324

Okay, I've been detailing my weekly progress on the 1 Year of Stitches project, which is coming along very well. I'll finish the first one in maybe a month, and the next project is lined up. But I only work on that an hour a day. I've had several other projects going during the same time (including writing an entire book! Which will go out to publishers soon! No, it's not a Tory mystery), one of which was a pretty major undertaking.

Way back in 2010, I bought a length of pre-assembled patchwork fabric from my friend Lorah at an auction. You can see the piece about halfway down the post here. I did make one thing (a bag) from some of the fabric, but otherwise, it sat in my closet, waiting to decide what it wanted to be. Fast forward to this January when I found out that Lorah was going to be a Grandma for the first time. The fabric spoke, and it told me it wanted to go back to Lorah, as a Grandma's House quilt (to stay there, for all grandchildren).

So, I cut a hunk of the patchwork (there is a LOT of it- it's commercially made, but actual patchwork. A total mystery) 18 x 18 squares in size (324 squares), and started quilting. In each square, I used an air-erase marker and drew a design, whatever occurred to me on that given day. I did representational designs and whimsical doodles. Outside of the border squares, and one mirror image feather, and two similar (though not identical) birdies, all of the designs are unique. I tried to quilt 6 squares a day, and yesterday I finished it.

The quilt contains many many motifs, including the entire alphabet and the numbers 1-9. I loved doing every stitch, and I cannot wait to give it to Lorah (well, I can wait until after next Friday, because I want to show it off at my Knitter's Group)(baby isn't due until May, so I'm good on the timeline).

Anyway, here are the designs, and the finished quilt:

I wanted to have a solid color binding but could not find the right shade of yellow, so I  went with the dots, because the white echoes the white stitches. I'm glad I did.

My hi-tech method for drawing the border arcs!

I love it!

Some of the squares amused me greatly- none more than the tiny TARDIS!

I have more of the patchwork fabric, but I will not be making another one of these... heh.

Wordless Quilt Progress, Now with 100% More Fabric for the Binding

For the Straight-Line Impaired

I highly recommend free-hand quilted squiggles.

 I mean, look at this: no eyeballing straight lines 1/4" from anything (a skill I simply do not possess). Just lots and lots of quilting along printed outlines, and then wandering wherever I please. More than one person has commented that the quilting around the stars looks like constellations. I love that notion. The only thing I'm sorry about is that my friend Ann V didn't mention that such a thing as glow-in-the-dark thread existed until I after I had already started the handwork. How cool would that have been?

Here's a much clearer shot of the backing fabric, chosen only because I had enough of it on hand and we no longer have a store that sells fabric within 43 miles and I wanted to get started. It'll do. The front border fabric was chosen for mostly the same reason, though that particular tan shade is echoed in the design panel, so it looks good. I will have to buy fabric for the binding, and I don't know yet whether to go with orange or green. I'll have plenty of time to contemplate the choice, I think.

Quilting, and spring

It took awhile to get the baby quilt bordered and

 sandwiched (and sorry for the less than optimal photo- sometimes my phone takes wonderful pics, and sometimes it doesn't... which probably means that the problem is the photographer)

 and basted. You can't see it but I basted lines every 4"-5" around the center.

 I had intended for this shot to illustrate my inability to eyeball a straight line and sew at the same time, but all you're going to be able to see is that the backing is a vaguely brown print. (Darn phone).

 I didn't get a lot of quilting done last night, but this is what I intend to do with the stars- just quilt in random squiggles around them. There are a LOT of stars, so there will be many many random squiggles. I'll quilt the outlines of the design elements, and whatever portions of the insides I feel like quilting. This is probably the least regimental project I've ever tackled.

I love love love my little stickum leather thimble. Keeps my finger almost entirely unpunctured.

American Idol is on tonight and tomorrow night, so it'll be Friday before I get more quilting done (I only quilt/knit/sew in the evenings- during the day I... get ready for it... work...), but I'm sure I'll post pics. More pics than you'll ever want to see.

We're having an exceptionally early spring. The grass is green, and leaves are popping out everywhere. I know that to most of you, the timing is nothing out of the ordinary. But we generally don't get leaves until the first week of May. I'll repeat: no leaves until the first week of May.

And how warm and weird is this weather?

We were too lazy to clean out the garden last fall, so the remains of the Brussels Sprouts are still in the ground. That green you see? Those are re-sprouts. The Brussels Sprouts not only survived the winter, they're growing again. And those other little green things sprouting? Well, some of them are weeds, but easily half is dill.

Like I said, weird weather.