Hitting the road...

The sleigh is packed, including the sewing machine -- I still have quilting to do!

But until I return to the land of the Internets, I leave you with this, one of my all-time favorites:

Merry Christmas, all! I hope you get all your projects done in time!

Wrestling the waffle...

Amaizin' Blue is done, but not without some lessons learned:

• As enticing as cuddly, stretchy waffle fleece may appear in the store, it's not the most cooperative when it comes to quilt backing.
• Spray basting does not stick to this stuff, so you have to pin the daylights out of it perpendicular to the quilting direction so it won't slip.
• Pick up an extra package of basting pins (or two) while you're at Joann's so you don't have to make a return trip.
• Do minimal quilting, preferably only in one direction to avoid pinches on the back.
• Use a long stitch length.
• This would really be a bear without a walking foot.
• A heavier polar fleece would probably have been a better choice (less stretch).
• Don't use batting unless you really like to complicate things and enjoy ripping out stitches.

On a side note, has anyone else noticed how flimsy the newer Dritz basting pins are? Compared to the ones I bought about six years ago, these new ones are considerably more bendy (read: cheap) and give way too readily -- which means the cat (and little fingers) can actually open them now.

All in all, I'm happy with the quilt. It's lightweight but still cuddly -- Archie tested, Archie approved -- and it washed up wonderfully, but it took me longer to pin baste the darn thing than it did to actually quilt it. So it may be a while before I use this as a backing again.
 
On the upside, it's another one done way before Christmas! Woo-woo!

More progress...

...of all sorts, I'm happy to report!

Two out of three UFO's have been checked off my list. One Christmas gift is complete, and another should be done by tonight. I could go on about how much I adore the striped binding I made for it, but I won't -- I don't want to sound like a total quilt geek.

Yeah, it's probably too late for that.

Yes, that's a toilet paper roll. Don't laugh, it works.

I've saved the hardest -- or rather, the most problematic UFO for last. I'm still playing with the layout, and nothing is working so far...but I'll keep plugging away. It's gotta become something within the next few days or I'm going to have to break down and take a trip to Toys 'R Us. Ugh.

Let's pray that doesn't happen.

A little amazin' blue...

Just some inside University of Michigan reference, there...though I don't know how good of an idea this is, given the big Maize & Blue finished their season in last place in the Big Ten this year -- for the first time since 1962.

Zheesh.

It seems a fitting Christmas gift for its intended recipient, who shall, at this point, remain nameless...but might be able to figure it out that it's for them, anyway. I'm just that transparent.

See Jane sew...

In an effort to work off my Thanksgiving food hangover, I took a long walk on Friday toward downtown Chicago and ended up at the Metropolitan Capital Bank, a very low-key institution located in the recently restored Tree Studios at State & Ontario -- not out of coincidence.

Metropolitan Capital Bank Chicago, CannonDesign (owpp.com)

This quaint little bank (which doesn't feel like a bank at all) is running a program called "Art Works Chicago" to showcase prominent local artists -- and its current installment is devoted to Jane Sassaman and her quilts. I have admired her work ever since I started quilting and think it's nothing short of amazing to begin with, but seeing it up close? All I can say is...WOW.

There are well over a dozen of her pieces on display. Some of them were familiar to me, others brand new. The pièce de résistance is "Willow," named one of the "Best American Quilts of the Century," and definitely deserves the title. This quilt gave me goosebumps years ago when I first saw a picture of it, and there it was!

"Willow" by Jane Sassaman, 1996

75" x 75"

It's much larger than I expected, and as a result, very overwhelming, there's so much going on. I could have looked at it, awestruck, for hours, but the bankers seemed to be eager to use their conference room so I went on my way to go home and sew something. Jane's website indicates you can call the bank for a viewing appointment, which might be better so you're not wandering through people's workspaces like I was -- they're probably used to it by now, but it was a little weird for me.

The quilts are there until January 14. If you're in Chicago, there is no excuse big enough not to get your quilty butt down there and see what greatness looks like. And come away inspired.

************

And sorry for the delayed announcement, but Stephanie D is the winner of the orange and purple giveaway fabric, as determined by Archie (I put names on scraps of paper and left them in a pile on my desk -- the first one to hit the ground was the winner, and it didn't take long!). Congratulations, Stephanie!

Beach blanket bingo...

It's very rare that I start and finish a quilt in one fell swoop -- that is, cut, pieced, quilted and bound without starting in on another project first. Typically, I get through the piecing phase and then bounce off to something else (and something else, and something else...) and don't get back to the actual quilting and finishing until, say, two days before I have to deliver it. So I don't know why this one was an exception.

If I overanalyze the process that went into this, I might find a cure for my Crafter's A.D.D. -- and that would ruin my creativity forever! I won't even begin to think about it.

Anyway, here's the quilt. And Lea, if you're reading, you might want to stop now, because this is your Christmas present.

My sister-in-law Lea loves purple and orange together. So rather than impose these big bold prints on the interior design of their house (which is most decidedly not purple and orange), I made the family a beach blanket. They have a vacation home high on a bluff above Lake Michigan near Ludington, MI, where they spend most of their summers hanging out on the sand.

Nothing fancy, I used 10" alternating blocks in fun "Finlandia" Merimekko-like Free Spirit prints that I've had hanging around for a few years just waiting for this kind of project. I put rock pockets in the corners and bound it with my favorite bright green-on-green print. For some reason, I just love this orange/purple/green color combination!

The back is from the same fabric line, though I stitched down some green squares here and there so the binding wouldn't come as such a shock.

It's a happy quilt, destined for some happy times. And finished more than a month before it's due!

To celebrate the rarity of a quilt conceived and completed well inside its deadline, I'm having my first-ever giveaway! I'm offering a yard of each of these gargantuan "Finlandia" prints (floral, squiggle and boxes, three yards total...and OK, they're big, but not "gargantuan," I just like that word) to a lucky reader who has left me a comment since I started this blog (and today doesn't count, sorry).

Just leave a comment and let me know what your favorite Thanksgiving side dish is. And thank you for all your responses over the past sixteen months -- it really is nice to know someone's actually reading my words and they aren't just dissipating into the blogosphere! Entries will be accepted through this Wednesday and the winner picked (randomly or, perhaps the one with the best-sounding side dish? Who knows?) at noon on Black Friday. One entry per person, please.

My first giveaway! I'm getting all excited about picking a winner already!

Next time...

...he's coming into the bathroom with me.

Identifying some UFO's...

I've joined Jacquie's UFO Challenge.

There are more unfinished projects hidden around my house than I care to admit. Her timing couldn't be better, because I'm running out of places to stash them.

While I'd love to get them all off my plate by the new year, I'm being realistic and have narrowed it down to three. Originally I thought five would be doable, but let's face it, Christmas is on its way and there's a lotta other sewing that needs to be done as well.

The first one is a "Summer in the City" charm top that I started probably three years ago, and didn't have enough squares to get the size I wanted (two of the pieces were mis-cut). There were many additional excuses made (discontinued fabric, nothing in the stash that I wanted to substitute, hangnails, dust bunnies, yadda yadda yadda), and the project stalled.

Yeah, it doesn't take much to bounce me off to the next shiny project. I'm not proud of it.

Anyway, I was driving back from Michigan last month and found a little quilt shop with a whole bunch of "Summer in the City" leftovers. No more excuses, I have more than enough fabric to get it done.

My Two-Color Improv quilt was supposed to be a charity quilt for Lent last spring, and got reprioritized for who-knows-what while I was halfway through quilting it. This one shrieked so much guilt whenever I walked past it I hid it in a closet. It's just time to get it out the door.

Many of you may remember the Safari Bento Box. That project got shelved because I just couldn't figure out what to do with those busy busy blocks, they just weren't doin' it for me. When I dug them out last week, they said "Christmas present!" and I'm determined to make them work. Somehow.

So that's it, the Big Three. Thanks, Jacquie, for the kick in the pants I needed to get these finished -- now that I have the blogosphere to answer to, maybe it'll be easier!

Now I need to get to work.

Is that Kule(r) or what?

I've been playing in Photoshop. Not in a look-at-my-fantastic-pictures sort of way, just trying to expand my knowledge of the software. I mean, once you've mastered the basics and get really good at removing ex-boyfriends from vacation pictures (long story, but they weren't mine), where else is there to go? Turns out, you can go lots of places.

One of the plug-in features I've discovered links to the most awesome website ever: an online community devoted totally and completely to color schemes! Color geeks all over the globe create and upload their own combinations for your viewing pleasure. You don't have to be a member check out the entries on the site or play to your heart's content.

It was designed as a place to experiment with color combinations and generate inspiration for print and web artists, but hello, quilters! If you haven't heard of Kuler, you really need to check it out! Just browsing through first page can conjure up a half dozen new projects!

All images from kuler.adobe.com

One of the functions enables you to pick a color and chose from seven different schemes (they call them "rules") to coordinate with it. In the spirit of Halloween, I chose orange...

Monochromatic

Analogous

Triadic, with the orange softened a bit

You can also just move those little nodes all over the place to create your own and see what your colors look like together.

Another function lets you extract colors out of an image to create a matching theme -- move the nodes to pinpoint colors in the image, and they appear below. Awesome.

It's serious color therapy! Cheaper than fabric and almost as fun!

Enjoy!

A return to blogdom...

Wow. I didn't think I'd be gone this long! To be honest, I kind of lost my blogging mojo for a little while and was waiting for it to turn up. To keep busy in the meantime, though, I...

...went to Michigan what seems like 20 times (but in reality was only three)

Fall comes to the Au Sable River

Lake Michigan through beach grass

...attended my class reunion with a bunch of other middle-aged folks

A small group of us on a tour of the old school...at what point exactly did we all morph into our parents?

...had a birthday

...had lunch with Jacquie and gave her a walking tour of one of my favorite Chicago neighborhoods

A funky little window in Old Town

...survived a major sandstorm at the beach (40-50mph for 24 hours, yikes!)

...spent the next day waiting for three bulldozers and a Bobcat to clear the road of three-foot sand drifts so I could get my car out


...watched my friend Devon and about 37,000 other brave and crazy people run through my neighborhood in 33-degree temps for the Chicago Marathon

When did George Washington develop a running habit?

You can never have too much Gatorade

Three hours later, they're still coming

Talk about brave...this guy got some really big cheers

...discovered yet another quilt shop taking the back roads home to Chicago

Happy Birthday to me!

...found some "Summer in the City" fabric in aforementioned quilt shop that will allow me to finish a three-year old (or is it four?) UFO

...have come to terms with the fact that Indian Summer may have just passed us by this year

...finally got my Jelly Pops top quilted and have started binding it, which could take a while, knowing me


But not necessarily in that order.

It's good to be back. I promise I won't leave you for so long ever again!

And yet...

By four o'clock yesterday afternoon, it was almost ninety degrees.

Wacky temperature swings are typical of Fall in northern Michigan -- it makes for fantastic sleeping. It also makes packing for a week a little challenging because you have to bring winter jammies, a bathing suit, and everything in between.


While it was still chilly I took a trip to my favorite quilt shop and found backing and binding for my Jelly Pops quilt. I also found a great white-on-white stipple print that may get integrated somewhere.


When I brought the new fabric out to take pictures, I realized I had some great light and a great background...so the top came out for another photo op. I love how the white border glows.

I also picked up a "Woodland Bloom" jelly roll, thinking that my Monkey Girl might want her own quilt to coordinate with the doll quilts we made last month.

Like I needed another project to finish before Christmas...zheesh.

I got a little carried away with taking pictures of this one. I couldn't make up my mind which shot I liked best, so you're getting them all.

I put it on the wood pile...

On the deck with pine cones and oak leaves...

On the dock, where it was a lot brighter...

And down by the fire pit.

Sometimes I think I'm better at buying fabric and taking pictures of it than actually making things with it. Is that a bad habit to get into?

It's definitely Fall...

I have come back to the place that soothes my soul...

I just didn't think my soul would freeze while I was here!

Happy 09-09-09...

It's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Definitely worth toasting with your drink (or nine) of choice, I think. I may just break out the tequila today, I have limes left over from the marinade I used on the grilled chicken Sunday night.

The clear, mid-70's weather at the beach this weekend was a gift -- compensation, maybe, for a cloudy, cooler-than-average summer. I took my coffee down to the water each morning, sipping it slowly while the waves lapped at my pajama cuffs, feeling the sun on my back, a slight breeze on my face. Still, there was a hint of Fall in the water, and in early morning, the sand held the overnight cold much longer this late in the season.

On Day 2 I took my camera down with me and finally managed to get a decent picture of what inspired my quilting on this quilt. It's the sand in the shallow water just at Lake Michigan's shore, rippled by the waves. I think I came pretty close to capturing it.

I also noticed these cool designs being created on the sand each time a wave came up. Little mountainscapes, ever changing, the entire length of the beach.

They looked a little like spider veins, too, but we won't go there.


Which got me thinking that these might be cool to incorporate into some kind of quilting, too.


It may take a while to find (or create) the right piece to do this on, but it could be interesting!

Goodbye, summer...

It's something I ask myself every year: where did the summer go?

It never seems like I've savored it enough, or reveled in its warmth (though this one goes down as the cloudiest on record), or appreciated its bounty.

And as the sun kissed the horizon on the last "official" day of summer, I asked it again.

Winter's on its way. Big sigh.

Clearing the decks...

Yesterday was a clean-up day. I tried to get some little projects done that were just messing up my workspace so I could get back to some of the more important things on my ever-growing project list. Like my crazy quilt blocks. I've almost forgotten what I was doing with them!

I got both of these little doll quilts quilted and, while trying to find the right size batting got all my batting scraps organized. Woo-woo!

I stippled the one on the left so much that the one on the right hardly got any. I think I just need more practice, that stippling got really tiny and if you turn it over, it kind of looks like I was drunk when I did it. Given it was before breakfast and way too early to be imbibing, I'm blaming it on Free Motion Anxiety and my Cafe Americano.

These piles have been cut and waiting patiently for a few weeks -- it's a wonder they didn't get tossed around by my manic kitty. He's had other things to keep his attention, namely the bunny on the front lawn and a UTI. But that's a story for another day...

I got them all sewn up yesterday afternoon. I figured this would be a good traveling project to take to the beach house this weekend (no cutting, no measuring, just sewing row upon row of square-in-a-square blocks). These pictures, unfortunately, don't do them justice (they're Sue Zipkin's "Winter Joy" by Clothworks), these colors look terrible here -- that's not red (it's more of a mulberry), and the cream is actually white. I really need to work on my ability to shoot with incandescent lighting.

I have also been tweaking my jelly roll pattern to reflect the great feedback I've gotten so far. If you haven't heard from me, your comments to my last post came up as "no reply," so if you didn't have a blog where I could contact you, I had no other means. If you'd still like the pattern, send me a gmail.

Back to a day of crazy quiltin'!

So far, so good...

I decided to add the two borders, mostly to use up my leftovers. Still haven't gotten it quilted, but my derailment is, in my mind, justified.

I really like how easy this was. And I had a few questions about this one -- I didn't use a pattern for it, so I'm working on recreating my steps. Or trying to. Writing a pattern is a lot harder than it sounds, and I'm math-challenged, so it's taking longer than expected. In fact, I've spent more time trying to capture it all than it took to make the top!

Anyone willing to try it out when I'm done?

Oh, and if anyone knows if this pattern already exists, would you please let me know? I definitely don't want to get involved in any copyright infringement! Thanks!

Time for a little instant gratification...

I ventured back to Michigan last week for another long weekend in the north woods. Which, of course, meant another trip to my favorite quit shop. I'd managed to miss their annual sidewalk sale by visiting the weekend before and the weekend after, and I was happy they still had some of these Moda jelly rolls left. I'd been thinking about this one since my last trip, and regretted not picking it up the first time around. I fell in love with the bright, saturated colors of the fabrics -- like the name implies, they really do feel fresh!

When I got home, I dove right into it. I know if I sit on something too long, I'll get paralyzed by indecision and it'll end up in a stash box.

Gotta swim with the momentum while it's flowing, the tide seems to ebb rather quickly around here.

So I made this:

I definitely needed to get something done. It always feels so good to actually complete a top, especially to one whose work usually ends up half-baked in a Ziploc bag! I'm still contemplating adding a border, which would seriously threaten its progress, and I'd really like to get it quilted this week to further add to my sense of accomplishment. Here's hoping!

And while I've been gone off and on for the past month, my little neighbor Ryan has been watering the flowers on my deck. He takes this responsibility very seriously, reminding his mother every morning that "Cake's flowers need water!" Over the years I've been "Aunt Take," "Auntie Tate," now "Cake." It could be worse.

Now, the weather took a surprisingly cool turn while I was gone last week, bringing a ton of rain (and a tornado, which I missed driving through by oh, six or seven minutes), and, I imagine, a bit of relief to my petunias, but that really doesn't explain how everything has virtually exploded.

I came home to a festival of purples and pinks and crazy verbena. My butterfly bush has dozens of cones, and my roses, which last year produced three flowers all summer, have twelve blooms on one bush this week alone!

Obviously Ryan has a greener thumb than I. Maybe I should leave a three-year old in charge for good?

Back to our regularly scheduled chaos...

And I have to say, a computer crash really takes the wind out of one's sails.

I've spent about a week recovering data and transferring it to a new machine. I'm still not sure I got it all -- I'm sure I'll realize I need some obscure file about an hour after I take my old laptop off life support. On the upside, my new machine is fast and shiny, with a hard drive three times the size of the old one; on the downside, it came loaded with Vista. Don't get me started on that.

Vacation seems like forever ago. I sunned, I swam, I golfed, took tons of pictures, enjoyed 45-degree mornings and 75-degree days with blinding sunrises, and managed to pump a fair amount of money into Michigan's quilt shop economy. Between three shops I purchased a jelly roll, some adorable snowflake prints that I have no idea what I'm going to do with them but were just too cute to resist, and a Woodland Bloom charm pack for a very special project this week: I was on Monkey Girl duty.

My goddaughter has been reminding me for the past six months that she learned how to sew, which qualified her to make a doll quilt when she came to visit this summer. Who was I to dispute her expertise?

I'd seen a short program on Quilter's TV with Billie Lauder (sorry, can't find a link) where she sewed two squares into a tube, sliced it down the middle, rotated the top piece and made another tube to cut in half to produce a nice, tidy four-patch. It seemed like a good, easy place to start, so when Monkey Girl arrived, in addition to making a special shopping trip for Kraft Mac 'n Cheese, chocolate pudding, peanut butter (and, for good measure, a jar of Marshmallow Fluff) and a little fruit just so I could say she ate healthy, I had her machine all set up and the squares ready to go.

Over the course of an afternoon, she made four-patches out of all of the squares. Her seams were a little wobbly but not horrible (I set up a "fence" made of about eight layers of painter's tape a quarter inch from the needle to keep her on track), and we only had to redo a couple that wavered a little uncontrollably when she picked up speed, but all in all, it was great progress...until she proclaimed to her mother that "parts of quilting were boring."

I suppose that's to be expected of an eight-year old. She liked making the "checkers," as she called them, and liked arranging them. The ironing and trimming and piecing the sashing? Not so much. I was left with making the actual tops while she colored and ate Fluffernutter sandwiches, which was fine. I managed to get one quilted before she left, packaged up as a surprise for her birthday next month.

Doll quilts for Nelly, Samantha and Kirsten -- American Girl Store, eat your heart out

I'm not so sure we'll be sewing next summer.

Monkey Girl works on her first quilt project

She's off to spend time with more family before returning with Mom & Dad to Bermuda, so my house is once again at peace, and Archie can come out from under the bed. The question is, though: what do I do with all this pudding?