pink, baby

I'm not having a girl, but lots of my friends are. So I can throw my pink passion into some baby quilts. Here's the first in the series (for Astrid, who inspired me to start blogging):

Jacob's Ladder pattern in pink and green

Per usual, I accidently cut two solid green squares too small and didn't have any extra (I tried piecing tiny bits together, but it was hopeless). So I couldn't complete one of the patches. But this turned into a happy accident. I simply appliqued a four-clover (see below) in the substitue patch, giving a break to the symmetry of the piece and a little extra personal touch.

lucky four-leaf clover saves the day

I'm also using these small projects to practice my machine quilting skills. I was hoping that machine quilting would be so easy and quick that it would lure me away from the ridiculously time-consuming, but irresistably lovely hand quilting. Well, it certainly is quicker but so much harder than I expected. I'm a sloppy sewer and I have a bad habit of pulling the fabric where I want it to go, rather than letting the machine do most of the work. This is diasterous with machine quilting, which requires that all layers be fed at the same rate. So after a couple rows I realized that the top was bunching up in places. It wasn't so bad that I needed to rip it out and the errant fluffiness decreased significantly after washing. But I realized I have a lot to learn before I attempt a full-size quilt or quilt any design besides straight rows.

all pinned and quilted

one quilt down...

color, color everywhere

Hooray! I've finally finished hand-quilting my mother's quilt (the back story is here). It didn't take 100 years, only 100 hours or so. I started last August and last week I finished the last square. I am so elated! After the final stitch, I jumped up and did a victory dance. Of course, my fingers may never be the same, permanently calloused it seems.

I'm not using this quilt on the bed,
but how else can you take a quilt pic?

I love the look of hand-quilting and I get giddy just admiring my work, as amateur as it is. It's partially the look, but the stitches are also a physical representation of the time and hard work that went into it.

the lovely bumps creating by hand quilting


1 of 24 log cabin squares, shadow quilted


a little wobbly, but at least at semi-regular intervals

I've got two quilt tops waiting in the wings, but I don't know if I can do it again. My friend is having her queen size quilt handquilted in only a month by some lady in Utah for $80, apparently the going rate. As disturbed as I am about the sweatshop level hourly rate this lady is charging, I am tempted. Perhaps she's a speed quilter (but even at 5x my speed, she's still sorely underpaid). Perhaps she pays undocumented workers half her rate to do the job. Perhaps little elves come in at night and do all the work while she sleeps. Perhaps I should just quilt my quilts and let the mystery be.

On a final, slightly melancholy note... per the cliche, working on my mother's quilt has made me feel connected, connected to her, connected to the quilting community, connected to a quilting tradition. The only thing that makes me sad is that I don't yet have anyone to which I can pass on my quilting (or any of my other domestic skills). I'm saying this with shameless gender bias, assuming that neither of my boys will be interested or at least too busy playing sports or climbing mountains. Even if I had a girl, there's no guarantee she'd be interested either. Perhaps quilting makes its own connection, in its own time. I'll hope for that.

baby on the way

I'm 5 months pregnant and baby knitting is in full swing. Last year I bought one precious skein of this Rowan big wool for 25 francs. This year I realized that I couldn't even make a baby sweater with this amount so I forked out another 25 francs so I could make this little number. It's sweet and cosy. I can't wait to snuggle my baby in it next winter.

discontinued

What happens when you impulsively buy yarn on sale then wait a year to use it? You realize that you don't have enough yarn to knit anything but a doll hat and you can't buy more because the stores don't carry it anymore.

Thus was my predicament this with yarn (and will be with many more yarn balls waiting patiently in my craft room). This is the third sweater I tried with this yarn, prematurely running out of yarn on two previous projects. On this project, I realized after knitting the front, back, and half of the first sleeve that the yarn was running precariously low. After a few hours of lamenting the prospects of frogging yet another failed project, I had an idea - short sleeves! Not quite brillant but pretty useful in this case. It worked like a charm, leaving only the tiniest bit of yarn left over (see above pic). However, this design choice turned this unisex sweater into decidedly feminine attire. Perhaps this is a sign? I think I'll add some embroidered embellishments to girl it up even more.

This sweater has an even longer story, which I'll elaborate on in an another post...

sugar, spice & everything nice

I finally finished my sweater interrupted and I couldn't be happier with it. Yea!

I love America

So my little case of homesickness has produced this patriotic number in just one month's time. The applique wasn't nearly as bad as I expected; I could get about 3 stars done in one TV show. Of course, I still have to quilt it.

A little happy accident caused the stripes to go horizontal, just like the flag. I hadn't designed this on purpose and only noticed it once it was all sown together. This only happened because I drafted my pattern horizontally instead of vertically (not realizing the consequences). This meant that the blocks would all be turned 90 degrees to the right, thus causing the stripes to go horizontal. Yea!

patch-tastic

The miracle of speed-piecing and lots of midnight quilting has surprisingly yielded a whole quilt's worth of squares in just 2 weeks! (OK, I admit that I still have many hours of applique left to lose my mind over.) The moral of the story is... pick the right pattern. My last quilt top took over 3 very long months to piece together and almost made me give up quilting before I'd even really started. But now I'm encouraged.

Per usual, the fun part was the endless planning in Powerpoint and Excel, creating all sorts of numbered diagrams to make speed-piecing possible for my "random" pattern. Here are a couple samples:

I don't recommend trying to figure out my system. I barely understand it myself and have to decipher it every time I reference the diagram.

patchwork complete...

...and the work has only just begun. Many hours of basting, quilting and finishing remain. I may just pack this away for the next generation to finish.

where the wild things are

Max is Max for Halloween

My first handmade costume for Max...
and maybe my last - that was hard work!

Stoffe, Stoffe, und mehr Stoffe

I remember why I quilt - because fabric is fabulous. I was just browsing this Swiss site, Cotton & Color, and they have the most beautiful collection of prints I've seen in a long time, maybe ever. In the "old" days, I used to frequent the low-end shops like Joann's and Michael's looking for $3/yd bargains and I quickly got bored with the selections. Occasionally, I'd venture into a specialty quilt shop and treat myself to 1/4yd of something fancy that I'd never use, only admire. But after spending an hour browsing this site, I desperately want to buy, buy, buy! I must resist. I absolutely cannot let myself buy any new fabric until I use all the fabric I already have. To this end, I foresee many one patch quilts in my future.