May 18, 2016

modern twinsies

I got my act together and lined up the photos of the "same, but different" quilts that I did for the wee twin boys who aren't born yet. I have met their mother, through their grandmother, with whom I work. Grandma is a lovely person and I probably went overboard on these for the mother who I had only met once, but none of the effort was painful and all of it added to my experience (I still consider myself new, having quilted for only a year and a half). Also, my friend Amber advised me that it would be the, "Best gift at the shower, bitches!". She's a quilter too, and she has totally gifted quilts at showers. Heck yeah!

So anyway, here they are, before quilting, after quilting, after binding and all-things-finished, and the back:

A disappearing 9-patch that really, really disappeared.
All-over meandering, free-motion quilting that has a couple of goofy spots, but is actually follow-able. I bound them both with Kona gray and now you're thinking, "Which Kona gray?" and I don't know. It's lighter than my other Kona gray; I know that much. The colours on the front are all Free Spirit. They're kind of primary colours but kinda not, right?
Those are my slippers. I don't wear socks with sandals. My daughter does and says it's totally okay, and even pointed someone out at the mall last weekend who was wearing BLACK SOCKS with her Birkenstock-style sandals. I cringed.
The flannel for the back wasn't quite wide enough (40-inch squares is what they are), so I added a strip of white flannel.
This one uses all the same fabrics, but it's different. See why I called them "same, but different"? Again, those are my slippers.
My daughter HATES the quilting on this one. I did each quadrant with a line toward the centre, and then another out toward the edge at 90 degrees. I didn't measure them and many of them have an apex that isn't in the middle. They're wonky and I like that. The thing my daughter really dislikes is the 'diagonal' line that joins the apices (I had to look that up) of each of the 90-degree quilted lines. The apices aren't in a straight line. The 'diagonal' line jogs back and forth.
I think this one is more of a modern quilt than the other one, but they're both all solids. This one has more negative space and a wonky block design that I made up as I went along. I made them both up as I went along. They would have been BOTH made from disappearing 9-patches, but I had a bunch of 9-patches that didn't make the cut because they were too flowery. So I only had enough for one quilt and then had to come up with this one separately.
And this is the back of number 2.

Yes, that's me. Yes, I have blue hair. Yes, I'm wearing a Batman shirt. No, I don't wear socks with sandals. For the last time, those are MY SLIPPERS!!!!

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May 17, 2016

startitis and a linky post

I have a bad, bad case of startitis. That's when you start everything. All of it. All the things.

I have just finished three pillowcases and three pairs of pyjama shorts in the past week.

I've cut fabric for a topper for a big chest that will serve as a side table in the living room, and which is too dear to damage in any way.

I've still got that round robin quilt sitting there with the pins in, waiting for the rest of its quilting.

I've completed two quilt tops that are 36" square, which will be donated to the preemie program at a local hospital. They need to be sandwiched, quilted and bound. (That should be quick because they're small and I'll do the binding on the machine.) They were made with some Riley Blake fabric that I received from the Modern Quilt Guild in a challenge, but I couldn't procure the necessary fabrics to finish them up and get them entered (I had to use other fabrics). The Riley Blake fabric, though, was super easy to work with and aside from it being 3/4 of a yard long rather than the width of fabric (the design runs parallel to the selvedges), it's perfect. I suppose if you bought 2 yards and wanted great lengths of it, you'd be annoyed if there were only 40ish inches of it based on the width.

I've been downloading patterns like crazy and am itching to make summer pants and shorts.

I've got a paper-piecing project planned. Just a mini, but it's got 20,000+ pieces and I want to get it done and out of the way soon. It's for a girl at work. She will probably outwardly scoff at it, but she's a prickly pear and I know she'll be thinking sweet thoughts on the inside.

I have some abandoned pieces from a disappearing 9-patch that will come together to be a quilt of their own, with only a little bit more sewing. And maybe some really bold orange added to it. That'll be a wild one. I hope the other girl at work is having a girl. She won't know for a couple weeks, but if it turns out that it's a girl, this quilt is ear-marked for that baby.

My walking foot broke the other day. It's this one. I only bought my Janome 8900 Quilter's Edition last August, and I had the world's best experience at Toew's, where I bought the machine. No questions, no issues, just a new part. WOOT! So because of that, I thought it best to support this local business just a little bit more and so I also got the 1/4" foot for the walking food (Accufeed), and I picked up a 'teflon' foot for doing a project with vinyl as well.

That's the other project I've got started - the sewing machine mat from Make It, Take It. It's made with selvedges on muslin, and then quilted onto batting and a back, and you add the vinyl to the front bit that hangs down in front of your machine so you can put things into pockets that you stitch into the vinyl. It's going to be epic - I'm making it as wide as my machine plus plexi-table, not just the width of the machine. Hopefully my machine will be a little quieter. Not that it's terribly noisy now, but it isn't silent and I don't have a sewing room with a door. I have a nook area off the kitchen, just around the corner from the TV-watching area.

So .... yeah. You can see that I'll have lots of things to show you in a while, but they aren't done yet. It's because I keep starting other things.

(Truth be told, I have finished a set of two baby quilts for twins that a friend's daughter is expecting, but I haven't got the photos available right now, so they'll have to come later too.)

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