Archive for May, 2009
Weekend in Review!
Monday, May 4th, 2009
This was a spectacular weekend!
We’ve started something new called “Studio Saturday” where Nathan gets to be ALONE in his STUDIO (he’s a painter) on Saturdays from 10 -6, and then Sunday is family day. It might sound contrived and forced, and how can we force artistic whatever into such a regimented, timed space?
WELL. He’s been Jonesing for studio time since Mazie was born, and trying to steal minutes away and it just wasn’t working. I thought that if we just said, “Ok, we won’t bug you from X time to X time on Saturday, but them Sunday is Family time” it might both help him to get some work done and help us to have a more pleasant time when we’re together (he won’t keep sneaking off.)
AND IT WORKED!!
Saturday, Mazie and I got up and went to the Farmer’s Market, to the quilt shop and to the yarn shop.
Then, we went over to Cindy’s friend Mano’s house and knit / sat around / played with the dog. Then, we did some errands and came home. We got home a little before 6, but by the time we had the grill going and the kebabs on…it was 6!
It wasn’t even that hard! I just organized all of our errands / visiting into that block of time and we were able to give Daddy some ME time. lol.
Sunday, we just had a great day spending time together. We did some stuff in the yard, went out for breakfast, just had a very nice, easygoing day.
During nap times, I worked on a few tumbling blocks:
I made them gigantic. I love how they look. These fabrics just make my heart race, especially the black with metallic gold splatter paint on it. I just LOVE that one! I made the blocks so big because my prints are big, and I want to show them off. I got all of these fabrics at Unravel here in town. (They’re 25% off!)
I’m not using a pattern exactly, I just cut out a bunch of 60-degree diamonds and am putting them together. I’ve been looking at tumbling blocks quilts online, and it seems like almost all of them have the black or darkest diamond on the left, and I’ve got mine on the right. Oh well. It still does the optical illusion for me, so I’m leaving it. I’ve got about 32 blocks left to place, and am still trying to decide how long / wide to make it. I’m definitely keeping the edges wavy (not squaring it up.)
Don’t worry, knitters, I haven’t abandoned you! I’ll be talking to you over on the Lion Notebook for the next few weeks.
Posted in just chit chat, sewing | 2 Comments »
First quilt from a real pattern
Friday, May 1st, 2009
I have to post this, because it’s the culmination of several weeks of work (slash) goofing off.
I finished piecing my first non-flannel quilt top that actually uses a pattern. It’s made of 9.5″ blocks arranged 7 x 10, so it’s about 63″ x 90″. A long twin? Twin with a generous pillow-tuck?
I have finished one other non-flannel (woven cotton) top that I dropped off at the quilters’ yesterday, and I’ll post photos when I get it back. It was huge. 90 inches by 80 inches. I was a little shy to post it before it’s quilted, because it’s kind of … quirky. Let’s just say quirky.
BUT, this one is the one I just finished. It’s from this book:
To me, nothing makes an FO look less appealing than photographing it on shag carpet…but that’s what’s on the floor in my mom’s craft space, so here we go:
This is part way through the piecing.
I bought these fabrics at Unravel while I was in a kind of subdued mood. Even the green sashing that’s supposed to make the pieces “pop” is neutral. My favorite is the taupe dots on the off-white background, they’re pearlescent. There are little shiny or pearly spots in several of the fabrics, but they don’t show up very well int he photos. You can kind of see it in this detail photo:
I saved all the little bits left over after I squared up the blocks and made a little doll quilt out of those. I'm using the doll quilt to practice my machine quilting. It's pretty expensive to have someone else do the quilting, so I can't do that every time. I think I'm getting the hang of it.
It pulled a little bit, but this is really a lot better than I thought it would be!