Breaks and Babies

Anyone who has continued clicking through my posts through the ups and downs of the last few years will understand why this post resonated with me so much.  Breaks will happen, life does ebb and flow...the secret is to not let breaks become full stops.  That is what I am committing to.  That, and maybe fewer breaks.

Well, here I am in the sewing room continuing to work on baby quilts.  There is a certain challenge in making gifts.  There is this tension between making what I want to make and making what I think the other person will like - looking for that place where the two intersect, if such a place exists.  I have been playing around with different ideas as I suggested a few posts ago, but recently began to get frustrated because nothing I came up with seemed "right" for the friend with the soonest due date, and neither did anything I had on hand already seem appropriate.

I finally decided to revisit the baby registry and after looking at all the yellow and green prints that she'd chosen for the things on the registry I glanced around my space and my eye rested on a yellow and green print that I have been in love with lately (from a dress I bought at a thrift store intending to wear but that turned out to have a small tar stain on it that I had missed).  I decided to pull fabrics that I had on hand that would work with that print, and suddenly I started to see what might be at the intersection between my style and their tastes.  This is what I came up with:

It is simple, but the best baby quilts usually are.  The light fabric is a buttery soft butter yellow flannel.



To me it is sweet, but not saccharin, baby appropriate, but still a tiny bit edgy.



Finally something I'm satisfied with.

Now I just have to quilt it, but that's the relatively easy part.

The Quilts of Summer 2012

An in-progress baby quilt.  Within my circle of friends there are several little ones expected this fall and winter, so I am turning my attention to shower gifts.  At this point I am just working on a few different ideas to see what develops rather than planning any one project for one specific person.

This started just by sewing scraps together, and is mostly from the scrap bin.  When I started on it I thought it was going to look very different, but this is what it quickly became.  

Also, check out my new sewing table:  

A friend moving to California was getting rid of it, and it is much nicer than the old computer desk I had been using!

Random Stripes

Extended post title: Random Stripes -or- Something I Actually Finished (Or At Least Finished The Top Of)

I have been calling this project "Random Stripes" because it is an improv variation of the traditional Roman Stripes pattern.  It is inspired by an antique quilt I saw in a book (stay tuned for me to figure out which book it was and give it credit here) and wanted to create my own "version" of.

I first declared this top to be "done" many years ago when it was just the center part with the blue border.  Then, before I got around to finishing it, I decided it needed something more and at someone's suggestion decided to add more pieced borders to it.

Then I put it in a pile where it sat for several more years.

I took it out again recently a decided it was finally time to do something with it.  After experimenting with a few possibilities I decided to try adding a row of blocks on top and bottom.  Once that was done, although there are a million other things I suppose I could do with it, I think it actually feels "done" to me.



Maybe I should say "done for now" given the history, but I have a feeling I'll stick with this.

It's pretty "random" as the name suggests, but I think it will make a fun toddler quilt for a little one to play on and with.  Or even possibly a nice lap quilt for a suitably "random" adult.  I'm not sure where it's going to end up yet, so we shall see!  It is 44ish x 62ish inches.



In other news, I have a three day weekend!  And I have to tell you I'm feeling quite extremely favorable towards three day weekends just at the moment!   I have to be grateful for work since I would never be able to enjoy time off so much if it weren't for work.  Right?  Right?

Hope you're all doing well out there in blogland :)

Pink

I had such a busy weekend of sewing that I actually have a little something to share!

I had this idea at the beginning of Lent that throughout the season I would work on some baby quilts to donate by Easter. Let me start off this story by telling you that nothing has been donated. The first thing I worked on as part of this project is the Chinese Coins quilt in the previous post. By the time I finished the quilting on that I just...didn't...feel I could donate it. I love it! Too much! I mean yes, there are a few too many pin tucks on the back, but I really like the quilting, and I have always really liked the top. I don't know how well it shows in photos (well, I'll post a better one when it's finished) but the colors and fabrics just really sing together. Of course there is no reason I shouldn't donate a quilt I love especially since even if I don't donate it I probably won't keep it. Somehow I can face gifting it, but donating it and never knowing what happens to it or if it's appreciated is, apparently, too hard for me.

So I started this pink baby quilt with the idea that I would have an easier time donating something if I planned it to be a donation from the start. But...now that the top is done...I'm sort of...

OK let's face it, I have problems letting go. I always have. But I'm working on it. I am not making up my mind yet what I'm going to do with either quilt. I still would like to donate some baby quilts some time even though I didn't meet my original goal. Now it will just be one of those nebulous undefined goals we all do so well with.

I don't know. I'll work on it.

Anyway, it has been nice to spend some time sewing, so my goal setting at least had that advantage. I'm trying to get focused on what I want to work on if I can keep up the habit of sewing. This quilt is all scraps and salvage fabric*, since that is pretty much all I have with me here, so I'm pondering which of my planned scrap and/or salvage projects I want to give my time to. Stay tuned?

Perhaps better photography can also be hoped for? Sorry, I was so excited to have something to share that I couldn't wait to have natural light and a block of time for a better photo shoot...

*Flannel sheet scraps, pillow case scraps, bits from three different stained or torn shirts, scraps from a blouse I made, and lots of good old fashioned quilting scraps.

Crumb Cake

You may remember the pieces of this quilt from this post a while back. They have been dormant for quite some time whilst I went through a lot of different design options in my head. My original plan was to keep the units small and uneven and sash them with thin black sashing for sort of a mosaic look. I was having too much trouble visualizing that, however, and when I tried to lay it out I did not like how it was shaping up. So the pieces continued to sit while I processed it in some dark corner of my brain and worked on other things. Finally I just decided that the best solution really was to just sew them all together into one big scrap mash up, and this piece is the result. My original fear is that this would dilute the impact somewhat, especially since the quilt uses only three colors so there is not tons of contrast. However, in reality I think it works, and I'm glad to finally have a finished top, as this has been in progress for...forever.

This quilt is sister to this one, and I have one more I'm thinking of doing from the same set of scraps to complete the "quilt family." I guess some people might call it a series.


my favorite bit

I would LOVE to hand quilt this, but I am torn because there are so many small piece and therefore TONS of seams. Some pieces are all seam. And maybe it's because my fingers are sore from my current hand quilting project that wrestling with a million seams doesn't sound fun to me right now. We'll see. I am loving hand quilting (the look of it) more and more these days; it just seems like it adds so much to the finished textile. I have always enjoyed the process, too, of course, but since I know there's no way I can hand quilt everything, I have to be selective about what I choose to work on. I just wish I would hurry up and get better at machine quilting so that maybe I would feel the same way about it, rather than just seeing it as a fast but not very nice way to finish projects.

(Bleh...it seems hardly a post goes by that I'm not apologizing for the quality of the photos, and maybe I should just get over it! However, I hear good photos are not in season right now, and I could not wait any longer to share this! I probably just need to improve my photoshop skills.)

In other news, I know only a few posts ago I was blogging about my new job as a teacher's assistant in a preK. And that has been a fun gig, for sure, and I have enjoyed it. However, I got yet another new job! I will be working as a paralegal in a non-profit agency that assists immigrants and refugees. It is more in the vein of what my long term interests are and is a better opportunity in a lot of ways. So I am excited, even if I am also sad to say good-bye to the preK kids. I am gearing up to relocate to the big city (Chicago) in under a week!! I will be staying with friends when I first go up so it's sort of a "soft" move - I won't be officially moving all my stuff until I figure out a more permanent living arrangement. As a result of the move I would not be surprised if the blog goes quiet for a while. I'm not strictly saying it will, because I hope to still make an effort to post. However, we'll see how it goes!

In the meantime, back to cleaning and packing. This includes more internal wrestling about the amazing volume of fabric I have in my possession and what, if anything, I should do about it. A question that never goes away??

Steps Completed

Here is the finished London Steps top. While I realize it is not something that is everybody's taste, I am pretty happy with it. I enjoyed experimenting with more non-quilting fabrics and mixing lots of different kinds of fabrics, and it has the look I was going for. To finish this I think I am going to combine two quilt ideas into a two-sided quilt, so I will be soon be working on another "top" for the back of this.



I am now working as a teacher's assistant in a pre-K classroom at a public school. This is still not my long term final destination job, but as jobs go it's a definite step up from substitute teaching, and I'm enjoying it so far. It has put a limit on my sewing time, I think mainly because it's been taking me longer to think about and transition between projects. I've had other jobs where I actually thought about sewing projects at work and came home ready to work on them, but so far I find I don't have time to let my mind wander while corralling three and four-year-olds all day. I actually kind of like the fact that the job absorbs me while I'm doing it. It has made me realize, though, how much thinking I actually do about quilts before and while I work on them, and that thinking time is an essential part of the process.

As a bit of an aside, flipping through my Hancock's of Paducah catalog I notice they are selling Gee's Bend quilt kits with a pattern to make a Gee's Bend style quilt, and a fabric line called Gee's Bend solids. I admit my initial reaction to that is not a positive one, given that patterns, quilts, and fabric lines seem so far from the things I love about Gee's Bend. Am I being narrow minded? Maybe it's just a way to make the aesthetic more accessible to people who have trouble working in a liberated way? Maybe it's positive because it's ostensibly making money for Gee's Bend (says they "partnered with the Gee's Bend Quilter's Collective). What do you think?

Strips

Here are two simple baby quilt tops I did last week. When doing my scrap organizing project a while back I set aside any strips that were selvage to selvage. I had fun putting them together in different combinations, and these are the results. I thought about adding borders or other additional elements, but I think I've decided that I like them as is, simple though they may be.



In other news, school is just about out for the summer meaning no more work for a substitute. I've decided to head back to the shelter in Texas for part of the summer to visit and help out. I leave next Wednesday. I'm not sure how long I will be gone for, but things my be a little quiet around here in the meantime. Of course you never know! I do hope to have one or maybe two more things to post soon. I have one project that is quilted and even bound, but unfortunately I found not one, not two, but three blown out seams when I was doing the quilting! Some patching is going to have to happen before it is considered "finished". I'm trying to force myself to get that done so I can share it, because it's a project I'm really excited about. Maybe I will be able to get to that today. Stay tuned!

Hope you're all gearing up for a great summer!

Going With The Flow

Remember this free-pieced project? And how I was trying to finish it or something? I decided I had "enough" units, I trimmed them to size, and then I started trying to come up with some kind of layout for them. Still working on that.

In the meantime I looked at the remaining scraps that I had set aside for that project and noticed that I had a lot of long strips of various widths left. A few seams later:


(This is actually before I sewed the blocks together, but it looks the same.)

I guess the best way to describe this block is improv log cabin. I tried to follow somewhat of a log cabin pattern, but obviously there's no real plan for the colors and the strips are all different widths. It's a little busy, but I really didn't want to sash the blocks. I think it works, though!

Scrap Pinwheels

I have mostly lost all focus on whatever it was I was trying to accomplish and am now just messing around and experimenting. Exhibit A:





Perhaps there is a method to my madness. More to come...?

Spring Cleaning

So I have been cleaning. I should say I have been trying to clean. I have been sorting through my huge overflowing piles of fabric and supplies, trying to turn a critical eye towards it all and decide what I MUST have and what I can get rid of. I've spent some time this year reflecting on the topic of stash and whether or not I need to reduce mine. While logically I can easily talk myself into keeping it all because it is all a part of the creative process, I finally realized that I WANT to reduce the amount of stuff I have. At the end of the day it feels out of control to me and feels like a burden. I think I will be happier if I reduce. In the same vein, my wardrobe is also on the chopping block. My book collection will very likely be next.

The problem is that I keep coming across certain supplies and thinking - I will just whip this up into a quick project in order to move it out of my stash. And the problem with THAT is that "whip this up into a quick project" is not really something I do.

Case in point: a set of five heart-themed blocks made by a friend of my mother's in the 80s. Mom was going to get rid of them, and since I am incapable of resisting a heart theme, I had to take them. So then I came across them while cleaning the other day and thought...that's right, "I'll just whip this up into a quick project." After all, in this case much of the work was already done for me.



Problem is, I wanted to try to modernize the blocks with the setting, but I was having a hard time thinking of a good way to do that, and that was impeding with the whole "quick" part of the process. In the end I decided to go with something simple - if it looks like it could be from the 80s, well so much the better, I say. Parts of it look a bit brown in this picture, but the colors are really mauve-y pinks. I was planning to put more borders on to make it more of a medallion style, but when I finished the first border it was a nice size for a baby quilt and honestly just looked finished to me. And it's well suited for a baby quilt, so I thought why not just go with it.

Here's a close up of this block that doesn't show up very well in the overall shot (even here it doesn't show that clearly - it so hard to photograph those subtle colors!):

My Oldest Work In Progress

Remember the grunge phase that swept the nation in the early nineties? Smells like teen spirit? Long hair? Ripped jeans? That was the context (umm...sort of! not really!) for this quilt. As a junior high school student at the time I went through a few years where I wore flannel shirts and hiking boots almost exclusively. It was around that time that my mom got me going on this quilt, probably as a way to keep me entertained in the summer, probably when I was eleven or twelve. It helped that I was also a little horse crazy (this was not related to the grunge movement as far as I know). I did the buttonhole stitch applique and embellishment (ears, eyes, and tail) on all the blocks at that time and set them all together without the borders, but that's as far as I got. Then it got moved from box to box to closet for about fourteen years.



Years later when I began to get seriously interested in quilting I hunted around for this project intending to finish it. All it needed was the borders for the top to be completed, but somehow when you've been not working on a project for over ten years it is easy to continue to not work on it. However, I had it specifically in mind when I went through my beginning of the year assessment and goal setting this year, and I bought the border fabric the first week in January. Now at last the borders are on and I can put it in the queue to be quilted. I haven't decided if I want to do it by hand or machine.



It's a different look from most of what I'm doing these days, but I guess you can probably expect that from fourteen year old works in progress...

Collaborations

Here it is! I did go with the yellow, which was perhaps a slightly more popular option. It really took me forever to decide, though, even with everyone's advice. I'm happy with it. I am thinking about making another, and possibly a larger older child version. In the meantime this one will be getting in the mail to Debra.



(If you are fascinated there are a million pictures of this on flickr. Let's just say that I am fascinated, probably too much so.)

Also, I have received nine of the eleven blocks I will get from the lap quilt swap on craftster. I need to make one for myself for a total of twelve. Here's what I've got so far:



I think they have a lot of potential! I have a million ideas for possible settings, so it will take some thought and some trial and error to decide how to put them together. Of course I can't really make any decisions about that until I have them all in hand. If you would be interested in participating in a future round of this swap, I suggest you join craftster ASAP, because there is a requirement that you must have been a member for thirty days (and post a certain number of times) before you can participate in a swap. Not sure when the next round will start, but if you join now I think you will probably be in time.

Life got very busy the last two weeks, or at least very busy compared to what it had been immediately before. My interview went smoothly. I haven't heard back about it, but I also at this point feel like the job would not be a very good fit. I also took another trip to Chicago just to visit and hang out with friends, and continued and finished up my two weeks of subbing for the ESL teacher. This weekend my Grandma and Aunt will be in town, and next week I start an eight day sub job in the bilingual k/1st room. Today, at least, I can stay in my PJs for a while.

Conversation Hearts

Remember what I was saying about my love for appliqued heart quilts? Well here is the second one I have made, although it is only a top at this point. I put the border on it last night, after much deliberation about what it should be. I had planned to make a lot more of these hearts for a throw sized quilt, but I decided it would be much cuter as a baby quilt. I think I was right. I quite like it this size. It's about 35"x40".





I'm definitely not going to finish this right away. I think because of all the hand work it will have to wait for an extra special baby. I have been calling this project "Conversation Hearts" due to...the hearts being made out of conversational prints. I know, I know...how do I come up with these things??

A Bright Moment

If you are snowed in, iced in, freezing, sub-freezing, or even just cloudy, here is a little dose of bright for you.



This top has been waiting for borders for a long time, but I wasn't sure what fabric to use or how to do them. Since this is a charm pack I wanted to use some fabric from that line, but I can't remember the name of the line and couldn't find any of the fabrics anywhere I looked. (And I was afraid to look too hard, because once I start looking at fabric I will start buying fabric. This has been proven.) I found this Laurel Burch print with the right colors, and it works for me. With squares laid out in a square, a square quilt seemed fitting. Pretty simple.



About 60" square. I have a suspicion of who might have it on their couch someday, but time will tell.

Bleh - I usually don't name quilts, but then it is harder to talk about them. Anyone else have that problem?

_____________________________________________________________

In other news, Dionne tagged me to share six interesting/quirky things about myself. Why is this so much harder than it seems like it would be??

1. I don't own a computer and haven't for five or six years. I have relied on computer labs, libraries, and generous friends and relatives. Plus at the shelter we had a couple of community computers. It seems a bit weird that I've never owned a computer in the whole time I've been blogging (nearly four years).

2. I like almost all animals, including pigeons, squirrels, mice, and other frequently maligned species.

3. I have travelled to five of the seven continents since high school, and hope to hit the other two (South America and Antarctica) before I die. I took 2.5 years off between high school and college and spent that time working full time and spending the $$ traveling (even though I sometimes told people I was saving for college).

4. I worked in restaurants as a cook for years during high school and college. I strongly considered going to culinary school and I still really miss being in the restaurant environment.

5. I think tree houses are really really cool, especially the ones that adult people actually live in (or stay in occasionally).

6. Many of you know this, but I just spent a year as a full time volunteer at a homeless shelter on the U.S./Mexico border.

Here in central IL we fall into the sub-freezing category.  School was cancelled yesterday and today due to the extreme cold and wind chills.  It's been a slow week for me.

Hearts

Look! It's my baby quilt! As in the one that was made for me when I was a baby. Mom started quilting the year before I was born. I think she didn't know if she was having a boy or a girl so she worked on two different quilts. I don't know what happened to the boy version.

I was looking at this the other day and thinking...maybe this explains my love for appliqued heart quilts. I adore them. I have files full of pictures of them and plans to make about a hundred of them.

My first needle turn hand applique project, naturally, was a heart quilt. The top has been done for I think a couple of years, and yesterday I basted it for hand quilting.



This was the handwork project that I took with me on my semester abroad in Mexico my senior year of college. My second needle turn applique project, still in progress, is...the exact same pattern in different colors and fabrics. True story.



Stay tuned for the finished version of my current hand quilting project that I hope will be finished tomorrow at the latest.

Very Purple Rail Fence

This is the worksheet the kindergartners in "my" class were doing on my first day of substitute teaching.



I finished this top today. It was previously a finished top, but first of all it was too big, and secondly I didn't like it. I had the blocks in a non-traditional rail fence layout and it just didn't work for me. And a nearly queen size quilt is really too big for a quilt in this color scheme, especially for an adult, and especially since I didn't like it. If I might finish a smaller quilt that I don't entirely like, I'll never finish a big one that I don't like. Got it? So, I un-sewed an entire large quilt top and re-sewed part of it into this. And now I like it reasonably well. I don't think rail fence will ever be one of my favorite patterns. I chose it to highlight the blocks from another printed fat quarter from Block Party Studios, which happened to be the right size/shape for this. It's 56"x63", and will brighten up the couch of one of my best friends who loves purple (and I hope isn't reading). I actually hope to finish it soon. (For Christmas?)

Color Block Quilt

This is my latest finished top. It is made from the backs of the t-shirts whose fronts became this quilt for my brother. It was/is an experiment - an experiment in quilting with knits. Hey, the Gee's Benders do it. If you've ever made a t-shirt quilt you know it produces a lot of waste. As I do plan to make more t-shirt quilts I will probably investigate other potential uses for the scraps. A rag rug, perhaps? Pot holders? But up until now this experiment has by no means turned me off on the idea of quilting with knits. I will probably try it again. I would just like to learn more about sewing with knits, rather than just treating them like quilters cottons and playing the "fake it till you make it" game.

I know you're thinking, why quilt with knits if you have no real need to. I mean sure...you COULD quilt with knits, but why?

Uhh...why not? Maybe?

I can't wait to see how this quilts up, so I'm moving it sort of close to the front of the machine quilting queue. Making it third in line. So I will have to wait quite a while anyway.

Ducks in the Pond/Songs in my Head

As I continue to try to get serious about life (i.e. start a temporary job, do serious job searching, etc. etc.) I find my productivity in the crafty area grows and grows. Fascinating correlation, no?

I'm happy to say that this is now a finished top. It feels good to finally have reached stage 1 completion on this since it has been such a long term project.



The block, according to my source (the book "Great Lakes Great Quilts"), is Ducks in the Pond. I can't find it by that name anywhere on the internet. I was mistakenly calling it Ducks Foot in the Mud for a while, but that's a completely other block.



The two-tone border is due to lack of available yardage on hand. The first thing I thought upon laying it out to take this pic was - should have mitered the corners. It honestly had never occurred to me. But I think it's fine as is and I'm not likely to change it. It turned out to be a very purple-y quilt. From the quilt's inception all those many years ago I was planning a blue-green border. And yet when I laid that out:



I didn't really like it and ended up deciding that purple was a better fit. If I was doing it over again I think there's a good chance that I'd think about border options longer, but I do like it as is.

This is about 45" x 55".

Vacation Show and Tell

Wait, what's that??

Could it be...?

It is! A quilt!





I know it looks pretty much just like the pictures of the finished top...but the point is, it's not! It's actually a 100% finished quilt, ready to be put in a box and mailed to my newlywed friends. I'm really pleased with it. I basically completely hated the quilting when I was doing it; I felt it was very "beginner". Which makes sense, as I am still very much a beginner when it comes to this whole "machine quilting" thing. But once it was bound, washed, and fluffed up nicely I found it didn't really look bad at all. It just looks like a quilt. (The back, to be fair, still does not look great. But it's not really about the back...)

I feel so great to have it done - that's at least one finish for the year 2008, and at least one finish for my time spent in Texas. And it's done within one month of the wedding it's a gift for...my best finish time ever on a wedding gift. (I'm about to start quilting a quilt that I intended to be a wedding present for a wedding in 2005!!! I'm still going to give it to them, if it ever actually gets done.)

And amazingly that's not the only thing I've accomplished this week. (Well, I have been holed up in a house talking to no one...this is my vacation!) I also finished a baby quilt top out of all salvage fabrics. This used to be a sheet, three blouses, and a pair of pajama pants:





Design wise it's super simple, but it's sweet and soft and will make a nice blanket for a baby girl. (I have one expectant mother in mind...I'm convinced it will be a girl, but we don't actually know yet.) I'm finding it hard to photograph because the colors are pretty subtle...here's a close up:



It's about 30"x30". I hope I will finish it soon rather than letting it languish in the "top" stage. I'm a little bit torn about whether I should use salvage material as batting, thereby making it a 100% recycled quilt, or go ahead and use the fusible batting that I have tons of right now. I think I might as well use the fusible. The only reason I can think of to use salvage (besides doing it on principle) is that I would probably use a flannel sheet and that would make it more lightweight. And that might be good?? I'm not sure. Decisions, decisions.

Today is the last day of vacation, and although I have a lot to do today, I hope to do some rotary cutting so I can have some things "ready to sew" for the limited craft time that I do get back at the house. I think I will be more likely to work on something if a lot of the "thinking" is already done...

All my best to the blogosphere! I've had a great time catching up on quilt blogs and discovering new ones this week...although now it's back to fully neglecting them...