A new love...

Well, the good news is I found the right flannels in my stash to finish the top from my last post. The bad news? There really isn't any, though it continues to confound me and I'm stuck in the arranging stage. It's hanging on my mock design wall, and every time I walk by I move a couple blocks...then put them back thirty minutes later. It's "in process."

But all productivity is not lost:  in a rare fit of self-discipline, I decided to finish a WIP before flinging myself into a new(ish) project. And I'm totally in love with "Bricks"!

So in love, I can't stop taking pictures of it.

These started as jelly roll strips that finished two inches wide. Most of the rows have eleven rows of quilting. A few have ten; the rest have twelve -- much more dense than my last attempt at this, the lines ended up being between about 1/8" and 1/16" apart.  It's half the size of  "Currents" (just 32" x 27"), but took almost as long to quilt.

Rather than being bumpy, the texture is actually very slippery.

It was also an experiment of sorts -- I designed it so there weren't any matching seams from row to row, minimizing the bumps that result from four seams coming together. The photo below makes it look like it washes out from top to bottom, but that's just too much lighting from above and too little Photoshop retouching competence on my part. If the sun ever comes out again I'll try to get a better shot, but here it is in its entirety:

I used a strong black and purple non-batik pebble print for the binding, which frames it really well. Needless to say, I'm very happy with the results.

This is not easy quilting. It takes a lot of time, and a ton of thread (i.e., buy twice as much as you think you'll need or you'll end up at Joann's halfway through). And as random and freeform as it looks, you really have to be conscious throughout to keep the lines straight as well as wavy (I know, that doesn't make any sense, it's hard to explain) so they don't "lean" across the quilt. Letting that latent OCD surface helps as well.

And I'm happy to say that my OCD kicked my ADD's butt. Big time.

Battling winter's chill...

I figure if I at least keep the stash in the corner of my kitchen organized when company shows up, maybe I'll look slightly less crazy and obsessive.

It's probably too late for that, but I can dream, can't I?

So I was putting months worth of fabric scraps away this past weekend and came across a large Ziploc bag with a UFO that was so far off the radar, it was in a completely other galaxy.

It was the substantial start of something that ended up being something else, begun in 2005, maybe 2006 -- I obviously had issues with it, because I've repressed the memory. I do remember that I didn't like where it was going at the time, so these blocks got bagged up and stowed away for another day.

Well, that day is today. It's ELEVEN DEGREES out (for those of you in Centigrade Land, that's MINUS TEN), and these are flannel, and I feel compelled to work with something warm.

These were also in the bag. I really hate working with triangles but love sawtooth borders...this looks to be enough for at least two sides, so I may have to break down and use them.

It's a really good head start, half the work's already been done. Now I just need to find the rest of the fabric.

That could be a problem.

Happy Friday, all! Stay snuggly!

Little diversions...

...are what keep me going. Not ones that are big enough to pull me away from a major project for days, but those that take little bits of time and give me a sense of accomplishment and completion that reinvigorates the return to the task at hand. They're like little creative vacations!

A former co-worker just found out she was pregnant and was coming over for a visit this weekend, so I whipped these little blocks up with pieces from my Silly Safari jelly roll (yes, there are still some left). Two inches in every direction, they turned out pretty darn adorable, if you ask me! I used batting trimmings for stuffing, which made me feel all resourceful and glad I hadn't thrown them out.

And then with Valentine's Day coming up, I had to get this shipped out to arrive in time (mail to Bermuda takes forEVER, and if the mailman is on vacation, well, you just don't get any until he's back in town). I heard Bitty Baby was feeling somewhat neglected after her sisters snagged all the doll quilts we'd made. Recognize the waffle fleece? I love using up scraps!

I'm not so sure I have a future in making doll clothes:  with all those tiny seams, I swore way too much and probably injected just a little too much bad karma into the spirit of the process. But I think that ruffle totally makes up for it.

Katekwiltzing...

It's my new word for this:

I ran out of thread again. Go figure.

Archie sends a message...

The gloves I use for quilting didn't start out that way:  they're actually pet grooming gloves that I'd bought long before I started this obsession hobby. My first cat Gershwin loved to be brushed, though -- all I had to do was open the drawer where I kept his brush and he'd come running -- so these didn't get used until I realized they were great for keeping fabric from slipping.

Archie, on the other hand, can't stand to be brushed...or even touched, really.

Can I still call him a pet if he won't let me pet him?

I figured if I could sneak in a few strokes here and there with these gloves without getting swatted, it would help keep the fur bunnies around my house to a minimum. I swear I could make another cat every other month with what he sheds!

Well, it turns out he doesn't like these, either. One look and he's running -- in the opposite direction. When I do finally get a hold of him, he's all squirmy (it's like trying to hold twelve pounds of Jello) and he manages to get an indignant nip or two in before taking off again.

If that message isn't clear enough, I encountered this in the kitchen this morning:

Tell me how you really feel, Arch. And don't hold back.

The beauty of procrastination...

This past week I had about ten things that really needed to get done around the house. When faced with this intimidating list, what did I do? I broke out the Bali Pop and started a new project!

The initial layout:  a sneak peek

You know how it is when you get an idea in your head and nothing's quite right until you follow through with it? It's a great rationale for putting off doing something else, and it happens to me a LOT. Half the time I get started and don't like where it's heading (which is why I have such an astounding pile of UFOs) -- that makes it a little easier to return to The List, but in this case, I was loving where it was going and The List, for the most part, got neglected.

Given the snow (~6") and cold (in the teens all last week and ZERO yesterday!), it was perfect weather for sewing. Well, rearranging, mostly -- I got all the blocks on my design "wall" (three yards of white felt suspended from the kitchen cabinets -- Archie's quite disappointed), made a big mug of hot chocolate with steamed milk (yum!) and started moving things around to get it balanced. Not one to rush the process (and not wanting to fix the toilet), I rearranged for a couple days, walking past and squinting, looking at it in different light and without my glasses, until it finally looked good. In between I got around to a few to-do's, but not as many as I should have, and I'm feeling a little guilty.

I wasn't as quiltingly productive in 2009 as I'd hoped to be (feeling a little guilty about that, too), so I'm hoping that this little quilt will help kick-start a whirlwind of creativity. That UFO pile isn't going to finish itself, and I have a lot of stash to get through!

So quilting today...then I fix the toilet.

It was a very quilty Christmas...

Quilts for everyone!

Chris models his "reversible" quilt...

...and Luke settles right in with his!

It's so good to be back home in Chicago after two weeks of sleeping in my childhood twin bed and watching Lawrence Welk's Christmas Special more times than I can count. Two great things about going home?  Mom always thinks I'm too thin, and Dad always thinks I'm the best bonus he ever got. Now it's back to reality!

Happy New Year, all!