Not so much work in progress Wednesday

I started quilting Tommy's quilt last night.

But once again I'm wishing I could do something, anything, other than straight line quilting. I played with my free motion foot once, but, as expected with only one practice session, I'm nowhere near ready to actually free motion quilt. Not sure what I'll do here.

The teacher appreciation gift was delivered Friday and I received the sweetest note on Monday.

Wow. Kinda makes me want to whip out a baby quilt for her! Not that it would be smart of me to do with one deadline already on my plate. I knew she was hoping for a pregnancy, so I was very excited to learn it happened for her.

And today this boy:

is at the vet's getting his teeth cleaned. I think I'm just about as nervous as I was when Mandy had her tonsils out. Anesthesia is just always scary. I feel silly worrying about such a routine procedure, but I'm telling you, I had a hard time dropping him off this morning!

Hope you're having a wonderful week. We're having perfect spring weather here and are very much looking forward to the end of the school year.

Teacher Appreciation

If you read my last post, you know I had in mind to make this for teacher appreciation:

My friend Mandy accuses me of making everything harder than it has to be, and I'm beginning to suspect she's right. I decided I wanted them in a circle, like a dresden wedge. Perfectly cute pattern as it is, and it's not like I just had a ton of time for this project, so I should have left well enough alone, but I didn't. I made 20 pencils, put strips of white down each edge & proceeded to try to make a dresden out of them. It wasn't pretty. There's a reason there is no picture of them included in this post.

But in explaining my project to Mandy, she had a much better idea & even sketched it out for me:

I wish I'd had a bit more time on this project, because there are parts I'm not quite happy with, but overall I think the design is absolutely adorable.

I stitched in the ditch and around the "pencils" with gray to make stand out more:

And then I did some organic outlining in white thread.

And finally, in honor of its designer, I bound it in pink polka dots.

 If you knew Mandy, you'd know nothing else would do. And if you knew me, you'd know that despite spending hours on this, I never once considered what I'd wrap it in. And in fact, forgot completely about it until after I had my daughter buckled in her booster seat.

So, a minimalist ribbon it is...

I hope she likes it. And I hope I get to do another one, more slowly and carefully next time.

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

Pattern rights

Maybe a year ago, I saw this adorable quilt on Pinterest and pinned it.

A couple of days ago I got a reminder in my daughter's backpack of Teacher Appreciation day and re-visited my pin. The pin takes you to Better Homes & Garden's blog where they mention this as a pattern in an upcoming issue. After some googling & reading of comments, I did find out that the pattern was expected to be in the Spring 2012 issue of Quilt Sampler, but I could not locate the pattern anywhere on their site, nor could I find any place to order a back issue on their site. Which I don't want to do anyway - I can look at the quilt and tell what to do. I just don't know what the legalities, or the moral issues are for this. Since a pattern was published, am I obligated to either purchase that pattern or not make it?

I mean, I'm sure if I looked at some pictures of popular patterns, like Swoon for example, I could figure out the construction easily enough, but I wouldn't do that. If I wanted to make Swoon, I would purchase the pattern just out of respect for the person smart enough to design it. But how much effort am I expected to put into that? If the pattern was in an old magazine that I no longer have access to, am I ok to just copy it by sight?

Maybe since I'm a graphic designer by trade, I'm a bit more careful about creative rights than the average person. Maybe because I have a better than average idea of what the creative process entails or maybe all the class lectures surrounding what all someone can get sued for - you'll never see a picture of Mickey Mouse on this blog!!

What would you do?

Not what I should have been doing

Monday is my biggest sewing day here, and this Monday was no exception. What I *should* have done was baste Tommy's quilt, but we were all recovering from a stomach virus that hit our house last week - well, they were recovering from a virus. I was recovering from three days of laundry and just didn't want to crawl around on the floor basting a quilt. I wanted to sit upright and do something less taxing.

What I did instead was make some great progress on my neglected Salt Air Hopscotch blocks. I wouldn't describe this as quick and easy - not if you want those points to line up - but I'm just loving this pattern:

I am having better luck with my seams lining up - that would be an absolute kill joy to me if I kept having all the problems I was having with the first set.

Don't you just love the colors in Salt Air?

I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced for her WIP Wednesday. That's usually worth an hour every Wednesday, seeing what everyone is creating this week.