Archie's quilt...

I started this quilt last Fall with leftover scraps from this quilt. It was one of those things where the pieces were hanging around in a pile and I thought it would be nice to use them up, along with my "up north" flannels.

Archie's Quilt, 60"x52", flannel top and backing, marbled cotton binding

I've made so many quilts with these two flannels I've lost count. But that's what I get for buying by the bolt off eBay about ten years ago -- I'm an impulsive bidder and I couldn't resist. There's a lot still left over, so if you like pine cones and pine trees and really soft, snuggly flannel, let me know and we can work something out.

Anyway, midway through making this, of course something brighter and more fun came along to work on and it got cast aside. Mostly to the corner of the sofa, and at some point during the chilly winter it became my go-to throw for watching TV -- half quilted and unbound didn't really matter, it was just as snuggly if I avoided some of the safety pins along the edges and tucked them in so Archie wouldn't play with them.

Then last Saturday morning dawned, and a strange sense of I-need-to-finish-something came over me. I'd just washed up the rose and green quilt, and the momentum was too powerful to resist. Next thing I knew, the quilting was finished and I was putting the binding on and it was DONE.

This one's for us. Or him, since he seems to have laid claim to it.

I guess I made my cat a quilt.  Is that weird or what?

Rose and pale green, she said...

"My client is having a baby girl and I need a quilt."

Any opportunity to rid my condo of fabric and batting is a welcome one -- even moreso when a friend is willing to pay for it.

"Her color scheme is rose and pale green."

Pale green I can do. But rose? Not a color in my repertoire. Conjures up images of dusty, darkened Victorian rooms with faded wallpaper and lots of lace. Not me. At. All.

I knew before I started combing through my stash that I didn't have anything resembling rose -- I'd have to buy fabric. Fortunately, the International Quilt Show fell about a week after my friend's request. I set off with high hopes, but apparently rose isn't very popular right now. And I'm usually really good with color, but had a difficult time defining exactly what true "rose" was -- some candidates were too pink, others too peachy.

If you were at IQS and a stranger asked you "Would you say this is rose?" well, that would have been me. I asked a lot of people. A LOT.

In the end, I found a rose(-ish) and green Kaffe Fassett dahlia print, a half yard of Aunt Grace solid that a few helpful showgoers thought came close, and another darker solid that was a match to the Kona Deep Rose on my color card.

When faced with specific color choices, I typically choose to aim around them so I don't miss the mark all together. I was hopeful I'd be close, but not very enthusiastic.

"Oh, and nothing too 'out there'," was another part of the request. Which I took to mean I should stay pretty traditional. Initially the dahlia print was going to play a bigger part in all of this, but it really didn't read "baby," so I used it sparingly.

I dragged my feet on this because I wasn't feeling it, but once I found the flannel backing two months later and pieced it, things perked up a bit. The quilting and a little piece of green there in the binding gave it a little more personality.

And, of course, before it gets washed, the QC inspector needs to test for nappability. It passed.

SO happy to get this one packaged up and out of the house. Finally!

Home again, home again...

Well hey, I'm back. My plans for Spring got upended when a weeklong visit with my parents turned into much, much longer. They're getting so old, and fragile, and moving them out of their house at this point would cause more confusion than good...so we kids motor on, providing a level of support that's acceptable to them, and hoping and praying for their health and safety.

I spent a great deal of time in the garden, laying down mulch and rescuing Dad's roses from Canada thistle, my new nemesis.  It wasn't until after I'd spent an entire day yanking 597 of them out of one bed (yes, I counted) that I read that doing so could potentially split the root (which can burrow 15 to 20 FEET), resulting in two new shoots, and twice the headache. Sure enough, within just a few days those suckers started poking back up through my fresh mulch, and I spend the next weeks cutting them off and applying Roundup in an effort to stem the tide.

On the upside, a few days of unseasonable warmth nudged the roses into action. They get about a month of unbridled bloom before the Japanese beetles descend, so I was happy to get some good pictures.

That last one is an old fashioned, on a bush that once belonged to my great-grandmother. It's close to a hundred years old and still going strong. My grandmother gave it to my dad when my parents bought their  house in 1952. That gift turned into a lifelong obsession, a seat on the district Board of the American Rose Society, and ~300 rose bushes (currently -- at some point we had more than 600). One look at his yard and you can tell where my fabric hoarding gene comes from.

And hooray for hand sewing projects! I thankfully took my hexie project with me to work on. It finished at 35.5" x 7.25" -- odd dimensions, I know, but it's made to hang in a particular spot and should fit perfectly. It's a little wonky along the edges (I didn't cut the hexie halves as carefully as I should have), but that will get covered up with binding anyway. I also could have been more precise when I cut my fabric pieces now that I see them showing through so clearly. There were some other challenges, and I have yet to speculate about quilting it -- for now, I'm just happy that it's done.

Not bad for a first effort, and I don't think it's my last. Hexies are fun!

A little Spring inspiration...

I was cleaning the hexie scraps off my coffee table this morning when this caught my eye:

Spring has been very slow to settle in around Chicago this year. We've been on a two-month roller coaster of high and low temps, accompanied by rain and gloom. These colors just popped against the Kona Snow, and of course got my imagination going on the color palette for yet another new quilt. They're pretty striking together, aren't they? And oh so happy on a damp, dark day.

And in pulling the above pic off my camera, I also found this one. I caught these tulips in bloom on a rare sunny(ish) day venturing out to my cousin's in the suburbs last week, where at this time of year it's 15-20 degrees warmer than it is near the lake. Those same vivid pinks and bright greens just pop.

I think it's a sign.

Uh-oh...

I wasn't feeling real great last weekend and the weather was pretty dismal. Spending a couple days on the sofa binge-watching the last season of "Downton Abbey" was pretty much all I was up for...except I hate just lying there, being totally unproductive.

Out of curiosity I'd bought some 3/4" hexie papers at the International Quilt Show a couple weeks ago (another post, and unfortunately my photos didn't turn out very well, so not much to show). I'd never done English Paper Piecing before and figured I'd try someday, and cutting and basting little scraps fit in very well with the weekend's planned event, which was, well, being a couch potato.

"Someday" doesn't usually come this quickly:  my first fabric purchase was in the closet for six years before I decided to attempt my first quilt!

So I pulled out my cache of solid scraps and went to town. I might rearrange some, add a few more flowers and I still have to finish all the border pieces, but I think it's pretty cute so far. It's destined for a friend with the perfect empty spot on her kitchen wall. She keeps bees (that lone yellow hexie is somehow going to become one, haven't thought that far ahead yet), so the hexagons are fitting.

It's laid out across my coffee table as it gradually gets pieced together. And covered with magazines every night so Archie isn't tempted to weigh in on an alternative arrangement.

Who knew hexies could be so addicting?

One more...

Here's a full pic of another Lenten Quilts for Kids project. Technically, I guess it's not really a quilt-as-you-go -- it's really more foundation piecing, given the back is one piece of fabric. Whatever you call it, it turned out OK.

I learned a few things (see this post), and will probably attempt it again if I need a quick no-frills project.

It ended up being 40" x 46", and very, very pink.

Faux feathers...

Man, I had a lot of drag issues with this quilt!

I'm not sure if it was due to sheer incompetence on my part, or the fact that the home dec weight on the back was slipperier than usual. When I trimmed it all up, it looked like I had quilted feathers into it.

You can tell exactly what direction(s) I quilted in. I had pinned parallel to my quilting lines; in retrospect, pinning perpendicularly -- and additional pins --  would have held the heavier weight backing more securely in place.

The backing before washing

The backing is a Crate &  Barrel Outlet Marimekko find from several years ago -- I think it was somewhere around $3 a yard, and was waiting for just the right quilt. I love how it picks up the colors from the front and lightens it up. 

I was pretty worried about how it was going to turn out with all that wacky puckering. Nothing was pre-washed, so washing in hot, hot water encouraged shrinkage, and in the end it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The puckering morphed into crinkles, and all is well.

It still needs a Quilts for Kids label, but is otherwise ready to be shipped. Hooray!