Quilt Project

New project: working on completing some old quilt squares I've collected from family and thrift stores.  To be pieced into a quilt (someday)!

Two I'm finishing:
Sunbonnet Sue needs to be appliqued to her square:

This piece was only signed in pencil (Mrs. C. E. Boynton.), so I embroidered over it:

Action shot:

big projects

It's just not the holiday season until I undertake a project too large to complete in time.  Here's the first for this year:

This is a quilt I think I started in December 2006 for my sister's April 2007 birthday.  Then I was going to finish it for Christmas.  Then I tabled it indefinitely.  But now it's back!  Just in time (hopefully) for Christmas 2008!

It is lap size and the back is a poly-cotton blend, pieced from a large piece of green and a smaller black stripe, in what reminds me of some African nation's flag.  The batting is some flannel I bought on sale long ago, thinking that I was going to make a sleeping bag liner with it.  I can't decide if I want to hand quilt it or do it on the machine.  Of course, it would be much faster if I do it on the machine.  But I've found it very difficult to avoid puckering with machine quilting.  We'll see!

Finished!

I finally finished the quilt for baby Andrew!

I forgot to measure it before I gave it away, but it's lap size.

Baby Quilt

Here's what I've been working on for a while:

It's the "Plain Spoken" quilt I'm making for Cara's baby. For some reason (actually, I know why. It is because I love the way this looks) I chose a really time-consuming pattern to hand quilt this quilt. It is taking a long time! I have only the outside squares to quilt, and then the binding of course. My goal is to be done by this Friday.

And here's something I made a long time ago:

I made this lovely kitty for Kim and mailed it to her while she was in Chicago, only to have it stolen by someone in her building or somewhere, before she ever got it! Gone forever!

Plain Spoken

Here's the top for the quilt I'm making for Cara's new baby boy, Andrew. It's from The Modern Quilt Workshop; the pattern is "Plain Spoken." After I had cut out most of the fabric I actually read the information in the quilt book and realized it's designed for solid fabrics (hence the name), and using too many prints would probably not do the pattern justice. So I bought some remnants to add a few nice solid colors. I like the way it turned out, I think the prints add a few nice points of interest to the quilt.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the back, I have some pieces leftover from the top, and I also have some nice corduroys I was thinking of using. I didn't really enjoy quilting with corduroy when I was making Kim's quilt, it seems to fray so much, but maybe for the back it wouldn't be so bad because I would use larger pieces.

Back to work!

I'm so glad the holiday season is over, I don't think I could take another weekend out of town, with family, eating too much, etc. I've again picked up the quilt I have been working on for my sister:

It's a little smaller than I wanted it to be, so I plan on adding a wide boarder, maybe 4", the size of the blocks. And I feel like I don't like the colors very much. But at this point there's little that can be done about that! The pattern is from 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts, a book my mom bought me a while ago. There are some nice patterns in this book and I've found the info in the back about quilting stitches very helpful.

Speaking of quilt books, I got The Modern Quilt Workshop for Christmas and can't wait to try some of these, especially Plain Spoken (check out the Flickr group...). This book says some things about quilting that are totally different from what I've heard everywhere else, such as you should press seams open, not to one side, to cut down on fabric bulk and therefore wear over time. They also advise quilters not to tie their quilts because again, the fabric doesn't wear well over time. This is especially disappointing to hear as I was planning on tying this quilt, and I'm not quite sure how I want to quilt it.

And in case you were wondering, here's where all the craft magic happens in my little apartment. I'd really like a new desk someday.