Giving in to practicality...

This past weekend while rummaging through my stash, I pulled out this adorable "Sultry" jelly roll I bought on vacation last summer. I set it on my sewing table to just look at it in all its pink and greeny goodness, and my mind started racing at the possibilities it held for a new project.

"Jelly Roll at Bedside." Can you tell I'm into non-fiction this summer?

It's a weird feeling to describe, but I'm sure you know it -- there's a lightness, and excitement as those ideas start flowing, rising like bubbles in a champagne glass. Pencil hits paper, sketches take shape, and in your head you envision the cutting, piecing, the backing, the perfect (or near-perfect, in my case) quilting on it, and see the final product fresh from the dryer, or maybe even being unwrapped to oohs and aahs by its recipient on Christmas morning.

The whole experience leaves you a little giddy, tipsy on creative juice -- and slightly out of touch with reality.

You think "If I start cutting right now, I can crank the top out this afternoon, baste it tomorrow and have it bound by next Tuesday!" And in a perfect world, you might. But those creative juices blind you to the 57 other things you need to do by next Tuesday, and you lose total sight of the project in progress and any other impediments to successful completion, like work and laundry and weedy gardens.

Sound familiar?

I was about twenty minutes into sketching what might have been the greatest quilt ever when the juice wore off and I began to mentally slap myself around a little for even entertaining the thought of starting something new. Who am I kidding? Don't I already have enough on my plate? Don't I have a whole mess of unfinished projects that need attention? Am I going to let the UFO's take over or am I going to try to finish some of them for once?

I hate it when my practical self surfaces and sounds an awful lot like my mother.

Alas, Practical Self was right. I really didn't need to start something new with so much unfinished. Big sigh.

So I closed my sketchbook and calmly, regretfully placed those cute, girly pink fabrics back in the bin they came out of and turned to my UFO pile to work on something from there instead. I narrowed it down to three projects in varying stages of completion, and then chose the one that held the most promise that it might actually become a finished quilt.

This bundle of strips held the most appeal. It was also the easiest of the three choices, so there's a good chance of success.

Don't worry, I'll come back to that jelly roll someday. I just need to do this to get Practical Self off my back for a while.

But I gotta tell you, this isn't helping my motivation very much:

A quilt for little d...

I started this quilt way back in February, the day my friend Devon told me she was pregnant. She's a reader, so I haven't been able to post any progress without spoiling the surprise. It's been delivered (the quilt, not the baby -- still waiting on her), so I can finally post some pictures! 

If I buy fabric with no specific pattern in mind (really? buying fabric for no reason? who does that?), I have to wait a while before it "speaks" to me. I loved this little bundle from the get-go, but it'd been stubbornly silent since I brought it home. The day my sushi buddy e-mailed to say she wouldn't be eating any spicy tuna maki again until July, it screamed "Whirlygig!" from the shelf and I started cutting.

The quilt  finished 39" x 45". Putting it together was like doing a big jigsaw puzzle, but that was half the fun. I love how some of the whirlygigs spin off into the border.

The fabric is Windham "Basics," and the binding is Kona Sour Apple, a nod to Devon & hub's St. Patrick's Weekend wedding two years ago. Visiting Mom & Dad last month, I returned to the quilt shop where I bought the fabric and, miraculously, they still had enough yardage left for the backing. They also had one of the same fat eighth bundles left (and a few smaller combinations) as well.

No, I didn't buy more.

I would have loved to have done some free motion on this quilt, but my BSR has been a little wacky lately and I seriously doubted I'd get it finished before that little girl arrived if I used it, so I stuck with my faithful walking foot and went with straight lines. I used a Color Catcher, but there was a mild post-washing panic and extra scrubbing when I discovered some of the red had run -- turns out much of it was due to stray red threads fraying under the white. I picked those out with a pin and tweezers and threw it in the dryer, where it crinkled up just like it was supposed to.

Now it just needs that baby girl to cuddle in it! Hope she gets here soon!



On a side note, it's fitting that I delivered this to Devon yesterday on my two-year blogiversary -- she's the one who inspired me to start blogging in the first place! Thanks, d!

Finding inspiration...

Sometimes inspiration can strike in the simplest of places.

Photo from plansnswers.com

This past weeked, it hit in the furniture store...

...and "Dovetail" was the result.

I used test fabric to see how if it would turn out the way I thought it would, and lo and behold, it did! I'm looking forward to working this up in Kona solids (and maybe hand quilting?), which I think would be appropriate for the design.

A 20-minute quilt top (literally -- it took me longer to find the piece of cardboard to cut the template than it did to piece the whole thing together) inspired by an unlikely source.

How fun is that?

An obvious analogy...

Dad is to roses as Kate is to fabric.

After a two-week visit with Mom, Dad, and 350 rose bushes, though, I'm convinced my hobby is infinitely less labor intensive.

Deadheading. Every day. I didn't take pictures of the 18 buckets of weeds I pulled.

The bane of my father's existence: Japanese beetles.

I think I'll stick with quilting.