Giving in to practicality...

This past weekend while rummaging through my stash, I pulled out this adorable "Sultry" jelly roll I bought on vacation last summer. I set it on my sewing table to just look at it in all its pink and greeny goodness, and my mind started racing at the possibilities it held for a new project.

"Jelly Roll at Bedside." Can you tell I'm into non-fiction this summer?

It's a weird feeling to describe, but I'm sure you know it -- there's a lightness, and excitement as those ideas start flowing, rising like bubbles in a champagne glass. Pencil hits paper, sketches take shape, and in your head you envision the cutting, piecing, the backing, the perfect (or near-perfect, in my case) quilting on it, and see the final product fresh from the dryer, or maybe even being unwrapped to oohs and aahs by its recipient on Christmas morning.

The whole experience leaves you a little giddy, tipsy on creative juice -- and slightly out of touch with reality.

You think "If I start cutting right now, I can crank the top out this afternoon, baste it tomorrow and have it bound by next Tuesday!" And in a perfect world, you might. But those creative juices blind you to the 57 other things you need to do by next Tuesday, and you lose total sight of the project in progress and any other impediments to successful completion, like work and laundry and weedy gardens.

Sound familiar?

I was about twenty minutes into sketching what might have been the greatest quilt ever when the juice wore off and I began to mentally slap myself around a little for even entertaining the thought of starting something new. Who am I kidding? Don't I already have enough on my plate? Don't I have a whole mess of unfinished projects that need attention? Am I going to let the UFO's take over or am I going to try to finish some of them for once?

I hate it when my practical self surfaces and sounds an awful lot like my mother.

Alas, Practical Self was right. I really didn't need to start something new with so much unfinished. Big sigh.

So I closed my sketchbook and calmly, regretfully placed those cute, girly pink fabrics back in the bin they came out of and turned to my UFO pile to work on something from there instead. I narrowed it down to three projects in varying stages of completion, and then chose the one that held the most promise that it might actually become a finished quilt.

This bundle of strips held the most appeal. It was also the easiest of the three choices, so there's a good chance of success.

Don't worry, I'll come back to that jelly roll someday. I just need to do this to get Practical Self off my back for a while.

But I gotta tell you, this isn't helping my motivation very much:

A quilt for little d...

I started this quilt way back in February, the day my friend Devon told me she was pregnant. She's a reader, so I haven't been able to post any progress without spoiling the surprise. It's been delivered (the quilt, not the baby -- still waiting on her), so I can finally post some pictures! 

If I buy fabric with no specific pattern in mind (really? buying fabric for no reason? who does that?), I have to wait a while before it "speaks" to me. I loved this little bundle from the get-go, but it'd been stubbornly silent since I brought it home. The day my sushi buddy e-mailed to say she wouldn't be eating any spicy tuna maki again until July, it screamed "Whirlygig!" from the shelf and I started cutting.

The quilt  finished 39" x 45". Putting it together was like doing a big jigsaw puzzle, but that was half the fun. I love how some of the whirlygigs spin off into the border.

The fabric is Windham "Basics," and the binding is Kona Sour Apple, a nod to Devon & hub's St. Patrick's Weekend wedding two years ago. Visiting Mom & Dad last month, I returned to the quilt shop where I bought the fabric and, miraculously, they still had enough yardage left for the backing. They also had one of the same fat eighth bundles left (and a few smaller combinations) as well.

No, I didn't buy more.

I would have loved to have done some free motion on this quilt, but my BSR has been a little wacky lately and I seriously doubted I'd get it finished before that little girl arrived if I used it, so I stuck with my faithful walking foot and went with straight lines. I used a Color Catcher, but there was a mild post-washing panic and extra scrubbing when I discovered some of the red had run -- turns out much of it was due to stray red threads fraying under the white. I picked those out with a pin and tweezers and threw it in the dryer, where it crinkled up just like it was supposed to.

Now it just needs that baby girl to cuddle in it! Hope she gets here soon!



On a side note, it's fitting that I delivered this to Devon yesterday on my two-year blogiversary -- she's the one who inspired me to start blogging in the first place! Thanks, d!

Finding inspiration...

Sometimes inspiration can strike in the simplest of places.

Photo from plansnswers.com

This past weeked, it hit in the furniture store...

...and "Dovetail" was the result.

I used test fabric to see how if it would turn out the way I thought it would, and lo and behold, it did! I'm looking forward to working this up in Kona solids (and maybe hand quilting?), which I think would be appropriate for the design.

A 20-minute quilt top (literally -- it took me longer to find the piece of cardboard to cut the template than it did to piece the whole thing together) inspired by an unlikely source.

How fun is that?

An obvious analogy...

Dad is to roses as Kate is to fabric.

After a two-week visit with Mom, Dad, and 350 rose bushes, though, I'm convinced my hobby is infinitely less labor intensive.

Deadheading. Every day. I didn't take pictures of the 18 buckets of weeds I pulled.

The bane of my father's existence: Japanese beetles.

I think I'll stick with quilting.

For a change of pace...

I've been busy playing gardener for the past couple weeks.

And I'm not sure I'm ready to give up quilting for roses just yet.

Or ever.

Buyer beware...

For those of you who have ever been tempted to snap up some of Joann's adorable bundles of fat eighths, I have two words for you: Don't and Bother.

I bought two bundles, eight cuts in each, this spring, intending to use them for my Quilts for Kids project. I don't typically buy fabric other than Kona at Joann's any more, but these prepackaged tone-on-tones were so darn cute they were hard to resist! Once I opened them up and started cutting, though, I realized that there was no way in hell this stuff would hold up to even one trip through a hospital laundry. We're talking flimsy. Cheap, cheap, cheap!

Anybody remember the gauze craze of the mid-70's? Those $3 plaid lighter-than-air shirts that lasted three washes before the seams started falling apart? That's what this fabric reminds me of. Well, maybe it's a little thicker, but not by much.

I paid $5.99 each -- high even by Joann standards -- for, essentially, two yards of $1.99 fabric. I'm still trying to scrub the word "sucker" off my forehead.

So this turned into a "live and learn" project. Purchased totally on impulse, I didn't pay attention to the fabric itself until it was too late; my choices were a) throw it all away or b) forge ahead. I don't like to waste anything (above all, fabric!), so I kept on going.

It's another UFO checked off my to-do list, and I can find satisfaction in that -- and I really do like the color combination, which is what I fell for in the first place. I just wish the fabric had been better!

Before binding

What few pieces were left over went into the backing:

I used Mountain Mist polyester batting and as a result, it weighs next to nothing. I'm not kidding -- I put it on the kitchen scale, and the entire 50" x 43"quilt (minus the binding) weighs 12 ounces! Given the amount of quilting I put into it, I'm guessing at least an ounce of that can be attributed to thread.

I love Joann -- in fact, she and I have had an extremely long, unhealthy relationship that will no doubt continue for years to come -- but her quilting fabrics (Kona solids aside) are definitely not quilt shop quality, and you really have to be careful with your selections if you want to create a quilt that will last.

I don't expect that this one will.

Big sigh of relief...

Anybody remember this project? It was going to be a very special present for someone's 16th Christmas.

Then I got hung up on border choices, and questioned the durability of the fabric I'd chosen for it, then Thanksgiving and cookie baking got in the way, and some shiny new bright sock monkey fabric showed up on my doorstep, and...well, it obviously didn't take all that much for me to throw the thing into the pile of unfinished projects and buy my nephew an iPod instead.

Fast-forward almost two years to last month, when the question arose of how a favorite aunt and godmother, while unemployed and of meager resources, should commemmorate an event as big as high school graduation. If I were working on a regular basis I'd probably get him something over the top, but that ain't happening at the moment. Since I got laid off, I've pretty much stuck to the rule of giving only handmade gifts, so why deviate for this occasion? And because I didn't really start getting into quilting until this boy had grown beyond the size of my production limits, he's never received a quilt from Aunt Kate. It was high time he did.

"Checkerboard Squares" came off the UFO pile and went on my "Spring to Finish" list in hopes of getting it done with plenty of time to spare. And what did I do? I put it off. I did everything BUT work on this quilt. I got an impressive number things (for me, anyway) checked off my to-do list, but the top sat, untouched, until it could no longer be ignored.

This past Monday (nothing like waiting 'til the last minute) I pulled out my original inner border choices and ditched them all for a navy-on-navy print found in my stash (which, incidentally, was there in the first place when I bought all the alternatives, zheesh); the nine-patches for the outer border (which I originally wasn't going to use, but he's grown quite a bit since he was 16) were all done but not sewn together. The pattern called for yet another outer border, an idea jettisoned very quickly because it would have exceeded the width of available space on my kitchen floor.

I started waffling again, this time about the backing:  I'd purchased some flannel way back when, but now it seemed too heavy, and not the right color...indecision threatened to derail the process again, but I couldn't afford a trip to the Apple Store this time around. I shrugged off the doubts and went with the grey-blue plaid flannel for the backing and ironed it all together with fusible batting to save time by not pinning.

In retrospect, I probably should have used something lighter weight, but oh well.

Archie looks for the seam in the back and can't find it!

Fueled by caffeine and dark chocolate for three days, I quilted, though it was more like wrestling -- honestly, I don't know how y'all who quilt big quilts on little machines do it!  I've never quilted anything this big before, and I think I need a lesson on maneuvering all that fabric evenly through the neck of the machine without having the results look like I was impaired. This time I was actually trying for once to quilt straight lines, but between the bulk and the weight of the sandwich (and despite support in front and behind), there are places where my talents might be questioned, even by a teenage boy.

But it's folksy, right? It's supposed to be a little rustic...right?

Just work with me here, folks.

At this point, it is what it is. I tied the last threads off Wednesday night, and currently it's flying through Memphis (gotta love FedEx) on its way to arrive just in time for tomorrow's celebration. Don't get me wrong, it's a very handsome quilt, and I'm proud of it -- I just wish the quilting had gone a little more smoothly. I expect it will suffer a great deal of abuse over the coming years, anyway, that will render all my transgressions moot, and provide enough comfort and warmth to compensate for any crooked quilting.

Besides, the way I see it, it completely reflects the personality of its creator:  down-to-earth, a little wonky, flawed in several places -- but at the same time, all warm and cuddly...and full of cat hair.