Short Attention Span Girl

Lately I’ve been working on little bits of things.

Mending has been going on – I finally fixed a jacket that has been hanging there seemingly forever, plus a few little things for a friend.

My finish was some more baby receiving blankets from some super cute flannel I found:

I say finish, but I still have a decent amount of flannel to make more. I should count how many of these I made and give away in a year.  It’s tough keeping up with all the new babies!

I’m quilting on a quilt – nothing exciting to show yet.

I signed up for a summer embroidery club over at Wild Olive.  I did the workshop last summer and it was so fun.  This year it’s a small design a week for 12 weeks and they all fit on a hexagon.  Naturally this led to a little shopping.  I bought some paper hexagons and found that now they make acrylic cutting templates, so it’s easy to cut out the fabric perfectly; naturally I had to add that to the order too:

I had a charm pack of 5″ square that have been sitting around waiting for the perfect project. I decided to use them to mix with the embroidered hexagons and got to cutting. It was so fast with that template!

All those perfectly sized hexagons ready to baste. I picked a plain white to embroider on, but that won’t get cut up until after the embroidery is finished.

Go see the other quilt finishes at Crazy Mom Quilts today.

- – marcella

I decided I wanted to start something brand new.  I’ve been playing with a block in my head and wanted to turn the idea into a quilt.  We’ll see if what I’m thinking is anything close to what I’m imagining right now.

For a long time I’ve been collecting fabrics from various collections by Denyse Schmidt.  I decided to use some of them along with a big piece of Kona ash that’s been sitting in the fabric drawer.

Not my usual style of prints but there’s something fun about them that I like.

I’ve been cutting, cutting, cutting and have pieces for 12 blocks cut out.

Now I need to turn most of those squares into half square triangle blocks.  That could take a while.  But, boy is it fun to work on something new!

Visit FreshlyPieced today and see what others are working on this week.

- – marcella

At the start of this year I saw that Leanne was hosting a “finish a long” to encourage quilters like me with lots of half done quilts to get them finished. The idea is each quarter pick which projects you’ll work on and at the end of the quarter blog about them.

I liked the idea of working for a quarter at a time rather than trying to finish a project a month. Sometimes my projects take longer and I don’t like to rush them just to meet an arbitrary deadline. However, it only counted for finishing completely projects that had already been started. My to do list includes that but also projects I want to start from scratch and projects I just want to get to the next stage.

So I decided to play my own version by myself.  The projects I chose were: make the heart baby quilt for a friend; finish that old Moda club top for the quilt show; finally sew those hop scotch triangles together into a top.

Today I finished sewing that triangle top together, and it’s not even the last day of the quarter!

It’s pretty bright for me, but I do like it now that it’s all together.  It’s time though to take a break from this project. One of these days it will get pulled out and quilted.

This next quarter?  I’ve got a quilt of my own that I’ve been dreaming about that I want to try to make, another old Moda club quilt that I might tackle finishing, dining room curtains to sew and a whole stack of flannel to turn into receiving blankets.

That should be enough to keep me out of trouble. Also, I’m sure other little sewing things will distract me along the way.

Today I’m linking up with FreshlyPieced; hop over there and see what other quilters are working on.

- -marcella

This is a really long term unfinished project that I finally, happily finished this week.  I’m so excited about it that I decided to link up for the first time to Crazy Mom Quilts finish it up Friday.

a peek at the back

Back in 2006 I was a member of a Moda fabric club at my local quilt shop. Each month we received a post card with a block pattern printed on it. Each month I dutifully made my blocks. That’s where it stopped.

At the end of the year we received the setting pattern for the blocks and I thought it was really unattractive. So I packed up the blocks for “someday”.

A year later I got a quilting magazine and when I saw the cover quilt I thought it would work with the blocks I had hiding in the closet. I pulled them out and put together the quilt top.

Then I spent another year sewing the hand appliqué border on at club meetings.

Once that was done the top sat back in the closet waiting for quilting inspiration to strike.

It didn’t.

Fast forward to last year when the Desert Quilters guild had a fun finish up your old projects challenge and I decided to finally finish up that quilt top. Except the quilting I decided on took much, much longer than the month I had to finish. So I got behind.

Then I set a new goal to finish it up for my local quilt guild show.

Then I ran out of thread and had to mail order more.(Because I cannot seem to make a quilt without running out of quilting thread) This put me behind schedule again and I realized I could not finish the quilt in time for the show. Back into the closet it went.

I’m starting to see why other quilters have new quilts to show all the time and I have this happen only a couple of times a year.

At any rate, in January I received in the mail the entry forms for the Desert Quilters show and thought that maybe this would get me back to finishing that never, ending quilt project.

And it did!

I’m thinking you can click on the pictures and see them larger.

In the border I quilted around the appliqué and then filled in with itty bitty stipple quilting. You can also see that I bound it in two different yellow prints which I thought was kind of fun.

In the sashing I did a pumpkin seed design.

I decided on four quilting patterns: stippling, straight parallel lines, a wavy line and an arc and used those elements for quilting the blocks. Here are a couple of my favorite blocks:

Now, fingers crossed that it doesn’t get lost in the mail!

- – marcella

We’ve been having some lovely weather so that has inspired a few adventures this past week.

First a drive south for just picked artichokes and a stop at the farm for some eggs.

Also a drive north to see some wonderful food photography.

Outside things are starting to bloom.  The blueberry bush is covered in little globe shaped blossoms.

Inside the house I’ve been quilting.  I’ve entered a couple of quilts in the Desert Quilters show and one of them needs to be finished.  I’m quilting each block differently and it’s taking a bit more time than I thought it would.  Here’s the latest one completed.

Given that today is National Quilting Day, I’m hoping to get some more work done on my quilt.

Hope you’re having some fun adventures wherever you are!

- – marcella

I’ve been following along with Pam Buda’s Orphans and Scraps project.  Rather than Civil War era fabrics, I used my scraps of 1930′s reproductions.

When the final project of a little runner was revealed, I took my blocks in a different direction.  I added some borders to them and turned it into a little quilt instead.

Eventually the top will be quilted and donated to the NICU at the local hospital for a tiny baby.

Meanwhile, I’m working on finishing up the quilting on an old project.  I’m hoping to have it done very, very soon so I can enter it into the Las Vegas guild quilt show in April.

See more beautiful things over at Freshly Pieced today.

- – marcella

This years quilting adventure was to QuiltCon in Austin, TX.  While I’m really not a modern quilter per se, I do enjoy seeing what those creative quilters are up to and it looked like the show was going to be really fun.  So, I packed my bags and met up with my quilting friend.

My flight arrived rather late in the evening but we had decided to go out to dinner when I got there.  We found a good restaurant near the hotel and enjoyed a delicious dinner.  On the dessert menu was pecan pie – a favorite of both of us – so we decided to split a slice.  The waitress said that it wasn’t a slice but a little pie and with her hands she put her fingers together into a little circle.  Then it arrived:

Hello!  This pie is 6-7 inches across and would feed four to six people easy.  We took one look at it and started laughing.  Honestly, we couldn’t even eat a bite because we were laughing so hard.  The waitress came back to check on us and asked if we needed anything.  I told her we needed her to grab a fork and take a seat and help us eat that giant dessert, but she wouldn’t.  What we ate was delicious, but we left a lot of pie behind.

One of the things we’d looked forward to about the conference being in Austin was the food.  We were really not disappointed.  I think we need to go back since we didn’t make it half way through our list of possibilities.  And while I liked the sign, we didn’t eat at this place:

I have no idea what a “flapjacket” is and I for sure don’t want to know what their jackalope dog is made out of.

Friday I had a lecture pass and enjoyed the lectures quite a bit.  The day started with a yoga class and the teacher was very good.  I was sore though because I am really not a bendy person at all.  Craftsy has put some of the lectures from the conference up on their site for free, so jump over there and check them out.

For lunch I went around the corner to a little BBQ spot.  It had quite a line which is always a good sign.  When in Texas, have the brisket.  It was really yummy.

Saturday we walked the show floor.  We collected free fabric and other goodies and enjoyed wandering the vendor booths.

There were lots of demo’s going on so we watched a few of those as well.

The quilt exhibit was much smaller than expected.  I counted only 240 quilts in the program which is about what my little local guild shows.  I had thought it would be twice as big particularly since they had so many entries.  They do, however, win for the cutest show ribbons ever.

I have no idea how they got all those ribbons made, but they were really adorable.  Each category was a different color.

Also the people whose quilts were in the exhibit were also given smaller versions of the ribbon and printed on the button was “my quilt is in the show”.  People wore their ribbons or had them pinned to their bags.  A very nice idea.

We did think though that I should have made up a bunch of buttons that said “my quilt was rejected by QuiltCon” to hand out as well.  I wish I had thought of that before the show because I think it would have been pretty darn funny.

Sunday we went out for a nice breakfast and I just had to order the pecan waffle.  Now, I know people in Texas are very proud of their state but I have to say I was quite surprised to have my breakfast look like this:

Really, now I have to go in search of state shaped waffle irons.

I spent the day in a workshop with Denyse Schmidt learning about Improvisational Patchwork.  I am a planning girl who has a great love of graph paper.  Learning to just sew and go with the flow was a challenge!  The teacher was so encouraging and really made it easy for us to play which made a stressful class much more fun.  Here are my four wonky blocks arranged in my design wall:

The white fabric with the little houses was the fabric I brought.  All the rest was from the class scrap bags.  I don’t know that I’ll ever become an improvisational piecer, but it was a fun exercise.

As fun as it was, I’m glad to be home and back in my sewing room ready to work on my next project!

- – marcella

I’ve been quilting away and honestly, dealing with problem after problem and a thread shortage.  The quilt is done though, and it’s off to the baby shower tonight.

Yep, the second row is upside down.

What is it with me and my spacial issues?  I swear nearly every quilt I make has something upside down.

Guess it’s a good thing I’m not Amish.  The old quilting story goes that Amish quilt makers put in an intentional error “because only God can make something perfect.”  If I were an Amish quilter and tried to put in an error, I’d probably end up correcting the wrong thing and getting shunned out of the quilting group for my uppity ways.

Oh well, I’m sure the baby won’t mind.  I tell myself it’s how people know my quilts really are hand made and not store bought with the tags picked off.

For the sashing stripes I quilted down the edges of the rick rack and then top stitched closely along the edge to separate it from the white.  On the white areas I did a medium sized stipple over it all – yes, even the hearts.  I thought it would wear better and I don’t think it takes away at all from the pretty fabric hearts.

See what the less error prone are working on this Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced. There’s always lots of good quilting inspiration there.

Here I am hanging out in Sisters, OR last summer at the quilt show.

Next month I’m headed to Austin to QuiltCon and I’m super excited about it. They’re having a linky party and asking us to post 5 things people might not know about us to help us all get to know each other better, so here goes…

1. I’m left handed but do pretty much everything except write with my right hand.

2. Not a fan of visiting “no shoe houses” yet 2 minutes after I get home my shoes are off.  I’m logical that way

3.  I will die before wearing yoga pants any place other than yoga class.  It’s probably the only fashion rule I have for myself.  I know if I go down that road I will never again wear real clothes.

4. Dolls totally creep me out.

5. I have this cookie problem.  Eating a dozen while baking the rest of the batch totally happens every time.  Then I innocently arrange 6-8 on a plate for our dessert and my husband eats one (maybe two) and I devour the rest.

As for QuiltCon, I’m signed up for the Friday lecture series and Improvisational Patchwork with Denyse Schmidt.  How about you?

- – marcella

I’m slowly getting my energy back and spending some time in the sewing room.

Lately I’ve been working on a little baby quilt for a friend who is having a baby in February.  Nothing like the last minute, right?

I’m using a free Moda bakeshop pattern called Candy Hearts for the quilt.  I had a charm pack stashed away and the colors are perfect for a little girl.

Naturally, I had to make a change to the pattern.  Instead of just placing a raw edge heart shape on the background and stitching 1/4″ from the edge to give a frayed edge to the hearts, I decided to finish the edges.

After making the heart template, I traced it onto the wrong side of featherlight fusible interfacing.  The hearts were roughly cut out and each was place fusible side to right side of the charm squares.  Then the shape was straight stitched along the drawn line.  I trimmed close to the seam with pinking shears.

Ok, here’s the part where you have to be careful.  Lift the interfacing away from the fabric and slide the tip of your scissors through the interfacing.  Then cut a slit in the center back of the interfacing heart shape.  Now you can turn the heart right side out and the edge is neatly turned under.  Because the hearts are now backed with fusible interfacing, the shape can be ironed onto the background fabric and it will stay put while you sew it down.

I chose the sew the hearts down with a machine blanket stitch using a variegated thread in pinks and yellow.

I think this will be a longer lasting way to appliqué the hearts onto the quilt and the baby quilt should look really nice through lots of washings and last a long time.

A few days of appliqué and the rows are all done.

Apologies for the floor photo, but my design wall is still filled with Hopscotch triangles.

Next up the rows are sewn together with sashing topped with big, fat rick rack and then bordered in more white.  I’ve got a lovely pink and white flannel for the backing.

Lots of sewing ahead for me this week as the shower is next Wednesday!

Take some time to see what everyone else is working on this week over at Freshly Pieced.

- – marcella