the best part of having too many projects started

is getting to see them all come together and be finished.

a bee block, which is quite nice looking, but only from a distance. this block was just awful for me, not too sure why, but i was nowhere near getting it to lay flat. :(



another bee block, which turned out much better, and had FABULOUS fabrics. i have to do something in gray and yellow!



two sets of maplelea doll blanket and pillow sets for my nieces, to go with the beds that we got them:





and i'm hoping that every day will bring something more done: a cowl, two pairs of socks, and a hat are still on the list for christmas, and are all in various stages of completion.

reasons why i should not start projects on friday evening:

1--i'm tired and consequently, and without fail, fuck them up and end up spending the better part of the evening with the seam ripper, which is NOT good times. this has been true ever since i was a little sewer on my mom's old singer in the basement of our house back in the day.

and tonight is no different. i'm nothing if not consistent.

i couldn't bear to look at another sock, and have decided to make doll blankets for my neices. i had decided on pinwheels, which means half-square triangles. which i'm totally familiar with, and love. so in looking at sizing (add 5/8". five-eigths of an inch?? GUH @ quilters! but onwards.), i found this grid pattern thinger. so easy! FRIDAY EASY!

cut my pieces. drew my grid, sew, sew, sew. snag. out of bobbin thread, fine, move on. snag: i'm an idiot. harder to get over, unfortunately. instead of these lovely half-square triangles:



i managed to make a stack of quarter-square-good-for-nothings:



and of course, the inevitable date with my seam ripper. good times.

kind of quilting bee fail recovery...

SO, i'm not quite so behind on my bee blocks. although EVERY block that i tried today was some kind of fail. possibly something to do with being home sick for the last FIVE days, and still not being 100%. at least, that's the story i'm telling. i finally, FINALLY had some energy back, and thought that it would be good to catch up on some sewing. not catch up on laundry or house cleaning, no, no. the sewing machine. :)

first up was what i thought would be the easiest, a monkey wrench and a shoo-fly block:



if you notice, there's just one block there. yep. i managed to run out of fabric. and i swear that i followed the directions *exactly*! :( off to an excellent start.

on to an epic block fail. my genius...cut the fabric for paper piecing and THEN realised that i couldn't just mirror everything, because fabric has a right side and a wrong side. enter S,M,S and some more fabric, and the block FINALLY came together, althoguh not without some seam picking because i sewed the blocks together backwards. BUT, i REALLY like the block, and the fabrics Catherine picked were just gorgeous.



then on to what should not have been a block fail since all it consisted of was sewing scraps on a pre-cut template. but there was seam-picking here as well, and i'm not sure that i love the end result. i think that i didn't do a super job on the fabrics, but she wanted it to be scrappy, and no matter what i did, it won't match what everyone else did, and that's the point, right? or something. but i *do* love the spiderweb blocks, SO cute! i will definitely be doing this block for something. something small-ish, i think...



and then, since i was on a roll, i started cutting for some pillowcases for our throw pillows to go with our new couch. didn't get very far since i only had so much of our fabric pre-washed (since i wanted to test washing the upholstery fabric, and only wanted to possibly ruin some of it, not all of it). they're going to be cute!

and now for the best news: i think that i'm feeling well enough and sounding well enough that i can re-integrate with society tomorrow! :D my shadow will be sad, since she's spent the last 5 days napping with me and insisting that we dog park RIGHTNOW...hard life.

oh.mai.hell.

so i've been ages. and i haven't really been present here at all. or a lot present in craftiness. but i'm here for the moment. i've had a bit of crafting sucess. i'm at least monstly caught up with my bees:















and i've been getting some baby stuffs done...




these bibs are SO tiny! i can't believe that i know people who are going to be in charge of people who are going to be small enough to fit into these bibs.





and i'm getting some wedding stuff done for my bride. and i just realised that next month is my month for one of my bees, so i'm going to have to start cutting up fabric and making out instructions. exciting, but scary!

and so ends another weekend.

and we're a week closer to christmas. and i didn't get "enough" done on my gifts, whatever that magic total would be. BUT, i did get blocks done for my bee!



*untrimmed because i didn't want to screw it up by accident*


not so sure i love this one


and i got the bias tape onto the baby quilts, and some of the edging sewn down.



the preemie quilts


another baby quilt made up of the same blocks.


and i even had a bit of help from the dog.




yes, that would be old polyfill batting that she is sleeping in. :|

i'z be crafty biotches.

that's right, plural. that's just how i'm rolling. going to quilt, and hopefully it will calm me down a bit. bad day at work. over work. independently wealthy please?

the quilt, she is quilted. the binding is sewn on, and the night will be spent in pursuit of finishing hand stitching it down.

and, the socks march on. and i'm half done my mother-in-law's gift, and my mum's gift is done. still up, both sister-in-laws, both brother-in-laws, mister man, my brother, and crowns for two little nieces. but i think that it will come together quickly, so long as i keep my head down and keep going. and the next couple of weeks are going to provide a LOT of extra crafting time, which is quite exciting. :D

PLUS, for jacquie's joy in the new year challenge, the wedding quilt will make one finish, and i re-pieced the baby top with the leftover blocks from the wedding quilt, so that's almost ready to go, and next up there will be a border for the vintage sheet quilt, adn then i'll be ready to rent long-arm time and try my hand at that, which is pretty exciting.

finally, november is my month for bee addicted 3, and the girls are just making THE MOST AMAZING blocks. see here!

ketchup..

so i've been crafting a bit, but mostly secret, christmas-y sort of crafting. so no pictures of that, because you really never can tell who is lurking about. ;)

i also need to commit to my UFO project for jacquie's joy in the new year challenge. i've got four ufos that i'm committing to, in pretty much every stage of un-finished-ness.

the wedding quilt, which will have to be done by november 21st, which is when my bride is coming to visit. it's half-quilted, so this is at least feasible, especially now that the lights in my sewing room work again.

then, there's the vintage sheets quilt, which will need to have a border added to it, and then will need to be quilted. i'm not totally sure what i'm doing with it yet, but i think that it might be a good candidate for trying out the quilt shop's long arm rental.

the third is the baby quilt with the leftover blocks from the wedding quilt, which was all ready to go when mister man had an unfortunate bleach incident. now it's picked to pieces waiting for replacement blocks to go in. thankfully i have a TON of replacement blocks, so it should be pieced in no time.

finally is the whirlygiggle baby quilt, which is still in the same states as last time i thought about it--i have a few blocks done, but need to figure out what fabrics i would like to use for the rest of the quilt. so far, i have no inspiration, but we'll see.

and this will take care of my ufos for a while. i've still got jane in the back of my mind, but i'm in no particular hurry there. and, after all, there is a lot of christmas crafting to be done.

holy bias tape, batman!

the girls came over this morning for some crafting. we were planning on making it an uber-productive morning of getting our christmas crafting underway, but it ended up being a lot of chatting and eating and less crafting than anticipated. although i have little voice left, i call it a success!

i also finished up with my bias tape adventure of yesterday afternoon, and that was a success. extremely time consuming, but i now have (hopefully!) enough to finish up the two queen-sized quilts i have waiting, so that's good. going to get at binding one of them, since hand sewing the back of the binding is an EXCELLENT way to spend a damp saturday evening. ;)

clever-like-a-fox-toberfest

today's post is brought to you by my hilarious incompetence! so i'm blogging from mister man's computer because he's in bed not feeling well watching a movie on my laptop. and blogging about my quilting bee blocks wouldn't really be that much fun without...pictures of my quilting bee blocks. hilarity ensues. long story short, i managed to set one of my bee blocks as his desktop photo. and i can't figure out how to change it back, so giggling, i changed it to me and him tiled across his screen. now to see how long until he notices/calls me out on it and i have to fess up to my crafty-nerdiness.

so my first block comes from belinda at the beehive. she was so organized, and her instructions were wonderful--she'd even made a pdf and emailed it and included a print copy in our packages. and i still think that i fucked it up. mind doesn't look at ALL like the others (well, it kind of does. i mean, i pieced it right, it just looks...off...)





i don't know why i had such a hard time piecing this, but i laid it out with different fabrics in different places like 10 times, and it just never looked quite right. i hope that it isn't terribly out of place with all the rest. :(

i also had enough left over for a 9.5" log cabin-y block, as requested.





and then i started on the wonky star block for brioni at bee addicted 3. this bad boy started out as one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" ideas. Brioni had asked for wonky stars, and made the mistake of saying that she didn't care what the configuration was, so long as the block came out to 12.5"...so yeah. my block was ambitious, and looks great, but has a LOT of seams! which, in retrospect, i should have pressed all open, but i really wanted the ones IN the blocks to be perfectly matching, so i pressed them in opposite directions, but that made things quite bulky. ANYHOW. it'll be fine once it's quilted, it's just doing its own thing right now...as well, i feel bad because everyone here seemed more than able to make two blocks with the fabric bri sent, but i only managed to turn out one, with VERY little leftover. i'm not sure that i'm up to snuff with these bee ladies. next month, i suppose!





in other news: the man is sick, the dog has been limping and is a suckface, and i don't think that i've eaten a vegetable all day. sigh! better tomorrow, although with less crafting, i suppose.

blogtoober: moving right along...

i've finished my very first "domestic machine quilting" quilt...ta-daaaaah! (sorry it's so cell-phone-y...)





the lines aren't *perfect*, and i definitely gave up on all of the stitching that was in the original kaffe fassett quilt, but i'm quite please with how it turned out and QUITE pleased that it's done!

next up: getting the wedding quilt done. i would like to try out a long-arm machine at one of my local quilting stores so maybe the long weekend would be a good time for that. :) i just have to get the pattern all set up on it.

blogtoberfest: lazy sunday interrupted

today would have been a perfect day for a lazy sunday: drizzly, medium cool out...sunday...but instead we took on the race, and then the sunday breakfast lineup of insanity as 10 000 people descended on ottawa breakfasteries, and then my mum and i tackled a local quilt show. i was hoping to get a kit for something easy for a stag and doe raffle quilt, but didn't find one, but i was inspired by this:





and then napped, and then finished quilting our bed quilt, and then, and then...hahaha. if i'm particularly inspired, i'm going to try and tackle this month's beehive block. :)

i'm [finally] learning patience!

because the bed quilt is making me its bitch. no joke. but i'm learning patience and actually found some zen in the quilting. but not after some REALLY un-zen. i started with a hot pink on the top to contrast with the white fabric (this would be a lovely colour i chose after changing the yarn twice) and white on the back against the deep purple backing. well, the pink looked TERRIBLE, and the lines weren't straight, and I didn't like the piecing. so i started another line with white top and bottom. it looked much better, but somehow my bobbin tension was WAY off, and the back was a huge tangle. so i spent an hour and a bit picking out three and a half times of 104" long stitching. YAY! anyhow, gave up, slept, gave the quilt some room, and now am doing white top and bottom, VERY slowly, and it's coming out beautifully. 4 rows down, 50 or so to go. :)

bought me some quilt basting spray, and it is THE SHIT. i'm not stellar at basting, and don't really have enough room to lay the quilt out on the floor like everyon says, especially for a queen+ quilt like i've got on the go. it took me a bit of forever, but my quilt is basted, pinned, and rolled, all ready to go for tomorrow.

AND, mister man and i managed to pick a new mattress! it's lovely, and we totally agreed on which one we liked without any major discussion--this would be a total first. our tastes kind of run a bit different. and, they're delivering it tomorrow, which is perfect because my neck is SO sore and now stinky of tiger balm.

oohoohooh!

sent of my packets for my bees. hopefully they won't be too long in getting home!

next up: i've been to the 50% off sale at the fabricland, since it's a really good time to get batting and thread, both of which i desperately need. i got a bright fuschia for the quilting of the kaffee fasset-y quilt, so:




i'm making this quilt, but huge...with apple green centre squares, and white in between the squares, and then am using the fuschia thread for the plaid style quilting. on the back is going to be a royal purple with white thread. i'm hoping that it's going to be fabulous! :)

then we'll have a nice new quilt for the nice new bed we're (hopefully!) getting tomorrow. long story there, involving mold and sadness, and eventually, cricky necks...

so that's my plan for this weekend: quilting and running a 5k race that i keep forgetting about.

dear jane!

i've started on a dear jane! i'm paper piecing it, which is going pretty well except for a few minor major setbacks last night which involved seam ripping on paper piecing. not that fun. but the blocks turned out super well:

A-1, Pinwheel gone awry





A-6, Uncle Homer





J-6, Granny weaver





working at it in no particular order and with no particular plan for colours. it's going to be scrappy and colourful with white kona cotton for the background and sashing. best part: the blocks are the same size! YAY!

my plan for a weekend of crafty goodness has been put into effect. hooray! so the whirlygiggles were the result of thursday evening's work. i need to get a few more fabrics to add to the quilt, which is destined to be a baby quilt for a january baby shower. i'm thinking that it needs a vibrant purple, a yellow, and some more blue. and possibly some green. definitely no more red, pink or orange. this comes from a pattern given by crazy mom, and the perusal of MANY a whirlygiggle quilt and tutorial, but all in all, SUPER easy to piece, i was pleasantly surprised.

today was spent hermit-like in the craft room, and not all in a good way. the morning brought me brown crud spewing from my iron and some mad iron cleaning and the lasting stink of hot vinegar, but it seems ok now. no more brown, but starting to get drippy, which i had noticed before. hopefully i won't need to replace it, because it's really quite a good little iron.

break mid-day to venture out into the pouring rain for this, which is my fall project, and e's fall project. more on that later:





also, just ignore that junk in the corner. and that other junk in that other corner.

next up was charm squares cut for a hgtv swap, which is excellent because i can swap around 200 and this will bring my running total up to about 800, which will be almost enough to start on a charm quilt!

the big finish today was the baby blanket made from the extra blocks from wedding quilt number one:





i'm kind of thinking that it might actually be MUCH better with the same sashing as i used in between around the border. i'm finding the white around the outside a little yuk.

and finally, just before bed, i finished FINALLY started and finished ironing all the fabrics which have been patiently waiting on my drying rack to be ironed. definitely going to bed happy thinking of this lovely stack of fabricy goodness, some of which is destined for wedding quilt number two.

i've already decided it's going to be a crafty kind of weekend.

inspiration!

so i spoke with bride #2 about wedding quilt #2, and i've got it sorted, and a pattern ordered. i'm going to make i do, which she really liked (of the options I gave her, HA!) and i really like, and it's kind of fitting since it IS for a wedding...so that's one thing taken care of, and i won't really need to order MUCH more fabric, REALLY....

next up: move #3 was this morning and went quite well, although really makes me dread ever having to move my own junque again.

and finally: i've joined another bee! bee addicted 3. it never rains, but it pours. i'm pretty excited. will announce my inspiration to the wider world once it's my month for each bee. very excited! beyond that, tired.

i'm lacking in definitive inspiration

or maybe i'm just whiny. i've got to really start thinking about wedding quilt #2, which although is still about a year away, i'm stressing over. i've started collecting fabrics (browns and blues, which i LOVE, was the request), and they look great together. i was planning on staging a values quilt. but now i'm just not feeling it. not sure why, since it will be stunning. then i was thinking maybe a log cabin-y sort of quilt, but i'm feeling that even less! maybe i should actually iron the fabric, finish collecting possible addition fabrics and then see what i come up with...in the next YEAR. silly!