Handmade Christmas

So the handmade Christmas happened.  Of the five people I needed gifts for who were involved in the "handmade only" gift exchange, I ended up making three gifts, buying one that was handmade by someone else (this was allowed within the rules of the exchange), and giving on "gift certificate" for a future handmade gift.  So you would think that making only three gifts would be an easy task and I wouldn't let it go down to the wire...but of course I did.  The good news, though, is that they all got done and I'm pretty pleased with them.

The gifts are as follows:

1) A set of throw pillows:

These I made for my little brother with scraps from the t-shirt quilt I made him several years ago.  He recently moved into a new house so I thought he could use some help with the decorating...

2) A covered journal made from the tutorial over on Exuberant Color:

3) A mini-quilt a.k.a a sketch:

My mom sent me Rayna Gillman's book as a surprise earlier this year, without realizing that I was already a fan of her blog.  This mini-quilt is the result of my early experiments with her techniques.  It was a lot of fun to make.  The purple section of the mini-quilt is a re-worked block from this quilt that I have a ton of leftover blocks from.  Perhaps more of those are to come.

Anyway, overall I enjoyed the handmade Christmas and will have to think about doing more handmade gifts in the future.

As the year draws to a close I'm starting to think about what I want to accomplish creatively in the new year.  I'm glad to be able to say that I actually made a few quilts in 2012, which is certainly a respectable thing for a quilter to be able to say!  Ha ha.  Hopefully I can keep this trend going next year.  I just want to think critically (as usual) about what specifically I want to work on.

Enjoy the new year everyone!!

Ring in the new...

Well, clearly 2011 has been a fallow year for me in the quilting/sewing/fiber arts area of my life, among other things. And that's okay. I think that if that's where the flow of life takes you sometimes, that's where you have to go. Right now I feel like I'm coming back around to this part of my life, or at least wanting to. Things are stirring.

In honor of a new year, new perspective, new priorities, I decided to finish this piece:



It is small, 14"x18", and machine quilted in what I like to call wavy cross hatching (I'm sure this is not a new idea).



I'm going to hang it in my office at work to remind me of my creative self...

I know some of you may be wondering what happened to the baby quilt of the last two posts? Well, what happened was, the baby was born. And it was a boy. So, I ended up gifting a boy baby quilt that I already had completed and on hand. What will happen to the bit of the folk art angel quilt I had completed, I don't know yet. It's going in the incubator, I guess. But I liked the suggestions I got of adding borders, etc., so we'll see.

Just a few other creative things I'd like to share. Check out this necklace my little brother made me for Christmas!!



Fun, right? It's awesome to be from a family of makers.

Last but not least, after seeing this tutorial, I have spent many a happy moment making paper snow flakes. Here are some I cut from our junk mail like she did in the tutorial, but I have moved on to every and any variety of paper.





Ah yes. So anyway. We'll see where I go from here. I obviously never claim to know what's around the bend for me or where life is going to lead me. But this is where I am right now, at the start of another year.

All the best to you and yours :)

Out of the Living Room

Hey, check out the photo installation of Chicago that my roommate put up:



Wait, what's that under those photos? Is it...? A? Quilt?

Why, funny you should ask...



So I don't know if I should call attention to this fact, but I just finished tacking down the binding on this quilt that I posted three months ago about hoping to have the binding tacked down in a few weeks. Good times! It had been sitting folded in my living room about 30% completed and with my roommates graciously ignoring it for three months until the last two weekends I finally sat down with a movie and worked on it. I'm so happy to have it done and out out of the living room, and I also really like how it turned out.

I, sadly, have been blogging so little that I think you can find the posts about the creation of this quilt top by clicking back one page of older posts. Finishing up reminded me how fun it was to make, and I absolutely got the effect I was going for. Throwing in a few fabrics that weren't quilting cottons turned out to be really easy and I like the texture that it adds to the quilt.



Thrifted sheet on the back. I had originally planned to do a pieced back but that was taking me too long and I decided I would rather get on with quilting it:



The quilting:



Ahh yes. So it feels good to have finished something, and hopefully it will inspire me to turn around and actually work on something else. Although I should have been made wise about posting statements like this, I have every intention of having a baby quilt done for my college roommate's Thanksgiving due date, so I need to get cracking on that. So...stay...tuned...?

As I believe I mentioned previously, I have been dabbling in making jewelry, which has been taking up some of the creative time I might otherwise spend quilting. I have a lot to learn, but I have enjoyed playing around with it. Anyway, here is a small selection of jewelry I have made:







Life in Chicago is otherwise quite good. My job keeps me busy and is really draining sometimes but I do really like it. Friends and fun times in the city keep me busy otherwise. To all who are reading I hope you are well!

The Latest

So this is one of those times where I log in to post acknowledging my woeful lack of posting. This, as you would imagine, correlates to my lack of progress in the creative arena. I am sewing down the binding on a quilt, so I will be excited to share that soon, but as I've said, anything requiring hand work is a slow process for me these days. I really want to have it done by next weekend, so hopefully a couple of movies or baseball games will suffice to get it taken care of.

The rhythm of life in Chicago has just not led me much in the direction of sewing. I put in a little work here and there, but I tend to find myself swept up in other things a lot, and I think that's just life right now. I feel content knowing that I have sewing space and it's there when I need it. I also feel content taking advantage of the blessing of living near friends right now and living in The Big City where there are always a million and one things going on. Since I know I am highly unlikely to be in this situation forever, I think it's incumbent on my to enjoy it while I am. If you would like to follow my life outside of my creative activities you can always check out Rejoice Always, although posting has been a bit slow over there, as well.

I did finally bust out my new jewelry making supplies last weekend, and I found this to be highly satisfying. Although I have essentially no idea what I'm doing, both technically and when it comes to design, it's super fun to play around with and satisfying to be able to complete a project in a very short time. And since I have no idea what I'm doing, the minimal time commitment makes it easy to just cut apart a project and remake it if I end up deciding it's not quite right.

Pictures of my creations to follow. I always intended this to be a blog for ALL my creative endeavors, but quilting has obviously always predominated. I really don't think there's any chance of this becoming a jewelry blog, so I beg the indulgence of the hard core quilters in the audience.

My birthday was this past weekend, and I got a new camera! Quilt bloggers know how exciting this is. I am really interested in photography and have been doing my best at taking it seriously with my old point and shoot, but wanted something that was a bit of a step up. Part of my motivation was to be able to take better pics for the blogs, so maybe this will also motivate me to make things to take pictures of!

In the meantime I took pictures of the top of my mother's pie safe, where she keeps many things:

The Diet is Over!

So when I found some sewing time after the Harry Potter Mania, my first project was a set of throw pillow covers for an undisclosed recipient. I tried to make them coordinated without being matchy-matchy. But they really just look pretty random - maybe they can be in different rooms?? I hope the recipient likes them. I thought she said no pink or purple, now I'm realizing that she said no pink or orange!! And that one pillow prominently features orange - bleh. I really hope she doesn't hate it. Making things to other peoples tastes is so hard!



With throw pillows completed I finally put the border on my red work extravaganza. I auditioned tons of different borders and this one just "worked" somehow. The darker burgundy color does give the top kind of a different feel, but I feel like it quiets the top down, while making it "pop" at the same time. And it introduces a bit of an accent color. After making my mom look at a zillion different choices I got her to agree that this one works, so I went with it.



Sorry, I wish I had a different background to photograph it against since it kind of blends into this floor. Actually, here's a slightly better view, along with one of my flip flops and Pip the guinea pig:



Anyway, with the move of this project onto the "finished top" list, I am officially ending my "no new projects" diet. Woo-hoo! Since starting the diet I have finished at least six tops, so it has been fruitful. I think I'm going to start something new today (Christmas present for my little brother) but I'm not starting more than two new projects until something else either becomes a finished top or one of the things I'm quilting becomes a finished quilt!

One last thing - okay so I upload my pictures on a mac and they look TERRIBLE on my PC at work - but I do have a terribly ancient monitor at work. So question to you PC users out there - do you look at my blog and find yourself thinking, "Why does she post such low quality super dark photos?" Or do they look OK to you? I'm hoping the problem is just with the terribly old monitor, but if it's not then I'll have to make an adjustment somewhere.

I Love Jesus Swap

I am participating in my first swap on Craftster. At many times throughout this experience I have found myself thinking...why did I think I wanted to do this? I enjoy craftster, even if I'm not the devotee that some people are. My main thought behind doing this swap was that I think theoretically that I would like to organize my own swaps (quilt block swap, craftster style!) and in order to do that I have to participate in two swaps first. So I figured I might as well jump in. So I am in the I Love Jesus swap (yea Jesus!) and I finished my stuff today (send-outs are Tuesday). My second swap will definitely be more along the lines of "fill a matchbox" or something equally painless - 5 items was a lot! And I copped out and purchased two of my items!! But now that's it's all done I'm realy excited about it. I think it's a quality package that I would not be afraid to send to Mary Magdalen herself. Anyway, since I don't have a link to this blog posted on craftster, I will go ahead a post pictures here.

Group shot:


Throw pillow w/ close up:



(I think the dimensionality of the pillow really solves the problems that this had as a flat block.)

"The Creative Call" book - I wanna keep this!


Charm bracelet:


Patch (this was a no-brainer):


And a few shots of the treasure box... The idea behind the treasure box is to fill a box with bible verses that are uplifting/encouraging/helpful, so that you can pull one out on a rainy day.






On another topic - to any other people out there who use the blogger/flickr combination: any idea how I can post "medium" size photos w/o the edges being cut off??? Maybe many of you just thought all my pictures are super off center and I always cut off the edge of my subject, but not so! I never used to have this problem on the old blogger...?