Sick.

My daughter has been so sick that I haven't had time to do anything other than take care of her for a whole week. My mother-in-law just got into town today and I didn't even have the time to clean my house as well as I usually do when she comes to visit. I will have to rectify this tomorrow.

smiling despite her 103 degree fever

Mama needs a brewski

late night strip cutting

I don't wanna cut into my mustache fabric (wah!)

 

 

 

 

I have a lot of strips cut for the herringbone blocks and I have a ton of UFOs right now. I really need to finish something. I have really been at a good creative place, but I don't just work on something until it's finished. I'm more likely to start something and get going on it and then stop and start something new the next time I sit down to cut and sew. Who else has the non-finishing problem? Do ya'll get sidetracked by all the new, shiny fabric, too? UGH! It's unavoidable. I just keep buying and buying and then looking and petting. Then I decide I want to make something and I have to buy MORE fabric - especially for that project. It's a disease, I tell you!

Now go and finish something!

New project???

Have you ever started working on something and then decided that the technique or the sewing you were doing was not right? You know you're gonna have to rip it out anyway, so what did you do? Did you get the seam ripper out right then and get ripping? Did you step away from the sewing machine completely, or did you stop what you were doing and redirect your focus to another project?

This happened today:

 I wanted to try out a quilt as you go technique.
As I started, I realized that I didn't want to
qayg on these blocks. I didn't know what I was
thinking. I got as far as outlining the spinner
in the center of this one block and decided, "NO!
I'm going to do something else.
(Later tonight I will be ripping this quilting and being mad at myself for not thinking this plan through - ugh!)

And then, this happened:

I'm so much happier with these blocks made from
the scrappy strip sets that I scrapped from the first
incarnation of the sparky quilt that you see above.
When I started Sparky, I put together some strip
sets of colors that I thought went well together.
After I had my strip sets made, I looked at them together and was like, "no way! These look horrible together. I can't do that." There was only one strip set that looked good and that was the one above. The reason it worked so well was that it had a solid strip of green at the top to bring the other two patterns together. I went with that idea and got some really great blocks out of it. I will be making my first tutorial out of those blocks later in June. (I'm so excited!!!)

So, I now have another project that I'm working on. The list of UFOs increases daily. I thought I would get a break now that I'm not working outside my house, but these quilting days are turning into a full time job. I don't know how I did it before.

More tomorrow. The adventure continues!!!

It's International Quilt Day

Yay!!! I can't believe it's here - International Quilt Day. It actually doesn't mean much for me since I am otherwise engaged today, but I hope to find time, later, to work on my QAYG blocks. I'm going to take the blocks from the Simply Modern Bee that I'm participating in (my month is March) and quilting them before putting them together. I'm kinda excited about this process as it is not something I've done before. My other ideas for the blocks are to deconstruct them in some way, like cutting them into four and reconstructing the blocks as I go - or cut some in quarters and some quarters on the diagonal. I don't know. I just want to spice up this block a little more. It could be that I'm just tired of looking at the garden fence blocks since I made 12 of them. I tend to get a little bit bored with an idea and want to hurry up and move onto the next, more exciting (NEW, shiny thing) project. I love all of the blocks that I've received so far, but I just feel like I want something different. I think I'll just stick with the quilt as you go concept as I'm just not feeling that ambitious.

Last night I finished my Fabulous Fifty quilt for my uncle's 50th birthday party this afternoon. Whooops! I just called and apparently the party is next Saturday. Well, I'm ahead of the game, then and I can enjoy looking at this beautiful quilt for a week longer. It is small: 52" square, but it's an okay size to put over yourself while sitting on the sofa. The green batik on the back is lovely - and I used monofilament thread on the front and a nice blendable, blue, cotton on the back. It was my first time using monofilament successfully. I tried before but it just kept breaking on me - my machine is set differently now and the top tension is pretty low, so the thread stayed together.

Now that I'm free this afternoon, I'll have more time to explore the blogosphere and read some posts for IQD. I'm also linking up to SewCalGal's linky party.

Here are the photos of my Fabulous Fifty quilt:

Fabulous Fifty quilt - front

Fabulous Fifty quilt-front closer

Fabulous Fifty quilt - back (Oh! how I love that little red/beige square)

Happy Quilting in 2013!

March Finishing Goal

On this last day of February, I thought I'd get a jump on making my March finishing goals. I have a few projects that I want to start this month to prep for upcoming finish months, but the main thing that I want to finish this month is my daughter's broken dishes quilt. I have the lovely top completed it has just been waiting for sandwiching and quilting.
I'm going to start making some QAYG blocks - I'm thinking Granny Squares. I also want to make an exploded star quilt for a friend. I started this the other day, but when I don't draw a line on my squares, I end up not getting a very straight block. I tried to sew together some blocks the other day and they were all off. So frustrating. I don't know why I can't learn from my mistakes and just do the work that I need to make a crisp block.
Here's to making it work.

Get your sew on today!
Green

Go Boldly

I'm working on a new quilt x-mas present for my mom. She is a huge Star Trek fan - a Trekker (do not say Trekkie unless you want to lose an arm). Every year and every holiday my mom gets something Star Trek. I had pretty much exhausted my ideas and then I thought I would make a Star Trek quilt for her. I love the idea of merging the traditional art of quilting and the ultra-modern idea of Star Trek. I bought some really neat fabric from Spoonflower - I didn't design my own, although I will in the future because that is just AWESOME - and I decided that the design would be all log cabin or at least log cabin inspired blocks. I have a few finished and they look like... this:

I'm really excited for this project and I can't wait for the x-mas day reveal.

Sew on, boldly!
Green