Life is good!

There isn't much movement on the list itself, but I've been making good progress on my WIP's.  I have the top of Northern Lights pretty much finished - my sister wants an initial appliqued on (it's a baby quilt) so I'm working on refining that before I sew it on.  My secret project is coming together, but it's been painful.  I got it up on the design wall last night, and I HATED it.  The feel was all wrong, you couldn't see what I considered one of the main design elements, and as my husband put it "it makes my head hurt".  Not exactly a resounding success.  So I made some adjustments, moved things around, and it's definitely better.  I think the quilting will have some major impacts on the final result, so I'm going to have to put some serious thought into that, too.  Originally I'd thought about doing it myself, but I think it's going to have to go to the long-armer to get what I want.  I'm also chugging along on the leade...

One of my dear friends from college finally had her first baby.  I am beyond thrilled for her, and of course had to send along a quilt in celebration.  The choice for her beautiful baby girl was Ribbon Box, a free pattern. The pattern calls for a 1/3 yard of all the fabrics, but some quick calculations showed I could use fat quarters for all of them (it helped that some of my prints weren't directional), and so this was entirely from stash, and helped reduce that rather prodigious pile of batik fat quarters that keeps reproducing on the shelves.  The backing is pieced, again all from stash. I tacked the machine quilting on this one myself.  It's a combination of straight-line quilting on the ribbons, with a simple stipple on the background. Certainly nothing fancy, but so far the largest quilt I've worked on.  My new Brother 1500 makes it so much easier to work on larger projects, and as so many blogs have said, it's all about practice! This ...

Lots going on in the sewing room! Stardust is finally pieced (although it's missing a row in this picture).  This was a challenging project for me, as it isn't so much about the construction - I'm pretty comfortable paper piecing - as it is about color placement.  And that makes me sweat.  Overall, I'm quite pleased so far, and am now in the sit-in-front-of-Doctor-Who-episodes-and-peel-paper mode.  And of course, I somehow managed to lose the remainder of the pattern, so I'm going to just have to take a good guess as to the size of the borders. Secret Project!  Love those!! This one jumped into my list - a commission from my sister.  It's the Northern Lights pattern from Jaybird Quilts, and the first time I've really done an all solids project.  It's going together pretty quickly and easily. Speaking of Jaybird Quilts, Park Bench is finally in progress.  This is a BOM from the Fat Quarter Shop, from a year or more ago.  ...

Okay, this quilt was just plain hard to photograph.  Because it's huge.  The original pattern finished at 96 inches square, then I added another 8 or 10 inches of borders, to get it to comfortably fit a king size bed.  So yeah, huge.  But I love it.  The fabric is an older line, Tradewinds, and I adore the colors!  These teacups are my favorite print!  This also shows the quilting well - there is a stipple over most of it, with designs in the large blocks.  This is a layer cake pattern, a variation on a disappearing 9-block, and it went together pretty quickly.  Here it is in situ, and I'm quite pleased with the final result!  I did have a bit of panic when I got it back from the quilter.  She said she used a fabric pen to mark the quilting designs on the large squares, only I have a suspicion she'd accidentally used a regular pen, because the marks did NOT come out.  I washed three times, and did some serious spot tr...

When it comes to sewing knits, and comfy clothes for the family, my new serger has been nothing short of fabulous.  This is McCall's 6985, a quick and easy maxi skirt and shirt pattern, and my daughter absolutely LOVES the final product.  There are almost no variations from the pattern here; my only addition was to make an elastic casing around the waist, as the black fabric waistband alone didn't have enough oomph to hold up the skirt on its own.  My daughter adores the final product, and has asked for several more.  I can see at least one more coming from this pattern! I love it on her as well - it's comfortable, provides good coverage, and she's already worn it repeatedly.  

This quilt has had many names.  Officially, it's the Trip Around the World pattern, from Bonnie Hunter.  I started it quite a while ago, and it became my "just 10 more minutes" quilt, because if I'd wrapped something up but didn't quite feel like I was done sewing, I'd pull out the strips and sew a block before heading to bed. When it started coming together, I could never really decide if I liked it, or if it looked like a rainbow had thrown up on my design wall.  I finally decided it was a little bit of both.  I played around with a number of layouts.  I'd kept a black diagonal line through all of the squares, for some consistency, so it did give me a lot of options.  I think this one is staying with me, largely as a utility quilt.  It's made out of fat quarters of less-than-stellar fabric, so not one I'd like to sell or give away, but it should hide stains and dirt well, with the black backing and binding, so a good one for picnics a...