Oof

This...has been a turbulent week. None of the bad stuff directly affects me, but there has been a lot of seriously heart-breaking news this week that's made my weeping heart, well, weep.

But that's for another post. For this post, we have a finish! Huzzah!

 Front!

Back!

I stippled it (not very well, mind you) around the focus pieces, so they're kind of raised and highlighted. I'm happy with it. I'm still not very good at stippling though. My lines cross a lot. A LOT. Oh well. The dark blue fabric on the back is some of the same stuff that I used in Just His Size, which was made for the recipient's grandson, so there's some connection there. Precious, I know...aren't I special? :-P

Friday Nigh Sew In is nearly upon us, and for once I'm hosting a party! A couple of friends are coming over, cramming themselves into my sewing room, and partying it up with me. I can't wait. :-) The major project of the night is top secret (to be revealed later, I promise), and if there's time then I'll put in some more time on the memory quilt. That one should go together quickly once I sit down and do it.

Design Wall Monday

First up, the Civil War quilt:

The top is done! I don't have quite enough material (at least not in the right direction) for the backing, so I'm taking a little field trip over lunch to grab some coordinating stuff for a border. Tonight, I'll hopefully get it basted and start with the quilting!

Next up, the design wall:

This is a memory quilt I'm putting together for my sisters-in-law's friends who are getting married soon. I love the fabrics they picked out - so colorful!

Just a quickie today, gotta get back to work!

Hand Dominance

Quick favor to ask all you followers out there.

Clasp your hands together. Which thumb is on top? What's your dominant hand? Leave the results in a comment (and for those of you who are FB friends, please only reply if you haven't responded to the question on FB).

Thanks!!

Impromptu Shop Hop and Design Wall

This weekend hubs and I went up to Franconia, NH for a weekend with his soaring club. As much as I love watching specks of planes in the distance floating slowly in and out of the clouds, it was pretty muggy and warm, so I excused myself from the picnic tables and took a little road trip.

First stop was at Stitch at the Old Mill, which billed itself as "a social club and fabric resource". Love it. The shop wasn't too big, but half of the building was set up with tables that would allow 20+ quilters enough space to work and chatter for hours on end. I wished I'd brought my machine (or at least the latest finish, since they'd had a show n tell not half an hour before I got there). Their list of social activities makes me want to retire early and just hang out at the shop all day.

The next stop took a little work to find. Google Maps led me slightly astray, so I ended up needing to stop for directions from a surly guy working at the paint your own pottery place (he made fun of me for using a GPS...I'm sorry, but I wouldn't have known your little town even existed, let alone had a quilt shop if it weren't for Google Maps, so don't knock it!) Then I got closer and had to ask a sketchy dude running what might have been a pot shop if he knew where the shop was.

Finally, I made it to Pinestead Quilts in Lincoln, NH. They don't have a website, and the shop was really pretty tiny...but I loved it anyway. They had bins and bins of precut squares that you could put together and purchase as little kits...sort of like a by the pound candy shop, but with fabric. Love it! The lady working the counter was 75 (she told me so) and just this tiny little thing, but she had some great opinions about technology. Not ones I agree with necessarily, but she had them anyway. :-)
I bought these fat quarters for a project I'm not at liberty to discuss yet. I'm actually hoping that this project won't be necessary, but just in case...

Aren't they lovely? I just love the rich colors and the subtle texture/pattern. Beautiful.

The final stop was Keepsake Quilting in the Lakes Region. Oh. My. Goodness.

They had an outlet store!

The place was seriously enormous. It took up an entire side of a strip mall, and the fabric selection was just overwhelming.

I loved this little tie quilt! It made me think of church-going babies

I bought this fabric for an upcoming project for a friend's mom. She wants a "whimsical cat-themed" quilt, so I found this stuff. The fishes is going to be sashing and the paw prints is the backing.

And after much labor and graphing (see below), the layout for the Civil War quilt is coming together. All the feature pieces (flags and maps) have fusible stuff on them, so now the next step is to crease the edges then iron them to their background blocks (blue has the Gettysburg address on it and cream is just a pretty pattern). Then I'll start putting the blocks together in chunks and hopefully by the end of the week the top will be done! I'm thinking I'll quilt around the feature pieces with cream or tan thread, some kind of swirly something.

Seriously, this is the most planning I've done on a quilt since the first one!

Design Wall Monday and a Finish

First, the finish.

The masterpiece is done! The backing is just tan fleece, and I just rolled it over to the front to bind it. I machine tied it (read: used the button stitch) in every block and in a few other strategic places (like the corners of the shirt). It's HEAVY, but it's done! Next up for this family is two queen-sized quilts made from the rest of the uniform materials, for her sons. Depending on what I have left from that, I may have an extra surprise up my sleeve...but no spoilers yet.

I also whipped up this top this weekend:

 It's going to be a Christmas present, so I'm not doing anything more with it for a bit. It was such a quick and easy project though, I just wanted something "bubble gum" to do for a few hours. I'll do something more exciting for the quilting part of it, promise. :-)

 I also got the focus pieces cut for the Civil War quilt. I'm still toying around with ideas on how to get them all into the same quilt without requiring applique, but I haven't quite come to an adequate solution yet. I'll keep you posted.

 Finally, I got out and took a few "good" pictures of the ARL donation quilt.

 How artsy am I, huh? Ha.

Pay no attention to that computer tower...or the fact that I had to strategically angle the shot to crop out the boxes full of junk on the porch. Next time I'll haul the chair out into the yard maybe.

Reliving

So I've started working on the embroidery part of the military quilt (taught myself, TYVM) and I have to say...it's actually really humbling. Doing this by hand is sort of forcing me to really think about what the words mean, and what they meant to the family involved. The one I'm working on right now says

"Short Tour"
Bahrain
Nov 2009 - Nov 2010

I can just picture the soldier's wife getting a phone call every few weeks telling her that they'd be in the field...just a few more weeks. I don't know that that's what happened, but it's what I'm picturing anyway.

 I rearranged the blocks a bit so now BDU material surrounds where the blouse will go.

 Hand embroidered FTW.

 Didn't wash away the marker, oops.

 Looks impressive, huh?

 First block. Not as pretty, but ok.
It's getting there.

In other news, I've cut out all the pieces for the Civil War quilt and am kind of a little considering bringing them to work so I can lay it all out on one of the big conference tables. Would that be crossing some kind of line do you think? :-D

This weekend we're supposed to get some silly hurricane heading our way, so it looks like I'll be spending a lot of time indoors...oh darn! :-)

And also, to everyone who thinks I have superhuman energy...you wanna know my secret?

I don't have kids. :-) 

I manage my time well and I don't have kids. My time is my time, and I LOVE that. I'm living it up until the inevitable happens and the future grandmothers in my family win out. For now, I don't spend my day chasing a knee-high around, so while it may sound superhuman, it's not. It's just lack of offspring.

What are you working on?

Accidental FNSI and Design Wall Monday!

Finally, I'm back!

This weekend I ended up having a bunch of time to work on stuff in "the lab", so I got a TON done. I had a finish:

 This one is puppy-themed, and is a donation quilt for the Animal Rescue League of NH's silent auction fund raiser in September.

 If you want to donate to the rescue league, our team page is here.

This guy will thank you for donating. :-D

After I finished that (literally, seconds after I finished the final stitch on the label), my best customer showed up with some Civil War themed fabrics to make a quilt for her dad's birthday at the end of September. I don't have pictures of that (grr), but it'll be up on the design wall as soon as this next one is down (hopefully by the end of the week, but we'll see).

Some of the fabrics include these:

The two general pictures are going to be the feature fabrics, and the flags and maps will fill in the spaces until the edges. Terrible description, cool project. There will be more pictures, promise.

After Jen left, I started cutting up pieces of military uniforms to create this:

This is a promotion quilt for a soldier who's being promoted in December. The post it notes mark where patches and/or embroidery are going to go. The only change I need to make is around the shirt - I'm going to make all the squares touching the blouse be BDU (green) material so it stands out more. The arms also need to be folded differently, to lay better. I'm waiting on 2 more sets of stripes, then I'll be able to start putting blocks together. Until then, I'll be embroidering stuff and stitching on patches.

I got mad embroidering skillz, yo. Yes, that's my handwriting, and yes I did that freehand. I know the 1 has a tumor, it won't happen again.

I still have a TON of leftover uniform material, and the wife has asked me to make 2 more queen sized quilts out of the leftovers for her sons. Hopefully, I can get them all done in time for Christmas. The only one that's time critical for now though is this one.

I also got this quilt basted last night (I didn't make the top, a friend's requested that I quilt it for her). Not sure what I'm going to do for the quilting.

Isn't that adorable? I just love the colors. It's so fresh and summery, it makes me think of lemonade. Love love love.

Other projects in the pipeline are a wedding quilt:

This is going to take some creative engineering because some of the squares are bigger than others, and (worse) some are signed all the way to the edges. I'm excited to work on this one though, and honored they'd think of me to put it together for them.

I really need to be putting together *our* wedding shower quilt as well. It's in a box and I really just need to spend a good hour or two getting the pieces organized so I can just hammer out a block or two when I have 15 minutes to spare. Maybe I'll do that tonight.

Finally, the other pile o' fabric new in my sewing room as of this weekend is a stack of t shirts from a gymnastics camp my sister in law and her friend(s) went to for the majority of their lives. I guess one of their friends is getting married, so they want a quilt made out of all the shirts from all the summers. I'm thinking this might be my first QAYG quilt, but I'm going to have to try it out on a smaller scale first, to make sure I can do the block joining right.

Anyway, that's what's going on in the lab these days. :-) All or nothing.