Or something 
Mostly its a very stressful time of the year. Workwise, things are INSANELY busy and stressful. Add on top of that the looming holidays and projects that need to be completed – AHHH!
In any case, here is one of those aforementioned holiday projects, a hexagon lap quilt, in Chicopee. It’s coming together pretty quickly, and I love the prints. I’m using this super awesome tutorial from tallgrass prairie studio.
Now that Halloween costuming foolishness is over and no longer taking up my studio space, I can finally get back to my projects. Yesterday I put a good couple of hours into working on my disappearing nine patch – I sewed the half-units together and pressed open all the seams so I’ll be ready to finish assembling them this evening.
Thing I am proud of: I am getting pretty good at matching points. I only had a couple last night that weren’t pretty, and it’s nice to see progress in that area, since I’ve been struggling with it for a while.
Thing I am worried about: I’m worried about the arrangement of the prints and contrast between all the pieces. I sewed all these pieces together without much forthought, and I know it is going to wind up biting me in the end.
After I pressed all of these, I wants a change of pace, so I even sewed up a bunch of HST’s for my pinwheel project – so I got a lot of work done!
So right – I haven’t been blogging…but really its because I haven’t sat in front of my sewing machine in a couple weeks. Work has been terribly busy, I’ve had a horrible head cold, and to top all of that off, one of my bassets got pyometra and had to have emergency surgery. Recovery has been slow, but she finally seems like she is back to her normal self, and she got her sutures out yesterday.
I’m really going to try to get in the studio this evening, but it’s looking like its going to be a late workday. I have two tops that REALLY REALLY need to be assembled. Quite frankly I’m tired of looking at them.
Wound up heading back and cut all of these out! Yay me!
It’s been a while since I felt accomplished with my projects – I actually feel like I got a lot done this afternoon! First of all I got these very pretty charm packs in the mail today, I love when the mail man delivers presents! I got them cheap, and I think I’m going to put them in my future ottoman reupholstering project I’ve been daydreaming about. The fabric is Gypsy by Felicity Miller, and I really like it a lot.
The big news though is that I finally finished assembling my 9 patches for my disappearing nine patch. I haven’t pressed them or anything yet, I really didn’t feel like it. I also sewed ten units for my next class project, which is going to be a pinwheel quilt. So yeah! Sewing! I do it!
I also made another one of those Stitch and Slash blocks, they are really fun!
Last night I was pretty determined to get some sewing in after having a couple of weeks doing absolutely nothing. This is a project for my quilting class, it’s a Disappearing 9 Patch, in Lucy’s Crab Shack. I managed to get all the rows sewn for my 9 patches, and 3 of them assembled. This round, in an attempt to get better at matching points, I pressed all the seams open ( I generally press to the dark ). As you can see, I’m still not hitting them exactly, which is pretty disappointing – I pinned these too!
Also – I made another two dozen HSTs for my back door curtain project, and tidied the studio up a bit – but just a bit. I still haven’t put my Sparkle Punch project back up on the design wall ( it fell because of the humidity when the lights were out for so long I think) , and I’m scared to move any of the pieces because it will just be harder to find the order and placement of all the units if I do. So its still in a sad pile on the floor for the moment, maybe I’ll take care of that this evening, I know its going to take forever – but its got to be done sometime. Barring natural disasters or family tragedy or work emergency or plague of locusts – I really want to wrap that one up this weekend.
So it’s only appropriate that I spend most of the day working on the beginnings of my Halloween Costume. I am a terrible procrastinator, and if I wait until the last minute it will never come together, so I’m starting now. So costume party on Halloween, need something to wear. Now the party I am going to is going to be attended by what one might call … mundanes. muggles. ahem. normal people. So I wanted a costume that could serve me later at nerdier functions – but I didn’t have to explain who I was to everyone. So at some point, I decided to do a steampunk Joker. Now I realize I may have to explain “steampunk” but at least with the green wig and the unmistakable makeup, everybody would know I was the Joker. And with that the costuming began.
So I bought this corset. Made by Damsel in this Dress, this is their Vixen model. I bought it because I basically thought it was versatile for all my pirate / steampunk / renfest costuming needs. And it is orange. I haven’t really decided what I’m going to wear underneath – right now what I’m leaning towards is a turquoise button down.
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So I had plans to get this one finished today. Got all the rows sewn together, and was excited to shelf it for something more interesting. But when I started the horizontal sashing, I found out that my rows were a half inch longer than WOF. Which means that I can’t use the jelly roll I had ready. So its going to have to wait until I can get more white because what I have in the Stash of Doom™ is not long enough either. Boo.
This little quilt was deceptively difficult, when it came to fabric arranging. There’s two spots that annoy the living bajeezus out of me – the polka dots that are touching each other in the first block of row three, and how there’s polka dots right next to each other in the second and third blocks of row four. By the time I realized it, I really didn’t feel like ripping seams anymore so I just let it fly.
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….
Besides the Sparkle Punch quilt and the mysterious Secret Project™, I have an embarrassing amount of unfinished projects floating around here. They’ve been looming over my head recently, and I really really want to put some of these to bed.
This is one of the first quilts I ever pieced together. My cousin was pregnant with twins, so when I heard the news I immediately pieced together two matching baby quilts. Unfortunately she miscarried, and I was too heartbroken to finish them. Now almost 3 years later, she has a 1 year old and a newborn – so my mom and i are dusting these off for the “New Baby” and the “Old Baby” The other one is further along, with borders and we basted it – so its ready for quilting. I want to get this one at least that far before the end of the month.
This one is embarrassing. It’s a pattern I got off of Moda Bake Shop, started last winter for the birth of a friend’s baby – I made a noob mistake and thought it would be a good idea to quilt this with invisible nylon thread. Which was very hard to handle, and I gave up midway through. Maybe he’ll get it sometime before he gets married. Bleh.
This one also was one of my earliest projects, and honestly I just took on too much too soon. Made of beautiful batiks my husband hand picked, it’s a giant quilt that is in the middle of being hand quilted. It’s pretty much overwhelming – and in the summer months its unbearable working under it. We’ll revisit this one come fall, I can’t even look at it in August.
And last but not least, my Grandmother’s Flower Garden. My project that I work on when I’m traveling, or when it’s not really convenient to be at a sewing machine. Working on this is just very relaxing to me – and I’m okay with not finishing it until I’m old and gray…because honestly, it will take that long. Currently I’m out of the fabric I’ve been using for the borders, so it’s on hiatus for the time being.
Last but not least, I thought this bolster pillow cover would be a quick project to make me feel like I’ve accomplished something. WRONG. I didn’t make this from a pattern, and planned on having one end solid and the other drawstring. I seriously have no idea how to get that end cap on there without ripping out the stitches of the sleeve that makes up the body of the pillowcase.
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