It's been too long.

It's been months since I've been to the sewing room to quilt... well, not exactly. I've been sewing. And knitting. I've done a lot of knitting since Hurricane Sandy blew through the neighborhood - what else was I going to do for 11 days with no power? Luckily, my order from KnitPicks showed up on day 3.

I made a sweater.

I made a hat.

I started on a scarf.

 When the power came back on, I discovered that the charm packs I ordered from Clotilde  were half an inch too short in one dimension to use for card holders.

I've made a batch of these using other fabrics for a local Winter Craft Fair that was cancelled due to the storm, and so they are now populating my Etsy shop.

 

So I made a large pile of QSTs (quarter-square triangles) from the charm packs, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet. They are very "scrappy" as I  just joined dark to light without much care for what colors were going together.

I still haven't finished that spiral mandala quilt, but the Harvest Quilters has a show in March and Garden State Quilters have a show in May and I want it done for those.

Last month, my Moment of Zen arrived back home from it's Hoffman Challenge Trunk Tour, and I hung it on the wall. I missed seeing it, and I love having it in the house.

Spiral Mandala Quilt, some actual progress!

I've been working on this sporadically since I took a class in October of last year. I think I might actually get this done before NEXT October.

It's turning out pretty cool, but not exactly as I planned, since I got some of the colors backwards on some of the blocks.

I'm pleased with the addition of green in the outer areas, and that green block (the one I finished up today) looks completely different when laid out differently:

I've got one more block to complete and the center portion of the quilt will be pieced. Then I get to decide what to do about the background and quilting!

From Large to Small

So I ran across this blog post a couple of days ago and I decided it would be a quick and fun project. Now all my friends want one. Here are some quick pix of what I've been sewing for the last 2 evenings.

Click here to visit the photo stream

QR Code Quilt, Part Two

This past weekend, the Harvest Quilters had their annual show. I finished the QR code quilt for the show. It scans.

This was the only piece I had in the show.  I will post more photos of other quilts from the show later on.

I love you more than you know

"I love you more than you know" is what the code in this quilt translates to. I got the idea for a QR Code quilt because the Harvest Quilters' guild challenge this year is to make a bi-color quilt, as inspired by the "Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts" exhibit that many guild members attended last year.  The top is finished, and I'll be sandwiching and quilting it over the next week or so, so it's ready for the guild show at the end of the month.

Making this quilt required a lot of very meticulous work. I won't be making another one exactly like this again. However, I will be creating a fabric panel to incorporate into a larger quilt, because then I can make custom quilts that can be sold for a reasonable amount of money instead of what I would charge to part with this one.

The message in the quilt, I love you more than you know, is a lyric from a song I've been working on for a while now. I used my writing session recording as the soundtrack for this short video, showing the progress of making this quilt.

A quilt for G

I was "forced" to take a break from working on my challenge quilt for the upcoming Harvest Quilters' Guild show at the end of March and make a "Big girl" quilt for my eldest granddaughter. She'll be 5 on Friday. We went fabric shopping yesterday and she picked out all the bright colored prints. She was very disappointied that  I couldn't get the quilt finished in 3 hours (I barely got the fabric washed and ironed in 3 hours!), but I will have it ready for her by Friday. I just got the top (and matching pillowcase) done a few minutes ago.

The thing I learned doing an attic windows quilt for my daughter when she was around the same age is that it works better when you use very dark and very light colors for the window frame. I was happy to find a wide scrap of Dora the Explorer and Disney Princess fabrics in my stash (thank you eQuilter "scraps by the pound"!) and was able to use some characters in the windows as a surprise for her.

I also made my first proper pillowcase, using that "roll up and sew n a tube" method. It turned out really well.

What I'm working on now

I just pledged the 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenge (the badge for the challenge is further down the page in the blogroll). We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I'm working on the Harvest Quilters' guild challenge quilt for the March show. The challenge is to make a bi-color quilt, with white and another fabric that "reads" as a solid color. I'm using a white-on-white print and a black hand-dye that has just a bit of texture in it. I'm not going to spoil the surprise but I will post a bit of a teaser:

Something Useful

It wasn't terribly easy to part with my mug rug at the swap last Monday, but I was consoled by the fact that I had to cut through a stack of 5 squares of fabric to make the one block. This meant that I had enough fabric to make 4 additional blocks that are nearly identical (but with the fabrics swapped in each piece).

I also needed something to carry my Wacom Intuous 4 drawing tablet back and forth to the office, so I decided to design and make a carry bag for it.  I used some of the Pellon fusible fleece that I see used for a lot of purse projects (that I procured at the last quilt show I attended). It's a whole lot floppier than the ultra stiff heavy duty Pellon that I've been using for various things, but it seems to make a nice bag.

The bag is still missing some Velcro closures,  because the Velcro is hiding in my sewing room, somewhere.
The "front," sporting 2 of the leftover blocks from the mug rug.

The back, with accordion pocket for  tablet accessories: USB cable, pen, pen stand.

 Pocket, opened.

The bag, open, so you can see the great batik lining fabric, and a the tablet peeking out.

Well I went and did it

I sent in my information to be considered as a contestant on the Ultimate Craft Throwdown.  Having watched Cupcake Wars and Halloween Wars more than a few times, I sort of know what to expect if I get picked to be on the show. I am sort of hoping they do pick me. Then I'd have to think about who to take as my assistant...

Mug Rug Swap

Tomorrow is the Mug Rug Swap at Garden State Quilters' Guild. So I did some curved piecing and spme spiral quilting.

The fabric is from Connecting Threads; a "layer cake" pack. I stacked 5 fabrics on top of each other and went to town with my rotary cutter. So I actually have enough cut out for 5 different "blocks" in the same design (but the fabrics will alternate in the patches). I'm not sure what to do with the other 4 yet, aside from piecing them.

I also used another piece from the layer cake for the backing.

Happy 2012!

I haven't posted here since the last workshop... Because of personal stuff, I haven't really been in the sewing room too much since October. That will change with the new year. There are a lot of projects on the back burner that need to get done and I'll be posting about it here.