As Promised

Here are the pics of Cori's Wrapped in Hope orange dancers quilt.  Still no real name for this.  Maybe it'll just be orange dancers.  How original. 

I gotta say, these pics were hard to get.  There's SO much orange here that it screws with the coloring of the whole rest of the shot.  I had to do a little post-production tweaking to get them anything close to the real look.

Doesn't that backing look like it was made to be part of this quilt??

Close up of some of the quilting.

"Love is louder"

And finally, the full frontal.  This will ship with the Superhero quilt in a week or so, in time for their respective birthdays in mid-March. 

And now, back to cleaning.  Yay.

Neighborly Love

As if Mother Nature knew I was starting to wonder if making a quilt for our amazing neighbors (who always plow our driveway, without so much as knocking to say "hey look what I did!") was a little too much, she dumped another 5 inches of snow on us over night.  Sigh.  Is anyone in the southern states (I'm looking at you, Hawaii) accepting applications for poolboy/house maid?  Nick and I would make a great addition to your household staff!

In any case, here's a little update on the quilt I'm making for the neighbors.  I won't lie...it's not as muted as I'd hoped for.  The pictures of the Moda line (Charlevoix) made it look like the colors were sort of...dusty?  I dunno.  Less whubam than they are, anyway.  They're bright.  It's not necessarily a terrible thing, it's just that muted tends to be more "decor-neutral" and since I don't know how they decorate their house, I'm hoping this won't completely clash.  There are so many different colors though, I'm sure something's bound to work.  I hope.

Anyway, pictures.

 The first few strips.  Even pictures now still look a little less intense than they do in person.  I dunno.

 More strips, with between stuff added.

All the  blocks are done and sewn together.  The between stuff with the smaller squares isn't sewn together yet, but this gives an idea of what I'm doing with it.  The treadmill makes design-walling a near-acrobatic experience, but I'm lucky enough to have both so I won't complain. 

The wrapped in hope quilt is officially done too!  I need to get pics of it...stand by! UPDATE: PICS!

Love is Louder

I'm not dead, I swear! Just trying to finish up this quilt before posting more pics of it. 

On Valentine's Day, a friend of mine introduced me to the Love is Louder movement on facebook, and I gotta say...I'm hooked!  It's hard to remember it some days, but love really is louder than anything negative the world can throw at us. 

To that end, I decided to incorporate the message in Cori's orange dancers quilt (which still doesn't have a good name yet) and quilted it (in my best handwriting!) in the bottom right corner.  It's subtle and you can barely read it, but if you look for it, it's there.  I could have done it brighter, bolder, louder, but I like that you have to really know to look for it to see it...it's like a secret message.  I did it using (what else) paper stencils.  I think I'm going to incorporate this on all my donation quilts.

Twist My Arm...

...Nick forced me to buy fabric at Yankee Pride today. Life's rough. :-)

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Quick Pix

Just a few pix of the orange dancers quilt.  I found the backing on sale at Joann's this afternoon, and I have to say...I'm a little bit in love with it.  It's like it was designed to go with this top.  At the store, this old Irish lady commented on it and told me my top was wonderful...it meant the world.  :-)

Basted and bunched up.

Stencils.  Whirligigs are for the orange blocks.

Hearts are for the pink blocks.

Butterflies are for the dancers.

Dancing butterflies.

Hearts and butterflies.

Whirligigs.

Flipside.  See what I mean about the backing?  How gorgeous is this stuff??? And it's flannel to boot!

Now you can see where I got the butterflies idea from.

And last but not least, the hearts.  I'm doing the butterflies in white, hearts in pink (need more pink thread, argh), and whirligigs in orange.  I'm also stitching down the ditches, but I got impatient and wanted to try out these patterns. :-)  I had to use tweezers to get the paper off of some parts, but I'm not too worried about that...it'll be tedious, but a good "zone out in front of the TV" activity. 

Since I made Nick hold this up...

...I'll post this picture now.  Here's the full frontal of the Wrapped in Hope quilt. 

Kini is suspicious but I think she likes it.  You can tell how long it is by realizing MOTU is holding it above his (6ish foot tall) head.  I think I calculated it was about 70x76.  I haven't decided what to name it yet...any ideas?

Design Stuff Monday

Yesterday I did a bunch of shopping for MOTU, so to reward myself I went to Joann's and used up some coupons.  I got this nifty book which has literally opened up entire new worlds for me.  I never thought to quilt using paper stencils.  Duh.  I think I need to get myself some thinner paper, but for now just plain printer paper is working ok.

I played around with the new stencils, using some leftovers from the last round of QFKs. I made a couple of these and turned them into Valentine's gifts for some unsuspecting friends.  Muahaha.

The paper should be thinner...it's hard to get off as is.  If I wet it, it mostly works but some stuff still lingers.  If I don't, I'm afraid I'll rip the stitches.

I kind of like the slightly damp effect here.

I have (as usual) a couple projects going on right now.  In addition to the quilt for the neighbor, I signed up for one of the kids in the Wrapped in Hope program.  My girl likes dancing (but not ballet) and the color orange.  Her birthday is in March, so I need to get working on this.  I'm cheating and using a modified version of the QFK pattern for this.  I have a lot of the dark orange and a bit of the pink/orange hearts and the lighter orange.  So that pic up there is the basic pattern I'm using.  Grey is the focus print (dancers), and the rest of the colors are self-explanatory.

Blocks and strips cut.

Trying out the first few blocks.  I'm still mid-strip-sewing, but I wanted to see if this would even look ok.  I think it works.  I'm excited to try some of my new paper patterns to quilt on these!!

I also have the wedding quilt and the colonial quilt for our bed in progress as well...should really put some more time in on those.  They're just really big and slightly overwhelming right now.  But I'll get there.  Really.


UPDATE!!

I actually finished the entire top before going to bed last night.  I don't have a good picture of the whole thing, but here's a sneak peek anyway:

Happy Monday!!

Next Up

 Remember these?  The one on the right (for the neighbors) is turning into this:

Pretty simple blocks, but it should be pretty, fingers crossed.

 They'll look something like this when they're done.  With different colors in the corners, and more than just two strips per block, of course. 

Finished Pictures

 My quilt is done!  Top!

Back!  I used a charm pack of Martinique for the rows on the back...I think it ties the whole thing together quite nicely.  The binding is stuff I cut off the sides, so there are little splashes (I like that name too Jo!) of Martinique along the sides as well!  Love love love! 

It's in the wash now, so I'm finding ways to delay going to bed so I can put it in the dryer before I sleep so it'll be ready to show off at work tomorrow.  I have a fan club, what?  :-D  Ok, not really, but I've been trying to describe this one for weeks, so its time is due.

The One That Didn't Get Away

I've officially decided to keep this quilt.  I'm in love with it.  I even had fun with the backing. 

Naturally, I needed the quality inspector to make sure it was worthy of completion first.

Here it is all laid out.  I've quilted it too, but I don't have pictures just yet.  I used a grey thread that matches the backing, and simply stitched down the diagonals.  It's definitely a "don't look too close" quilt, but it's mine.  :-)  Hoping to put the binding on tonight so I'll have done pics tomorrow.  And I'll likely bring it in to the office to show off.  :-D

Design Strip Twist Monday

The strip twist top is coming together nicely.  I have the top three rows sewn together...just 5 more to go!  I'm not sure what I'm calling this one, nor what I'll do with it when it's done.  I'm starting to think I might keep it for myself...selfish, I know.  :-)  I got this fabric to make a bed quilt for MOTU and me in the first place, so I guess it's not so wrong. 

I got these two sets of fabric to make a quilt for our sainted neighbors (right) and possibly another one for me to keep (left).  It's hard to explain the pattern I'm going to try, so I won't bother until it's in progress.

If all you want to see is quilts, stop here. 

This is our back yard right now.  That mound is actually a car...no joke.  Fortunately, it's not one we use frequently, but still.  Anyone out there in a warmer place need a nanny or something for the winter? 

The snow is so high that Kini doesn't have to jump up to the window anymore.  She can now simply walk up the pile outside the kitchen window and poke her nose against the glass. 

I spent 3 nights in Cambridge last week, and this was the view from my hotel room.  Pretty spectacular.

Different day, same window.  Love it.