Thursday, February 14, 2013

Better late than...

Okay, so my first target date for a WIP Wednesday came and went. But it doesn't mean I wasn't pluggin' away on those lists!


Sashiko fish!
Here's the update:

Gotta do's!
Child's Play - No progress
Jewel Squares - Blocks finished
Sashiko fish - Finished!
Qui-vet for spare room - Finished! (Sorry, no pics yet!)
Cousin & Mrs. Cousin's Wedding quilt - No progress
Mariner's Lunch Box Challenge - Finished! (Top secret!)
Mme P's retirement quilt - No progress (though I did pin some potential fabrics!)
Miss K's birthday quilt - No Progress

Wanna do's that have become Gotta do's!
Project using Konas - Transformer quilt is 100% Kona-tastic!


Happy Valentine's Day all!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Sewing up a storm!

It's been a particularly snowy week-end here on the East Coast. So much so that all the activities that I was meant to take part in were cancelled! We couldn't even go skiing today due to ultra high winds keeping the chair lift non-operational. Oh well... guess I'll have to stay in and sew!

I've been plugging away this week on a UFO from way back... Jewel Squares from Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Patchwork. (Click the book image and you'll see the original version). This UFO got lost in space for a while. I actually started it in 2011 and re-discovered it on a closet clean out. Finally, I've finished all those fiddly little paper-pieced blocks. There are 155 of them, ranging in size from 9 inches to 1 and 1/2 inches. Yikes!
And here they are laid out... though I couldn't actually start sewing them due to technical difficulties. I took a little break from quilting to do a repair job on a piece of Himself's clothing. Turns out my dear Pfaff wasn't a fan of so many layers of heavy fabric! I was forced to bust out the back-up...

Himself's first Christmas present to me...
Just part of why Q-A hates paper piecing!






The snow's still falling... but even I have to leave the studio once in a while!

J

Monday, February 04, 2013

A large week!

I prescribed myself a little quilt therapy this week... it's been productive! This is the kind of self-medicating I should practice more often!


I'm meant to wear a name tag at my guild meetings, but I've always baulked at the prospect. Then I came across this little gem on Pinterest, a tiny paper pieced sewing machine. It was fiddly, but worth it! Then took a couple tips from a lanyard tutorial (also a Pinterest find).  I cannibalized a lanyard I already had and... voilà!

Lovin' the orange and grey lately! I'm a little behind on the Pantone of the Year (2012) but maybe I'll be more with it this year!










 There's also a new addition on the way for the family of my pal, SuperKate. So I decided that the best looking of the orphan baby quilts had her name on it (even though the new addition doesn't have a name yet!) Though still done on the diagonal, I quilted this one differently from the two large quilts made for Miss E and Miss O. The diagonals touched the small rectangles in the white blocks on each corner. It ended up forming diamonds with the stitching.

And then, one of my co-workers made a comment whilst knitting that she was missing her knitting bag (which was too large to bring for travel projects). So I whipped up a little basket/bucket from this tutorial... though I added an over the top handle instead of side handles.



I also got some time in on an item from the Gotta do list. I finished the appliqué sections of my Maui purchased sashiko fish. I'm not an appliqué person, much less hand appliqué, but Himself really liked this one when we saw it at the Maui Quilt Shop. I've started on the sashiko stitching and it's really coming along nicely. I'm enjoying it so much that I'm thinking of finding more of these projects. Not an easy task in our local quilt shops. Oh well, I might have to go back to Maui!


And to top the week off.... my first Kona fat quarter bundle arrived!!! Yes, three exclamation points are warranted here. It's exciting to get fabric in the mail. If you've never experienced it, but it on your bucket list for this year. Anyway... here they are!
From darkest to lightest: Pacific, Water, Alegria, Lake.
I can't hardly wait for next months batch!

Thanks for reading!

J