On Hold

Remember how I mentioned a few times that our neighbors are the best ever?  Well, she came over today to give back a container I'd used for brownies, as well as to give us a belated HAND MADE wedding card.  It's gorgeous and adorable, and I'll post pics later.  She also came over saying "stop sending us thank yous!" Apparently making brownies in return for a driveway plowed multiple times makes her/them uncomfortable.  So maybe next year I'll stick with a card or something.  But the funny thing was, as she was knocking on our front door to tell us to knock it off with the thank yous, I was pinning/sewing their thank you quilt.

...
....
.....

...awkward.

So I think I'm going to put this one on the back burner for a bit and keep it until we move. Then I'll finish it and leave it on their doorstep with a note and a flaming bag of dog poo so they don't feel too awkward about it. Silly neighbors.

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!

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.