Well, I certainly didn't MEAN to take a blog-cation...

...but once you stop, it's soooo easy to let it slide! Other things take precedence, and before you know it, the autumnal equinox has come and gone and it's October!

That's not to say I haven't been sewing. I got a few things done in between gardening and working and all that other stuff that takes away from creative time.

My upstairs neighbors had their first baby (a girl!) this summer. They didn't know the sex ahead of time, so their nursery was fairly neutral with a lot of dark-ish gray accents. I thought some Kona Coal and a packet of mini-charm square dots would fit in nicely. The 1/2" straight-line quilting in the wide border gives it some great texture for baby hands to explore, especially where the vertical and horizontal overlap.

Good Night/Good Morning (front), and Archie sneaking into the shot

My camera is a cat magnet.

There's a gray-green dot in the backing that matched the nursery walls perfectly. I snagged their painter in the lobby one day to get the name of the paint color and got the chip at the hardware store. Lo and behold, I had a Valori Wells dot in my stash that worked and brought some more life to it. Forget trying to get those dots straight, though -- they weren't printed on grain, so I gave up fighting and let them go all wonky.

Sometimes his appearance is more subtle than others.

Good Night/Good Morning (back)

My Monkey Girl turned 12 earlier this month, obsessed with pink and aqua, the colors of her new bedroom. I figure this presents me with gift possibilities for the next, oh, four years at least.

I raided the pink stash bin and used a 20" pillow form. There are a few lines of aqua thread among the pink straight-line quilting, and a couple lines done by hand just to mix it up. There is one square of overly-furry fleece that I added at the last minute, and it turns out it's her favorite one. The black piping really made everything pop.

I used up some half-yards and fat quarters of fun baby prints for this quick-n-easy quilt for a friend's first grandchild. I think I've had these prints since I started quilting ten years ago -- finally using them in their entirety (no scraps! hooray!) was a cathartic experience.

Getting a LOT of mileage out of my $2/yard Ikea purple solid.

It makes great binding!

Also, in an effort to shed some of my inventory (are you noticing a theme here?), I also opened an Etsy shop this summer. Not a lot of traffic so far, but that's due to my inability to self-promote -- although for about a week, Facebook kept trying to sell me my own quilt in one of their targeted (You have pictures of quilts in your profile! You must need more!) ads. It was a little surreal, having it show up on the sidebar.

In the coming weeks, I'll be featuring some of my fabric in the shop. I have a lot of older, discontinued Jane Sassaman prints that aren't doing me a lot of good just hanging out in the closet, as well as several other bolts that aren't getting used up as quickly as I thought. So stay tuned!

It feels good to be back! Sorry I was gone so long!

Another finish...

I haven't shared this one yet -- it's my second Quilts for Kids Lenten project. Ideally I would have gotten this and "Pennants" to them in time for Easter, but I'm just happy I got them finished at all! I don't do circles (or, in this case, half-circles) very much at all, but I'm giving them a try. This design has a few more possibilities that I'm eager to experiment with...when the time allows and the inspiration hits --  a rare confluence.

From many of the pictures I've seen, it seems Quilts for Kids doesn't get many boy quilts, and a lot of those that are have novelty prints for very small children. I like this one because it's masculine colors, but not too young. The back is a little wild, but the front reminds me of basketballs, or planets. Hopefully it'll have some appeal for the older kids.

So it's washed, threads knotted, and ready to ship. And I can pat myself on the back for actually finishing something on the to-do list!

Possessed by a creative spirit...

A very odd thing happened at Chez Kwiltz today.

I awoke in the wee hours of the morning, all hot and uncomfortable in this weird heat wave we're having (91 yesterday, and two days ago we had a freeze warning -- Mother Nature must be bipolar), unable to go back to sleep. I was feeling pretty rested though, and there really isn't any returning to Dreamland anyway once you've awakened the cat, so I got up, fed Archie his breakfast, and in the dim light of dawn, before I'd even had my coffee, started cutting into fabric.

Up until 4:45am I didn't have a thought of starting a new project, and by seven o'clock, all the rows were complete.

Pardon the cat hair -- making a dark quilt during shedding season isn't perhaps the best idea

It wasn't quite autopilot, but it did kind of feel like it was out of my control. It had been a while since I'd pieced anything, and I had a new "Comma" charm pack (the result of a weak moment online last week) just begging to be opened...those two factors combined to create this overwhelming compulsion to make something NOW, and I ran with it.

I didn't finish the top, but I got a good chunk of it done before I had other work to do. It'll be a wedding gift for later this summer, and I'm thankful my subconscious (or whatever that was) gave me the head start.

And now I need a nap.

The power of positive thinking...

It took a while -- seems like none of my projects move very quickly these days -- but I finally got "Positive Thinking" done. Doesn't seem possible that I finished the top at the end of 2011. Missed the gift-giving occasion by a long shot, but better late than never, I say!

 Archie photo-bombs.

I adored this one long before I quilted it, and now? Totally in love!

The quilting (using Signature variegated "Sand Dunes" #20 cotton thread) came out about a half-inch apart, and it creates great texture -- not too much, not too little.

Not his best side.

The batting is Thinsulate -- lightweight but very warm...and, if the amount of cat hair on it is any indication, it's very, very snuggly, too. Every time I put it down, the cat was on it, and it wasn't like he had no other quilts to choose from -- he wanted THIS one. We watched close to the entire third season of "Mad Men" together while I bound it, Archie on my lap.

Yes, I know, I'm the slowest hand-binder EVER.

If I hadn't already sewn a label on it, I'd be tempted to keep this one for myself (or Archie), but it's going away soon. Maybe I need to make another one for the two of us?

Butterflies are free...

I just realized I forgot to post this one, completed earlier this winter.

It was a UFO started with leftovers from a quilt for my now eleven-year old nephew's arrival. I think I had a much larger project in mind, judging from the number of scraps and squares I'd stored in the Ziploc bag, but in the interest of actually finishing something, I just pieced the finished "butterfly" blocks together and made a small stroller quilt.

All these years later, I still love that moon and stars print for baby quilts. Maybe that's what they mean by "Timeless Treasures"???

Reach for the stars...

Well, "Orbits" has finally been gifted, and it's about time! It took his mom and me a little while to get together --  the "baby" boy is getting his first tooth and doing the coffee table walk already!

I'm just glad I got it to her before he started kindergarten.

This one was totally inspired by this quilt. I fell in love with Marit's stars on that deep blue field. Initially, I wanted to do spiral quilting on it, but decided to put the stars into "orbits." The thread on the left is blue, the right orbits are green, and the filler ones are yellow, doubled up for a little different texture. I think I actually had TOO much sun in the living room for this picture -- a rare day left the pictures a little washed out.

The background is an old Makower tone-on-tone with stippling throughout. It looks kind of dark here -- it's not quite as royal are the picture above, and not as black as the one below.

And of course, there was a present for big sister, too!

This doll quilt was made from leftovers of her "Welcome to the World" quilt, made two and a half years ago (which, much to my relief, is getting some use and holding up pretty well. I have this irrational fear that all my stuff just falls apart as soon as it leaves my house). Little Miss Piper was diggin' the pillow (not the case, mind you -- the pillow itself), and her babies were diggin' the blanket.

It's always a good feeling to give things to people (and stuffed rabbits) who you know will appreciate them!

Thinking spring!

It's only 35 degrees here, with winter hanging on stubbornly, and no real signs of letting us go. I was rummaging through the stash this weekend looking for kid-friendly fabrics to finish up another Quilts for Kids quilt and came across this great fishy fat quarter. Those colors got me thinking about (and wishing for -- holy smokes! this time last year, it was in the 80's!) warmer temps and the tulips in my parkway garden. I'm looking forward to seeing them again...whenever that may be.

Diving back into the stash, I came up with these coordinates:

I'm having some very random fun with this one. It won't be finished by Easter, but I'm making progress!

Pennants as penance...

It's that time of year again! 

Lent has arrived, and while I don't have nearly the ambition of a few years ago for my annual Quilts for Kids project, this one's a start.

I became a fan of triangles when I made this quilt. I loved the way they looked on a uniform background, and when I looked at the rows upside down, they reminded me of pennants. It planted a seed of an idea, one that had been growing for a few months.

Last Sunday turned out to be harvest day.

Bored with sewing bindings on by hand (which aggravates my carpal tunnel, anyway, so I can't do it for very long), I pulled out my Tri-Recs ruler and started cutting. And sewing. And quilting. And by yesterday, I was done.

Do you know how rare it is for unfocused ADD-prone me to start and complete a quilt in a week without bouncing off to another project (or two, or three) halfway through? It's a Lenten miracle!

Where I have been...

Well, hello there! It's been a while, hasn't it?

February was a blur. My 90-year old mother tripped and fell in the house at the end of January, jamming her right shoulder and breaking her arm high up near the joint, in a place they couldn't cast it. The good news was the break was clean and set exactly where it should be; the bad news was she wasn't a candidate for surgery so the shoulder is what it is, and the break needed to be immobilized in a sling. She's right handed, which meant she was very limited in what she could do on her own.

My father has never been one to cook anything other than microwave hot dogs, or vacuum or do laundry, so I went home to help out. I was chief cook, laundress, housekeeper, hairdresser, snow removal specialist, chauffeur, and cat referee for a good part of the month. I stuck around long enough to see the sling come off (bone is healing well! hooray!) and take Mom to her first physical therapy appointment (this is going to be the big challenge), then left both of them in the care of my other more local siblings.

This is Sugar, the neighbor's cat who adopted my parents this fall and now rules the house.

She looks very cute and sweet but ambushed poor Archie every chance she got

I arrived back in Chicago exhausted, but in anticipation of being in Michigan for an extended period of time had taken some binding projects with me, so I'm happy to say I returned with some finishes. Can't show the finished products just yet, so here's a peek:

I'm happy to be back home with my machine, and my own big bed (nothing like a month in your childhood bed to send your back into a whole new realm of muscle spasms), and at the same time stressed out to be so far away from Mom & Dad. I don't suppose this is going to get any easier, is it?

My least favorite part of quilting...

I think I've already spent a good three hours trimming threads on the back of this top in preparation for quilting and am not done yet. I love Kona, but man, does it ravel!

As much as I hate doing it, it's a critical step in the process. It's horrible to spend untold hours creating, only to have stray dark threads show through the lighter fabrics when it's all done. I've dug enough of them through from the front in my quilting life to know I really don't want to do that when I'm finished with a queen-sized quilt. So I keep trimming. And trimming.

On the bright side, I've almost made it through the fourth season of "Parks and Recreation" while I work. Thank you, Netflix!

A short demonstration...

Archie attempts to thread my sewing machine. Or whatever.

332 days and counting...

While other parts of the Midwest have been treated to at least a few inches of snow so far this winter, it's been almost 11 months since we saw our last measurable snowfall here in Chicago.

I am compensating for this lack of precipitation by making my own.

PaintStiks and stencils on an 11"x14" scrap of Quilters Only white

Well, it ain't much...

...but it's a little finish for the New Year.

Just experimenting with a design, and decided to do a doll quilt first instead of my usual practice of plowing headlong into a bigger project, getting halfway through and deciding I hate it, and banishing it to the UFO corner.

New year, new approach.

We'll see how long it lasts.