Thursday, December 29, 2011

Let's start the year end party early!


It's the last Friday of the year!!  and it's my turn to host TGIFF! (for real this time!)
I'm posting Australian time, but I hope to update by Friday night (NY time) with an actual finish of my own.. My stitch n bitch is underway as we speak, so wish me luck~
***ETA**
Applique Laurel Leaf block is DONE!!  and it's still Thursday in New York!  That means i can go on to finish another project before tomorrow night, right?
I'm sorry I didn't have a completed, bound, washed quilt to share this week.. but this one block does feel like quite the accomplishment.  It was Shelly's October block for our Two's Company Bee (totally inspired by the Infinite Variety show in NYC last March), and I'm late, but at least it's finished.  Hopefully I can get it to the post office tomorrow and that'll be one big item off my year-end to-do list (you know, the "let's finish all this stuff before 2012" list..).
Did you finish anything this week?  Please link up and share!  It's the end of the year, let's start celebrating~

busy fingers

Which UFO will get my attention today?

The mini-quilt that's so old we used to call it a "wall hanging":

Or the overdue bee block that took way longer than a month to complete?  (but that I love because it reminded me how much I used to enjoy applique.)


Being that it's still only Thursday morning here in New York, and I've got a couple of quilters coming over for a stitch n bitch today, I think the odds are pretty good that I'll have a finish this week for TGIFF!  I'm hosting the party this week (It'll go live in a few hours actually), so be sure to stop back and link up  your finishes!


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Felt Stockings

Last year Nifty posted her felt Christmas stocking and surmised it must have been a popular style in the 1950s..
I must agree with her.  My mother is one of 8 children and these stockings hang on my grandmother's fireplace every year.  I believe grama made each one, and I remember noticing as a kid that the older the sibling, the more complex the stocking.. (Mom was the youngest, I think her felt figures were glued on..).  Didn't phase me much growing up that Grandma had raised 8 kids, but now as I struggle day to day to stay sane with my only child, I wonder how she did it.
(Christmas 1966?)

In age order:








And for the record, I bought George's stocking from Pottery Barn..
(George's first Christmas, 2008)

Saturday, December 17, 2011

I just don't know if I can do it..

I washed the quilt.  I folded it and put it in the box.

I took it out again and did another photoshoot..




I sadly put it in the box again but I'm procrastinating from taping it up and actually driving to the post office..

I gotta fall in love with a new quilt fast and forget about this one.. it's just so hard. 

Friday, December 16, 2011

Friday?! Already?

Just as I caught myself thinking that December was moving along nice and slow.. here we are in the middle, and another TGIFF! party is upon us.  I finished the binding on this baby last night as I momentarily set aside a pile of grading to catch up on some netflix TV (re-watching season 2 of Glee, loving every minute!), and figured I might as well finish this one off and get it in the mail before Christmas.
I started this quilt sometime in the spring? summer?  as a simple piecing-- mindless sewing project to zip through the machine when I only had a short bit of time to sew.  The blocks grew, and grew.  It was fun to play with chunky scraps and I really let the size of the scrap determine the shape of the log cabin.. I didn't trim the logs down to any certain size before assembling the blocks. 

Actually, in the beginning I chain pieced a bunch of centers onto random sized strips and then cut them apart, pressing, trimming, and repeating for the next log.  I had no plan for the blocks and no idea how large I wanted to make them.  I though I'd just keep going til they looked big enough, then measure to find  the size most of them ended up being, and go from there.  In the end I trimmed them down to 11" square.  Some blocks have 3 rings of logs on all sides, some have only 2 rings on the white sides.  Whatever.  I was really not worried about anything with this quilt, and let it grow into its own.
I threw them up on the design wall last month and this layout just sort of happened.  No thought, just play.  I finished the last 6 blocks and pieced it right after Thanksgiving.  I was hoping to present it as a housewarming present when we travel to Chicago in January, but oops, I finished it early so it can be a Christmas present instead. 

I hope it keeps its new family warm..

Sunday, December 11, 2011

the December crunch

I spent 7 hours working on this quilt on Thursday, from basting to attaching the binding.  I tried to take some pics along the way and thought I'd share my process. (I had really wanted to write this post Thursday, but once I started working, I didn't want to stop to post, and then once the quilt was at a good stopping point, my arms were too tired to post, haha).

I timed myself during the basting and binding, and found that it took just about an hour to baste, and then only another 60 minutes to cut, join, press, pin and attach the binding. 




At the end of the night I took the quilt down to the living room to show C, shook it out and said, "Ta da!" hoping he would be as impressed with my progress as I was. 
Me: "Look, I did all this today"
Him: (not really phased) "how long does it usually take you?"
Me:  "For the amount of work I did just today?  About 8 naps."


I would have liked to take more pics of the quilting and squaring up, but it was already dark and I knew they wouldn't come out that great.  I did snap this one of my improv binding holder-- usually I wind binding around a piece of cardboard as I press it so it's more manageable to attach to the quilt.  Well, I cleaned the sewing room last month and couldn't find a piece of cardboard anywhere.  But, george had been playing with his train set in the sewing room earlier, so I grabbed one of the track pieces and.. it worked perfectly.
Part of me thought I should just push on through and hand stitch the binding like a mad woman so it could be done for a Friday Finish.. but that didn't happen.  Guess there's always next week..

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