Oldies but goodies

While I was at home in Chicago, I had the chance to take some better photos of the quilts I made for my dad and sister in 2007.  I love going home at taking the time to pour over them again, studying, remembering, reliving the making of both quilts.  It's different then seeing the quilts I have around my house that are just part of the backdrop of my daily life.  I miss these quilts, but I'm happy they provide color for the backdrop of my parents' house.

Crosses - front:

Crosses - back:

I loved this fabric and I'm so glad I used it here because if not, it would probably still be in the stash..

Comfort Star for Lori:

This was my first attempt at crumb blocks, and "making" fabric for the 9 patch center:

a close up.  I could stare at this quilt for hours:

Whenever I go home my sister patiently listens as I retell her about every patch in her quilt.  Where it came from, how long I had it, if I used it anywhere else.  She is so patient with me.  I guess she has the patience of a quilter, but she has the gift to spend it on people instead of fabric and stitches.

My oldest UFO

My oldest UFO from jessica alexandrakis on Vimeo.

Pulling in all together

Isn't it cool when you cross things off your "to do" list faster than you thought you would? I have been pretty productive in the last two weeks-- a mega-trip to the post office including 2 quilts to 2 long armers (ok, well I just sent new backing fabric to shannon, she already had the top), phone calls and apointments are all taken care of, textbooks are purchased, school stuff is in order, and..I finished these two pillows for my cousin's dorm room:


Foundation pieced, no quilting, but very cute with lots of sentimental fabrics, like the green raccoons that my grandmother (?) made into dresses for her 6 daughters, and the green giraffes that became pants for our cousin in high school. If she ever asks, I can tell her the story of all these fabrics.. that's just the kind of quilter I am. :)

Well, this post has been sitting in my drafts pile for too long, I could say more but time to post is limited. I start classes again tonight, wish me luck!

The List

Because Amy asked, here's what I'm packing for our 4 day, 3 night road trip to MA.

for George:
car seat, stroller
front-pack carrier
high chair (small seat that straps to normal chairs)
2 bowls, 2 spoons
4 tubs of baby puree
1 box baby oatmeal (haven't decided if I'll put some in another container or just take the whole box...)
sippy cup
6 bibs
dish soap & sponge
5 ziplock baggies
5+ plastic shopping bags (I'm sure I'll find more along the way)
50+ diapers
wipes
changing pad, disposable changing pads
Vaseline
baby nail clipper
blue nasal aspirator (i call it the nose plunger)
4 washcloths, 3 burp cloths
sunscreen, hat, sunglasses
2 bath towels
3 teethers, 4 small toys
clothes
diaper bag
3 blankets

for Jessica:
extra pair of glasses (in case he tosses mine into the pond)
sunscreen/moisturiser
shower shoes
towel, washcloth
hair dryer
3 hand towels
travel mug, water bottle, travel chopsticks, travel paring knife in plastic case
clothes, shoes
camera, charger
cell phone, charger
travel quilt #2
blue desk lamp
datebook

Well, we're leaving in about 15 hours and that's all that I can think of. Last minute items may get tossed in "just in case." We are going by car, of course, but maybe i should post my packing list for our upcoming Chicago trip just to compare. When traveling by plane I just buy diapers/food when I get there.

Oh oh, and here's my Hootie Hider. (Nevermind the messy hair, it was windy)

Quick Crafts for Sanity

There's a flickr group called "quick crafts for sanity" and these two definitely need to be included..

first I made a spring/summer "Hootie Hider" which I use every day. I took my store-bought one and just copied it to the best of my ability, using a strip of template plastic along the center of the top so it would stand out and George and I can make eye-contact. I completely forgot I had the fabric and now I'm really glad I used it on something useful.

(*edit* I had full intention of sharing a pic of this wonderfully useful item, but when I went about my day, it occured to me that taking a picture of myself using it would be nearly impossible.. it's not that I'm against showing breast-feeding photos online, just that I'm always the one taking the pictures.. so if I'm nursing, I can't also be across the room taking a picture of myself. Sure, I could set up the camera's timer, but with a hungry 17 lb baby in one hand and the hootie hider in the other, the logistics of getting the camera set up at the right angle and pressing the right button are just... well, if I ever get it to work, I'll post then, ok?)

The next project is a terrycloth bib-- I got one as a present and didn't use it for the first 6 months because it was big-- a bit too long for just a dribble bib, but now that we're eating solids (and making messes) a longer one comes in handy. I got tired of washing the one bib every night and between meals, so I went through the linen closet for an old-but-still-in-good-shape towel, traced the store-bought bib, added bias tape from my scrap bucket and Voila! Cute, practical, and very home made.

So I'm preserving sanity and using what I have all at the same time. And this weekend we get to go to Smith and show them off, yay!

April 1

I didn't finish anything (wisps or otherwise) in March, but I did start not one, but TWO new projects. I'd like to call them quilts, but with my uncertain sewing schedule I don't know how far I'll get with them. The coin quilt progressed rather quickly.. here are the strips laid out on the bed in the guest room (hey, no one's living upstairs, why not take over the entire second floor with quilting?). I've got 2 more coin strips to piece-- both are already stuck up on the design wall, just waiting for a chance to be sewn together. I could go up and work on that now actually, seeing as George went to bed early tonight, but I want to post a full update first.

As I was going through fabrics for the coin quilt I kept coming across these great dark blue batiks that I had cut up for another project long forgotten (a block swap from 2003). I have an odd number of 6.5" and 3.5" blocks already cut, and about 1/4 yard left of 4 fabrics. I decided to bite the bullet and try to make geese, finally, from this tutorial that Jan mentioned here (yeah, some 16 months ago.. did I really wait that long?).

They came out pretty good, but I realized that my machine's foot is wobbly and that's part of the reason I can't get a consistent 1/4" seam. Anyway, I think I'll use up the rest of my batik squares and pull together a lounging throw (EQ snapshot forthcoming), if time (and motivation) allows.

Almond Brittle

Money's tight, we need to use what we have. Can't go running down to Baskin Robbin's every time we have an urge for an ice cream. It's time to open the cupboards and get creative.

I have a terrible sweet tooth, and sometimes it's easily satisfied with just plain

SUGAR.

Yesterday I pulled out my recipe for peanut brittle, but seeing as we had no peanuts, I tried it with almonds and it came out sooooo good. So good that today I decided to make more, and photograph the process...

It's so easy. You just heat sugar until it melts.

Keep stiring.

Then when it gets a nice carmel color, quickly mix in your almonds and salt (I like lots of salt), and pour it out onto a piece of buttered tin foil with the edges folded up.

When it cools a bit, take the tip of a fork and stretch it to make it thin.

Wait a few minutes for it to harden completely, and break it apart.
(made with my little helper, of course).

Pink Flamingos for Poppy

Finally I finished something crafty in February! Yay, I made it in time for the Challenge!
Ok, so it wasn't a WISP (though the tumbler pouch looks more like a pouch than it did last month-- still not finished, it needs a zipper), I actually made it this morning during two of George's naps. It's a birthday present for a sweet 5 year old we met yesterday. Now, to get it in the mail on time...

Finished!!!

I finished George's baby quilt! (wait, that's the baby, you wanted to see the quilt..)

Started May 2008, finished January 2009, thanks to the challenge. I used Ringle & Kerr's Plain Spoken pattern (with more than a few prints because I didn't have many solids) and hand quilted in pearl cotton #8. All the fabric came from my stash, woohoo!

I was worried about how it would come out when I threw it in the washer & dryer-- this is the first quilt done in pearl cotton that i've actually finished. thankfully it came out ok. I still need to re-measure it though and I might have to change the hooks on the wall if it shrank at all. It looked so good on the wall above George's crib, but now that it's actually done i just want to cuddle him with it and use it..
Maybe I'll just hang it up when company comes over...

Creative Recycling

When I packed up my sewing room back in April I left out 3 projects to work on over the summer—Travel Quilt #2, Theresa’s Garden, and a pile of fabric for a baby quilt. I also packed up all of my Quilts Japan magazine collection and most of my other quilt books.

Lately I feel that by limiting the amount of projects I have to work on this summer, I’m limiting my creativity. All the sudden I have tons of great ideas for smaller projects or ways to finish up UFOs, but I can’t get to them without ripping the tape off the boxes in the basement. So I’m torn between wanting to be good and finish these 3 (now 4 with the surprise addition of a second baby quilt) or just giving in to my passions and unpacking my stash. AHHHGH!

It crossed my mind that I should just start reading a book. If I fell into a good novel, I could go between reading and stitching and keep a happy balance. Strangely, there’s nothing I really want to read right now either (should I mention that my stack of “I’m dying to read these” books got packed away already by a good intentioned husband?).
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I woke up this morning (having written the above post yesterday) and said to hell with it. I want to make something fun. So I did, I tore into the packed boxes to find some heavy fusible interfacing and cording, and this wicked cute print of fish that I got in Japan last year:

I took these unflattering pants:

(you don't know how embarrassed I am that I just posted that picture...)

And turned them into this nifty cute bag:

I left the cargo pockets on the fabric and centered them on either side of the bag. The handle is made from fabric from the cuffs. Good refashioning, don't you say? Have you refashioned anything lately?

Baby quilts

I read a great post over at Meet Me At Mikes yesterday (by way of whip up) about starting a blog and what a blog should have.. it got me thinking. I’m not writing here much these days for a bunch of reasons, but the biggest excuse is poor internet connection. For a while I wasn’t feeling crafty or creative, and I wasn’t making anything, so I felt I didn’t have anything “good” to post about, but the Mikes post reminded me that it’s my blog, and my thoughts are important.
Makiba keeps telling me i should be writing pregnancy notes in a journal because I’ll want to remember all the little stuff later. I think about it, but writing there hasn’t happened yet either. Maybe after a semester writing papers and exams for grad school I feel all written out.
Doesn’t hurt to just jot down what’s been going on though.. During finals last month I chose, washed, cut & ironed fabric for the baby quilt. I decided to go with the pattern "Plain Spoken" from Ringle & Kerr’s Modern Quilt Workshop. My stash is totally lacking in solids though, so I just used all the neutral (gender neutral, I mean) fabrics I had set aside for the baby. I don’t know, somehow I just felt I should exclude all the floral prints.
Anyway, with sewing a few blocks/strips here and there, it went together in no time. At first I felt a little self-conscious because after reading the color choice notes for "Zipper", I realized I didn’t have enough medium tones in there. I just go straight from light to dark in a lot of places. My confidence was jarred again when Costas said he didn’t like it, that he was thinking of something more “babyish” with pastels and teddy bears (teddy bears?!?!?). So I went back to the drawing board (or, over to flickr to browse my favorites). These were some of the contenders.

But I finally settled on this one by Carolyn (fabric she sent me made it into the first quilt, btw. Thanks again Carolyn~). Simple, babyish, I headed out to Ann’s Fabric & Sewing Machine center in Canton that same day after work. It was a bit strange to walk into a quilt store with the intention of buying fabric after I have so diligently been using only stash since November (well, mostly). And not just “buying fabric” by rummaging through the scrap bin and picking through remnants like I usually do; I went in to buy yardage. I wandered around, pulled bolts off the shelves, stacked them up, took a few steps back, changed my mind, rearranged…The shop staff was very helpful, but I was looking for something specific that I couldn’t quite communicate to her. In the end I settled on 9 prints, mostly from Kumiko Sudo’s Shiki line for In the Beginning, and took a quarter yard each. I made it out of there for about $20.
It was so nice to have new fabric. Like, new as in spring colors with 2008 printed on the selvage. After it was washed and ironed, I just laid it out on the futon and looked at it for a few days.
I think it was this past weekend that I started cutting, and I pieced most of it this past Wednesday. It’s nice. Soft and sweet, totally looks like a baby. In between the ironing and cutting though, I went back and finished piecing & basting the first quilt, and once it was together and I started quilting, I liked it much more. So now I’m working on two baby quilts, for this kid who should make an appearance in 19 and a half weeks or so. I’m happy, and it gives me something to do when I wake up at 3 in the morning with pregnancy heartburn.
By the way, we found out Wednesday, it’s a boy.

February 20

Do you ever feel like a million things are happening all at once? The potential for change is in the air... hopefully it's an early sign of spring.

Here is Dan's Morsbag:

I discovered that I can stick stuff on the fridge and get good lighting coming from the kitchen doors, neat, huh? The top fabric he used I've had forever (read: since college) and I'm happy to see it go into a project, but sad that I won't see this bag again. There is an 8"x7" scrap left, so that will have to get incorporated into a future project.

At the Monday night SCQguild meeting we discussed our UFOs and what to do with them. I have all of those mis-matched blocks for the WQ that's going no where and I was really thinking about just taking the 6" string pieced blocks and turning them into something like Sarah's Roman Stripe. The guild encouraged me to continue with the huge sampler project, but I don't see myself picking it up again any time soon. We'll see what happens in the next few months.

Here is the T-shirt quilt all pieced together:

I spoke to my long arm quilter and she quoted me $175+ for the quilting. I'll really have to save some money first before I drop it off at her house.

Tonight I'm quilting Travel Quilt #1 and it's moving along pretty quickly. I've got a nice set of nails, so that helps. We were going to have a sit & sew this Saturday but it's been canceled because they still haven't finished the building repairs after the flooding in December. Not what I wanted to hear.. but what can you do? I should probably spend half of Saturday reading for class instead.

More morsbags

Amanda & Dan did make it in the early evening, and by that time the house was nice and tidy. I wasn't surprized when Amanda wanted me to show Dan all the quilts I had made/was working on, but when she suggested that he make a MorsBag right away I kind of just went with the flow. Me, stop people from sewing?! never!

So we pulled up the pattern on the computer and Dan picked out fabrics (this process took much less time than I would have expected.. i totally wanted to play with my stash a bit more). I cut, Amanda ironed, and Dan learned how to use the sewing machine. It was pretty cool. He was very patient with the two giddy crafters, and in just under an hour, he had a new shopping bag. (pics of the final product forthcoming.....)

How fast is this going?

I've been telling people that the English paper piecing I'm doing goes really fast, and to me, it feels like it does. But then, each side of each diamond is only 1.5", so sewing each side does go quickly. Sewing them all together though...


I have made a lot of progress on this quilt, but when I lay it out on the bed, I think only 1/5th of the top is done. Maybe I could call it 1/4, but then i know I'll be putting on a thicker border. Anyway.
There have been some issues, mainly that i was running out of template pieces. I bought one pack last year and bought another in November, for a total of 120 diamonds. I also got a pack of coordinating (1.5" long on each side) hexagons, to smooth out the edges on either side of the quilt so I wouldn't have to deal with 1/2 stars. I thought this would free up more diamond templates, and it has, but I still don't have enough. When I had this problem with Travel Quilt #1, I added one side of the border and freed up all the diamonds that had been stablizing that edge. Knowing that this is what I would have to do again, I have had the inner border fabric chosen, washed, cut, pieced and ready to go for days now. But for some reason that final bottom edge is just not getting finished. You can see a bit of it inthe photo above, on the bottom there is a gap between the light blue star in the right corner and the white one to the left. This gap will fit 2 stars. Just 2 more stars til I can sew on the border and have the freedom to let this project continue at a faster pace. Ahhh... Realizing that it won't be done (meaning i can't sew the inner border on to this one edge) before Monday is somehow very sad to me. I thought if I could atleast get it to that point then.... I don't know. It's one of these bizzare personal-creation dilemmas.
Another bit of trouble was that I was running out of stars. I didn't want to cut into yardage for any of them, but most of my scraps of appropriate size have been cut up, and having to choose which large pieces of fabric to cut into is also posing a mental challenge. I had wanted it to all be blues & greens. If you check out the photos, that isn't really happening. I have tons of the right size scraps to cut up (anything less than a fat quarter is fair game at this point) but I still have some reservations on color choice. This will work itself out eventually though. This quilt is taking much more fabric than I had originally anticipated anyway, and at some point I will love it and cut 2 1/8" diamonds from all of my most coveted fabrics.
It started as a "use what you have" project and now, with my pledge not to buy fabric in '08, it will definitely stay that way. The pale blue diamonds are coming from a fairly large piece (i think i had more than 2 yards to start) that has some bad sun damage. Maybe you can tell from the pic above? Cut into such tiny pieces it works really well though.
Ugh, i had not ment for this post to come off as complaining or disapointed. I am very happy and proud of this quilt so far, and I still get quite obsessed with the piecing, but it's getting big and I want to see it into the next stage already, you know? The deep red strips of inner border lay next to my cutting board and I really want to see how they'll look on the quilt. If I free up all those templates the project will once again be portable (I'll start another section working from the edge in, and attach it when I run out of templates again), and it's not like I have any travel planned for the coming weeks, but you know me, in case I have to go somewhere, i need to take something with me..

Creative Recycling

This is all that's left of 15+ of my favorite T-shirts.
My T-shirt quilt is still in the same un-finished state that it was in this post, (I hope to attend to it at our guild retreat next month), but what do you do with all the parts of the t-shirt that aren't good enough to go into the quilt?
Crochet them into a rug, of course. I followed a link from someone's blog a few months back about crocheting old clothing into rugs and had the brilliant idea to try it. Of course now I can't find the link or the blog I read it in, but hey, it was a really good idea!!
First you cut up your t-shirt into a continuous 1" wide strip, then roll it into a ball so it's easy to work with. (the light green one above used to be an ultra-comfy Comme Ca du Mode long sleeved pajama tee that I got at a thrift shop in Hokkaido.. the red one below had the sad fate of being worn by my sister when she decided to dye her hair..)
Then crochet away! I started with back and forth rows to make a long rectangle, then went around a bit and added longer stitches in places to make it more oval. The hook is a size Q. My cousin Amanda came to visit this weekend and took over the stitching, bringing it to it's current size and shape. It would be nice if it were 3-6 rows bigger, but we ran out of t-shirts. I started the project with her in mind so she will take it back for her dorm room, adding to it if she wants to, and I will have the satisfaction of knowing that my beloved t-shirts have found a new functional purpose.

Block a day

One of my very observant students gave me this Block a Day calendar for my birthday last month. Now I go into work every day and get to stare at a quilt block, counting the minutes until I can go home and try it out. We didn't go back to work until January 7th, so here are the blocks so far for this week:

Mon. 1/7/08:
Tue. 1/8/08:


Wed. 1/9/08:

I didn't make the block for today because it's very similar to Tuesday's (which was a pain in the ass, actually). I'm using the fabrics I had set aside for this quilt, and may incorporate the blocks into it should I ever decide to dive back into that project.

My favorite so far was Wednesday. I love what the little 4-patches do in the corners. I think I'd like to use this block in a whole quilt someday. Overall, I realized that I don't usually make geometric quilt blocks. I like how they look but I don't enjoy making them. I hate hate hate squaring up half-square triangles. A hatred that often leads to me sewing them and leaving the block unfinished, frustrated, and coming back to piece it the next day. But, the final result sure is cute...

Is anyone else making the blocks from this calendar? I'd love to do a quilt-along type thing, even if we don't end up making every one..