

Now I've got a stack of other tops that I'm dying to get quilted, but I should probably make some more progress on the sewing room excavation.

I am so in love with this quilt that I've even lost my bitterness about the selvedge bag with no selvedges in it. I might've made a Bento Box if that hadn't happened, but it wouldn't be this one. And I really really like this one.



I think it'll be done soon, but I'm not in a big hurry. I'm having too much fun watching the fabrics come together into blocks to rush.

I do want to rush Simple Pleasures, because I don't have enough faith that it's going to come out the way it looks in my head.

And I want to get started on North Pacific.

A few weeks ago, I was blindsided by an ad in one of my new quilting magazines -- you know, that sudden urge to grab the car keys and head out the door to search for that particular yarn or fabric or magazine or piece of wood from Home Depot. I rarely -- more like never ever -- have that reaction to quilt shop fabric. But the ad for Moda Shirtings 1875-1900 got me.

I'd been wanting shirtings ever since I read Scraps and Shirttails, even without Moda trying to seduce me into the fabric shop with descriptions of "Kittens, dogs, horses heads, sewing tools such as thimbles, needles moving thru fabric..." Actually, I'm more tempted by the ad copy than the fabric in the line. And just look at the log cabin border on that quilt in the picture!

Turns out that the line isn't even available yet, or wasn't when I was keeping an eye open for it on that shop hop with my best friend. But I did find a fat sixteenth of a needle moving through fabric. That little piece has already been incorporated into the Bento Box and is one of my favorite prints in the whole quilt so far.

That North Pacific quilt absolutely demands white fabric with little blue or black prints on it. Joann's doesn't have anything even remotely appropriate. I've got a few suitable fabrics in my stash, but not nearly enough.

It was exactly the wrong time for Moda to be tempting me with something that would be absolutely perfect if it wasn't so pricey. Aren't I lucky that those fabrics don't seem to be available quite yet?

And aren't I lucky that I saw the discussion of Whittle's Fabrics when it happened on Quilting on a Budget not long ago? THEY have shirtings, which I like better than the ones in the Moda collection, and which are four bucks a yard.

I am completely in love. I want to roll around in this fabric. I want to order lots of the other fabrics on their site. (It's a bit harder to have self control when the fabric is so gorgeous and so affordable.) But I'll try to finish a few projects first and have faith that they'll still be there and have pretty stuff when it's time to shop again.

We did some thrift store shopping with Grandma yesterday and I found a perfect sheet to use for the back of Simple Pleasures. And another perfect vintage sheet that had to stay at the thrift shop because it was full of cigarette holes. At least I saw them before I bought it.

Quilting on a Budget is giving away the Quiltopoly board game. Wouldn't that be fun to win?

the excavation continues

I'm slowly sifting through the mounds of fabric and patterns and half finished projects that've accumulated in the corner of the dining room. No one else can tell by looking, but I'm making progress.

The last few blocks for the cat bed are pieced and the leftover strings are put away with the rest of my strings.

I sorted through my piles of potential Bento Box fabrics and cut what I had, then counted to see what I still need. Only two darks and seven lights, and I'm optimistic that I can pull those from my stash.

I emptied out a storage box for the pieced sections Simple Pleasures and sorted my light and dark squares into a box that's within easy reach for leaders and enders.


But my happiest accomplishment for today is redoing the quilt ladder. It's been buried in lace shawls ever since Grandpa made it for me. This morning, the lace went up to my sewing room and the quilt tops came down. THESE are the ones I'm waiting to quilt on Mom's longarm. The ones I keep almost forgetting because there's always another quilt top I've finished or want to finish.

I hope that having them right there in front of me will motivate me to schedule some time to go up and quilt them. It's not all of the tops, not by a long stretch. Sparkling Gems should be there (it's hiding behind the log cabin), but as much as I love that quilt top, it looks awful folded and hanging on the ladder and the goal here is to encourage myself.

My deal with myself was that if I stayed strictly no-buy (which I haven't managed), I could start as many new projects as I wanted. So I've been starting new projects right and left and have a dozen or so more that I want to start.

That'd be fine if I hadn't done a hurried clean up of my sewing area and totally lost track of what I was working on and where it all was. I've got a scary mess on my hands, which I decided to tackle last night.

I assembled the pink and blue applique cat blocks into a top and went out to the sewing room to find something to use for the backing. I've got some big hunks of pink and blue gingham, but since I don't like gingham and didn't want to deal with it, they're deliberately buried.

I did find a huge length of soft yellow stuff that would work great, and another top for a baby quilt that I wanted to finish. A little quick outlining around the pinwheel shapes, fold the backing around to the front and sew it down as a binding...

It all seemed like a quick and easy finish until I was fighting to get the quilt turned around a tight corner and hit the foot pedal before I got my little finger out of the way. It's been almost twenty years since I machine stitched my own finger, and I'd forgotten how gruesome and painful the results are.

A couple of hours, some butterfly bandages and a bit of Neosporin later, I worked up the nerve to go check on the quilt, if only to make sure there wasn't a bit of broken needle unaccounted for. I don't know how it didn't get bled on, but it was like I'd just got up to take a break.

My finger had mostly stopped throbbing, so I sat back down and got the rest of the quilting and the binding done. I've had so little quilting time lately that I'm not going to give up any good opportunities.



And, since it was only midnight, I finished hand stitching the binding on this one:



I still think I made a mess of it, but it'll make a serviceable baby quilt for some little guy. I've just gotta find one whose mother can appreciate flawed utility quilts.

Now that I've found my new packages of safety pins, I've got two more baby quilts to get pinned and ready for quilting.

And this one, which is going to be for Leif's bed --



I can't get over how much nicer it looks with the borders on. Wide borders don't usually appeal to me, but I love these. Now I've just got to figure out the best way for me to quilt them.

Does having two new FOs count if those projects weren't contributing to the chaos? I did find the blocks for the cat bed so I can work on that tonight. Then I can put away the strings that I've been trying to keep separate for that project.

Today was errand day and we were on the road for hours. I really didn't think I'd get it all done, but the kids are signed up for the library summer reading club, the mail's been picked up, groceries bought, karate classes taken... and even though I had to double back to the house because I'd forgotten the torn couch cushions and the pharmacy filled our prescriptions at the wrong location so I had to drive across town an extra time, I'm feeling pretty cheerful.

The apron book I've had reserved at the library came in and most of the patterns (except for my absolute favorite) only call for a yard of fabric. I've got some cute one yard cuts of fabric!

I ducked into Joann's for the new issue of Quiltmaker because I wanted to check out Bonnie Hunter's new mystery and absolutely fell in love with the cover quilt. It's got curves. And I really really like Dusky Meadows, which strikes me as very Bento Boxy. I'm thinking Halloween prints, because I've got a ton of those.

There's a new Knitty, and the patterns actually loaded on my computer. I've gotta make The Deadliest Crab. Because that's what you do after you knit a disappointing lobster, isn't it? And a Trilobite hat for one of the boys. If I had a little girl, I'd be knitting Elenka I think I've got some pink cotton that was going to be an apron....maybe I could knit one for charity? And there's Kingdom, a gorgeous pair of cabled gloves. And Treetop Socks, a cabled pair of kneehighs that makes me drool. And Outside In, another pair of gorgeous socks.

Now I've gotta put the couches back together and start some laundry. Hopefully my energy will hold out a bit longer and I can do a few more string blocks.

This afternoon, while I was trying to pretend that I thought my noisy little boys were actually taking a nap, I played with strings.



Yes, I've already got a scary number of UFOs, but I wanted to play with something that didn't matter. And I was pleasantly surprised when I laid the blocks out on the floor to see if I had a disaster or the beginning of a baby blanket.

There are several more big pieces of solid fabric in my sewing room, so this may be the first in a batch of baby quilts.

We've been travelling. Which is great and wonderful and fantastic, but by the time we got home I was really looking forward to playing with my sewing machine and letting everything else go for a few hours.

It hasn't been that easy.

In addition to a few other things we didn't expect or feel like dealing with, we walked into a house without running water. Something's wrong with the pump. Or the well. The water is sort of mostly running now, but it's definitely not the color I want my water to be.

I knew I should've washed those white sheets before we left!

We spent most of the trip in a time share unit that felt almost as big as our house, but on the way there and back we stayed at a couple of motels that are more what we're used to. I was trying to fall asleep the second night when I felt something fall into my hair.

I don't want anything falling in my hair in a cheap motel room. I can't tell you how hard it was to reach up and feel whether or not something actually was in my hair. At least I didn't scream and wake up all four kids. I did wake up Bill to find out what it was and make sure it got out of my hair.

It was a safety pin. Not just a safety pin, it was the bent kind that quilters use.

Any quilters out there have a reason for putting their bent safety pins in the ceiling of a motel room? Trying to figure out how it got there kept me up that night. Well that, and the fear that something else would fall on me.