Can't stop yet....

I have finally finished the first section of the baby quilt I'm working on -- yay!!!

The sewing machine doctor was unable to get my sewing machine up and running, or, at least, not in a sustainable fashion that continued working once I got it home. I think my machine doesn't like me very much, as it tends to work fine for other people. I'm following all the instructions in the manual, but clearly I just do not have a way with this machine. It was working at the machine doctors; he showed me. But once home, it was back to Broken/Breaking Thread City again.

I've temporarily given up, will wait until I can get her to an authorized Bernina dealer and try again, and meanwhile will keep on sewing by hand. I actually enjoy working by hand, as it is so much more portable. I can bring my sewing to the dining room table and stitch while the boys do school, or while the family watches a movie I'm only half interested in. I can bring it out to the sun room and sew in the sun when I'd otherwise be freezing (there are no outlets out there, so I couldn't take my machine to the sun room). I can come to the empty desk in the computer room and hang out and chat with the boys while they compute. In fact, when I do get my machine up and running, I will likely take over the empty desk as the perfect spot for my machine, here with the family rather than off in my sewing room in the back of the house.

Still, going by hand is slower. I'm not complaining, at all!, because I do enjoy the hand work. I did my whole first quilt by hand, right up until I had Kim quilt it for me. So, I can do this. It means that The Writer's quilt is on hold until I finish the baby quilt, as I have an August deadline on that one. To finish the top, get  it backed and get it quilted. By hand. But I think I can do it, if I stick to my schedule.

And here, in its internet debut, is the first third of the top. Four vertical rows of triangles, each row consisting of 20 pairs of triangles. All identical, except the 8 triangles that make up the purple diamond. Just two more sections just like this and the top will be done! I can do it.

"Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" -- or, in this case, just one diamond so far!
(and, no, triangles are NOT a hand quilters/piecers best friend! LOL!)

close up of the 1st diamond.
I am grateful that 1 - the recipient will not notice that even the lines of the diamond
don't line up exactly straight all the way around, and 2 - the rest is all one fabric and the
print hides the seams very, very well, and the quilting will hide 'em even better.
'Cause hardly any of those seams line up properly. Triangles! Sheesh!! What was I thinking?!

It takes me about a day's worth of sewing to go from a stack of 40 triangles to a row put together. And then about a day or so to get the 4 rows joined together, and I'm guessing another day to get the 3 sections put together once I have the other 2 sections done. Which is NOT to say that in a mere 10 days I'll be done with the top, because of course real life interrupts and all, but I do plan to, hope to, finish the top no later than June 15th. That will give me 2 months to quilt it.

Wish me luck, and keep me accountable. Ask for progress pics. Often. By Monday I should have the next third. And the Monday after that the last third. And the Monday after that, it had better be all together and quilting started. Come here and check, 'kay?

Christmas in May

Some people who love me (they know who they are) sent me a package last week. I knew the package was coming, and what was in it, and I was anxious for it to arrive. When it did, I disappeared into the computer for a few days, coming out only to feed and clothe my family (or so they tell me) while I played with my new gift.

Two days later I remembered to call the gift-givers and let them know the package arrived safely and I was having fun with it. Not the most prompt thank you ever given, but it's not my fault I was distracted.

What did they send me? Only the most amazing quilt designing software ever, called EQ7 (Electric Quilt 7).

This software is amazing. Let me just say that again -- Amazing. Basically, this program takes all the math and technical aspect out of the equation and just lets me create. I can even draw my own blocks and designs, with never a care to "If I make this piece this big, then what size does this need to be?" and so forth and so on. No maddening graph paper and pencil and calculations. Just drawing, and pointing and clicking. From my heart and head to the computer, in a few clicks. And from there, all the information I need to go from drawing to sewing, all the fabric calculations done for me. Amazing.

To put it another way, it lets me do this:

...And Read All Over
the final layout for The Writer's comic strip quilt
(except the red parts of the border will be centered...)

Flora and Fauna
a design I played with for a website challenge

and, last but not least, The Brazil Quilt
I'm not 100% sure of the final coloring, but this is the quilt I've been drawing for ages,
based on the cobblestone sidewalk designs here.

Like I said, amazing. I've never been so happy to receive a Christmas gift seven months early. Thanks again to the gift givers!

One-third + one-sixth + one-half = Progress!

I'm working on three different quilt projects right now, and I'm at a good progress point for updating on all three. yay!

The first is the still on-going Diary Quilt; I'm busy adding what are called setting triangles to all the blocks I finished earlier. What that means is I take each small square and put a triangle on each side so that each block becomes a square within a square. I of course do not have pictures of this yet, because my camera batteries are, as ever, dead. But, I'm done with half the blocks! Yay!!!

The second is the Comic Strip Quilt for The Writer. He created this hilarious comic strip, Mt. NeverRest, when he was quite young; maybe 9 years old? I forget. Simple but so funny. In an effort to preserve his comics for him, I decided to turn them into a quilt. I bought printable fabric and will photograph several of his comic strips, print on the fabric and they'll make up the middle of the quilt.

The outside of the quilt will be in all blacks (on the left) and all white (on the right). The middle two columns (it will be 6 columns total) will alternate white and black, so that the overall look is interlocking teeth, similar to this design:

Which is Which quilt, by Mamacjt
originally seen on Pinterest, traced back to
this Flickr photostream (though not that page)
The maker of this quilt knows I'm inspired by hers and making my own, altered, version.

Today I finished assembling all the black squares. Hooray! That's one-third of the blocks, ready to go. They aren't joined yet but just having the blocks done is a big accomplishment for me. Each block is roughly 12x12, just to give you an idea of size.

for the Comic Strip Quilt
this will be the left third of the quilt when done

The third project is the Argyle Baby Quilt; I showed you recently the first column full of triangle pairs. I've finished another column's worth of triangle pairs since then. Woot! Making progress! It's a fun little project to work on, as the little triangles go together quickly.

I'm debating how to back it -- I originally bought enough of the lavender dot fabric to be the backing, but over the weekend I saw a lavender microfiber/microplush baby blanket that is the right size & color to serve as backing if I want. I'm researching how hard or easy it would be to use that, and thinking it over. On the one hand, it might make it more likely to be used, which is a good thing. On the other hand, I'm reading that it can be finicky fabric to work with, which is not so good. So, mulling it over. Anyone have thoughts on that? I believe it will behave similar to minky fabric, if that helps you. 

Today I'll be starting the white squares for the Comic Strip Quilt. Cold weather has arrived with a vengeance here, and I'd hoped to have the quilt done for The Writer at least before the end of our winter. Must get moving! The Diary Quilt has no deadline whatsoever, as it's just for me, and the Argyle Baby Quilt doesn't need to be finished until September-ish or maybe August, so I'm bumping the Comic Strip Quilt up in the line and working full speed ahead on getting that finished for my boy. Wish me luck! I do so want it to be done in time for him to enjoy it this winter!

Time to get to work! Happy Thursday, everyone!

Ready, Set, Argyle!

Well, it's begun! I spent quite a while a few days ago cutting little fabric triangles so that I can begin assembly of the argyle baby quilt I'm making.

I'm following this tutorial, more or less.

Except my triangles are 4.5" x 3.5" cut size. And then I'm making vertical columns instead of horizontal rows of triangles, because I want my diamonds for the argyle to be horizontal instead of vertical.  Yes, that makes sense; trust me.

But I did use the tutorial to understand how exactly to line up the triangles when I get ready to sew them into pairs. You can't line up point to point, or they won't be right when you unfold them. You have to scoot the top triangle down just a bit so that your seam allowance falls in the right place. I only had to read that three times and look at the photo for five minutes and then scoot, measure, scoot, measure something like four or five times before I got my first pair lined up correctly. The mechanics of sewing do not always come easily to me, what can I say. Luckily, once I got the first one I figured out what to do so that the rest of my triangle pairs are nice and properly pointy when unfolded.

What I didn't see in the tutorial is a much needed admonition to make sure that if your left hand triangle points up & your right hand triangle points down, that you keep it that way throughout. Because if you just go all willy nilly, grabbing a triangle, plopping one down the opposite way, without paying attention to if you have a Down-Up or an Up-Down arrangement, you wind up with pairs that don't go together.

on the left, an Up-Down arrangement;
on the right, a Down-Up
See how the Up-Downs cannot be paired with the Down-Ups? Oops.

Fortunately I only had 5 pins in my little needle book at the time, so I only sewed 5 pairs of triangles together. Three of them wound up as Down-Ups and the other two were Up-Downs, so I quick decided the rest of that row would go with majority rule and be Down-Ups and set the errant two couples aside. I think I can use them in the next row if I do all Up-Downs for that row, though I'm not 100% sure that will work and I'm a little afraid to risk it.

However! I got enough triangles paired up to make the first row. Woot! This is double exciting because I needed that so I can figure the math that I messed up earlier.

all 20 pair; 40 triangles
takes most of the length of my dining room table
pardon the mess....

See, as I was deciding on size for this baby quilt, I remembered to subtract seam allowance and shrink each triangle from the cut size of 4.5" x 3.5" down to what will likely wind up being 4" x 3". Which means my rows, or rather columns, will each be roughly four inches wide, and depending on the size I make my argyle diamonds, I need either 12 or 18 columns.

I was originally thinking 12 and used that to determine -- aha! Twelve columns times four inches per column equals a width of roughly 48 inches. Perfect!  I say roughly because I learned on my first quilt that my seam allowances tend to be a smidge wide and thus my quilts tend to shrink a bit and be a little smaller than intended. Since this is not a pattern anyway, it's whatever I decide, so no problem.

Then I figured the length. I think I want somewhere around 45" x 60" more or less, so I divided that length of 60" by the width of each triangle, three inches. Lovely! I need 20 triangles per strip to have a strip that's 60" long!

Except, no. Because the two triangles go together topsy-turvy, so the base of one overlaps the base of the other. So the two triangles together are more like 4" (and really this will shrink more, I think, as each pair goes together....) when all is said and done. So I need forty triangles, twenty pairs. To make my sixty-ish inches. So I have a LOT more triangles to cut and then sew.

But! Still and all, today I paired up the first twenty pair of triangles (does one say pair or pairs for plural???), including the one that will be the point of the very first diamond for the argyle. Does it give you enough to see how the quilt will go together?

close-up of the bit that has the 1st diamond point
and so you can see the coraly-orangey-salmony color that I might match

I'm not planning to assemble the rows/strips/columns yet, as I'm still undecided on exact size of each argyle diamond, and also the color of that pesky center diamond. I had ruled out the green, thanks to a friend's suggestion, but then the more I look at it, the less sure I am that using the 2 purples I have will be enough contrast. So instead I might go with a perfectly splendid coral sort of color that matches the orangey-coraly-salmony color dots in the background, and is the print of the green floral I posted before. I'll post pics of that later; I forgot to take pictures of the fabric while I had the camera out.

Whew! My brief little update got really long! Sorry 'bout that! Wish me luck as I keep cutting and sewing, cutting & sewing. My machine goes to the machine doctor this weekend and hopefully I'll have it back soon, which will speed things up considerably. Meanwhile, it's fun handwork and easy to do a bit here & there.

Stay tuned for further updates as things progress! And soon a picture of The Writer's quilt progress, too.

Remembering Socks

I posted last week (was it just last week??) that our little kitten, Socks, was not well and needed to be put to sleep. The Chemist took care of that, holding and petting Socks all the while as the medicine did its job; the boys and I stayed home and kept busy.

The Artist, who was Socks' official owner, designed a little memorial mini-quilt as a bit of therapy and comfort for himself. He drew it out, chose the fabrics, and I cut and assembled for him.

The job was one done quickly, with more focus on speed than perfection, so it is not my best work. But it is a gift full of love and prayers for my boy as I sewed, that it might ease his grief, so in that regard, it's a smashing success.

The kitten was "fussy cut" (ie, I cut around a picture of a cat) from fabric that I bought The Artist sometime last year. The red, yellow & green were chosen as they are the colors of the catnip balls that Socks loved so dearly. The gray because that is the color of Socks himself.

The picture is meant to represent Socks resting on The Artist's bed.

I quilted a very simple and loose heart around Socks and then just straight lines radiating out from the heart; loose and fast quilting, just to get it done. The Artist is pleased, and says that he feels closer to Socks and less sad when he looks at the mini-quilt. Mission accomplished; job well done.

What things have you found to help you or a loved one over a patch of grief or sadness? 

Winter is Coming....

Today feels like winter. It's not here to stay, yet, but the signs all point to "soon."

	Today	Tonight	Tomorrow
Partly Cloudy	Mostly Sunny	Partly Cloudy	Partly Cloudy
68°F	82°	59°	83°
Feels Like: 68° Get FREE weather on your desktop	High	Low	High

You will note, in the forecast above, that right this minute it is 68* outside. That is COLD. At least to my tropical living self it is.

Aside from the weather report, which you may or may not believe means winter (yes, I see we'll reach 82* today....), here is how I know it's coming:

*we had to turn on the electric hot water heater last night in order to get warm, not even hot, showers
*the blankets we keep on the couch are cold to the touch when we get up in the morning
*I've switched our bed sheets from the summer sheets to the winter sheets
*I'm going to pull out the extra fuzzy blanket for my side of the bed today
*I'm wearing socks all day long now
*and jeans and a sweatshirt, just to stay comfortable in the house
*the boys are asking about hot chocolate
*and The Chemist wants to make soup for dinner
*all of which means, winter is on the way

Sadly, the quilt for The Writer is nowhere near ready. My sewing machine is being a little glitchy, so I'm working by hand at the moment. I've found a place to get the machine repaired, though, and will take it this weekend for a little tune-up and hopefully be back to machine sewing in the near future. Fortunately, The Writer doesn't mind, is quite patient, and we do have plenty of blankets. I just had hoped to have his quilt done in time for winter. Looks like that is not going to happen, unless winter stalls out.

Of course, adding in the baby project I'm working on means even slower going for The Writer's quilt, but I'm alternating and working on both, so that's fine. My quilting friends all voted and one brave soul suggested "Why not leave out the green all together???" which I deemed to be a brilliant plan, so the baby quilt will have the adorable background as pictured and then a center diamond in the purple floral and the two side diamonds in the purple marbled fabric. I am very excited about this combination, and so thankful for the sweet girl who suggested it.

What's the weather like in your neck of the woods? 

Fabric Choices: HELP!!

I mentioned earlier in my quilt updates that a person in our life (who shall remain nameless)(but is most definitely NOT me) is expecting, and I had the design all ready to go. You might remember it...

isn't it lovely in the pinks & blacks?!

Then the person found out she's expecting a GIRL!!! Hooray!!! I was all set to go and buy the perfect pink, hot pink & black fabrics I'd chosen for this delightful quilt.

But then the person selected the bedding she wants for her little girl's nursery, and it's much softer and feminine and lavender. With purple and moss green accents. Which is very much not pink and black.

Since the store offered several pink/black baby bedding combos, I have to assume that this person -gasp- actually prefers lavender/purple to the pink/black which I really really really wanted to make. And since I want this person to LOVE, not just "like" and definitely not hate, the baby quilt, I decided I'd better use the colors she likes, not the colors I like. Hmph.

still nice, but not as pazazz-y if you ask me
I am counting on the actual fabrics to fix that.

Making gifts is way less fun when you do not love the color choices, let me just say that, right now. Then also, keep in mind that my fabric shops here are about the size of a very small bedroom. As opposed to fabric shops in the US which are about the size of a house. In other words, my selection is limited. And I already had picked out the absolute *perfect* fabrics in pink and black, so finding something just as good in purple and green was  hard. I had huge mental blocks to hurdle, limited selection making it more difficult, and, well, purple and green just do not make my heart sing the way the other colors do, so it was hard.

I did it, though. I picked out a really great background fabric, and then a dark purple and a moss green. You might note that in my conceptualized drawing, above, I have a light spring green as the center and moss green as the criss-cross. Fabric reality here is that there was not one single acceptable light green fabric, so I swapped that around. See how complicated this is??

I did find, but didn't buy yet, the perfect little thing to be the criss-cross of the argyle. I can't wait to go back and get that! It will really make the quilt. Cute little fabric daisies that make a ribbon of sorts. Different sizes of daisy, not just totally symmetric equal sized daisies in a boring little row. And the fabric has a bit of sheen to it. Not shiny or metallic but just a hint of sheen. Oh my heck it's going to be so cute!

First, though, I have got to decide on this purple and green. The Writer says I'm over thinking it. His logic is, the recipient can't hate the quilt. I assured him she can. He replied, in his witty way, "Well, she can't tell YOU she hates it, so you'll never really know. She'll only say to you that she likes it...." He does have a point, but still. I want her to love it.

Here's a sort of mock-up of what it will look like when done, just so you get the full view as well as the close-up view:

I absolutely LOVE the background fabric, though it's less tone-on-tone than I originally wanted. 

Which is where, finally, you all come in. Which two fabrics work best with each other and with the background???

Green Swirls & Purple Floral

Green Swirls and Purple Marbled

Green Floral and Purple Floral

Green Floral and Purple Marbled

PLEASE leave me a comment telling me which purple and which green, or be honest if I need to keep shopping. I do have another fabric shop I can try which might have something different. The Chemist will love you for that one....LOL!

I can't start cutting fabric until you guys vote, so don't let me down!!