This is to document my love of and obsession with fabric and quilts! The true, guilty story of buying "just a little bit more", of shopping at thrift stores for the extra large mens shirts to use in your next quilt..and yes..even eyeing up your best friends blouse wondering if she'd notice if you "borrowed" it and just how many 2 inch strips you could get out of it!
I popped over to Stash Manicure the other day and just LOVED what I saw! Elizabeth from Such a Sew and Sew was the guest poster of the day and she shared a snowball quilt that she had just made. I fell in love with everything about this quilt..the colors (which are so not me) and the layout. This is perfect for a friend of mine who just had knee replacement surgery. How could you not recuperate faster under a happy quilt? Here are my fabrics for it:
I haven't even been in my sewing room this entire week. My fabrics that I cut out last weekend are calling my name, but I really want to get a quilt done for my friend first. So, those noisy fabrics will just have to wait their turn until I am done with this first. I can see myself making at least one more of these snowball quilts.
Well, off to start making snowballs...hope you all have made more progress than I have!!
I spent a few hours today cutting out fabric for 2 quilts today. Well, it is the same quilt, I am just back to making 2 of them at the same time. This one is a treat for myself. Ever since I got the book, "Friendship Triangles" by Edyta Sitar, I have wanted to make this for myself. It is actually a wallhanging. It is called Tree of Life. Here is a pic that I copied off of The Fat Quarter shop that had the pic of the wallhanging on it:
Isn't it just wonderful? I fell in love with it the minute I saw it. The fact that there are 8 trees on it makes me love it even more as there are 8 members of my family. I think I will put each persons name on a tree. I love all the patterns in this book and will probably cut out fabric for at least one more tonight.
I am definitely on a HUGE hst binge now so was wondering...is there any interest in doing an hst swap? We could all make a set amount..say 10 per participant, mail them to me and then I could divy them up to everyone. Nice chance to get some new stuff in our hst choices. Just a thought..let me know what you think!!
I followed Gina from A Patchwork Garden, over to Quilt Times. It seems that Sue over there is having a Christmas Quilt Along. I believe she picked the second Saturday of each month for working on holiday projects. I can always use a reminder (read that as kick in the pants) to get going on these. Anyone else want to join? Just clock on the button to the left!
Tonight I had a hard time deciding what to work on. I finally decided to quilt up my mystery #15 table topper....for 2 reasons. First, I love how this turned out and I have just the table in my kitchen that this will look perfect on and second, I needed a fast finish to get my finishes up to 3 so I would only have a few more to get done to complete my self imposed restriction. You know..finish 5 ufo's before you can start anything new.
I also wanted to try doing something different with the fmq, so again, this would be perfect. Scrappy enough to hide the booboos, and staying here in my home, so I decided to try swirls. Now, I know you ladies do AMAZING things with your quilting, but you have to remember, I am a newby at this! I just started fmq last year and have lots to learn.
So, off I went making the most awful swirlies on this table topper. And you know what??? I had the BEST time and the MOST FUN I have had sewing in ages!! Why do we make it all about how fast it gets done..or how many get done...or we have to bust our stash?? Personally, I am DONE WITH THAT!!!! I had forgotten WHY I do this..to learn more, to have fun..not to keep quotas! From now on, I will sew what I am in the mood to sew on....new project? GREAT! finish an old ufo? GREAT! make awful swirlies all over something!! EVEN BETTER because my confidence grew hugely as I did it..and I LAUGHED over how awful some of them were..and I will now cherish this table topper as the valuable teaching tool it is. Everytime I see a distorted swirlie, I will remember this night...the night I remembered how to have fun.
So..here is my awful swirlie, beautiful table topper:
AND..I am guilty of even worse things with this table topper. I used this:
...an old fleece as my batting! This was one of those adorable, yet wayyyy too small fleece blankets to ever be of much use. I have to say, I LOVED quilting on it. I am sure there are reasons I shouldn't use it, but for tonight, please don't tell me. I feel like a total quilt renegade..bad swirlies, no more "gotta get it done" lists and inappropriate batting. I tell ya, life doesn't get any better than this!
Reenie..off to sew the binding on this one and to relish my quilting bad a** reputation I am going to have NOW! lol
Jitterbug top is all done and I am not sure I like it. I don't know what it is..I think it is my color choices. Maybe it is too bright. I dunno..I can't wait to see Shellie's so I can maybe figure out what it is about this one. The more I look at it, the more I like it, though. I know the pic is awful, but it was drizzly out and I was hoping if I saw it in the outside light, I would like it more. LOL..it did help.
Btw..the gray shadow on the middle blocks is me behind it! lol
Well, not really, but I was Jitterbugging. I worked on my Jitterbug quilt last night. I got all the blocks done:
I also got the sashing pieces put together..but not pressed as you can tell:
Next is putting all the pieces together. I probably won't get a chance to work on it until this weekend, but I should be able to show you a completed top then!
Even though finishing this up is on my list, I am feeling guilty. I really need to be quilting some of my tops and getting them off the list. I need 3 more completed UFO's before I can start anything else, so after I complete Jitterbug, I think I will quilt it up then 2 others and I am good to go again. Hallelujah!!!!
I finally finished quilting Allegany Rings today. This is finish #2, so 3 more to go before I can start anything new. It was 2 weeks ago that I had this already to quilt. The problem was, in part, to not knowing HOW I wanted to quilt it. I actually started quilting the border areas TWICE and ended up ripping them out. They were just too fancy for me for this quilt. So, I ended up just doing a meander pattern on the borders also, as I did the center. The rings are outline stitched and there is a vine and leaves done on the red sashing. The rest is just simple, large meandering. I think it suited the quilt. Nothing fancy, just simple. What do you think?
