Year's End Post

I kind of want to say nasty things about a cursed year and express wishes for a better one to come, but that seems like tempting fate.

So instead, I will say that today I got the backings for both baby quilts finished, and both quilts basted.  I also whip-stitched the leftover batting from those endeavors together:

...and have that ready, together with the Christmas wallhanging and its backing, to baste together.  Then I will have three smaller projects ready to quilt.

It's popular among quilters to pick a focal word, something for them to think on and strive toward, for each new year.  I'm not going to do that.  But I will be making three sort-of resolutions.

(1) I will write 400 words of fiction each day.

(2) I will only go to the fabric store when absolutely nothing from my stash will work.  Sew up what I've got!

(3) I will only eat when I'm actually hungry.

Let's see how long I can cleave to these goals.

Family Quilts, Far and Near

 I finished the quilt top for my cousin's child.  I give you Rainbow Mermaid:

I don't like it quite as well as Squiddle's Rainbow Quilt (maybe the black made that pop more for me?), but I think it's a good quilt for a baby/toddler.  And, hey, in a few years her parents can use it to teach her colors.

Actually, on further consideration, maybe it's just that I don't like the above photo, because it was taken at night with indoor lighting.  I think the quilt looks better in person and in daylight.

Also while going through the photos on my phone, I found these pictures from the quilt I gave to my mother at Christmas:

I laid out the quilt on my queen bed, so I know it's a good size for my parents'.

A closeup of the feather wreaths I quilted in the open squares.  I'm quite pleased with them.

In the pieced squares I went for a simpler motif, yet they were more difficult to do, simply because of the extra bulk at the seams and especially the intersections.

And I made a pair of matching pillowcases!

Christmas and Baby WIPs

 So!  A couple of days ago I mentioned a couple works-in-progress.  The first one is this:

I got the stars in a miscellaneous box at some point.  They're hand-sewn, about 15.5" square each, and done with very dated fabric.  That said, I couldn't just let the poor things languish!  So at some point in the past I'd pulled and cut the sashing fabrics and bundled them together with the stars.  I'd actually sewn the center part together, so all I did on Christmas Day was sew the borders and nine-patches for the corners and put it all together.  It's only 38 1/2" square, so it will fit on a single width of fabric - which I've already dug out from my Christmas stash and pressed, so the next step involves batting and basting.

There's a bit of bulk in the center of some of the blocks, so I'm thinking maybe feather wreaths for the quilting motifs?  That would allow me to avoid fighting with the bulk....

Also in progress is this:

Gosh I wish I had more of that mermaid print!  But since I only ever had the one fat quarter of it, clearly it was meant for this project.  It looks a little odd here, with just the first row of color added.  But I'm up through the orange row now, and it's looking like it makes more sense.  If my math is right, it'll end up at 58 3/4" x 55 1/4".  Odd size, I know, but the FQ wasn't precisely square to start with, and trimming it so it was left it odd.

Of course, my cousin's child that I'm intending this for is now 9 months old... but given how much of this year I lost creative impetus for, it can't be helped.  Plus I prefer making toddler-sized quilts anyway.  They'll see years more use than crib quilts ever will.

(And in between the rows and pressing, I may have been leader-endering a tree block for my Christmas Trees wallhanging.  It'll get done... eventually.)

Christmas and Crafting

Seven quilts gifted at the greater family gathering on Christmas Eve.  (I made sure to say not to expect this every year.)  At least two of them have been slept under - Wonderful Husband actually napped under his Minecraft quilt, and Squiddle now has his rainbow quilt on the bed.  Jazzy was irked when he realized his dinosaur quilt is much too big for his toddler bed, but he decided that he wanted it on the sofa instead so he can cuddle under it when he's watching TV.  (Side note: Jazzy's speech is improving by leaps and bounds the last several weeks!  I actually literally physically cried with happiness a few days ago because he said "eight" and pronounced the "t" at the end, which he has never done before.)

I hosted Christmas Eve dinner this year, and pulled off the smorgasbord fairly well, I think.  My mother brought her potato salad and my sister brought the kottbullar.  And all three of the kids actually ate some things from the spread!  (Also, parts of the downstairs got a pretty good cleaning.)  One of the funniest parts of the evening was my sister giving Jazzy a drum set.  Backstory: when I was three, my grandparents gave me a drum set.  My mother never forgave them, and spent the next forty years swearing she was going to pay it forward on my children.  And did she?  No, she did not!  So my sister took it upon herself to fulfill that promise. ^_^  And I'm actually pleased about it - thus far, at least, the boys like it but in a less volumetric way than Niecelet was doing.

So, having done all that quilting leading up to Christmas, you think I'd be burnt out on it, wouldn't you?

No.

I went out into the garage this morning to find my bodkin to repair a few of the drawstring gift bags whose strings had been pulled through.  I also found a quilt top I'd been looking for, a round robin I did with the Orange County Quilt Guild a couple years ago.  I was thinking it might be a good baby quilt for my cousin's daughter, born in March.  (I know, I know.  But I lost a lot of mojo this year, like many other people.)  Except now that I look at it, it's so sewing-themed that I want to keep it for myself!  But I also found a purple mermaid-themed fat quarter, and realized I could use it to do a kind of reverse of Squiddle's rainbow quilt, and that would make a good baby quilt.  (Need to get more green, but I have enough of the other fabrics to whip it up.)  And I pulled in three projects-in-pieces.  One's a bundle of patriotic Friendship Stars I haven't looked at yet.  One's a Christmas wall hanging I'll blog about tomorrow.  And the third one looked like this:

It's 25 yellow churn dashes on black and white backgrounds, set on point and already pieced in rows with the setting triangles.  I have a vague memory of this - these were swap blocks.  Were they from Block Lotto, though, or the Orange Grove Quilt guild?  Or maaaaybe Orange County Quilt Guild - I never put my name in, but on the rare occasion someone else ran block party for me, they did.  But why did I get halfway on this and stop?  So I pressed all the creases out and seamed the rows together.

Not what you'd usually think of for a baby quilt, but given that babies rely on high contrast more than anything for their first few months, I think this would be good for an infant.  My friend Jamie from Orange County Quilt Guild was due to have her son late this month, and I think she might like this....

Christmas Eve Eve

Little boys got baths last night and clean jammies and I changed their bedsheets and pillowcases as well, surprising Squiddle when he came into his room after his bath.  He didn't understand that changing his bed meant different pillowcases as well, I guess?  Jazzy opted to keep the same quilt he's been sleeping under, but Squiddle wanted a change, so I dug out one of the more bohemian quilts I've done - a scrappy vintage top with fabrics dating probably from the 1950s through the 1970s.  The more important factor, to me, was the flannel backing.  Why?  We have central heating!  They're not going to need the extra warmth!  Sometimes what the instincts want has nothing to do with reality.

Yesterday I went out-and-about and got food for our Christmas Eve dinner, as well as stocking stuffers and chalkboard labels, since at this point we are largely a gift bag family.  I've grown to dislike the sheer waste of wrapping paper and have been shifting us over for a few years now.  But we don't have quite enough gift bags on the large end of things, so four presents got wrapping paper regardless

And I finished, washed, and wrapped Squiddle's quilt!  All done.  Seven quilts for Christmas - everyone who will be here tomorrow gets one this year.

The house is cleaner than it was, all the pots and pans are washed and put away, the kitchen counters are clear, the duck eggs are hard boiled, the shrimp is in the sink thawing, the jello chilling out in the garage (with a towel over it; the fridge was full) and all I need to do in the morning is prep cold foods. And possibly send Wonderful Husband to Costco for a cheesecake.

Squiddle's Rainbow Quilt

The menfolk, tall and small, have been tucked into their beds and lay dreaming.  I'm the only one awake, still working on the last Christmas quilt, Squiddle's.  This is my own choice - it's in a state now where I could give it, quilted, bound, and labeled.  But I want to get the last four rows of interior quilting done as a point of pride, and at the moment I'm redoing a section of the binding that I pulled too tightly on the inital pass.

The quilt is a little bit bigger than it needs to be (roughly queen sized, and Squiddle sleeps in a full bed) but it will likely shrink up a touch when I toss it through the washer and dryer.  And I love it so much that I'm actually considering submitting it to a quilting magazine.  Even my father-in-law gave an impressed "bloody hell" (according to my mother-in-law) when I sent them this in-progress picture:

I've been using black thread for most of the quilting - circling every dot in that center panel, a line of quilting on each side of the black stripes, and zig-zag quilting in the outer border.  For the rainbow stripes I'm color-matching my thread and doing a different motif for each color.  So far I have infinity eyes in the purple and waves in the blue.  The binding is rainbow stripes.  The back is a red flannel - Squiddle's (current) favorite color.  And even though it looks like it in the picture, the color stripes aren't all from the same fabric line!  Only the red and yellow match.  The orange and blue are batiks, and the green and purple are Keepsake Cottons from JoAnn Fabrics.

I don't have matching pillowcases for it yet.  And I like to do those when I give a bed-size quilt.  But I'd need to get more black fabric from JoAnns first, so I think after I give it to Squiddle I'll ask if he wants me to make them or not.

But for now I think I'll get my sewing machine threaded with green, start the dishwasher, and go to bed.

Chugging Along

Trying to juggle everything for Christmas and the boys' last week of school for this calendar year!  The tree is still not decorated yet. :(

I've been working on the quilt for my mom as I can.  I've got all the feather wreaths done, and fourteen of the eighteen blocks.  If I concentrate, maybe I can finish it tomorrow?  Wednesday at the latest.  Of course, I still need to make the matching pillowcases....

For now, though, I'm knocking off to bed.  Because last night I kept working, and didn't get to bed until almost midnight, and that kind of thing does me no good at all.

Feathers!

This afternoon we made an outing of it today and drove across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge over to the (bigger) Joann Fabrics, where I did in fact find a suitable orange batik for Squiddle's quilt!  I also purchased a wide flannel backing so that I won't have to stress over seams.  And I let myself have one splurge: a yard of this Star Wars fabric.  (Wonderful Husband: "Han Solo says gay rights?")  It's quirky and I'll never see it again, so.

Last night I got the quilt for my mother basted.  (And this morning I steam-mopped the floor to get up any excess spray baste.)  I had tried marking circles on the alternate squares with the water-soluble markers I had, but they were old and heading toward dried out, so it was an uphill battle.  I got new ones at Joanns, and oh my they made such a difference!

You can kind of see the triple circles I marked (using a dinner plate, a soup bowl, and a small canning ring) to use as guidelines for feather wreaths.  I got four quilted before the boys turned in tonight.  Thirteen more to go!  They're being so easy because there isn't any seamline bulk to fight against.  Of course, I had to remember how to do them, so maybe don't look too closely at the first one. ^_^;  And in the picture above, you can see the fabric I used for the backing.

Progress Made, Progress Stalled

 So!  Bad news first.  I started in on Squiddle's Christmas quilt, and got the first two rows (red, then black) around the center panel added on.  But when I cut out the next row (orange), I ended up 11.5" shy.  And this is a years-old fabric, I can't get any more of it.  I was at Joann Fabrics up in Port Orchard last week, they don't have anything suitable.  And I've gone through my stash in the garage.  And the only quilt shop here in Gig Harbor closed.

F*ck.

However, I looked on the Joann Fabrics website, and if it isn't lying to me, the store over in Tacoma (so across the toll bridge) has some possibilities.  So the plan is to go there tomorrow and hope.  And if that doesn't work, go farther afield to The Quilting Fairy in Puyallup, which I recall was a pretty big store.  (I looked at the website for Shibori Dragon, in University Place, which is closer, but again found nothing that would work).

So since I can't work on that today, I'm going to get the quilt for my mother basted and labelled.  I found about eight yards of a backing fabric in my stash, so I got that seamed up and pressed ready yesterday.

Here's the quilt top as I pulled it out of the stash:

Pretty well made, obviously a sampler quilt, but not a great size for any of my parents' beds.  Also, I found a pin my grandmother left in it!  So I've set that pin aside in a special location because I am a sentimental being.

Here it is after I added borders:

(Forgive the lumpiness from the toys scattered all about under it.  I wasn't in the mood to stop working to clean them up.)  The near and far final white border are each 2" narrower than the same border on the sides.  Otherwise it was going to drag on the floor while draped across a bed.  I have some of the blue from the bottom left square prepped as the binding, though I'm still debating if a dusky pink might work better?

A WIP, a Book, and an Argh!

 I've been working on the quilt top for my mother's present.  It started at 60"x84"... which is maybe a good size for a twin bed.  But my parents' home doesn't have any beds that size!  So I'm adding a white/floral stripe/white border to embiggen it to 80"x104", which... if their bed is the same height as ours, will be brushing the floor on the sides.  Hmm.  Maybe not?  I've got the white and floral stripe on, which takes it to 72"x96".  Wide enough for a queen (18" overhang) but not quite long enough.

Wonderful Husband suggests a slightly wider final border on two sides.  That might work.

In any case, I did my first mitered corners on this quilt!  I wanted the floral strip to look nice, and it does.

Also, and unrelatedly, I finally got the book I'd requested from the library!  Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston - about a romance between a theoretical First Son of America and a younger prince of the British royal family.  Its enemies-to-lovers storyline had me thinking it would feel rather fanfic-ish, but to my surprise, it wasn't!  Though at certain points it was very very much escapism from the hell that has been the last four years of the American political landscape.  The secondary characters are well fleshed out and I found myself thinking I'd happily read stories about any of them.  My only minor nitpick was that the prince was the Prince of Wales, which I believe is a title typically given to the heir to the throne?  So it should have been his brother's title if I understand correctly?  Otherwise, the British parts of it read well to my ear.  I ended up very much liking the book (418 pages) and wishing there was more.  I'll happily read her next novel!

And, finally, in assembling fabrics for rainbow rings on Squiddle's quilt, I've had to compromise on a red-orange.  But I knew I had the perfect orange in my stash.  So I went and dug and found it!  But I'm pretty sure it's not enough. ;_;

Busy Sunday!

Looking at the jar of split peas in the pantry the other day, I was struck by a yearning for split pea soup.  Which takes having some ham and a hambone.  So I bought one.  But hams don't come in small - it was over 11 pounds!  So I invited my parents and niecelet over for dinner this evening.  (I would have invited my sister too, but she was working.)  And since there were going to be more than just Wonderful Husband and I here, I made a blackberry pie (Squddle, Jazzy, and Niecelet will not eat pie yet) from this summer's berries.  And some loaded cornbread.  And since my parents were coming over, I made salsa so I could send a couple jars home with them.  And at Squiddle's request, I made hot cocoa.  (Making the cocoa and the salsa at the same time was a bit of culinary cognitive dissonance.)  But despite cleaning up as I cooked, all day long, I have still ended up with a sink and counter full of dishes, waiting for the dishwasher to be done.  Le sigh.

Yesterday, however, I gallivanted!  I picked up a present for my sister, did some grocery shopping at Winco, popped through two different St. Vincent de Pauls, picked up some things I needed at Joann Fabrics (largely to complete Squiddle's Christmas quilt), and some other things (picture hangers, Citrustrip, etc.) at Lowe's.

My thrifting score included two bedside tables for the guest room!  They're badly painted over, with the drawers poorly decoupaged with pages from a poetry book.  They are, in fact, what the aforementioned Citrustrip is for.  But they're solid wood with lovely lines, and I hope to get to work on them this week.  I also found a couple pairs of trousers apiece for the boys, some fabric, about a dozen quilting magazines, a new duvet cover, a vintage pillowcase, a kitchen towel, and a couple of Christmas tree ornaments.

One amusing moment this afternoon: when all three of the short people were wearing us adults down with the running and screaming, I busted out the paint and wooden paint-ables.  Amazing instant silence as they all worked on their projects.  Me, to my mother, a bit too smugly: "Twenty bucks at the dollar store." :)  I think I might've convinced her to get some paint and paint-ables for the days she watches Niecelet.

And, to turn this post back to the quilting I usually post about here, a couple pictures from recent projects!

I love this starry blue fabric from the back of my sister's 16-patch quilt.  I also love the line/circles/line quilting I did through the three borders.

And this is the fabric for and script quilting I did in the border of Jazzy's dinosaur quilt.  If you look carefully, you can read "triceratops."  (And see one at the bottom of the fabric, and one at the right.)

Cluck Cluck Cluck

The chickens started laying eggs a few weeks ago.  Well, at least two of them did.  I'm bringing in one or two eggs most days.  I know they're not from Sunny (Color Pack, so her eggs will be in the blue-green range) or Joanne (Buff Brahma; her eggs will be a light brown) so that leaves Roberta (Brown Leghorn), Kaya (Silver Dorking) and Sassafras (Golden Campine) as the suspects.  When I put more oyster shell in their calcium free-feed dish, though, they all had some.

Thing is, through, Squiddle wants a couple scrambled eggs for breakfast most days.  And if Jazzy or I want some as well, the egg count in the fridge remains going backwards!  I know it'll get a bit better in that regard as the other three hens continue to mature, and when spring comes, etcetera.  Still, this has me thinking I might want to expand the flock next year.  If I do, I'll need to build another run - I am not going to try cramming ten hens into a 8'x4' space!  And in any case, the new chicks, like with cats, would need to be kept in sensing range but not attacking range until the current set got used to them.

So would I want to build the same setup again, but lighter, and have two structures to shift on every few days?  Or go for an 8'x8'x2' true mobile pen without a proper coop?  And, if I do do this, what breeds do I want?  (Current shortlist: marans, barred rock, Rhode Island Red, and ameraucana.)

Thinky thoughts for winter.

Movin' Right Along...

 (Footloose and and fancy free~)

Well, Quilt #4 (that being the dinosaur quilt) is completed, washed, and in the dryer.  I did simple straight-line quilting in the sashing, and Xs in the blocks.  For the outer border, I grabbed a chalk pencil and wrote the names of dinosaurs in cursive, then quilted my writing.  I think that may become one of my go-tos - it's fun and distinctive.  I did much the same thing for the pirate quilt for my dad, scripting Jimmy Buffett lyrics in the border: "Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late. The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder, just an over 40 victim of fate." I wish I'd been able to spell out "40" but there just wasn't the space.

Striking while the metaphorical-as-opposed-to-physical iron was hot, I've started in this evening on quilting Quilt #5, which is the 16-patch.  I made a good dent into it this evening - I got to the last row of the alternate blocks before my top thread ran out, and when I loaded up the next spool I also treated myself to a fresh needle.  So that's ready to go in the morning.  I'm doing a simple Orange Peel quilting pattern in the alternate blocks, and I'm planning a slightly more complex Orange Peel variant in the 16-patches.  And probably feathers in the outer border, taking all three as one....

I'm looking down the gun at t-minus 23 days until gift giving, and two of the quilt tops aren't complete yet.  I can do this, but I need to remind myself to stay on track.