Have I Done Nothing But Quilt Lately?

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Yep. And I feel like I’ve done very little the past several weeks besides getting my quilt on. It’s not like I haven’t had anything to say either–I’ve just been quilting. A lot.
I’m finally on the last six blocks of Laura and Steve’s Wedding Quilt. I’ve been feeling like I’ve really been hauling on it recently–it seems like it’s taken me no time at all, until I look back and realize that in fact, I’ve been working on it for what is actually forever. I have been trying to really get the piecing finished up soon though–we’re expecting to start a major renovation in our kitchen, hopefully starting at the end of this month, and I’m not sure how much work I’ll be getting done on it when we start that project. No new pictures of it at this point though–it still all looks the same to me. I’ll post a shot of it again when I get the entire top pieced. It’s too hard trying to hide the pictures from those people who are not allowed to see it at this point!
Unexpectedly to me, I’ve also gotten a ton of work done on my Bright Squares Quilt that I started about two or three weekends ago.

Bright Squares Quilt

Despite being a smaller quilt, I have almost the whole top finished! I’m about seven blocks away from having it all finished, but most of those blocks have actually been started. Hopefully another week or two, and I’ll be able to start piecing those blocks together. I’d like to have it finished soon so that I can order the fabric that I love for the back of it:
Disco Dot Fabric

And finally, after seeing all of the really cute pincushions at Wee Wonderfuls, I decided that I had to make one too. This one is for a friend in my Crafty Girls group (that I’m headed off to shortly). For being my first one, I thought it turned out pretty cool!
Flower Pincushion

eBay Find

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Last week I was browsing though quilting things on eBay, and I found something that I thought was totally cool! I’m not usually much of an eBay shopper–I tend to get bored looking through it–but I was pumped when I found a set of 10 Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks. They came yesterday in the mail–an exciting Valentine’s Day arrival! The prints look like the fabric is from the late 30’s or 40’s. I’m not that good with identifing dates of fabric, so if anyone could give me a better idea about it, let me know.

Granny's eBay Flowers

Parts of the flowers have been hand pieced, while some pieces in the same block were sewn on a machine. And while the fabric itself is in pretty good wear, there are a couple of stains on the blocks that I’d like to try to take out, if it’s possible to do, without destroying the fabric. If there’s no way to do that, it’s not too big of a deal. It just shows its age that way. Does anyone have any good tips for that?
Granny's Stains

Despite all of that excitement, I have been progressing with my wedding quilt for our friends. I have two full rows pieced together. Yay! Only three more left to go! (I’m never going to get it finished!!!) But I have made a promise to Steve (one half of the wedding quilt’s recipients) that from now on, I’ll hide the pictures of the quilt. (He wants to be surprised!) So anyone who isn’t getting my quilt as a gift–click on!

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I’m Putting the Knitting Needles Away

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I’m not allowing myself to do anymore knitting for awhile. When I start knitting something, it’s the only thing I do…ever. I finished my poncho this past weekend, and when I brought it to my crafty girls group this week, people were amazed that I had it done already. THAT’S BECAUSE I’VE DONE NOTHING ELSE SINCE I STARTED IT! I’m not fast, I just have no life. But it is finished, and it’s nice to wear around the house.

Blue Poncho

And now, since I’m no longer letting myself start any new knitting projects, I’ve actually gotten some work finished on my new wedding quilt. Today I sewed three finished blocks together. That was a big accomplishment. For months, I only had one actual block completly done. Now I can start to see just what the top is really going to look like:
Blue Poncho

It needs to be ironed pretty bad right now, but I’d like to wait and do that when I get a strip of six blocks done before I do that work. I’m real pleased with how it’s starting to look. Now if I can just get a lot of work finished with it this weekend when we’re on our 12 hour trip to North Carolina. As long as it doesn’t make me carsick, I should do pretty well!

A Glimpse Into The Unfinished Projects Basket

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I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on projects, but lately, none of it’s been my quilting. I’ll get to that in just a bit. First though, I figured since I’ve been so stalled out my quilting, I’d at least profile some of the work that I could be doing instead. Shortly after I started the Wedding Spectaularrr quilt almost two years ago, I decided that I wanted to make myself a quilt in the same pattern, but in different colors. I got several stars done, but after I started piecing the top of Wedding Spectaularrr together, I put it away, and I haven’t worked on it much since.

Texas Star Quilt

As usual, it’s one of those projects that just doesn’t get attention because it doesn’t have priority over the quilts that are going to be gifts. I stopped working on this one, because I needed to devote all of my attention to finishing Wedding Spectaularrr. But until I get an extra moment for quilting, it sits in a basket, waiting for me to get bored with whatever else I’m working on for the minute.
In the meantime though, I’ve been knitting. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again–I really don’t like knitting that much, but there’s something about it that makes me need to do it. It’s not that I hate it, and don’t have fun with it, but it’s not nearly as fun as quilting is to me. But despite that statement, I’ve been busy. Last week I threw together this:
Purple Hat

I found the pattern on the Lion Brand Yarn website. They actually have some pretty good patterns there. I thought this one was really simple–I finished it in only a couple of hours, and that’s pretty good for me.
And then finally, although I had started (and intended to finish) a knitted poncho a few weeks ago, I abandoned it and started a new one in better colors.
Better-Colored Poncho

I’m not giving up on this one now, and it’s also partially to blame on why I’ve not done any quilting yet this week. Ben and I are driving to North Carolina for a friend’s wedding reception (in simpler terms, it’s a hog roast) and I’d like to wear it to that. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it actually turns out!

Machine Quilting and Me, Part Two

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(I had started to write this as just a comment to all the responses that I got to yesterday’s post, but I started to ramble so much that I thought I needed a new entry for it.)
Power to my fellow handquilters! I honestly figured that people would just told me to pull out my machine and give up my handwork completly. And it’s not like I’m even considering giving up my handwork–I love it too much to give up–it’s just that I guess that I look around at other quilters and the quanity of work they’re doing. I feel like if I start any more projects, it’ll be years before I have any of them finished. It took me over a year to make “Wedding Spectaularrr” from beginning to end, and to me, that feels like an eternity. Sometimes I just wish I could churn out more projects (that are still up to my quality standards) more quickly and effeciently. I also think I listen to people who have no idea what goes into making a quilt too much, and hear “Why put so much work into it, when you could just finish it up in a few days with a machine.” I have to go back to what I really feel though, and say that hand quilting is a true art form. No one would scoff at the work an artest does to make a painting; why should I stand for someone to tell me to take all the art out of what I do? I just think a lot of times people can’t appreciate all the work that goes into a quilt because they have no idea what actually goes into making one.
So in conclusion: I’m not giving up hand piecing and quilting, but I may try to do more piecing work from time to time on the machine. I’m still not convinced on machine quilting though–to me it looks far better (and gets that great wrinkle look) when quilted by hand. It is also nice to know that I’m not complely in the minority in quilting; although I don’t have too many people my age (I’ll be 24 in April, for those who wanted to know) quilting in my area, the Internet (as always) has shown me there are others like me out there. Oooh, I love the Internet! : )

Machine Quilting and Me

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I’ve been thinking of a lot of new quilting projects that I’d like to start in the near future, and although I’m thrilled that I’m actually coming up with new ideas, I’m so frustrated to think of how long it would take me to get through any of them. It’s making me seriously reconsider just how dedicated I am to the art of hand piecing and quilting my projects. To me, handwork is just so uncommon, especially in quilters my age (okay, let’s be honest, there’s not a lot of quilters my age anyway) that I feel that I’m somewhat obligated to keep up my policy on it. To me, it just feels so much more complete when it’s finished by hand. I’m torn on the issue, and I know so many people would tell me to just suck it up and use the machine, but I’m so attached to my needle, thread, thimble and quilting hoop. I know I could get double the work done that way though.
And quilters, if you’ve got some downtime in the next two days you may be interested in contributing a block to Marta’s Tsunami Quilt. She’ll be putting together a wall hanging made from sent in blocks to sell on E-bay with the proceeds going to UNICEF. If you’re interested though, act fast–the deadline is February 15th. You can get all the information at Tsunami Quilt 2005.

Crafty Girls Night

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I had been thinking last week about how much fun I have when my friends that quilt or knit meet up and do our things together. Maybe it was part inspiration from the Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation book that Ben gave me for Christmas, and maybe it’s a little of just wanting to see my friends more often, but starting tonight we have a crafty girls group. We decided that it wasn’t going to be just a quilt or knit-specific group, since most of us do more than one of them. I’m excited though for everyone to get here–it should be a lot of fun.
I am finding it frustrating though, that it never seems that I’m able to get a project done lately. I guess it’s that I’ve started things that all take more than just a couple of days to finish (and in some cases, no less than months). But I have been busy. I started knitting a poncho (not really because I wanted a poncho, but more because I’m trying to learn how to actually use patterns to knit… it’s not going extremely well right now). I doubt I’ll use it for much more than around the house wear when I finish it.

Puke Color Poncho

I’ve also been trying to get through as much the wedding quilt for our friends Laura and Steve. The blocks are getting bigger, and when you lay them out, you can start to see what the pattern is going to look like:
It's Starting To Look Like A Quilt!

It’s making me itchy to finish the rest of the blocks so that I can sew the whole thing together. But hand piecing 30 blocks with 81 squares in each takes up a lot of time. It’ll be worth it in the end though. Here’s still what’s left to be sewn together:
I've Still Got That Much To Sew???

And with all of that going on, I finally got some pictures from the Wedding Spectacularrr quilt printed up, and I’m working on scrapbooking them in my quilt book. I’m not a huge fan of scrapbooking, and it kinda drives me crazy since it takes so long to make one page nice, but I figure that I worked so hard on the quilt, I might as well take the time to make a history of it.
Wedding Spectacularrr.... On Paper

Catch Up Time

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Happy New Year! I figured it’s about time to update, or people are going to think that I’ve either vanished or stopped quilting. It’s neither actually.
**New development #1! I finally gave my Granny her quilt! We finally made it up to see her late last week. I couldn’t believe how nervous I was about giving it away though. I think I’m intimidated by the fact that she’s been quilting for longer than I, and my work isn’t up to her quality. That’s just me being a nutcase though. She loved it, and said she can’t wait to take it to her quilting group this spring. I was just happy to finally give it to her. It felt like I waited so long for it.

Here, have a quilt!

**New development #2! I’m a tard. I didn’t take any pictures of the scarves I knit for my sister, my sister-in-law, and the student that I work with. I was in such a rush at the end to get them finished and wrapped, that I completly forgot to take pictures. That’s half the reason why I haven’t had anything to write about for the past several weeks. That was all I was doing, and then I didn’t have anything to show for it. I felt stupid on that one.
**New development #3! As for my crappy Christmas cards, I only sent out 10 of them. The rest of them looked like worse crap than the less crappy ones did. I’m not making cards next year.
**New development #4! I’m finally making headway with Laura and Steve’s wedding quilt. The end result will be this:
Jinny Beyer's Cross Walk Quilt

It’s a Jinny Beyer pattern, called “Cross Walk.” I’m pretty much sticking to the colors that are used in that photo, but in mine, there’s more contrast between the green, blue, teal and purple. Now that I’m done with Christmas presents, I’ve been working on it every chance I get. As soon as I get a few more blocks together, I’ll post a new picture.
I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday! Here’s to many new and completed projects in 2005!

Traveling Today? How About A Crapload Of Snow?

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I’m glad we’re not driving up north tomorrow. It’s nasty out here. I’m trying to debate if I should even make a 20 minute drive to my Weight Watchers meeting tonight (yes, that’s right, I’m a fatty-fatty-boom-ba-lattie) or stay on the couch and curl up under a blanket and watch tv and sew. Two very tempting options, I know!
The other night I finally updated my quilting links with some new blogs that I’ve been reading lately. Brit, (who often posts comments here–yay! A regular reader! You’re awsome!) has a really good quilt blog called Terrapin Textiles and posts far more frequently than I have recently. Plus she’s far better at organizing her quilting supplies than I am. Either way, it’s always nice to find a good quilt blog, since there really are so few of them.
I so heard thunder! It’s “thundersnowing” right now. I’m going to kick myself if I don’t go to my meeting.
If you’re traveling, stay safe. Have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Gobble Gobble! 🙂

Bummin…

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My mom called this afternoon after work to tell me that my Granny’s in the hospital, and isn’t going to be feeling up to having the fam up for Thanksgiving. Both sides of the situation are disappointing: having her be in the hospital, and not being able to give her the quilt. Hopefully she’ll be feeling up to having company again in the near future, and I’ll be able to deliver the quilt then. Bummer.
But let’s not be sad, people! I’ve got more project news to report!
I’m halfway done with a Christmas gift that I’m making for the teacher that I work with. I had all the kids in the class sign a canvas bag (one was sick, and I still have to have her sign it, but she’s a bit of a loudmouth tattle-tale, and I’m waiting until the last possible moment for her to sign it so that she doesn’t give the surprise away) and I’m embroidering over their signatures. (There’s nothing cuter than a bunch of first-grade signatures written in bright colored floss.) The first side is finished, and I hope the backside goes as fast as the front did.

Look Mom! My Name Took Up Almost The Whole Freakin Bag!