The end is in sight for the Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top. At least, I feel like it is. I've been working on it fairly diligently.
I'm thinking about hand quilting it, since it's hand pieced but I'm the world's worst hand quilter...
Anyhow, research has ensued and I thought I'd share a couple of photos from around the web.
A popular method is to shadow quilt in each and every little hexagon. That's a lot of quilting!
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I'm definitely not as prolific as some people, but I did finally manage to finish one baby quilt. I used the Minny Muu squares I received recently.
For the back I worked in the leftover squares.
Things are a little hectic around here getting ready for school to start on Tuesday, but once that happens I will hopefully be back more regularly.
Wow, I didn't mean to take another break. I just haven't done much worth sharing lately. That's about to change however. This morning someone's coming over and we're going to sew up a storm! I have an idea I'd like to work on.
In the mean time, I did make the fourth block for Amanda's star quilt-along. I've decided not to go with medium and dark fabrics, but only darks.
I'm still one block behind but that's the first thing on the list this morning.
I've been creating a little collage of the blocks to see my progress. I think it's time to start making setting blocks...
Well, kind of. I'm a quilt pattern kind of girl although I yearn to be a quilt designer. This project is inspired by a pattern, but I'm not using it. It's not a very far stretch but it's a start.
I think my biggest fear is "wasting fabric" by cutting it up and then ending up with something I hate.
I like what I'm doing here, so it's all good so far.
Warning: This may long and winded.
As you may know if you read this little blog regularly, I pretty much spent every spare minute last week quilting the Stash Dash Quilt. About 1200 minutes, actually.
My Bernina is about 15 years old and every minute of this, I really worried about her ability to do this much sewing in such a short period of time. I love my Bernie, and do NOT want her to give up the ghost. She makes wonderful buttonholes, and sews a beautiful blanket stitch. And a replacement will cost thousands. I need a strong sewing machine that'll be able to free motion quilt for long periods of time without getting stressed out. This way I can save Bernie for the "special" things and not overexert her in her old age.
I remembered Amanda raving about her machine and contacted her for some details. I researched online and did some pricing. I then put my argument to the dear hubby and guess what - he agrees! So today, I'll be ordering this baby.
I have been banned from quilting on Bernie, so I'll be making tiny things this week...
As you can see, I did finish Stash Dash. It's dark and raining outside. These photos are as good as it's going to get today, I'm afraid.
Yes, I did do the free motion stitching in black! It was six of the one and half a dozen of the other. Black would show on white and white would show on black. Since the backing is black, I went with that. Don't look too closely.
Christmas finally got completely put a way this weekend. The rest was pretty much spent in a "What do you mean you're going snowboarding on Wednesday and since you grew 5 inches in the last year nothing fits?" panic.
This means that nothing fun really happened and "Dove at my Door" is still not done. I have decided to give you a sneak peek since I have NOTHING else to show and my cutback in blogging is becoming a little more than I was planning on.
In other news...
...I have TWO mittens now!
...you ask. Do you ever feel like all you do is laundry? I was wondering how many loads I do per week, so I strung my little row counter up in the laundry room. The count is not as high as I expected, but the week is young...
On a different note, the block for week 5 of the quilt-a-long.
I really like this one.
The Christmas cards are made and we got the tree up yesterday, but that's about it Christmas-wise. I'm hoping to hit the loft today and see what's up there that I still want to put in my house. Am I the only one who sorts through the Christmas decorations each year and goes "What was I thinking?"? At least this is an excuse for new stuff...
In August I posted about the Holly Jolly charm squares I fell in love with and just had to have. I'd never bought charm squares before and now know why. What on earth do you do with 37 different 5" squares? While I was still pondering a solution 3 months later, the amazing Monica came up with one.
And here it is...
the Jingle Jolly runner.
It matches the family room curtains just perfectly!
I really was planning on posting less after NaBloPoMo, but I seem to have something to share every day...
Quilt-a-long Week 4:
I bought Josh's birthday gift today. One more thing checked off the list.
Today:
1. make Christmas runner
2. take some decorations down from the loft
3. address Christmas card envelopes
4. write family Christmas letter
Notice the repetitive trend here?
At the beginning of October a bunch of us went on the Fall Stash Dash. This was a great little shop hop, since they handed out a fat quarter of fabric at every shop, along with one step of instructions for the "Stash Dash Quilt". The quilt is officially called "What's Black & White & Red All Over?", but since I'm in an orange phase...
Since we all seem to be fully in the Christmas Spirit at the moment, I was inspired to pick an almost Christmas-sy fabric for this week's block.
Check out blocks made by fellow quilt-a-long'ers here.
I realized this morning that, after doing absolutely no quilting for months, I am now working on three quilts. Strange how that happens, especially when I should really be getting ready for Christmas...
My second block for the quilt-a-long.
You can see other beautiful blocks made by "quilt-a-long-ers" over here.
Now for the contemplation...
Ever since I started this blog I've posted just about every day. That's why I thought that posting EVERY everyday during the month of November would be a breeze. All it has lead to, however, was a feeling that I was being forced to do something, which lead to me not wanting to do it at all. Kind of like a teenager (or a man). I'm now questioning whether I blog because I create things or whether I am at the point where I'm making things because I blog. Hmmmm...
NaBloPoMo has been kind of hard, but today I have "real" stuff to post about. Yay!!!
I made my first block for the quilt-along over at Crazy Mom Quilts. It took all of 30 minutes and I'm going to do some serious stash-busting in the process.
I do have a question for all the experienced quilters out there though. How on earth do you get all your seams to be exactly 1/4"? I have a 1/4" foot and try really hard, but somehow, by the time I get to the outside of the block, the seams don't line up because all the small inaccuracies add up to a big one at the end.
Christine over at Sew Christine is having a lovely giveaway. Go check it out.
Oh, and Josh's soccer team won their division of the President's Cup, which is the big Cup for rec soccer in Washington State, last night in a shoot-out. It was nail-biting. They are now going on to the State semi-finals. Fingers crossed...
This was one of the very first quilts I made. I don't think I would pick this pattern today, but it still holds warm memories and I love taking it out every year.
It is machine pieced, and hand appliqued and quilted.
(click on the photo if you want to see more detail)
I'm working on a project I'm very excited about. Here's a little sneak peek.
I'm also making slow but steady progress on granny's flower garden.
I have lots of home sewing (duvet covers, chair covers, curtains) waiting for me, but I'm having so much fun with the creative stuff that is falling badly by the wayside.
This is getting to be a l-o-o-o-o-n-g time and withdrawal symptoms are starting to set in. My head is swimming with ideas that I have no way of executing. Woe is me!
Anyway, I have been working diligently on granny's flower garden...
When all else fails, show pictures of old quilts...
This quilt is based on the same idea as Josh's frog quilt. The cat fabric was part of a bag of fabric for an ugly quilt challenge, but the other fabric was just too ugly to mix in with it, so I dumped it all and used the cat fabric and fabric left over from the frog quilt.
Went "shop-hopping" with E today. Great fun! It's not really about Shop Hop itself, since I'm really not into the fabrics. It's a wonderful excuse to visit a whole bunch of quilt stores we wouldn't normally get to.
We started the day up north in Mount Vernon and worked our way back down to Seattle. I packed my camera to take wonderful photos to share, but after an enormous slice of quiche for breakfast my brain shut down and shopping was all I could think of.
I will therefore have to share after the fact.
The free stuff:
The "paid for" stuff:
a little off-season Valentine-ness, 
happy chickens on green,
and my favorite - pink, of course.
Not a good day for the "Use what you have" challenge, that's for sure!
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