Alisa

Baby K’s Quilt: Finished!

Last … July? I started a quilt for my neighbors, who were having a baby in late August. I chose Baby K’s Quilt, by Audrey of HotPinkQuilts, which she featured during the her spot on the Lets Get Aquainted blog hop organized by Beth of Plum and June. I had high hopes of finishing it and giving it to them as a baby shower present. Then the semester began, and all my best intentions, well, we know what happens to good intentions.

Well, I finished it just before Christmas. Finally! This is what it looks like:

I used scraps for nearly all of the postage stamp squares, though I fussy-cut some 1001 Peeps and the little blue pigs. The green is Kona Clover, the stripe is Hello Pilgrim.

I’m really pleased with how the postage stamp squares turned out:

I free-motion quilted the squares using Elizabeth Hartman’s orange peel pattern. My peels aren’t quite as plump and pretty as hers, but I’m not unhappy with them.

I quilted the borders on each side of the seam, which was, well, not quite as much fun as the orange peels, but I’m happier with how it turned out — though I need to learn how to adjust my stitch length better next time.

I waffled on the backing for a little while, and finally settled on fleece: I talked to friends this summer who had a little one, and their favorite part of the quilt their mother had made was the soft fuzzy backing. As a bonus, it shows the quilting well:

So that’s one of the things I started last summer and finished in December!

Linking up with Thank Goodness It’s FINISHED Friday. Because, really? I’m so glad this one is done.

WiP Wednesday, January 2013

New Wave quilt:
I’m using the Sunday Best bundle from Pink Castle Fabrics, but I replaced the two white prints with blue and grey, because I didn’t want white tumblers framed by white sashing.

(I promise, those ones that look white are actually light blue or light grey: I can’t find my real camera, and an iPod can only do so much…)
To-Do:
-Piece tumblers and sashing into strips
-Piece together strips into quilt top
-Figure out a backing (dark blue?) using extra tumblers
-baste, quilt & bind

Strip and Flip Quilt
I altered this one a little bit — I cut the strips 2 1/2″ wide instead of 2″ and I was very careful sewing the strips together, to keep as much length as possible, so it’s a bit larger than the pattern suggests. The cat is thoroughly unimpressed by it, but I’m looking forward to finding my camera and taking proper pictures of it.

To-Do:
-buy binding fabric, bind the quilt, figure out who on earth it’s for.

Simple Math:
This one hasn’t gone much of anywhere since I last posted, because its blocks are sitting on the back of my sewing cart, and apparently out of sight is out of mind. Oops.
To-Do:
-finish trimming blocks to 6″ square
-find sashing fabric
-baste, quilt & bind

Kitchen Window:
This one has only seen a little bit of progress since the last time I posted, too, but I’ve got parts of it halfway done — enough that the next time I have black thread on the machine I can start piecing blocks together to see what they look like. I think part of the reason I keep putting this one off is because it’s for a queen-sized quilt, and the idea of that large a project is a bit daunting. Still, just a step at a time, and I’ll get there eventually.
To-Do:
-sort out the second half of the cut fabrics into groups for individual blocks
-cut the rest of the black fabric for frames
-cut the rest of the green fabric for background parts
-start constructing blocks
-fiddle with layout
-make back
-baste, quilt & bind

2012 Year in Review

1. FinalWhole, 2. FQ-Close, 3. Front_garden, 4. Full_front, 5. BlueBlack-staggered, 6. Henrietta1, 7. Notebooks, 8. Sarah’s potholders (front), 9. Black bag 1

In 2012 I started quilting seriously, started blogging, met a whole bunch of really lovely people and learned tons from advice and tutorials and quilt-alongs, and finished a lot of small projects and several quilts, including one that isn’t featured in this mosaic.

In 2013, I’ll be joining the Inspire circle of do. Good Stitches (which I’m really looking forward to) and trying my best to keep up with the Pile O’Fabric Skill Builder Block of the Month in hopes of learning how to sew curves at the very least. And ideally, I’ll be a little bit better at keeping up with this blog during the spring semester than I was this fall.

Coming up for a breath!

I hope everyone is having a happy and relaxing holiday season! Things are going well here in Brooklyn, and I finally have enough space to breathe, and to post again. I’ve missed it.

I’ve been in an absolute rush all fall, between a full course load and finishing my MA thesis and a part-time assistantship (and the 12-hr/week commute doesn’t really help, though I read on the train). There just wasn’t much space for quilting, or for much of anything else, really: I sort of disappeared for a while there from all aspects of my life other than SCHOOL.

Thankfully the semester is now over, and all I have to do between now and January 13th is finish editing my MA thesis. (Hush, you. That totally counts as a vacation.)

I did manage to get some knitting done, because it’s more portable than quilting, and socks fit well in my bag for those times when I’m just too tired to read for school while I’m on the subway. I made these socks for my mother for Christmas:

And since the semester has been over, I’ve been able to get a little more sewing in, which I’ll post about soon.

Blog hiatus

As is perhaps obvious, the return to school has left me completely unable to keep up with this blog. It’s not even a question of having time to make posts: I don’t even have time to quilt, most weeks.

Once the semester ends, in late December, I hope to pick things up again. For now I miss having the time to comment and interact with folks: it feels very lonely.

—

On a different topic: I’m in New York City, which was surprisingly hard hit by Hurricane (Superstorm?) Sandy. I was very lucky: our house was untouched, and we didn’t so much as lose power. Since then, we’ve given blood and bought supplies for the shelter near our house, and signed up to work shifts, and been very, very grateful to have been spared and to be able to go on with our everyday lives with so little disruption.

But thousands of other people were not so fortunate, and the city is looking to try to house something like 40,000 families until their houses can be reconstructed or repaired. Not to mention the more than 100,000 people who are still without power, just in the five boroughs of New York City.

There is apparently a send-quilts-to-victims project, if you have the time to participate.

And if you’re financially able, the Red Cross is in desperate need of donations to be able to continue helping victims. Even $5 helps, if enough people kick in what they can. Thousands of people are in need of drinking water and food, and the Red Cross is doing a great job of getting to areas that were hard-hit.

My best wishes to anyone hit hard by Sandy, and I hope the recovery effort continues long and strong, because this isn’t something for which there will be a quick fix.

EZ Dresden Challenge

Wow, has the beginning of the semester swamped me. Now that I have a full load of coursework in addition to my MA thesis (and a part-time assistantship), well, I have a little less time for quilting. Knitting socks is going well, though even that has slowed down: I need to read on the subway, instead of knitting.

That said, there are a few things I want to point out, because the Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild’s EZ Dresden Challenge has ended, and they’ve got link-ups of a huge variety of excellent projects.

Mini-quilts are here.

Innovative quilts are here.

Traditional quilts are here.

Go check them out — you’ll be astonished at the variety of quilts people constructed using the very same ruler.

WiP Wednesday as the semester first kicks in

The fall semester has been kicking up into gear, so I’ve had less time to work on projects recently. It’s also influenced what I’ve been working on to a certain extent. That said, I’ve still gotten some things done!

Finished:
I made three notebook covers for classes, following Rachel’s tutorial on Stitched in Color. I’m going to make one more in yellow and red, to match the Plantagenet colors, for my class on the Angevin Empire. And this time, I’ll (hopefully!) remember to add a pocket before I sew it all together!

HST BoM QAL: some progress! I made the second July block & and my first of two August blocks.

-finish second August block (cut and partially pieced)
-fix botched May block already!
-start thinking about how to arrange the blocks & what to back the quilt with.

Knitting lots of progress!
-monkey socks in Persia (Malabrigo sock):

The more time I spend on the subway going to and from work/class, the more knitting I get done — I may have to take up hand-stitching things, if the majority of my crafting time continues to be on the subway.

Perk Me Up Bag: some progress.
I finished one side of the bag, which is a patchwork of the various fabrics, and I quilted it, because it’s a lot sturdier that way: I didn’t want to risk knitting needles poking their way through the bag and stabbing someone.
-iron interfacing to back of bag exterior and/or quilt it, too.
-attach pocket to back of bag exterior
-cut strap extender, strap and closure strap, attaching appropriate hardware
-sew lining together with internal zippered pocket in place
-attach lining to exterior pieces
-finish strap and etc.

Simple Math: trimmed a few more blocks!
-finish trimming blocks to 6″ square
-find sashing fabric
-baste, quilt & bind

Baby K’s Quilt: no progress since last week. This one is what’s laid out on my WiP cart right now, but I keep putting things on top of it — I should just get it done! There’s a bit left to work on.

-sew together two more postage stamp panels
-construct pinwheels
-lay out & attach borders
-construct backing
-baste, quilt & bind

Kitchen Window: no progress since last week.
-sort out cut fabrics into groups for individual blocks
-cut black fabric for frames
-cut green fabric for background parts
-start constructing blocks
-fiddle with layout
-make back
-baste, quilt & bind

Spinning: no progress since last week.
-Merino/yak continues to entice me, but I’m not watching much TV, so not much spinning is getting done. Perhaps I’ll watch a move with friends/family one night this week, to give myself some time off before things get crazy. That might be fun.

Modern Designer Charm Swap

I took two spots in the Modern Designer Charm Swap going on over at Flickr. I was assigned two designers whose work I am not as familiar with, which was great. It was fun to get to trawl through their fabrics to see what caught my eye.

For my Heather Bailey fabrics, I went with warm colors:

For Amy Butler, I went for darker backgrounds:

There’s just one problem: I cut the last set of charm squares while I was on hold on the phone, and in my distraction, I cut wrong! I ended up with 54 squares, and 4 rectangles of 5″x 3.5″! Did I feel stupid, or what? New rule: no cutting fabric while on the phone. I’ve got a fat quarter on the way to make up the 2 extra squares, and then I can mail them all in.

I have to say, I’m looking forward to getting back the products of these swaps in the mail: it’s going to be great to get little packages as a bunch of surprises!