Quilting tip for the day

Don't spray baste a quilt on your living room floor during your husky's shedding season. The floor was clean when I did it, but thanks to some overspray, it looked like we had switched to carpet a couple days later.

WIP this Wednesday, and next Wednesday...

I like to work with my hands, so I get frustrated when my quilting to do list is all machine work. Plus, I already have the Mystery Project and Strawberry Patch to machine quilt, so I decided to hand quilt this one.

I haven't gotten very far with it, but I really enjoy spending my evenings with it.

Linking up to Freshly Pieced - go see what everyone else is up to this week!

I made my daughter a pillowcase to match her quilt.

Finally.

But the real reason for this post, is that her room is clean ... for the 2nd time in a 12 month period!! Now that is news:)

Ok, you can click to the next blog now.

Linked up at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it Friday series.

WIP Wednesday

I have just gotten started on the quilting of the mystery project. Unfortunately, I have caught whatever my daughter had over the weekend and I don't see work progressing very quickly.

I can't wait to make a full reveal - this is one pretty quilt.

Linking up at Freshly Pieced.

Quilts in Use II

This installment of Quilts in Use is brought to you by another stomach virus that hit our house at 4am. They just never hit in the daytime, do they?

Oh, and I made another pillowcase this week.

Figured I'd better show it to you now because after seeing what all came out of that child this morning, I'm feeling a strong urge to soak it in hot water and bleach. It may never look quite like this again. And how do sick kids always end up on our pillowcases anyway?

Here's a better shot of the quilt

I didn't so much like this quilt right after I made it. There was a good sized pucker along one of the stripes where I must not have gotten the fabric smoothed well while basting (I spray basted this one), and the squares got a little pulled out of shape in the quilting process because I didn't yet have a walking foot. But now, after I've been quilting a while, I'm pretty amazed that there were no other puckers in all that straight line quilting going in both directions, especially with no walking foot. Now I'm pretty impressed with it:)

Edited to add: She slept until about 9 am and has acted completely fine since, including eating a good lunch. Not sure what was up, but it's obviously not a virus. I'm glad for her and for us - it's date night!

My hero

When I first saw Strawberry Fields, my interest in it was more for my sister-in-law than myself. She decorates with strawberries in her kitchen, and I knew I wanted placemats or a table runner for her.

I made her one this weekend with the largest of my scraps from my quilt. These were my largest pieces, and I could still only cut them 3 1/4", so you can imagine the size of the other ones I saved.

And as you can see, even with a piece this small, I still wasn't able to keep my colors separated. I just have a mental block - I can't seem to do scrappy!

I used Kona celery for the backing and size 20 crochet thread for the quilting.

Even though my hand quilting is so very far from perfect, or straight, or even good, I still love looking at it

And yes, Kim is my hero. I've been beyond blessed in the in-law department.

Thank you to everyone who commented on Strawberry Patch, the quilt top. Many very encouraging words!

We have a flimsy

I was on a blog one time and the writer was describing their process for making a scrappy quilt - said they just put all the pieces in a bag, shook it up, and then used whatever piece they grabbed when they reached in, even if it was the same as the one they last used. This blogger was obviously male, because females don't work that way, do they? No, control freaks that we are, we carefully lay out every piece & study it, rearranging it to be sure no two colors match

And no two patterns match

And certainly identical fabrics next to each other is an absolute no no

And I guess if it happened twice in one block, we'd just break out in a cold sweat and throw the block away

But then what females do sometimes, this female anyway, is pin things late at night when there are no kids around, when we're tired, and subject to mistakes. And then when we make those mistakes, we're just plain too tired to care.

I did, actually, very carefully line things up. I was certain that no two patterns, colors, or identical fabrics were touching. Except I matched the bottom part of the block to the top part of the block instead of the middle portions, so it had no bearing whatsoever on the final outcome.

Luckily, there are enough different fabrics in this quilt that it turned out pretty scrappy anyway.

I'm still loving this quilt, but I'm considering adding top & bottom borders. The current size is 64" square, and that just sounds like cold toes to me. My scraps are pretty tiny, so we'll see what I come up with.

One last gratuitous shot:

And have a good weekend.

(Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts for her Finish it Friday series)



Quilts in use

The blue one on the bottom was made my a friend, not by me.

Based on this little peek into our life, you would think she slept a lot. On the contrary, it's such a rare occurrence that I've documented nearly every nap.

Strawberry Patch

I've never really named a quilt before, but what a quilt to start with, huh?

Loving the fabric - Strawberry Fields for those who live under a rock - and love the pattern - Patchwork Wheel by Don't Call me Betsy.

I have been a bit frustrated, though, at things not lining up as well as I want them to. This fabric is so very soft - I think it has more give to it than I'm used to. I also stared at the pattern for a little while trying to decide which way to iron which seams and finally just figured I'd iron them all open so I didn't have to worry about it. Well, nestled seams line up better than ironed open seams. And finally, my method for making HST puts the edge of the square on the bias, causing LOTS of stretch, a problem that could have largely been eliminated if I'd used spray starch. Lesson learned.

But, that little bit of wonk is not stopping me from loving this. I'm searching around for backing & binding now.

And this one is all mine!