One of the Baby Quilts is Finished!

This baby quilt was finished up right before I left town to spend time at my oldest sons in Oregon. Though it wasn't gifted until I returned home, it felt really good to attach the label and check it off the list.

Baby quilt finished up!

It has a sort of busy, young vibe to it, so hopefully will grow well with baby. My baby quilts usually end up somewhere around 42-44 inches wide and 46 plus inches long. Plenty of quilt to be used in a toddler bed.

My little brother has gotten more baby quilts from me.....

The long sashing strips are machine stitched in-the-ditch on either side and also around the peachy horizontal strips. Everywhere else is hand quilted very simply with #8 or #12 perle cotton. It's getting so very, very difficult for me to not add hand quilting somewhere. It just feels wrong! So you know me. I don't even bother fighting it. What's another couple hours with the hoop? hehe

Loving the texture

I passed this quilt off on the Sunday after returning home and the smile I received in return was sweet and perfect. Baby #5 gets to have a little something handmade from her A. Audrey and I know that means something to my sister-in-law. It's never worthwhile when it starts feel expected and unappreciated, right?

Just had to add the lime green, couldn't resist

In a nod to the fact that it was supposed to be for 'baby', I went ahead and used an old retro looking kitty cat fabric for the binding. As I've mentioned before, conversation prints look cute and all, but they just don't feel easy to work with. Most of the time I leave them behind in the store and think wistfully about how much easier to must be if only I could wrap my mind around the concept! 

A little bit of whimsy

I ended up being gone eleven days I think, arriving at my sons house the day before their newest daughter was born! Between the other grandma {who came and went everyday}, we kept our kids and granddaughters well taken care of. Lest you think we pushed ourselves onto them, we didn't. I would never have stayed so long without a genuine invitation of 'help'!

My precious granddaughters!

Getting a kindergartener off to school and picked up from the bus stop everyday, keeping up with the housework, plus chasing around a very active two year old is a lot of work for the grandmas, much less a recovering mama! Dad just switched jobs a couple months ago, so didn't have much time available to take off.

Miss Eleanor Olivia {Ellie}

I would say it was a hardship, but in reality, it was lovely getting so much hands on time with all my granddaughters. I hate that we can't see them more often. What a joy to snuggle a brand new baby, see a little girl getting ready for soccer practice with her daddy, watch the 2 year old slowly figure out that this grandma is completely wrapped around her little finger! So hard to say no to those sweet little faces! Also, our youngest son moved down to the same area about a month ago, so it was great to check in with him and see that he's doing well too.*sigh  Why can't they be happy living in the back of beyond like us?  Oh well. That's the way we were too. Couldn't wait to move away to a more populated area when we were younger! Super nice to back home though, as nothing is ever quite as good as home sweet home...

All the applique finished up and the blocks squared up!

As you can imagine, there was very little time for quilting. Once in a great while I managed to stitch some of the brown curved strips onto Crazy Daisy. This part actually went very fast and though I mostly stitched in terrible lighting {dim lights while the adults were watching tv}, I don't think any of it is so terrible as to justify ripping out. After I got home and got caught up on the laundry, I finished all the rest in a hurry and stuck a few blocks up on the wall. I played with a couple potential setting triangle fabrics, but my heart wasn't in it. All that will have to wait until the sashing is settled.

Online shopping just doesn't seem to work
out for me...

If you look at the picture above, the fabric on the left is the fabric that I went ahead and ordered for the sashing. The colors seemed perfect to me, so why fiddle around? In what now seems super ironic, the fabric that I ordered came in a much different look than the original fabric, very muted in contrast. Both numbers on the fabric were identical so I figured it must be a batch {dye} discrepancy. So I ordered another yard of the same fabric from a totally different store. Uh huh. Same issue. Which is why I so rarely try to buy the 'perfect' fabric on line. This never works out well for me and so once again, I have retreated to make-do, make-it-work with what you have method. All the strips for the new sashing are now cut out and read to go, all from the stash, which is what I should have done originally!

The start of a new baby quilt

So glad I didn't get started on the baby quilt for my new granddaughter before I left! This quilt should be a lot easier to put together now that I have a better idea what the nursery theme will be. I've cut out parts for simple 'wrench' blocks with the darker greens as the background. Hopefully they will go quickly and then I can lighten the vibe as things progress toward a border. 

My quilting attention is unfortunately a bit spotty since I've been home. Doesn't take much to get out of the routine does it? I'm finally starting to do some hand quilting in the evenings and remind my fingers what a quilting callous is. Surprise! {not really}, after a short break I am enjoying the hoop even more than before. Nope. Not giving up the hand quilting anytime soon....

Thankfully, before I left town, all the mending was finished up in a flurry and now that's one thing out of the way and off the counters in the quilting room. Did you think I never had any? If you are short like I am, barely 5'2", and tired of stepping on your jean hems? This tutorial worked well. I mean, like, amazing well! Someone told me about this method of hemming years ago and honestly, I just didn't think it could possibly turn out very nice looking. So I nodded at all the right moments and then promptly ignored their advice. I have been putting off hemming several pairs of jeans and finally, had no choice but to hem something, destroy my hems, or buy new. Yeah, right.

My old method of cutting off the bottoms of the jeans and turning under a couple times worked to shorten the jeans, but never looked as sharp without the original distressing and commercial thread used. After this hemming session, I did go back and do the extra hand stitching {mentioned at the end of the video} on a couple pairs of jeans, just so the hem doesn't flip up during washing. On one darker pair of jeans, I added an {almost invisible} extra, stabilizing top stitch, which... yeah, I can already tell was probably needed. Okay, why am I so excited about this? I have five pair of jeans now that fall exactly where I want them to at the top of my shoes? I'm not stepping on them. And the hem doesn't look obviously 'hand mended'. Do you know how rare that is for us short people? So tempted to go back and hem a couple of my older jeans as well, but I probably won't. I'd much rather be quilting!

From One Phase of a Quilt to the Next

Next up in the hoop is Autumnal Tulips. As most of you know, there is a lot of quilt tops to choose from and most times, I can't even tell you why the current top is chosen. Not the case this time as the seasonal look evidently drew me in! I was hoping to have this top completely quilted by the end of November, but that was a bit overly optimistic. What can I say? My head generally works much faster than my hands...

Autumnal Tulips next up in the hoop

Since I'm hand stitching primarily over the top of the applique pieces, the quilting is a bit tedious. Definitely not able to employ the rocking stitch quite as much as I'd like to! Overall the vibe feels very pleasant though and I wouldn't change this quilt out for any other!

Getting in some good progress with
the hand quilting

The quilt project below, Big Basket #4 finally saw some love in the past couple weeks. All the applique was cut out and pinned to the background, just needed some stitching. Now it's ready for me to address the next phase of the quilt whenever the proper mood strikes. I'm thinking about random sized appliqued 'pear' blocks in a surround border. For some reason that element sounds super intriguing at the present. We'll see. For now, I'm just playing with fabric and pondering.

Big Basket #4

Another project that I was itching to make progress on was the 4-Block Tulip Medallion. It has quite the old fashioned vibe which makes it very fun to take it out of the project tote. There's just something about the fabric blends and colors that make me melt. The scrappy make-do borders needed to be sewn together {tho not onto the quilt!} before I could even start to get serious about the potential applique work. I've drawn up a mock-up for the tulip baskets envisioned in my head and now it is just a matter of getting the pieces drawn up to size and then translated into the most impactful fabric/colors. This step will probably take awhile as other projects keep getting in the way.

4-Block Tulip Medallion

On a whim one day, I decided to go ahead and cut out the first part of a brand new project. This fabric has been stacked up and marinating together for probably well over two years. My concern is that the fabrics will start to look dated if I don't get moving on them fairly soon.  There are just some fabric pairings that appear to have an expiration date attached! You know that I didn't actually go looking for something new to start. Oh no... Me? Why would I purposely start a new project when I already have so many in the works?

The new project

The inspiration came from an old quilt book and is deceptively simple looking. I fully intend to use more oranges than the original quilt shows and also, add some brownish purples. No applique planned at this time, but of course, anything is possible in the future. My quilts definitely have a habit of getting bossy and starting to demand things that I never, ever intended! For this project though, I'm thinking the biggest draw is the fact that it should be a great change-up from all the other projects needing hand work. Maybe if I keep telling myself that??

Inspiration from an antique quilt

The Melon Patch quilt that has been in the works for years and years suddenly took a big detour. Last June I had stitched the melon parts to this point. Not entirely happy with them, I nonetheless determined to forge ahead and in fact had finally placed them at the head of the applique project list. After spending well over an hour trying to get started stitching my first block, I just gave up, ripped out all my stitches and went to work figuring out a different solution.

Freezer paper template for Melon
Patch background

Honestly, if I hadn't spent so very many hours layering the applique parts, I would have just tossed the whole kit and caboodle. They don't look like what I wanted them to look like and quite frankly, I've fallen out of love. Yeah, I'm kinda stubborn though, and now it's become a challenge of sorts. Late that night, just before falling asleep, I conjured up an idea which involves stitching these petals into 'chains'. After that, I will further stitch those chains onto perhaps a burgundy colored background? and then into a row quilt.  So that's the new plan of attack and all the next prep work is ready to go. Whether it will look good or not is totally up in the air, but regardless, I won't be any more disappointed than I already am!

Melon Patch Rows

Of course, that was exhausting. And because I was such a good girl {not ditching the entire project forever}, decided it was time to reward myself. Why stich on the problem child when something else sounded like so much more fun? Coronacrazy is the applique project that has been most loudly calling my name of late. Quite shamelessly bellowing for attention actually! Anyway, it was altogether too easy to fold the Melon Patch project up and move it totally out of sight once again. I can only console myself that it has NOT been neglected. Merely left to marinate and simmer until we all reach a better conclusion!

Coronacrazy

This Coronacrazy quilt looks a little bit busy for one of my quilts doesn't it? I still don't totally understand the pull of this particular, oddball project and I'm not sure that I ever really will. The charm seems to be partly in the fact of using up so many abandoned applique parts and pieces, but that's not the sum total. When I start stitching, there's such a feeling of accomplishment with each new added element, I can't even explain it. It just feels good.

Starting on the bottom right side and moving up

For this particular year, it seems especially smart to work on at least SOME projects that lend themselves to joy. Right? If it ends up being a crazy hodgepodge mess in the end, oh well. Maybe I can turn it into a body pillow cover or something!

Enjoying the quilt on the bed

Thanksgiving was a little quieter here at the home front this year, namely the fact that we did not get to see the grandkids. Very sad. Hopefully we'll get to see them at Christmas! We did have a niece staying with us and I quite enjoyed visiting with her and of course, getting an occasional glimpse of the quilt on the guest bed.*wink  

Lots of family gathered at mom and dads this year {per their request} and many of my siblings came and went throughout the entire weekend. Lots of new happenings including a brand new great-niece {10 1/2 lbs!}. They had Thanksgiving with just immediate family though I did end up spending half a night helping out with the baby just before the holiday and lots of friends/family helped by dropping off food. My youngest sister and children recently, unexpectedly moved back into the area, other extended family were off checking out another state they fully intend to move to, our youngest son is working out of state until lockdowns are lifted here in Washington, we had to get two brand new appliances {why do stoves break down at Thanksgiving?} and on and on. Most of the normal Black Friday shopping was done online and a few ventured out in support of the struggling small businesses. This year seemed to be very tightly focused on being thankful, having good conversations and inhaling lots of food. 2020 has changed many of us in a myriad of ways, some for the good and others, unfortunately, for the worse....

The Applique Ideas That Never Seem to End

I've been home for a few days now and have thoroughly enjoyed some quality time to sit and quilt. Quietly. Peacefully. Getting to go to the Oregon coast for a couple days apparently reinvigorated something deep within me. We don't always realize how badly a little 'time out of time' vacation is needed until the moment that we're breathing it in. Until the moment we walk back through the door of our home and are so very glad to be HOME.

Love Apples progress

The main project that I worked on while away from home was the 'Love Apples' quilt. I couldn't believe it when I looked back and realized that this quilt has been in the works since May. My oh my, how time slips away! Such a happy project. I knew I would love doing the stitching on this one! With a little more time spent on it after returning home, all the stems are stitched now on the 21 background squares. One block is completely finished up just so I could see how it was all going to look. And then I was abruptly done with that project for the present. Funny how that happens. 

Thankfully I hadn't cut out all the leaves as I determined that the size of my template needed to be one seam allowance larger. That's something that happens altogether too often around here, so I've learned to expect it and actually, even to look for it. The smallest pile of lemon shaped parts is the cut-outs from behind the larger, layered pieces that make up the Love Apple flowers. No clue what will happen with those little bits yet, but I'm sure they'll be happy enough to rest in the orphan applique totes until further notice.

Coronacrazy

And speaking of orphaned applique bits.... After being home for a little bit, I decided the project that I most wanted to work on was Coronacrazy. Kind of surprising as it's been awhile and honestly, at times, I was feeling a bit down with the entire idea. Another whole applique quilt? Whose idea was this anyway? The quilt start is approx. 42" x 47", so lots bigger than is naturally comfortable for hand applique work. It's crazy. {Thus the name.} Lets just call it a Covid-19 mush brain quilt and every quilter {everywhere} totally gets it. All I know is that it totally made sense at the time.

Looking at the 'hills' that still need to be stitched down

All previous angst aside, this week I have slowly been plodding forward. Improbably, feeling really good about this quilt too! What I'm showing you here represents hours and hours of stitching effort so I guess you could say that I've fully and unabashedly recommitted to finishing this quilt. I mean, not right this very minute, but eventually--as free time and mojo permits. 

Finally, last night I succeeded in reaching the point of getting all this initial flower applique stitched down. All the stems that tuck under the hills are fixed in place. Yes! Of course, there's still the upper side of the arches to stitch down and then next up I will address where and what leaves will be needed. After that, there will be the question of which other orphaned floral pieces will go on and yada yada yada. It's a phase by phase sort of quilt and I totally expect answers to manifest as each area become more and more defined. At some point I fully intend to think about a border. Or two. But that's in the future. Plenty of time for that when we get there!

As far as answers go, for instance, there was an area on the right side of the quilt where the hills looked pretty ragged as they practically dove off the side of the quilt. You can see this more clearly from the August auditioning work. It's something that I've considered here and there. Hmm.., does it look sloppy? Rushed? Crazy? lol  Could it be cleaned up without destroying the integrity of the folksy look that I was initially striving for? These and other random thoughts swirled around in the deep recesses of my mind on occasion.

As I was laying the quilt on the floor the other night {to better admire the whole effect of the finished applique stitching}, suddenly my brain engaged and I immediately knew what to do. Lightbulb time! It was so simple and yet, if I hadn't been steadily working on the quilt over a period of several days, my subconscious wouldn't have had that quiet time to dwell on and seek for answers. 'Cuz you have to know that I wasn't even positive that it needed changed. It was more like a little niggle of irritation, not a clarion call to action! Whatever. I am loads happier with the look now. The quilt already seems to have oodles more potential to turn out well, right? It's okay. I think so and that's really all that matters.

The new start

And lest you think that I am losing my awesome abilities to impulsively start a brand new project, never fear. The squirrels are here. Oh yes. One of the marinating stacks of fabric is now well on its way to becoming yet another applique project. As if I don't have enough! Just blocks for right now in blue like the ocean. Wow. Just wow. So shocking! I'm calling this one 'Crazy Daisy'. Nope, not a tulip in sight fo this particular quilt. Just a ruffle-y look flower that will probably end up on with the blocks on point but yeah, we'll see about that. I don't even care. It's hand work. Fabric. Color. Peace.

I'm gearing up for yet another stressful month, albeit from a slightly healthier place. Lots of challenges facing us during this season that I'm not looking forward to at all, but that I know are unavoidable. Yay. 

Julie said something the other day that really resonated. I probably need to cut myself some slack too. She said her stash was soul soothing and I definitely feel that way about mine as well. What a great place to start. It's okay to dive in and start something new from pieces of what we already love or maybe even just stack up the fabrics and dream. Dreaming is good, even if it never goes anywhere tangible in the immediate future. {But I'm betting it will!}  Without getting too deep in the weeds, I just love how her observations matched up with several of the things that I've observed or experienced lately as well. It's good to have quilty friends. Enough babbling though. I've got approximately one day left of my gloriously people free home.*wink  Something that rarely ever happens around here....

A Little Bit At A Time

Life has been very disjointed and moody lately. We have deadlines and 'have-to's' out the kazoo. Things happening that seem quite heavy. Or at least it seems that way. It could be that our get-up-and-go is feeling recalcitrant, and everything seems to take an extra dose of effort just to get done. Our kids and grandkids came to visit last weekend, so that was a wonderful window of good times. Nothing like the honest joy of little children to make everything seem just a little bit brighter for a moment or two!

Coronacrazy progress

Governor proclamations and mandates have been getting especially wearisome of late. It feels like we're at permanent pause regardless of any available, pertinent data. I have family grappling with the public school question and I'm very relieved not to have to be dealing with that dilemma myself! Feel so sorry for the kids who will have to wear masks all day and not get to have any positive social time with their friends. Definitely time to seriously consider home school options, but if too many do that here in our valley, the result will probably be that our community permanently loses the school itself.

Good time to pull out the Coronacrazy quilt out and make a stab at moving things forward--put my crazy towards something beneficial. Just too many things completely out of our control! This picture above represents three hours of auditioning the layered flower bits and then taking off the pieces not needing to be tucked 'under' the hills. I'm not very much in the mood to do this particular applique at present, but it is all prepped and ready for when the time arrives. Which it always does.

Binding for Sweet Tarts

Lovely to have had the binding all ready for Sweet Tarts! It's well on its way to a post of its own here on the blog, and I must say, it will be very bittersweet to be finished up with this particularly sunny project. It's been a great mood elevator during these past weeks of having it in my lap.

Applique border on Seedpods

The Seedpod quilt has the applique addition all cut out, very carefully fussy cut from the remnants of a single fat quarter. Stumbled upon this fabric when combing through the stash totes and it seemed so obvious that it was the perfect choice to help make this centerpiece shine! Amazing what a little fussy cutting can do! Crossing my fingers all the colors work as well as expected....

Time for a basket!

This has been in the works for a couple weeks. One day I was perusing the multiple stacks of fabric marinating throughout the quilt room. This stack of older blues and pinks didn't seem very inspiring, but mixed with a few reds and greens, just had this little glimmer of possibility. 

A make-do background

On that particular day, I must have been feeling fairly invincible, as it was not the least bit scary to just start cutting and throwing things at the wall. In no time at all, there was a substantial basket looking back at me. Easy as pie to add more width to the chosen background fabric and then, next thing I knew, the preparation for applique was well on its way too. Love when a project barrels along, gaining momentum with every single decision made!

Figuring out the applique

I'm enjoying the faintly Scandinavian look/color palette to the applique, but you probably need to know that all the cues for this flower arrangement were taken directly from the darkest blue fabric in the basket. Still not 100% sure about the white stem and leaves, but am willing to try it out and see. The basket handle still needs some fine tuning, but otherwise, all is ready for hand stitching there too.

Next up in the hoop!

Though we did have a lot of distractions over the weekend, there is generally always a brief window for hand quilting around here too. Thankfully Peachy Cameo was already sandwiched and pinned, ready to be popped into the hoop at a moments notice! I've been dreading working on this quilt for some ridiculous reason, but finally the time had come. No more excuses or procrastination allowed!

Closer look at Peachy Cameo

Now that I've stitched a hoop or two, it seems like a rather silly 'dread' and I'm left wondering why? It was probably the open areas in the applique border that seemed rather intimidating. Sometimes it takes getting a quilt into the hoop before those decisions can ever be satisfactorily addressed in our minds. Gotta go through instead of trying to weasel our way around a problem.

Full view

Up till today, I've not had a boat load of problems with the New Blogger. Little bit of a learning curve, but not too overwhelming. Today was a doozy and I eventually just had to delete an entire post and just start over. Why? Something to do with {accidentally} engaging the link button and then trying to type out the entire post while in that particular mode. Definitely. Do. Not. Recommend. I've been working on getting a post out today for more hours than I want to admit to. You'd think I would have quickly figured it out, but no.... I'm not techy smart and it took me forever to understand why all my defaults had suddenly went pyscho. {Head banging stuff.} Blogger, you picked a fine time to change things up and I sincerely hate you. The end.

So the paperwork has been piling up around here and I've been ignoring it best that I can. {For a long, long time actually!} Thinking... Hmm.. Surely I can put it off till a less stressful time? Yeah. Not happening any time soon. I finally bit the bullet and started getting things organized for a big push in the home office. Will still try to blog here and there, but cannot guarantee any regularity. Or perhaps I will post pictures and leave off the wordy ramblings? Whatever. Will figure it all out in due time. Thankfully I have lots and lots of hand work prepped and ready to go for when I need the down time. 

Am currently trying to get my hand work bag sorted out with applique projects organized in order of priority. lol  Order of importance? Or order of interest? You tell me which ones more important...

Gonna Take Another Brand New Project Just To Get Through...

Some days I can focus and some days it is pretty much impossible. Definitely dealing with some depression over all this, though I know you don't want to hear that. I am not a happy person all of the time, not do I suspect, are you. It appears that we are on the slow-boat to open-up plan here in Washington State. Had to laugh at something Lori posted today about her state. Oh my. Sounds too familiar! On impulse the other day I started a new project. Yep. This could get dangerous as a feel-good activity....

Strippy Triangles , the new project

Just cut a whole bunch of 5" squares in a 'light' grouping of fabrics and also a 'dark' grouping of fabrics. It's got interesting vibe going on that I hope bodes well for the entire look of the quilt. Strippy Triangles is what I'm calling it and the plan is to mix these long triangle rows up between long strips of sashing fabric. Very scrappy antique. So far I have 8 out of 14 sets of the strippy triangles pieced together into stacks of 4-triangle units. Once the longest measurement of the quilt is determined, then I will go ahead and sew those units into long rows. It might all depend on the length of whatever suitable fabric that I find for the alternate sashing strips!

Starting to sew the lengths together

Then I saw a post over on Clare's Instagram. She's doing a QAL for her lovely 'Big Kiss' quilt starting this week. Most QAL's haven't tempted me in the least lately, but this one grabbed my attention.

Big Kiss quilt fabric contemplation

I pulled some likely fabrics from two different, simmering stacks of fabric {made a lovely mess}, and am seriously contemplating making an attempt. The problem is, most of my fabrics are not nearly long enough {she indicated 38" long for the longer pieces} and that might make me change my mind. Maybe. This is a very sweet quilt and one that I have long admired! Just noticed that she has the tutorial posted on her blog now. Hmm... This could be my happy place for this coming weekend. And don't worry. There is a top limit for open-ended projects around here....

I Am a Maker in the hoop...

And, as usual, I am still hand quilting late in the evenings. Not been picking it up quite as early as usual and some nights I am only managing a good solid hour with the hoop. Love how much it is picking up the stitching texture though and am so, so glad that I chose this one for this particular 'time out'.

One of the things that is driving me insane is that we have so very little time to ourselves these days. Love my kids and all, but wowsers. Sure miss those days when we had the occasional evening alone, just me and my better half! Cannot even imagine if we all didn't get along as well as we did! After dinner my husband disappears out to the garage {it's so tidy now!} and the rest of us head to the corners of our home or in the case of one of my kids, out to the garden. Oh well. We definitely can't complain about being lonely, which is apparently something many other people are having to contend with. But no matter which way any one of us are experiencing this, nearly everyone seems to be on the same page with the difficulty of having our existence suddenly narrowed down and tightly controlled. I'll admit, there is starting to be some rebellion, visiting extended family members and running to the store just for ice cream...

Always Something Going on Around Here

Scrappy Tulips is the quilt in the hoop these days. Since each red block is 22", I have to move the hoop a couple times in order to stitch each tulip in the block. I probably could have stitched the middle sashing down at the same time as the middle tulips, but was unsure what to do there.

Scrappy Tulip quilt starting to get some stitching

Lots of pondering about that and now it's starting to come together in my mind. I started out stitching every other string in the tulips and after about five of them, found myself going back and filling in. Finally I just gave up and am stitching through every single string. Much faster to do them all at once! Loving the look though. It's one of my favorite strings quilts ever.

A closer look at the blocks. It's amazing how different the
red looks depending on the light!

This afternoon also found me doing very basic sashiko mending on some summer capris. When the holes wear through to the point of showing skin on my upper thigh, it's a no-go. I had to go back and touch up the patch on the left as I didn't stitch quite far enough out on one side. I also clipped a few of the white threads so the patch could show through--just a bit. It's a fun, casual boho look. I don't mind it at all for hanging out at the house or going grocery shopping etc.

It's so hard to find capris that I feel look okay on my middle aged shape--I often give in and buy the ones with the pre-distressed look if necessary. {If they're cheap enough!} The mending is an annoying task, but also kind of interesting as I often play with different colors of thread and/or the shape of the stitch. Plus, it holds up really, really well. I taught my daughter how to do this several years ago and then wondered, why not do it for mine as well?

#sashikomending

And here's the next quilt project that persuaded me to jump in and play. I've been eyeing this stack of fabric for awhile now and quite by chance, stumbled on the green/turquoise stripe fabric the other day. I only bought a 1/3 of a yard {since they didn't cut fat quarters} and all of a sudden, the quilt started making sense.

My new quilt project that I'm calling 'Hey Grandma!'
because some of the fabrics remind me of prints she used.....

I know there's some 'ugly' looking background fabrics appearing in the quilt, but it's so intriguing to try and blend the old with the new. It just never gets old to me, unless I start churning out failure after failure of interpreting my ideas and inspiration. I'm also very interested to see if I can use that oldy, lighter turquoise print that I'm auditioning there for the border. That one was a fabric that almost got moved down the road when it was first gifted to me! Then I had second thoughts, 'Nah! Maybe save it for a backing fabric?' And now I've dug it out of the totes for something totally unexpected. We'll see. There's a lot of work to be done before I reach the border, blocks to cut out, applique to prep, stitching to happen. Well, you didn't really think I'd make something this colorful without applique did you?*wink

A Pre-Holiday Catch Up

Got my computer back late yesterday evening but refused to plug it in until all my Christmas cards were addressed and mailed. Which finally happened today. And wouldn't you know it, a ton of addresses needed updating. Why do people move? So annoying.

The new wall hanging

The good news about my computer is that it should be fine until next summer now.*sigh  I was not looking forward to fighting for computer time on anyone else's computer in this particular house. Or learning new programs, operating systems or important laptop tricks.

As you can see, in the last two weeks I managed to finish up my Vintage Basket AHIQ wall hanging.  It's going to go on the wall in my quilting room and make me think very creative thoughts. Of course it is....

Not my favorite batting, but it turned out alright for this small quilt.

And I also finished up my Tipsy Geese baby quilt. I machine quilted in the ditch on all the vertical rows and then came back and started stitching in between over the top of the geese. Bad mistake. Ended up using my seam ripper because all my geese were bunching up in the mid section of the quilt. There's just something about machine quilting that means there can never be too many pins in the sandwiching process. I know this and yet I continue to be optimistic there can be a compromise made.

Looking at the initial phase of quilting.

So I threw it in a hoop and randomly hand stitched {half or less of} every set of geese. Not that I had time for that, but what do you do? It obviously needed more stitching. Did I ruin it by not hand stitching every single one of them? Sometimes I think my get-up-and-go is not in keeping with all my expectations. I love it and yet, I was itching to add more hand quilting. In fact it was all I could do not to spend more time on this little baby quilt! But really, the time had run out. And it's fine. Perfectly acceptable.

Tipsy Geese is done!

I was only able to incorporate one of the oddball geese units into the quilt. Love how it finishes off this top corner though. And in case you were wondering, this quilt is for a baby boy who is almost six months old now. I personally don't think it's ever too late to gift a child a quilt, but wonder what the mom will think when it shows up out of the blue!

Such a sweet geese unit to finish off the corner....

I totally forgot about getting a label onto the quilt until today when I was packing it into the box for shipping. My daughter totally put the guilt trip on me until I hurriedly wrote one out and got it attached. Which made me arrive at the post office at ten minutes before closing with a mailing box and also needing 120 stamps. Oh, and can you wait to close until I get them all on please? hehe  I almost put the babys name on the label but decided not to at the last second. Cynthia's oops with her beautiful quilt was still very fresh in my mind. Just hope I got the husbands name correct on the mailing address as that could be a bigger oops.....

All my boy, baby quilts end up with the same colors....

In the event I might possibly get bored, there is a new project in the works too.

A new project

One box of dark colored flannel strips and another of medium to light colored flannel strips. All I have to do now is sew a light to a dark until they're all sewn together and then I'll sew those sets together until I have new sets of six.

Accumulating the strip sets

It should look something like the pattern below only I'm eliminating the border altogether and making the quilt a bit wider. Funny how a pattern from January/February of 2005 can still be extremely relevant today. I desperately need a no nonsense, non thinking, chain piecing project right now and who cares when it gets done. And uh... I actually cut out enough strips to make two of these. Which is good because I need a couple more comfort quilts to give away in the next little while.

A Fon's and Porter pattern

And I'm still getting to those pesky circles. Whose idea was this anyway?

50 circles sewn and 4 more ready to go

All going well etc., there will be a linkup party on the first of every month for the next year.  Okay, must go now. I still have a major Christmas shopping list to get figured out as tomorrow is the day to try and finish up. Oh how I hate going the last Saturday before Christmas, but that's the way this year has been. I am very grateful for all of our blessings, good health and wonderful family and friends. If I don't get back to you before the holiday is over, Merry Christmas to you and yours!