Ninety blocks for ninety years...

This one is for Aunt Helen, who turns 90 this coming weekend. And of course, I waited until last weekend to settle on a pattern I liked and start slicing up the stack of flannels I pulled three weeks ago...and then a client called with a two-day project that ate up all of Monday and Tuesday.

So now I'm in serious Crunch Mode, because it needs to be on its way to Cleveland in a car with my cousin on Friday afternoon. In two days.

This is what it looks like this morning:
 

It's not like I didn't know this occasion was coming. I just really wish the inspiration wouldn't hit so darn last-minute what seems like All. The. Time.

Someday I'm going to figure out why I do this to myself.

The best laid plans...

True to form, I finished 250+ batik flying geese, and wasn't crazy about them. For now. They have to sit for a while before I'm ready to finish them up -- fortunately, the cold weather is persisting, so I may get the quilt finished after all before the crocuses poke through the icy garden muck.

In the meantime, a friend's daughter had a baby, which allowed me to put the geese aside to percolate while I whipped up a simple little boy quilt. Fire up a season of "Doc Martin" on Netflix, and lo and behold, the top is done! I got half of it quilted and intended to do the rest yesterday morning, but someone else had a different agenda:

Sometimes a nap is just more important. At least I know the inspector approves.

(So much for more frequent blogging! I'm trying to get my mojo back, honest!)

Well, hello again!

I was such a bad blogger last year -- and not much better at quilting, either.  While a few projects were started, not many got finished, which means the stack of UFO's in the corner of the kitchen got even higher in 2013.

 The only project I sewed for Christmas this year -- a table runner for my sister (and yes, that is a Mr. Potato Head on my tree)

Penguins Afloat Redux -- a 2013 baby quilt you'd think was made for Archie

Last year was full of distractions -- both personal and work-related -- which didn't leave much energy (or will) for writing or sewing.  While I'm not one to make New Year's resolutions, I am at least hoping that I can give both a little more attention in 2014.

In that vein, when the Polar Vortex paid a visit to Chicago last week and temps dipped well below zero (minus 52 degrees with the wind chill! Yikes!), there wasn't much else to do but make soup, stay indoors and sew. Archie and I hunkered down to avoid freezing, and I decided a new project was in order because, as we all know, a new project is SO much more fun than finishing up an old one. Stack in the corner, be damned!

Three batik jelly rolls (navy, brown and amber/sand-ish) were waiting to be united with 1½ yards of cappuccino Minkee dot -- the thought of which sounded really snuggly in the face of the ice forming on the inside of my windows. So I began.

Here's the idea:

I'm starting to think all my quilts should match my floor

The pieces measure 4½" x 2½", and if my calculations are right, I need about three times this many geese to make a decent-sized throw for the sofa. I have some work ahead of me, but the snow outside is providing incentive.

And with a few more bone-chilling winter days (and much perseverance), I'll be able to use it once or twice before the daffodils spring up!

Hope everybody is staying warm! Happy 2014!

Well, I certainly didn't MEAN to take a blog-cation...

...but once you stop, it's soooo easy to let it slide! Other things take precedence, and before you know it, the autumnal equinox has come and gone and it's October!

That's not to say I haven't been sewing. I got a few things done in between gardening and working and all that other stuff that takes away from creative time.

My upstairs neighbors had their first baby (a girl!) this summer. They didn't know the sex ahead of time, so their nursery was fairly neutral with a lot of dark-ish gray accents. I thought some Kona Coal and a packet of mini-charm square dots would fit in nicely. The 1/2" straight-line quilting in the wide border gives it some great texture for baby hands to explore, especially where the vertical and horizontal overlap.

Good Night/Good Morning (front), and Archie sneaking into the shot

My camera is a cat magnet.

There's a gray-green dot in the backing that matched the nursery walls perfectly. I snagged their painter in the lobby one day to get the name of the paint color and got the chip at the hardware store. Lo and behold, I had a Valori Wells dot in my stash that worked and brought some more life to it. Forget trying to get those dots straight, though -- they weren't printed on grain, so I gave up fighting and let them go all wonky.

Sometimes his appearance is more subtle than others.

Good Night/Good Morning (back)

My Monkey Girl turned 12 earlier this month, obsessed with pink and aqua, the colors of her new bedroom. I figure this presents me with gift possibilities for the next, oh, four years at least.

I raided the pink stash bin and used a 20" pillow form. There are a few lines of aqua thread among the pink straight-line quilting, and a couple lines done by hand just to mix it up. There is one square of overly-furry fleece that I added at the last minute, and it turns out it's her favorite one. The black piping really made everything pop.

I used up some half-yards and fat quarters of fun baby prints for this quick-n-easy quilt for a friend's first grandchild. I think I've had these prints since I started quilting ten years ago -- finally using them in their entirety (no scraps! hooray!) was a cathartic experience.

Getting a LOT of mileage out of my $2/yard Ikea purple solid.

It makes great binding!

Also, in an effort to shed some of my inventory (are you noticing a theme here?), I also opened an Etsy shop this summer. Not a lot of traffic so far, but that's due to my inability to self-promote -- although for about a week, Facebook kept trying to sell me my own quilt in one of their targeted (You have pictures of quilts in your profile! You must need more!) ads. It was a little surreal, having it show up on the sidebar.

In the coming weeks, I'll be featuring some of my fabric in the shop. I have a lot of older, discontinued Jane Sassaman prints that aren't doing me a lot of good just hanging out in the closet, as well as several other bolts that aren't getting used up as quickly as I thought. So stay tuned!

It feels good to be back! Sorry I was gone so long!

Another finish...

I haven't shared this one yet -- it's my second Quilts for Kids Lenten project. Ideally I would have gotten this and "Pennants" to them in time for Easter, but I'm just happy I got them finished at all! I don't do circles (or, in this case, half-circles) very much at all, but I'm giving them a try. This design has a few more possibilities that I'm eager to experiment with...when the time allows and the inspiration hits --  a rare confluence.

From many of the pictures I've seen, it seems Quilts for Kids doesn't get many boy quilts, and a lot of those that are have novelty prints for very small children. I like this one because it's masculine colors, but not too young. The back is a little wild, but the front reminds me of basketballs, or planets. Hopefully it'll have some appeal for the older kids.

So it's washed, threads knotted, and ready to ship. And I can pat myself on the back for actually finishing something on the to-do list!

Possessed by a creative spirit...

A very odd thing happened at Chez Kwiltz today.

I awoke in the wee hours of the morning, all hot and uncomfortable in this weird heat wave we're having (91 yesterday, and two days ago we had a freeze warning -- Mother Nature must be bipolar), unable to go back to sleep. I was feeling pretty rested though, and there really isn't any returning to Dreamland anyway once you've awakened the cat, so I got up, fed Archie his breakfast, and in the dim light of dawn, before I'd even had my coffee, started cutting into fabric.

Up until 4:45am I didn't have a thought of starting a new project, and by seven o'clock, all the rows were complete.

Pardon the cat hair -- making a dark quilt during shedding season isn't perhaps the best idea

It wasn't quite autopilot, but it did kind of feel like it was out of my control. It had been a while since I'd pieced anything, and I had a new "Comma" charm pack (the result of a weak moment online last week) just begging to be opened...those two factors combined to create this overwhelming compulsion to make something NOW, and I ran with it.

I didn't finish the top, but I got a good chunk of it done before I had other work to do. It'll be a wedding gift for later this summer, and I'm thankful my subconscious (or whatever that was) gave me the head start.

And now I need a nap.

The power of positive thinking...

It took a while -- seems like none of my projects move very quickly these days -- but I finally got "Positive Thinking" done. Doesn't seem possible that I finished the top at the end of 2011. Missed the gift-giving occasion by a long shot, but better late than never, I say!

 Archie photo-bombs.

I adored this one long before I quilted it, and now? Totally in love!

The quilting (using Signature variegated "Sand Dunes" #20 cotton thread) came out about a half-inch apart, and it creates great texture -- not too much, not too little.

Not his best side.

The batting is Thinsulate -- lightweight but very warm...and, if the amount of cat hair on it is any indication, it's very, very snuggly, too. Every time I put it down, the cat was on it, and it wasn't like he had no other quilts to choose from -- he wanted THIS one. We watched close to the entire third season of "Mad Men" together while I bound it, Archie on my lap.

Yes, I know, I'm the slowest hand-binder EVER.

If I hadn't already sewn a label on it, I'd be tempted to keep this one for myself (or Archie), but it's going away soon. Maybe I need to make another one for the two of us?