Archive for Odds and Ends

Weekend to-do list:

Well before I start sewing – I need to do work work.  So that comes first.  I have a site migration and template buildout.   Both are pretty pressing, but they are paying me early ( for some reason I don’t know ) for the migration so that will probably come first.

As far as quilting goes First and foremost I need to finish my Sparkle Punch top.  No excuses.  It needs to be off my design wall and ready for basting.  Serious.   It needs to be done.

Number two:  the 9 patches for my Charm Square Quilt project for my Quilting Quickly class?  Need to be done.  The sashing can wait until next week, but those blocks will take no time and need to be assembled. Actually, I might do that tonight while the Lug is putting together his new computer.

There’s something else I really really need to tackle, but I just really don’t want to do it.   My fabric stash is a giant mess, and I can’t find anything in it.   It’s awful.   Everything needs to be pressed, it all needs to be organized, and I don’t have any room for any of it.  See Below.  Not pictured is a very large suitcase, and a big rubbermaid full of fabric.  Ugh.

Lastly – I wanted to kind of explain where I want to go with all this business.   Right now, in my quilting I am working towards developing a skillset, and trying to get all the technique down so I can move towards a more fine art approach to quilting.  My background is in art and design – and I want my quilts to eventually become a more personal body of functional artwork.  It goes a bit deeper than that really, into a discussion art vs. craft, and why so much creative work – seriously hundreds, thousands of years of pieces made by women’s hands are dismissed as “craft”, or as something lesser.  But that is really a long discussion and rant for another time when I don’t have my workday breathing down my neck.   I need to get to it before the natives turn on me….

So let’s see – what have I been up to?

This Sunday the Mom came over and we worked on The Secret Project™ for a while, and she also brought me a new quarter inch foot – so that was cool.  I managed to make some progress on the Sparkle Punch quilt, but not as much as I would like – there’s all kinds of drama afoot from all directions.  Families = Crazy.  Yep.

And my big box of scraps came in the mail yesterday – there’s some highs and lows in there.  A lot of woven countrified plaids – meh.  And quite a few tweeny novelty prints – blah!   Of course this only led me to take the most offensive of the bunch and add it to my scrappy HST collection.  Only one clearly says “Hannah Montana”  after everything was sliced and diced, so I guess it could have been a lot worse.

Today I wound up buying more fabric – I was poking around Connecting Threads – and saw that they had VERY reasonable charm packs.   The next project for my Quilting Quickly class is a disappearing nine patch using charm squares, so I picked up a handful of their Riviera II charms.  I’ve got a Grandma’s Flower Garden project in their Riviera line that I will probably be working on until I die, and I really think the bright florals are just so happy and fun.

I swear I had plans for last night.   I’m in the middle of a Sparkle Punch Lap Quilt for a friend’s mom who donated  bags and bags of fabric to my stash, and I really wanted to make some progress on it.  But even before the rain started – my lights were out.   How does that even work?  I will never understand the power grid here in Hammond.  So instead, I sat in the dark and read.   The lights were out for a good 3 hours or so , just enough to start getting all gross and muggy.  Bleh.

Yesterday wasn’t all bad though – I got my Charm packs in the mail!  I’m a couple years into this whole quilting thing – but I’m completely self-taught.  So there’s a LOT of gaps in my knowledge base – and as a solution I’m taking an online class with my mom.  We’re starting from the beginning over at Craftsy, taking the Quilting Quickly class.   I’m pretty excited about it. In retrospect, I probably should have gotten some coordinating solids – this little quilt is going to be super busy!