Niecelet's Jacob's Ladder Quilt

We've been having Santa Ana winds here in SoCal, which makes taking good outdoor pictures... difficult.  Nonetheless!  I made Wonderful Husband hold Niecelet's quilt up in sunshine and shade for documentation purposes.  A couple of the pictures weren't too flappity...

The sunshine picture, above, makes the quilt look very bright, almost neon!  It did brighten up a touch after an Oxiclean soak, but not this much!

The shade picture, here, is closer to its actual colors.

Here it is laid across our bed to show off the size a bit better.  At 48"x60", it's a bit big for a one-year-old, but my hope is Niecelet will get a few years' use out of it.

And here, the binding, backing, and label.  The binding actually is about as bright as that top picture - it's a 1930s repro print that's been in my stash for years.  It looks like it's bias-cut but it's actually straight of grain.  Since I wanted a very narrow binding on the front, so as not to lose any more triangle points, I actually hand-stitched the binding the the back.  Not my usual modus operandi, for a few reasons... durability of baby/toddler quilts, time involved, RSI flares... take your pick.

Saturday Sewing

I spent a fair chunk of yesterday at my sewing machine, first quilting then binding a relatively large (63" x 86") quilt top from my UFOs pile.  It's not one I made - I got the top in a box lot from Goodwill - but I guessed that getting some utility quilting on it and then a ride through the washer and dryer would make the top's ripples, puckers, and flaws a lot less visible.  And I was right!

One of the things that made this kinda ugly quilt top interesting to me was the spots where the quiltmaker had run out of the original plaid and substituted some of the same design but in an alternate colorway:

Since, unless they don't want it, this one is going to my parents, I pulled out a tropical pineapples and bromeliads print for the back, thinking they might want it for their sailboat down in Baja.  The seam joining the two lengths together of fabric for the backing is nearly invisible... but the pineapples are going up on one side and down on the other!  (SHHHH.  Tell no one.  Wonderful Husband didn't see it until I said something.)  I had the perfect shades of polyester thread in golden brown for the bobbin, and silk thread in seafoam and white for the top.  Yes, sometimes I quilt using silk thread.  I have a stash that I bought on deep discount when a JoAnns closed years ago.  I found a brown and gold stripe fabric in my stash and made it into the binding, which I stitched on the back first, then flipped around and top-stitched onto the front.

And that, friends, is how I can sometimes get a relatively large quilt quilted and bound in one day!

So that's two UFOs done and ready to give away in January.  I won't get to show them off at my guild, but at least I've got a third UFO under my needle at the moment... the Asian fabrics Round Robin that I did with my guild last year.  The center block is quilted and the first border is marked.

Wednesday Workings

Instead of being good and basting another UFO for quilting, I've been block-making.  I've finished the five extra yellow/black Churn Dash blocks to make my BoM winnings into a top.  I've also pulled out my quart baggie of 2.5" squares and started sewing them into 5x5 blocks for a scrappy Double Irish Chain.  Whee, what fun!  But the REAL winning sewing is this:

Squiddle (age 4 years, 4 months) has been asking me for sewing lessons for... four months now.  I'd promised to start teaching him when he was four.  He's recently stepped up the requests, so today I finally pulled out his great-grandmother's (absolutely pristine) Singer 128 hand-crank.  The one I hauled all the way back from England several years ago.  He picked out three fabrics from my stash, I pressed and cut them, and we proceeded to make a 10" square reversible drawstring bag (roughly like this one).  He sat on my lap and turned the crank while I fed the fabric under the foot and pulled the pins.  (He helped put a couple of the pins in.)

And when we were done, he gave the bag to Daddy!  And he wants to make another one for Jazzy (he has already picked out the fabrics for it) and then one for himself.

And in non-sewing things, meantime, Jazzy is continuing his streak of independent precociousness.  While we were in England, he figured out how to go up and down staircases by himself.  No one showed him.  Today, he figured out how to climb the ladder to the playhouse that's part of the swings/slides set in the backyard.  The first time, I was hovering behind him in case the rungs were too far apart.  Then he went down the 5' tall slide.  Not fifteen minutes later, I looked up, and he was up there in the playhouse again all by himself!  He now no longer gets unsupervised time in the yard for a while.  And, according to Wonderful Husband, tonight while I was at writing class and he was getting the boys into their pyjamas, Squiddle was being stubborn about not knowing where to put his clothing.  Jazzy marched up and pointed to the hamper.  And when Squiddle was being stubborn about not knowing how to put on his undies, Jazzy picked up two more pair of his undies and threw them at his brother.

Blast from the Past, Part 2

Whee!  I spent a good part of yesterday hand-sewing the binding to the back of the Jacob's Ladder quilt, and I got it done!  When Wonderful Husband complained after his guitar lesson that his fingers hurt, I could relate.  Now I just need to make and stitch on a label, let it soak in Oxyclean to get out any age stains that will come out, and wash/dry it.  It will be a late gift (Niecelet's birthday is today), but as she's one, I don't suppose much that she'll care.  And if my sister complains, well, she was three months late sending my boys their birthday cards.  No leg to stand on.

Today we went en masse and raided Ikea, looking for a toy storage solution.  Wonderful Husband wants out of his killer commute and to work from home more days a week, which means shifting toys out of the office so he can close the door and it can be a workspace.  We ended up with a 4x4 Hallax unit in birch, and I'm busy seeing how many toys it can fit - and moving our boardgames out of the hallway closet and onto the top shelf, so we can see them and be more likely to use and enjoy them.

In any case, here is the second lap quilt that I made for Wonderful Husband's grandmothers, yonks ago:

This one is a little more complicated than the other, with scrappy purple Triple Nine-Patch blocks and free-motion quilting.  I have no idea at this juncture how I did that, save for inexpertly - as with the other, there are tiny folds caught in the quilting on the back.  But I still love the design, and think it turned out rather pretty.

Blast from the Past, Part 1

Alas, I was not able to go to my writing class last night. A combination of bad headache, possibly blocked milk duct, and Wonderful Husband getting home late.  So I will try again next week.  And I ended up spending the evening quilting, and got the Jacob's Ladder quilt (64" x 51" apparently) all quilted and trimmed.  Today I hope to do the binding and dig out some muslin for a label.  I'm thinking it will be a birthday gift for Niecelet, who is turning one on Saturday.  But she lives up in Washington state, so it will be late by a couple days. :/

Yesterday I also pulled out three more projects and their backing fabrics, and am mentally debating which one to tackle next.  There's a large green/plaid four-patch quilt I got in a Goodwill lot - it'll be for my parents.  Or there's the String-X quilt that's maybe for Jazzy.  Or the Asian fabrics round robin I did with my guild....  I'll probably go for the four-patch, as I want to do straight-line quilting with the walking foot on it, and that goes quick.  Plus it will be a project that will immediately go to its final home!

While we were in England, I became reacquainted with a couple of my older quilts.  They were lap quilts I had made years ago for Wonderful Husband's grandmothers, who were in assisted living facilities.  Now my inlaws have them, and Squiddle slept under them while we were there.  Here's one:

I don't remember if this one was Nan's or Gran's, and I made it long before I knew anything about labeling quilts.  It's a very simple quilt alternating four-patch and white muslin blocks, making green chains. It's bound in a pink that matches flecks in the green fabric.  There are a couple wrinkles caught by the quilting on the back - I didn't know about spray basting back then or walking feet.  So, I could do slightly better now.  But the construction is actually pretty sound, and I am definitely not ashamed to own up to having made it.

Wednesday Report

Finally both boys slept through the night last night, which means Mummy got to also!  Well, except for the part where I woke up half an hour before the alarm.  Ah well, more time to get things done, especially since tonight I go back to my writing class for the first time since Jazzy was born.

Yesterday I met up with my friend Debi, who had taken over Block of the Month for me while I was in England.  I always toss my six sample blocks into the kitty, but I never put my name in the drawing because of conflict of interest or whatever.  I told her I don't put my name in.  So guess what she did?  Put my name in.  And I won.  Twenty blocks!  Another UFO. ;_;

I also churned through more of the Jacob's Ladder quilt.  It's now about seventy percent done, and I will probably run out of white thread before finishing it, so I know what's on my shopping list today.

Meantime, here is my wonderful mother-in-law (hi, Mary!) and her quilt!

Some years ago she made a many-colored dream coat for Joseph for a production at the school she worked at, and this quilt is made from the leftover scraps.  I love how bold and colorful it is!  The solids plus the block pattern she chose give it a wonderfully modern look.

Under The Needle

Part of yesterday's excavations was my sewing nook.  My sister and 11-month-old niece were supposed to (it didn't actually end up happening) stay at our house for a bit while we were out of the country so I had moved stuff to make things inaccessible to inquisitive baby fingers.

While we were in England, I scared myself by starting a list of my UFOs and WIPs.  And I mentally added more to the list yesterday as I shuffled stuff back to uncover the sewing machine.  And I haven't even actually looked in the projects bin yet!  But so I took the thing which was closest to completion and started working on it:

This is a Jacob's Ladder quilt top I picked up for $10 at Costume College last July.  Based on the fabrics, I'm guessing it's from the 1940s.  It's not terribly big, lap quilt size maybe.  I had started quilting it when I volunteered at my guild's booth at the county fair in August.  I had my Baby Lock machine that day, and the one-tenth of the quilt I did was arduous.  So it got set aside until yesterday.

The machine really does make a difference sometimes!  Using my trusty 1952 Singer 15, I moved the quilt from one-tenth quilted to one-third quilted.  Hopefully I'll get more done today, particularly since Squiddle is coughing and sniffing enough that I'm ruling out school for him today...

Back Home

We arrived back in California Saturday afternoon, jetlagged and varying degrees of sick.  What fun!  The jetlag is slowly wearing off (up with Jazzy at 6am yesterday, up with both boys at 5am today...) as are the headcolds.  Tidying up the unpacking mess is going a bit more slowly, unfortunately.

I gave myself yesterday as a grace period, but today I need to start doing stuff.  Excavating my sewing area, contacting the guild members who covered for me, getting ready to resume my Wednesday night writing class, etc....

I didn't do too much sewing while in England, but I did borrow my mother-in-law's sewing machine and stitch a bit on some block bits I'd brought with me.  I also finished one of my half-done thrift store embroidery finds.  For Christmas, I got several quilting books, about a yard of fabric that various gifts were wrapped in, a giant silver thimble to corral scissors and the like in, and a vintage quilt top from my sister!  I also purchased about four and a quarter yards of fabric.  I think this year I'm going to try measuring my fabric in-vs-out.

I also gave away six quilts this holiday season.  One each to my sister, sister-in-law, father-in-law, aunt and uncle, our dear friends whom we visit in Cambridge, and the baby quilt to Wonderful Husband's friend.  Whee!  Room to make more quilts!  I also made something like seventeen pillowcases for Christmas gifts, and a pair of Lilo and Stitch pyjama bottoms for Wonderful Husband (which I need to hem up because apparently the pattern thinks his legs are like 5" longer... and he's 6'1" so it's not like he's particularly short to begin with!).

And!  My mother-in-law made her first finished quilt!  She had the top done, and I helped her figure out how to sandwich and machine quilt it.  I have a picture to be posted later, after Wonderful Husband wakes and I can get my phone from the bedroom.

For now, little boys need entertaining....