Sew-tastic Week-end!

Around these parts, it's still technically the week-end (yes, I know this post is dated Monday). It's a civic holiday for lots of people in Nova Scotia. Long week-ends don't have quite the same oomph when you're on vacation, but I can appreciate them on others' behalf!

The past three days saw me sewing away as though they were my last days on earth. Would I sew if it was my last day? There's a good possibility of it!

On Friday afternoon, I decided to start a paper pieced project I bought on Craftsy called Crabby. Himself spends a lot of his worklife with these little darlings, so I'm drawn to fabric and patterns featuring crabs. This pattern had a lot of small pieces... the finished block is only 8½ by 11. If you decide to make it, be forewarned. The sections are lettered and numbered, with the numbers representing your piecing order. But there's no shading or coding to tell you whether the piece should be crab or background. Hence the numbers circled in blue on my pieces.

I intended this to be a project I could pick away at over time. Paperpiecing is perfect for that. (Q-A would disagree, heartily.) But once I got going, I just couldn't stop. He's all finished and ready to be quilted into something lovely... perhaps this week.

 Now for the fun bit... tearing off all that paper. Perfect for television time.

Then the urge to make some HSTs hit me again. They just came together so nicely on that baby quilt I made earlier in the week. I had these beautiful fabrics left over from a recent baby quilt. I added some of my favourite new tone on tone - Rain. It's the second from the bottom. I have it in three colours already and fear I will be unable to resist buying more.

I forgot to take pics of the blocks in process, but I used the same technique as my last HST adventure. This is how it looked when I went to bed... very late. Please note the use of the design floor ☺and that my pedicure matches the quilt.

Saturday saw my living room/dining room/kitchen taken over for another Quilt Therapy session with Q-Squared. Q-A and Q-D were in attendance and working away on their projects while I sewed together my HST... I'm calling it Citron Twist.

I love a striped binding! One of these days, I'm going to end up planning a quilt around a striped fabric for the binding.

On Sunday, I spent some time layering and quilting the asterisk tree skirt... here's a sneak peak. You'll see more another day!

Then there's today's project. This one's been layered and ready to go for a while, I just needed some fire in me to take on the quilting.

 

I was inspired by the front cover of Quilting Modern (soon to be added to my quilting library courtesy of Himself. I was leary of the pebbled free motion quilting, but Q-D urged me on. And away I went!

I paced this work by bobbins. As each bobbin ran out, I'd get up, take a pic, stretch, and do some little jobs around the house. I knew from the first few minutes of pebbling that this pattern was going to be rough on my neck and shoulders. Lots of breaks needed!
Bobbin 1

 Bobbin 2

 Bobbin 3

 Bobbin 4 - I am becoming less proficient in keeping my feet out of the shot!

 Bobbin 5 - Into the borders!

With only a few square inches left to quilt, catastrophe! When you buy 800m of thread, you just don't think it's ever going to run out.

But I found a solution. Lucky for me, the tension in my machine is excellent and didn't seem to mind a bobbin on the thread spool!

 The last section to pebble... roughly 4 hours later.

And here she is - all done! Mother Nature turned off the thundershowers for a few minutes and put out some blue sky and puffy clouds for me.

Like I said, there was a lot of sewing around these parts!

Hope your week-end was sew-tastic too!

J

Finish up Friday - Inaugural edition!

So yeah... I might be over Work In Progress Wednesday. Sometimes a weekly accounting of the stuff still to be done is disheartening.You know what's doesn't cause my heart to sink? Finishing stuff! Which I have been doing like crazy the past two weeks! There is no longer anything on Gotta Do portion of The List (January 2013 edition). I've finished Miss K's Dare.... just a little peak of that since I'm saving the full photo essay ☺ for Miss K's birthday!

And, I've finished the quilting and binding on Mme S S's retirement quilt. Now all I need to do is schedule a night for her to come for dinner.

Since I finished those two projects, I felt free to just make some stuff. I sewed up another baby quilt top using orphans from my Jewel Square quilt. I positively hate to throw out blocks that I worked so hard on (but on this one, I couldn't face any more paper piecing)! I opted to use them with my signature solid (not plain, Q-D, solid!) Kona Ash. I like to think I was working on the modern quilt aesthetic principle of asymmetry here. How quilt pretentious is that?

Speaking of orphans, I made this nine patch from bits left over from Miss K's Dare and my Transformer quilt (and few others thrown in). I really just wanted to use up some sections of 2½ inch strips that were already sewn together. I liked the colours, but the top was just a little... meh. Then I quilted it! I wish I'd taken a before and after shot because the chevron/zigzag quilting really makes it!

Also in the baby quilt department, I quilted the roman stripe quilt that I've been calling Whoo likes pink? So cute... wish someone would have a baby girl.


You know that point on a project where the enjoyment of working on it is overtaken by the overwhelming urge to finish it? I completely felt that one on Mme S S's quilt. It happened about 2/3 of the way through quilting! There's just this moment where you want to be done so you can either send the quilt-gift on to it's new home or start enjoying it for yourself.

Do you get that feeling? Tell me all about it, quilt-y people!

J

WiP!

Damn. I so meant to post this last night! Let's call it Work In Progress Thursday. I know at least one reader is out there waiting with bated breath for this week's update. So here we go!

On the Gotta Do department:

Jewel Squares!

Child's Play - layered and pinned, ready to quilt
Jewel Squares - top completed
Mr & Mrs Cousin's wedding quilt - backing arrived today, already washed!
Mme S-S's retirement quilt - waiting for main fabric to arrive
K's Dare - blocks complete (though I do need to check if she's got a double or queen bed these days!)

More Jewel Squares!

And after five hours of picking and tearing, the foundation paper is officially gone! Thanks to my Do-Bee pals for the assistance!

K's Dare thus far!

I also whipped up some placemats over the Easter week-end as a little Easter gift-y for the 'Rents. These were probably is more of a Mom gift than a Dad gift, but at least he might get to eat off them. I purposely made only two so that they would be used for every day and not saved for guests! Sadly, no pics today.... perhaps nect time!

Now, stop reading this and get sewing. You know there's something you're excited to work on sitting there waiting for you!

J

 

Sewing up a storm!

It's been a particularly snowy week-end here on the East Coast. So much so that all the activities that I was meant to take part in were cancelled! We couldn't even go skiing today due to ultra high winds keeping the chair lift non-operational. Oh well... guess I'll have to stay in and sew!

I've been plugging away this week on a UFO from way back... Jewel Squares from Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Patchwork. (Click the book image and you'll see the original version). This UFO got lost in space for a while. I actually started it in 2011 and re-discovered it on a closet clean out. Finally, I've finished all those fiddly little paper-pieced blocks. There are 155 of them, ranging in size from 9 inches to 1 and 1/2 inches. Yikes!

And here they are laid out... though I couldn't actually start sewing them due to technical difficulties. I took a little break from quilting to do a repair job on a piece of Himself's clothing. Turns out my dear Pfaff wasn't a fan of so many layers of heavy fabric! I was forced to bust out the back-up...

Himself's first Christmas present to me...

Just part of why Q-A hates paper piecing!

The snow's still falling... but even I have to leave the studio once in a while!

J