It's quilted!

It also seems to have shrunk overnight. When I took the real tape measure to it this afternoon, it came out at 70" x 82" -- not quite the biggest quilt I've made. But it's still the hugest thing I've dared tackle with the Janome -- and it came out just fine!



The meandering isn't quite as nice as I've been managing on my smaller quilts, but it's a LOT better than I usually do on the long arm. So I have my top quilted now AND got better results than I would've had if I'd waited. And now there's nothing in line in front of the cats.

I really do need to go measure the cat blocks because if it isn't going to be bigger, or much bigger, than Sparkling Gems... I might be getting giddy all over again.

Don't you love those quilting (knitting, cooking, whatever else) moments when you suddenly realize that you not only can accomplish something, but now that you've got that new skill or bit of knowledge, you're going to be able to accomplish a lot more somethings?

My other big revelation for this week has been about the muslin. It doesn't have to match! Bonnie at Quiltville says so, and if Bonnie says it's okay to use all of those different bits of muslin in one quilt, I'm gonna get my stack of mis-matched whitish pieces and start cutting two inch squares.

Today, I am pushing myself. And apparently I'm making it as hard on myself as possible. Most quilters, I'm guessing, know the dimensions of their quilts. I've usually got some vague idea myself -- if I make twenty-five six inch blocks, I'll probably have a quilt that's around thirty inches square. Or I can look at the pattern and subtract the width of the borders I left off.




But it's been a very long time since I messed with the Sparkling Gems top and I have no clue where the pattern itself is. I've never made a quilt that needed more than a flat sheet to back it, so I wasn't even thinking that the full sheet I bought last week would be too small. But it was, by two or three inches. The other sheets in my stash weren't big enough, either. At least not the ones that I thought would work with this quilt. I didn't check the others. And I was going to be extremely mad at myself if I couldn't use the sheet I wanted after I spent five bucks on it. So I took the two pillow cases that came with it and pieced my sheet to make it big enough.

My batting wasn't big enough either, which is extra maddening because I'd had the right size in my hands in the store and walked from the checkout line to the back of the store to get a smaller one because I didn't need a queen size. I don't make quilts that big. Except for this one. I did have a the right size up in the sewing room, which I'd bought to cut into fourths for quilts in sizes I do actually make.

(There's still not a big enough space to lay out a queen size quilt on my floor, not even if I move furniture, but I've probably whined about that enough times already.)

The plan was to try a technique I read about on Quiltville chat and cut the batting in half, then baste and quilt half of the quilt, then add the rest of the batting and quilt that half. I don't remember making the decision to pin baste the entire thing. The quilts are making their own decisions or I'm channeling whatever housewife lived here when the house was first built in 1920, or I don't know what else, but I did not decide to try quilting a queen size quilt on my Janome.

Guess that means that I don't get the credit now that it seems to be actually working! I started in the middle and made my way out to one corner, and if I could get one quarter of it done, the other three quarters should also be possible. I've already accepted that it's probably going to have pleats and tucks, but all of my quilts seem to have a few of those, so that's not big deal.

Doess this mean I don't have to wait for longarm time to get my quilts finished -- unless I want to?

How many bugs can one family have at the same time? And how long is this going to last? If Bill and I get what the kids had, and the kids and Bill get what I have... I'm not even going to think about it too hard because I'll scare myself.

After a full day of no symptoms from anyone, I was sure we were safe to head into town and run errands. I was wrong, but at least everything got done and I don't have to leave the house again anytime soon.

The tires are rotated, the wheels are aligned, the cat food is bought, and the bills are paid...now onto the important errands.

I needed a sheet to back Sparkling Gems because someone over on Quiltville Chat gave me an idea how I can quilt it on my own machine without waiting for the longarm. I don't know how it can be so hard to buy a sheet.

Kmart only sells them in sets. And doesn't believe in actually opening any of their checkout lines, so I didn't even get the sets I wanted for the boys. Kohls, the other store within walking distance of Costco, might have had a couple of sets, but I was too distracted by the boys to pay attention. Target had some nice flat sheets, but they were all solid colors and that's not what I want for this quilt.

The first thrift store didn't have any good sheets, but it did have an old apron and very cheap children's books, which were only four for a dollar if you bought them in multiples of four, otherwise they were a dollar each and why I couldn't just buy the odd two for a dollar instead of adding two more to the stack is beyond me, but maybe that's just because I'm tired and cranky.

I did finally find a sheet at the second thrift store for five bucks. How can used sheets be so expensive? The only way I can make myself pay that much for a sheet is to figure out that, with a 50% off coupon, I would've spent fifteen dollars on yardage at Joann's. There was another vintage set that I really wanted to have, but I was a good girl and decided to see if it's still there next week when a different color will be half off.

Now I've got my backing, my batting, and my thread. But no energy left to do anything with it. But when I do feel better, I'll be ready to go.

Today, I've been experimenting with some fabric I found out in the sewing room. It's a pretty jersey knit and I wondered if I could use it to back some of these baby quilts I've been playing with. I Googled and found a site that said I could. I know, I know, I could probably find a site that would tell me I could contact aliens with tin foil and coat hangars, and that not everything you read on the Internet is a good idea, but this time the advice worked.

And just in case it didn't, I started with my least favorite of the baby tops.

I like it SO much better now that it's quilted! Now to find some scrap binding or something I won't mind cutting up.



My other experiment for today was dragging out the bolt of polyester batting that's been hibernating in the bedroom closet. Turns out it's not the high loft stuff I thought it was, instead it's somewhere between the Mountain Mist that I really love and the thick stuff I hate. And I can separate the layers to make it thin.

I don't know how many yards there are here (and I'm not quite silly enough to try unrolling it and measuring) but it's enough to do a lot of baby quilts. I can probably skip that great sale that Joann's has on batting this weekend.

Tonight's project, if I can work up the energy, is sorting scraps. I need more little squares to play with.

The latest little top has 4 1/2" center squares. I think it's my favorite so far.

be careful what you wish for

I wasn't looking forward to our weekly trip into town today. Staying home where the fabric and sewing machine are sounded so much more pleasant, but it's actually not.

Not after getting up three times in the dead of the night to change bedding and clean up sick preschoolers. And now the oldest has whatever it is. (The one kid who isn't sick now was already sick Friday night.) Chasing around to the bank and the post office and karate would have been much more fun. There's caffeine out in the world. And the fried chicken I planned to pick up for dinner on our way home.

Judy at Patchwork Times has an interesting question on her blog -- do you love your stash?

I'm glad to have my stash, but most of the fabric came from thrift store scrap bags. If I could somehow magically replace it yard for yard with absolutely anything I wanted, I'd happily take some Moda shirtings and Kansas Troubles and a bunch of 30s and Civil War repros... I guess it's a totally different question for people who originally bought all of their stash at quilt shop prices!

Since the fabric fairy probably isn't going to show up tonight, I guess I get to keep the stash I've got.

The organized chunk of my stash, the fabric I actually bought brand-new, on purpose (just not at quilt shop prices!), is fabric that I'm happy with and probably wouldn't choose to replace with something else.

The remains of the scrap bags are another story. But it was bound to happen. If you take a big bag of fabric, pull out everything you love, then go back later and pull out everything that's floral, then pull out all of the juvenille prints, then pull out everything that would make good 2 1/2" squares....eventually what's left is going to seem pretty pathetic.

But I've made quilts from those bags that I love and absolutely wouldn't replace with quilt shop patterns and fabric. And if Grandma can buy a scrap bag for six or seven bucks and get a quilt top out of it, I think we got our money's worth.

I'm in quilt lust again -- this time it's a quilt over at Exuberant Color. I love the big black corner squares, and the wild combination of narrow strips and the whole half-log cabin thing.

Maybe it's because as I've been sorting through my scraps to cut squares for the baby quilts I keep finding strings to add to that bin.

Maybe it's because this looks more possible than the log cabin quilt I saw a picture of at the quilt shop last weekend, the one with 7/8" strips. Not that I don't still want to tackle one of those...

The plan for today was to get up before the kids so I could cut scraps and listen to the commentary for the zombie movie Bill and I watched last night, but my body convinced me that I needed sleep more than I needed zombie enlightenment. And the phone rang during nap time, so I couldn't watch it then, either.

I never did get to the fabric today. But I feel a lot more functional, I've rounded up most of the library books that are due back this week, and dinner is simmering on the stove. Tonight's experiment is Depression Era Corn Chowder, except I left out the onions and added chicken. Don't know how it'll taste, but it smells nice.

Last week, we tried slow cooker tarragon chicken, in a dutch oven on the range because someone stole the knob to my crock pot and pliers didn't look like they'd work. It was the yummiest thing to come out of my kitchen in a long time -- not counting Bill's cooking, which is always better.

There was also a cranberry pot roast the next night, but the best thing I can say about that is that it didn't poison anyone.

These little quilt tops are fun! Yesterday, I finished two more.

Here's #2



This is the same block I used for my first "real" quilt back in 2008, this time with smaller squares and different layout.

And here's #3



This is how I originally visualized the blue quilt from yesterday. Now that I've seen it both ways, I like the blue one with the six inch center blocks better.

Today, I've been cutting up fabric and making kits for a few more baby quilts. The 2 1/2" squares are all in two containers -- one has the floral prints for a batch of controlled scrap quilts I've got planned, and the other is filling up with everything else. I also managed to cut background fabric for the three floral quilts.

Some days I probably shouldn't have bags of fabric piled waist high at my end of the dining room -- or so people tell me. I'm not convinced. But it'll be nice to have some projects kitted up and ready to go so that I can sew without making a huge mess. Or going up to the sewing room to track down fabric by flashlight. And it'll be a good supply of leaders/enders for my own projects.

Playing with scraps again, this time cutting 2 1/2" squares. Now that I've found a group to quilt for who will let me use my own judgement, I'm excited to see how many baby quilts I can assemble from my existing stash before my energy fades.

Here's #1



This was a completely different quilt in my head, with only nine eight inch center blocks, but the hunk of blue fabric wasn't the right size to cut them, so I adjusted my numbers.

#2 is a sorta split nine patch that I'm hoping to finish tonight after the kids are done playing Mario Kart and I can put on some better background noise.

That seventeen yard dent I was worried about? I compensated for it by buying 14 1/2 yards of fabrics that will go perfectly with the rest of my favorite lights and darks. It was $2.95 a yard and exactly the stuff I haven't been able to find at the Joann's sales.

I've started North Pacific, the quilt that I've been lusting after for a year now. It has lots and lots of pieces, most of them triangles. There's a center section made up of sixteen Ocean Waves blocks, and that's surrounded by twenty-some pieced ships and whales.



So far, I've gone from completely overwhelmed to feeling like I might be able to pull it off but wanting to get those center blocks done as soon as possible so I'd know for sure, to not feeling like quilting at all.

The goal here was to slow myself down a bit. I made eighteen quilts start to finish last year, and pieced another eight tops. Seven went off to other loving homes, but if I keep ten of my own quilts a year and Alex makes her own quilts and Mom makes quilts for the kids....

I know, you can never have too many quilts, but it could add up very very fast. Not like sock knitting. A knitter could totally justify two hundred pairs of socks, or at least keep them neatly tucked away in one drawer.

Since I don't feel like switching from quilts to socks at the moment, I decided it makes sense to tackle some of the more intricate quilts I've been drooling after, especially if I already have most of the fabric I need in my stash. (Not that finding a great deal on twenty-some other prints that will fit in nicely is a bad thing at all!)

I've been stressing about our Quilts for Kids package for a couple of weeks now. The three quilts from the kits they sent were done and ready to go, along with two quilts from our own stuff. It was the fish quilt that I couldn't seem to get finished. I'd plan to do it, then stuff would happen, then I'd find myself awake at night worrying about it because the deadline was getting closer and closer... It didn't occur to me until Tuesday that I could just mail the five quilts we had finished and send the fishes along when they're ready to be done. They are now on their way and I'm breathing much easier.

Another quilt made it to Give a Kid a Quilt. And now that it looks like I've found a local group to make some baby quilts for, I'm not going to have to deal with postage and packaging anymore.

I'm all out of cats to sew!

After a year of avoiding these things, I can't tell you how good it feels to have them all done! No more cats -- at least no more cats from this pattern. Unless the missing six turn up and I'm not going to worry about that because I doubt it'll ever happen.

I do still need to add some sashing (narrow because this quilt is going to be huge) and get the top assembled, but that can wait for another day.

Now I'm starting to pull fabrics and cut half square triangles for Leftovers again and North Pacific. Between the two quilts I'm going to need thousands of them, but I can do it if I only think about a hundred or so at a time. Seventeen yards of fabric to cut up, not counting the extra strips I'm cutting for the 1 1/2" bin.

What makes it hardest is that I'm cutting into my "best" fabrics, the ones I really love and have been saving for special projects. These are the projects, but I've still got mixed feelings about using up the fabric.

Someone please remind me that seventeen yards is barely going to dent an overflowing 45 quart plastic bin!

My best friend invited me to her house to quilt yesterday. I don't have a good portable project right now, so because there was nothing else, I grabbed the plastic box with the cat blocks.

I still don't enjoy piecing those blocks, but I left her house with seven new ones done and the idea that if I made myself do one block each time I sat down to sew, I could have the top done and ready for the long arm when Mom gets home in April.

Then I realized that if I did four cats a day, I could have it done by the end of the week, so I sat intending down to slog my way through four cats. And sewed eight.



It's not that I want to sew cats today. It just seems easier than pulling and cutting triangles for Leftovers Again. But I'm almost out of cats -- only four more to go!

Our new table is big enough to lay out and pin baste a baby quilt. Which means that the old table, evil twin to the new table, was also big enough to lay out and baste baby quilts. I just never cleared away all of the schoolbooks for long enough to realize it.

Now that I know about it, I plan to take full advantage. I'm feeling all motivated to make baby quilts after stumbling across the Give a Kid a Quilt blog earlier this week. After struggling to make my last two quilts meet the requirements of Quilts for Kids (100% cotton and nothing re purposed were my biggest stumbling blocks there -- almost none of my quilts, not even the best ones I've made for myself meet their criteria!), I feel like I can do all sorts of things if I don't have to stress so much about the fabric content.

But not until those other two quilts and their four friend are in the mail. I got the 30s coins quilted this afternoon and the binding sewn on. My goal is to get the hand stitching done, then get them washed and in the mail when we go into town next week.



The new baby quilt (which I'm sure has some bits of polyester) is together and I've got backing upstairs.



I love that I can just throw the extra blue squares into my 2 1/2" bin. But I can't figure out where I put the thing.

I bought the book. The library didn't have a copy, so it was either buy my own or wait for Mom to get home in April so I could borrow hers. Or just work it out from the pictures.

Now that I've read the pattern, I don't plan on following it because I don't like to strip piece scrap quilts. Oh well. There are a bunch of cute patterns that I do plan on following later. So it'll work out.

I'm more excited about the bobbins I bought yesterday. Six from the Janome dealer and eight more from Walmart because I wanted to see if the cheap ones would work. I wound one this morning and pieced a few blocks to test out the tension and then kept piecing because I've almost got enough blocks for the blue nine patch and I'm going to have Leftovers Again to use as leaders and enders for everything else once I get the fabric cut.

I've now got enough bobbins wound to finish both of the quilts I've got pin-basted. This is nice.

The little boys have been helping me assemble nine patch blocks for the blue quilt this morning. If anyone has trouble sewing things together randomly, I strongly recommend having a four and five year old pick out the pieces. Once your convince them that the pieces can't match exactly and that they can't grab green fabric intended for another project, it works very well.



We got lots of good practice counting and taking turns and playing I spy with all of the different prints. And now I'm totally exhausted.

I did start out tired because I was up late putting together the madder snowballs. For some reason, I had washed the fabric for the backing but not the fabric for the border. And I didn't realize it until I'd already spent two hours piecing snowballs together and was ready to cut the strips.

No way was I going to bed before I knew for sure that the pieced border was going to fit!



I can't wait to see how this one looks once it's quilted and bound, but if I'm ever going to get those last two quilts from my list of loose ends done, I've got to force myself to quilt and bind them first. It won't take all that long, but I've been avoiding it like the plague.

What is it with these snowballs? I thought I was through with them after making eighty-some for Simple Pleasures. Then I made a hundred more for this quilt. And now I've seen Red Hots.

But those aren't snowballs -- they're nine patches with half square triangles at the corners. Which isn't the same thing at all. I've got lots of red left over from the red scrap quilt, but not a lot of whites....but I *do* have plenty of lights and darks to play with... I could do something more like the one on this page. And I've got a bunch of light and dark 2 1/2" squares left from Simple Pleasures, which would give me a head start on the cutting.

I like this plan!

Did I mention that I got a new laptop for Christmas? Now that I've worked up the nerve to plug it in and get the virus software set up, I'm seriously loving the fact that I can set up where the action is and look at quilty blogs while I can watch the kids. No more waiting for a chance to slip off into another room! It's what I could do at the old house, with my computer desk in one corner of the room that was called but couldn't possibly be used as a dining room.



It's bleak outside today, but I love the way the branches look against the grey sky. And it's not raining or freezing.



I'm really anxious to see how the madder snowball blocks look once they're assembled. I loved the colors in Root of the Madder from Connecting Threads and bought a bunch of fat quarters when I had a coupon to combine with a sale and went on a bit of a binge. But then I didn't know what to do with them.

My first idea was a bento box, but I didn't have the right combination of lights and darks, so the fabric sat and waited for me to come up with a better idea. And I made my Bento Box with that Moda scrap bag that didn't have any selvedges.

I saw a snowball quilt at a show that I loved, but it had alternating light and dark blocks -- still not enough light fabric. Then I found a snowball quilt pattern in a magazine that was all dark blocks with light corners. If I threw in some reproduction shirtings that I was holding back for something special, I had enough fabric to make it work....as long as I resized everything because the pattern was written for half yard cuts.

I can do the math to redraft a block, but the part that throws me is figuring out how to get the largest number of the biggest squares I can make from a cut of fabric. My fear of messing it up paralyzes me. That's why I've never started my special sweatshirt quilt even though I've got all of the stuff for it.

It's a sign of how much I want this quilt that I pieced almost a hundred snowball blocks without whining about how boring they are! Now I'm planning to send the kids to bed as early as I can get away with so I can try to get it assembled tonight. I've even got matching backing and thread.

Can you tell I'm just a bit excited about this quilt?

And finishing it will mean that I've used up almost all of those Connecting Threads collections I binged on last year. Country Breezes is a finished quilt, Mama's Kitchen is a finished top, I used the indigos I bought for Leif's Snails, and now there's this one. That just leaves a handful of the blue and burgundy indigos.

See, I do use what I buy. Sometimes.

I got this neat little gizmo at Joann's yesterday. Imagine, all of my bobbins stuck in one place without coming unwound and getting all tangled up! It does confirm my suspicion that I don't have nearly enough bobbins, though.

Now I remember why I let this project sit for so long! Two afternoons of cutting and sewing and trimming 1 1/2" strips is enough for me, but I've got twelve new blocks which means I'm halfway there!

And that I've got enough done to lay it out and get a better idea what the completed quilt is going to look like.



And would you believe that I've pieced ninety-six snowball blocks without whining once? I really want this quilt!

My sewing machine seems to have developed a magnetic pull. Instead of starting January in a creative funk like I did last year and the year before that, I'm getting all sorts of things done.

I finished quilting my log cabin and got it bound--



The backing, which used because I wanted to save my original choice for a different quilt, looks a lot better than I expected it to. I'm not as madly in love with this quilt as I was when I first started it, but I'm glad it's done and happy with the results.

My Fun With Bricks, the one I made to replace the rail fence I gave to my best friend, is quilted and bound --



I had planned to use as many fabrics from the rail fence quilt as I could dig out of my stash, but I guess I kept substituting the fabrics I would have put in the rail fence if I'd owned them a couple of years ago. So the two quilts have almost nothing in common.

But what I loved most about the rail fence was the dense quilting, and this one has that same texture with fewer mistakes. I'm happy.

It's amazing how much better a top looks once you start quilting it. The fish are transforming into an actual quilt --



I wanted to try something different than my usual meander, and I'm loving these ripples, but they're taking absolutely forever. I spent an hour on it this morning and then switched the machine back to straight stitching so I could have some fun.

The last of the madder snowballs should be done tomorrow so I can start putting that one together, and I did five more blocks for my courthouse steps, which is a sequel to the log cabin, and I think I can get a little more piecing done before dinner.

Either having a clean work area made me more productive, or having spent the entire day making it clean made me feel like I was entitled to some guilt-free playtime. Either way, I got a lot done last night and this morning.

I cut my Root of the Madder fat quarters into squares for a quilt I've been wanting to start. There isn't quite enough fabric to do the pattern as written, so I had to tinker with the numbers a bit to make the biggest quilt I can with the fabric I've got. And then I put off the cutting because I was afraid that it either wouldn't work, or I'd make a mistake, or I'd hate the way it looks once it's pieced together.

All of the pieces are cut and I've pieced enough of them together to lay out a swatch and convince myself I really am going to like this quilt.

Then I took the narrow leftover strings from the 30s disaster and squared them up and sewed them together into a long panel. The plan was to make a fabric basket or tote bag, but the more strips I sewed the more I realized that I would probably never use a bag or basket made from these particular fabrics.

So I'm going to cut my big panel into thirds and make it into Chinese coins sashed with some of my good white muslin. If it works out, it'll go to Quilts for Kids along with the kit quilts.

I've been stressing over those. I knew what the requirements were when I committed myself to this project, but I didn't realize how many of my quilts contain fabric that is either not 100% cotton or has been reclaimed from something else. Somewhere in my stash were some novelty prints I bought to make pants for the boys, but they weren't going to be quilts so I didn't have coordinating colors. It's been very easy to convince myself that I was going to have to buy new fabric.

When I was cleaning up yesterday, I found a big hunk of fish fabric. And coordinating colors. It's last owner fussy cut fish out of the middle, so I couldn't cut wof strips, but I think I made it work.



I'm not sure if there's enough green left for the back or not. I'm happy enough that I got the front out of stash.

We're getting a new-to-us table and chairs, so I spent the entire afternoon in my sewing corner at the end of the dining room, trying to haul as much stuff as possible out into the "real" sewing room. The one without any lights or heat and with only one electrical socket, which makes actually sewing out there a remote possibility.



Once I got going, it was actually kind of nice to excavate the layers of fabric and patterns. I wound up with the room clear enough to swap furniture into and several new projects lined up.

I'm a bit less excited about the new table and chairs. I've been wanting a new set for quite a while now. The ones we've got were a gift from Grandma when we first got married nineteen years ago. They're not awful, but I don't think I've ever really loved them. Or maybe after nearly two decades I'm ready for a change.

Something happened during the last move and for the past years the once sturdy table has been getting more and more precarious. We've been shopping around for the perfect replacement, but other, more urgent, things kept needing to be replaced first and we still hadn't found our dream table.

Grandma knew we were looking, but also that she absolutely couldn't buy anything without Bill's approval. Then one of her dealers, who also knew we were looking, had a nice table and chairs left over after an estate sale and offered it to us for free. It sat at the antique shop for a while until we could drive up and take a look at it. She described it over the phone, the unusual way the pedestal splits when it opens up for the leaves, and the bit of carved decoration along the edge and it sounded like a normal table to me.

Now that I've seen it, I know why. It's the twin of the set I've been so anxious to replace. Except the stain is a bit darker and the new one isn't threatening to topple over at any moment.

What are the odds of that happening? On the bright side, the chairs from the old table are the same exact style. And this set is only supposed to be temporary, until we find our dream table.

It'll be another twenty years.

Life has me frazzled.

If I didn't make the time to start a new quilt today, I was going to wind up locked away in a nice quiet room somewhere. It's not the frazzled part that's the problem, it's been the lack of fabric-y playtime to balance it out.

For the past few days, I've been drafting quilts in my head, trying to figure out how many two inch strips it will take to make the log cabin blocks the same size as the applique chicken blocks, and which way to twist them to make things line up the way I want them to, and what that might look like with different fabric combinations.... but I can't do that in my head, so all I succeed in doing is making myself long for time with actual fabric.

One of the blocks I've been playing with in my imagination is this one:



The magazine pattern is called Grandma's Donuts and those wedges are itty-bitty. Just the right size to cut from the strings in my bin that seemed to wide and clunky for string quilts. I was reasonably sure that I could piece the wedges, but not how (or if) I was going to be able to applique them to the background squares. The pattern itself doesn't offer any suggestions, just "applique."

I got my quarter circle close enough to the right shape, pressed the raw edges under, machine zig zagged it to the background, and am reasonably happy with the results. Now I get to trace around the template a zillion more times to cut a zillion more wedges.

I'm actually looking forward to it.

The "loose ends" list is getting shorter -- I managed to cross off three projects the first week and make progress on most of the rest.

This quilt now has a binding and I'm even more in love with it than I was before.



Isn't it amazing what you can do with a bunch of 2 1/2" squares, a pattern from an old library book, and the desire to see if you can actually make that quilt?

I also finished the Marilyn apron. Four bucks for the fabric, which I love, and nine bucks for the pattern, which didn't live up to my hopes and expectations, even though I read through it before deciding to splurge on the thing.

I'm kinda wishing I hadn't cut up the fabric. Or, better yet, had bought a lot more of both colors.

My first quilt for 2010 is done.



Now that it's quilted and bound and the label is in place, I still don't like it much. But it's not for me or mine, so I suppose it doesn't matter that I'm not into orange cars.

This isn't for me or mine either (it's for a friend with a baby due in two months) but it's the kind of baby quilt I want to make.



I found the pattern in one of my stacks of old magazines, then ignored it completely and worked from the picture. The one in the directions had checkerboard hearts in two colors, and the setting triangles around the edges were plain. I don't even know what size the blocks were supposed to be, since I had a box of 2 1/2" squares that I was determined to use, I just figured out how big the other pieces needed to be and never measured the templates to check.

That's two projects to scratch off of my "loose ends" list. I was trying to finish free motioning the log cabin tonight, but Alex is planning to take over my machine to start her own quilt. The girl has two sewing machines. Why does she need to use mine? Probably because both of hers are cranky and I don't know enough about either of them to help her out. If I'd been more adventurous month ago and knew how to make my Featherweight do its thing, she could use it and I could free motion -- but that's probably not a good idea with all of the starting and stopping I'll have to do while I'm helping her.

Guess I'll get Fun With Bricks pinned and cross my fingers that she finishes her quilt top while I've still got energy left to work on the log cabin.

cheering myself up

I finally made time to sit down at my sewing machine today. It was supposed to happen yesterday, but an incident involving one of my kids (not sure which) and my few pieces of good jewelry, the ones I love but never wear because I'm afraid something will happen to them, left me in a funk. Everything has turned up except for one of the diamond earrings my husband gave me before we were married.

No one will admit to the crime, but I'm suspecting a combination of an older kid who decided to snoop through my things and then left them exposed to a little one who's intrigued by itty bitty shiny stuff. Which could have been any of them.

There are countless itty bitty shiny things lurking in this house -- sequins that have fallen off of clothing, bits of a Christmas garland that fell apart, beads, bits of shimmery confetti from a project of Alex's... I hate itty bitty glittery things that aren't my earring.

I knew that knitting or quilting would help my mood, so I got up before anyone else and did two repeats of the short row scarf I started before Christmas.

After I made breakfast and dug under the couch cushions for the second time, I started a kit from Quilts for Kids. Alex and I were supposed to work on these with Mom before she headed back South for the rest of the winter, but there wasn't time.

The whole top went together fast. I don't do baby quilts like this. I wouldn't have chosen these fabrics. But it was fun and calming and exactly what I needed this morning. I can't wait to get it pin basted and quilted tomorrow.



And I finished cutting the pieces for a new leaders and enders project. None of the WIPs I have left will work and not having anything to use while I was pieced the car quilt together was extremely annoying.



Now my problem is that I want to see how this quilt comes together and will probably sit down and piece the whole thing instead of using it as leaders and enders.

Which wouldn't be a horrible thing.

plans and more plans for 2010

Back in June, I listed all of the WIPs that came to mind while I was sitting in the van waiting for my husband to finish grocery shopping. Of those twenty-five projects, all but two are now finished. I've decided that lists can be useful, so here's a brand new one to start the new year with --

projects to finish soon
Marilyn Apron (half done)
Short Row Ribbed Scarf
Mindy's Quilt (just needs binding)
My Log Cabin (half quilted)
My Fun With Bricks (ready to pin baste and quilt)
4 baby quilts
applique flower quilt (needs binding)

other wips
scrappy cats
lover's knots
courthouse steps
2" scrappy squares

tops to quilt
Irish chain
bento box
sparkling gems
30s buzz cake
blue fun with bricks baby quilt
Chinese coins baby quilt
stained glass window

WHIMMs
bow ties
Shenandoah log cabin
Shakespeare in the park
devil's claw
pointy butterflies
yellow quilt
burgoyne surrounded
north pacific
double hourglasses
scrappy pineapple
grandma's donuts

2009 Year End Totals

Things are starting to make more sense now that I've gone back through my blog posts and added up my year end totals for 2009.

There wasn't any knitting.

Over the entire year, I made two dishcloths, a lace scarf from a single skein of Knit Picks Crayon, a pair of worsted weight baby socks, three pairs of booties, a pair of worsted weight adult size socks, and two bulky hats. That's all -- eleven finishes, nothing that took more than a single skein of yarn, compared to the fifty I finished in 2007 and more than sixty in 2008.

All year that lack of knitting bugged me. How does a knitter go from complete obsession to a screeching halt like that?

It was the quilts. I didn't realize that so many of the quilts draped all overy my house happened this year.

I made eighteen quilts from start to finish, finished eight more tops, quilted four tops that were left over from the previous year, not to mention the bagsket and the strippy cat bed which is probably equal to another quilt all by itself.

Start to Finish Quilts

Scrappy Mountain Majesties
Birds in the Air
A's Quilt
One Thrifty Quilt
Scrappy Irish Chain
Red Quilt
Weed Whacker
Simple Pleasures
Leif's Snails
Cheerful Buzz Saws
applique flowers
30's baskets

Start to Finish Baby Quilts

blue disappearing nine patch
girly disappearing nine patch
pink lattice
yellow fun with bricks
white framed nine patch
scrappy hearts

Unquilted Tops

sparklng gems
scrappy irish chain
bento box
blue fun with bricks
ugly nameless baby quilt
chinese coins
my fun with bricks
30's buzz cake

I have a hard time figuring out how to count quilting finishes, mostly because I consider assembled tops as a finish category of their own. So I wound up with several lists of finishes. I guess that works.

Christmas is four days away, I haven't wrapped a single thing, I haven't finished shopping, and I've got two quilts to bind before lunch on Christmas Eve.... the usual holiday season around here!

I did discover something encouraging when I was doing the first mad dash of my Christmas shopping. Fred Meyer (a chain grocery/department store) now has sock yarn and bamboo dpns. Since I started knitting and paying attention to that aisle, their selection hasn't changed much -- now they've got a lot of new yarns I didn't even know about.

There was a 20% off coupon, so I came home with a skein of Lion Brand Hometown USA and made a hat.



It would be Shroom from the new Knitty, but I didn't have enough yarn to make it long enough and wasn't patient enough to wait until I could drive 30 miles and buy a second skein just so I could do another dozen rows. I like the pattern and like the yarn (which I was trying because I might be tempted to buy enough skeins to do a bigger project) even if this little hat isn't quite what it should be.

Maybe Alex will lose it in the chicken coop.

After almost a year of not buying any yarn (not knitting made it very easy to avoid temptation), Grandma called and let me know about an estate sale one of her dealers was running.

I've never seen so much Red Heart Super Saver in one place that wasn't a store. I bought three huge bags of yarn, not counting the dozen skeins of fun fur that Alex snapped up for fifty cents each, and we barely made a dent.

Now I've got to figure out how to best use those single skeins that were too pretty and inexpensive to leave behind.

Among my purchaes were four skeins of Red Heart Strata, which can't quite be described as pretty and has an awful texture, but it's fun to play with. I searched Ravelry to see what others had done with it and found the pattern for Knit Dorm Socks.

They've been adopted by Alex, who doesn't seem to mind that they're a bit crunchy.

I have got to get back to posting more often. If nothing else, it helps me keep track of what I'm doing. And I really need that help, because I sure can't seem to keep track of what I'm working on.

A couple of weeks ago I stopped at the new thrift store in Albany and saw a quilt. It wanted to come home with me. I wanted to take it home with me, at least until I got a look at the price tag.

I don't really collect antique quilts, I just bring home the occasional really cheap one that won't let me leave it behind. If I was serious about collecting old quilts, this one wasn't the kind quilt I like. And I wasn't even sure that it was old.

I apparently didn't get a very good look at it, because when I saw a sample hanging in a quilt shop a week later, I convinced myself that I could make a substitute that had all of the things I loved about the thrift store quilt and the added bonus of jagged edges. I did still have that fat eights of Mamas Cottons that I hadn't started to cut up for my butterfly quilt, and some of them did look a little like the ones that drew me to that other quilt....

That's how I wound up with this --



Please tell me I'll like it better when it's quilted. Because right now I'm thinking I totally wasted my nice fabric.



We went back to the thrift store on Thursday and the quilt was still there. Apparently I didn't get a very good look at it the first time around, because that's the only explanation for why I did what I did with my fabric.

Now that it's cut up and sewn together into something else, I can see what I should have done to make the quilt I wanted. Too bad this isn't knitting, where frogging and starting over is usually an option!

Today, I've been retreating. I started out by cleaning my sewing machine and winding a bunch of bobbins. Then I pulled out a baby quilt that's been sitting there, all pin basted and ready to quilt.

I'm in the mood to meander.



This quilt started out as a pile of 2 1/2" strips that I planned to make into a baby-sized bargello. I kept looking at the prints and being haunted by this niggly little feeling that they were going to look awful if I didn't make a drastic change to my plans. I'm glad I found a better use for these fabrics.

I haven't spent much time online lately. There just hasn't been a lot of time to fill by following fabric and yarn related rabbit trails. It's starting to bug me, so today I made some time.

I'd like to make a Lamplight Quilt, nevermind how much I hate laying things out on a design wall and sewing them together one bit at a time.

I could spend the next week following links from How About Orange. Far too many things there to get excited about, especially with a creative twelve year old sitting next to you.

Like the half eaten gingerbread man ornamets from Elsie Marley's Blog. I like these! There's not a scrap of brown felt to be found in the house (not that I've looked -- I just know that I don't use much felt) so I can't even consider making one until after our next trip to town. I'm thinking he might look even cuter using the cinnamon bread dough recipie the kids and I tried a few years back. Or Fimo, not that I've got or know how to use that either. Today's post makes me wish I knew how to crochet.

And the Cute Birdie Bookmarks, which we've actually printed and cut out. And NaniBirds. We can do stuff like that now that (after more than a month of doing without) we've got a new printer. With full ink cartidges -- yippee!

Alex was looking over my shoulder when I stumbled across Mod Podge Rocks. She knew she liked Mod Podge. She didn't know what the potential was -- I think I should be scared.

I'm blown away by this papercutting blog and wondering if it could be combined with freezer paper stencilling.

And I've got a new baby quilt started, but just barely. It should go together quickly, if life cooperates.

I'm starting to think differently about my quilts. Before, having the top assembled was done enough and I could let it sit around indefinitely until I felt like quilting it. Now, though, I've got the desperate urge to see what it's going to look like when it's completely done. Probably because I can do most of them on my own little machine and don't have to wait around for the longarm.

My replacement rail fence is together and waiting for me to either free up some safety pins or make it to town to buy another few packages.



I'm not sure if I like this one or not. It looks clunky -- or is that just me?

This one felt clunky too, but now that it's quilted and bound I think it's fine. Maybe because it's going to a new home and I won't have to look at it anymore.



Oh, and I've been knitting just a tiny little bit.

I've been playing with fabric, having too much fun with my limited time to drag out the camera and take pictures. Without pictures of what I'm up to, it didn't seem worth writing and trying to explain.... so it's been a while since my last entry.

This is the one I wrote about last time, all assembled and quilted. It still needs a binding, but it's mostly done.



And this is the one I started cutting little squares for before the basket blocks were finished. I found the pattern in a book about vintage fabrics and it was similar to another quilt pattern I'd been too intimidated to try (hundreds of 2 5/8" inch squares? -- not a chance. I'm at least using a measurement that's marked on my rulers!)



This is the most applique I've ever done on a quilt, just fusible and machine zig-zag around the edges, but I love the way it came out. I can do this! My next new project is going to be that butterfly quilt I've been thinking about since I first started quilting.

The little squares, all five hundred of them, went together much faster than I would've imagined possible. The real fun started when I trimmed them to put the whiter border on and left myself with a zillion bias edges. The whole top shifted every time I looked in it's direction. So I got it pinned and quilted densely enough that it isn't going ANYWHERE.

I got both quilts (except for bindings) done start to finish in just over two weeks. I almost never do a quilt start to finish without working on something else, let alone two in a row.

Now I've got the replacement rail fence to finish piecing, and butterflies to trace and cut, and a hundred and some snowballs to make out of my Root of the Madder fat quarters...

I bought a new book, Scrap Basket Surprises by Kim Brackett. I saw a preview on the author's blog earlier this year and ever since I've been waffling back and forth on whether I really needed to buy a copy or not, swinging between "I've absolutely got to have this book or I'll die!" to "Maybe if I wait long enough the library system might get a copy."

When I bought it at Joann's on Wednesday, I still hadn't made up my mind, but I had a fifty percent off coupon and I've learned my lesson the hard way. If you don't buy a book you're that intrigued by, the thing will go out of print and still be haunting you five or six years later.

In the first five days the book spent in my house, I completed all twenty five blocks for the Market Baskets pattern using mostly vintage fabric from my stash. And that wasn't even one of the patterns that I bought the book for!

I'm making myself a quilt.



I know, I'm always making myself a quilt, but this one is special. And after an unplanned break from quilting, it's making me very happy to just plod away and piece bricks of fabric together into pairs, then together into bigger units.

After I gave away my rail fence quilt, which I thought long and hard about and was perfectly okay with, I started to miss it just a little. And I started to think that I could make it a fraternal twin (remember those log cabin quilts last Christmas?), but instead of making another rail fence it might be neater to try yet another Fun With Bricks

My plan was to use a bunch of the same fabrics that I used in my rail fence, but I don't think that actually happened. Instead, I used fabric that would've been in the rail fence if I'd had them in my stash when I made that quilt.

Last night, I finally had enough piecing done to lay it out and get an idea what this might look like.

It's going to be better than the rail fence.



After that last trip to Joann's, I haven't been too optimistic about my fabric buying future. It seemed like cheap but nice fabric might be getting harder to come by.

Then my best friend and I stopped at a quilt shop this afternoon and the sign on the door read "clearance fat quarters, buy one get two free." Okay, $2.50 for three fat quarters -- better than the best Joann's sale. Except they were actually $1.25 for three fat quarters. AND they had a ton of different light prints that I can use in the next umpteen quilts I've got planned. I bought thirty fat quarters for $12.50.

My math skills aren't the greatest with a four year old helping me pick fabric, so it wasn't until a couple of hours later that the real numbers finally sunk in. $1.66 a yard for quilt shop fabric -- now I'm kicking myself for not buying more to make pieced backings for those umpteen quilts.

I'm not expecting to find a deal that good again, but it got me wondering -- are there good buys to be found at the quilt shops? I usually don't even try them because I've assumed everything is out of my price range.

The jinx continued with broken glass lurking under the surface of the dishwater and wasps buzzing around in the front room, but the bugs are dead and my cut will heal and things seem to have calmed down over the past couple of days.

We didn't have a single bit of trouble with the long arm when I went over to Mom's yesterday and quilted Simple Pleasures. We always have trouble, either because the machine is being cranky or I'm going to fast and messing up the tension on my own, but this time things worked.



The kids were even angels, until I fed them lunch and tried to go buy binding. Then things fell apart, but my quilt is quilted and it's easier to schedule a fabric hunt than it is to schedule long arm time.

Quilting Cotton was 30% off at Joanns, but everything I looked at was $6.99 a yard. Even if it seemed to be better quality than what I usally buy there, it was frustrating. That makes the sale price higher than what I paid for that really nice stuff from Whittles and almost as high as Connecting Threads. I could get similar prices shopping the sale rack at real quilt shops.

I found something to bind my quilt with and a couple of other fabrics to add to the quilt that I'm cutting pieces for, but not as much as I'd hoped to find. I'm either going to have to wait to find more fabric, or dig deeper in my stash, or make this one a little less scappy than I want to.



The blocks for the latest baby quilt are finally pieced and I was able to lay them out. I think I like it. And I've got a plan for the next one.

If a twelve year old girl mixes up a batch of chocolate cookies and turns her back on the bowl for just a moment, her three year old brother will bring in the box of salt from the kitchen to the dining room and dump half of it into the bowl.

If a mother figures out exactly what time her kids need to be on Webkinz to do the neat activity they've been waiting for, and it's a time they should be able to do it, the website won't load for two solid hours.

If a quilter is foolish enough to think she'll get her project done soon, she'll wind up with a big stack of blocks to rip out and redo.

I'm thinking we're jinxed here. There actually was a voodoo doll made recently, and it's not unreasonable to think that some of my hair was in it, even if it was intended for the maker's big sister.

But it wasn't a total loss. We do have kinda salty cookies. Maybe we'll time it right and get to play with Doug the Dog tomorrow. And maybe I'll get that quilt top done.

And Alex's quilt top is done. We were talking about Christmas wants this afternoon and I asked her what would make her life happy (not that she wasn't happy at the time) and she totally surprised me when the answer was that she wished her fish blocks were square.

I'd forgotten about the fish quilt. She started it months ago, maybe last summer, and was making great progress until she decided not to bother with quarter inch seam allowances. It's her third quilt. She knows how to do this right. But she didn't. And she didn't want to rip out and redo forty-eight blocks -- not that I'd do it on my own quilt either!

I was going to make her deal with her own mess, until she said that this afternoon and I realized that I could probably force the blocks together into a wonky but assembled top. It's not like I haven't done it plenty of times with my own projects.



And I'm glad I did it. That feeling of avoiding a project because you're afraid it's beyond saving is a miserable one. I've had it about enough projects, but I never thought of Alex's fishes this way until I was trying to get them sewn together into a top.

It really is a cute quilt. She picked the pattern and fabric and did all of the blocks on her own. I'm glad we'll be able to get it finished.

But I refuse to salvage lace knitting. With that, she's still on her own.

Halloween is in the air already. And on my house -- look who was napping on the front porch when I stepped out there last week! Isn't he just the cutest thing? I'm trying not to dwell on the sign in front of the veterinary clinic that warns me about rabid bats every time I drive by.



We were careful to leave him alone and kept our fingers crossed that he'd find his way back where he belonged once it got dark again. Hopefully he's back out in the barn doing his batty thing.

There hasn't been a lot of quilting time lately. If I could do that fifteen minutes a day people keep recommending, I'd be making progress on the gorgeous quilt that's in my head, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that most of the pople who keep recommending that aren't homeschooling four kids. I know -- there are people homeschooling six or a dozen whose dishes are all done and carpets vacuumed and finished three quilts this week, but I'm not one of 'em.

I did play with some leftovers from a thrift store scrap bag this afternoon and come up with this --



The white looks much less stark in real life, but I still think it needs some applique or something. I've just got to figure out what to stick in those empty squares.

Ideas?

Today's project has been crumb blocks. My plan is to join them in strips and make a quilt similar to that one I did yesterday with the strings, but I'm really not sure if I have the patience or not.



What I do have is a ton of crumbs and strings and bits and pieces. So in addition to piecing the two hunks here and a few more that didn't fit in the picture, I've been sorting through a bin and cutting strips of lights and darks for courthouse steps and bricks for another Fun With Bricks quilt...which could be why this is taking so long!

I know, I said I wasn't going to pull out the camera tonight. But that was when I didn't even expect to finish the strips for my new little baby -- and now the strips are done, the sashing is done, and I'm just too happy with it not to share right away!



I didn't repeat any of the fabrics, so I'm guessing there are close to a hundred different prints in there. I'm not sure if the strips really did come out that crooked, or if it's just the way the quit way lying when I took the picture. Either way, I like it.

So that's one new baby top down, nine more to go! Think I can manage another tomorrow?

Progress! I dragged a box of fabric strings down from the sewing room this afternoon and started piecing strips for a baby quilt I've had planned. Most of the strips are done and I haven't even dented the box.

I think that's going to be the new goal -- finishing ten baby quilt tops from stash. Strings, crumbs, orphan blocks from the thrift store boxes...whatever I can come up with.


I'm not feeling quite motivated enough to dig out the camera, so I'll take pictures tomorrow when I'll hopefully have the top together.

My sewing machine is half buried under a pile of mail and school books and all of the other things I've been dealing with lately that aren't quilting. Or knitting.
I'm hoping that Susan's Labor Day Retreat might help me get back on track tomorrow.