My favorite quilt

There's a party going on over at Mary's blog.. she wants to see our favorite quilts.  I like a lot of the quilts I've made.  Some that I see every day I'm tired of, and others that I've given away I've almost forgotten about.. but there's one that I'm happy to catch glimpses of every time I walk through the house.  I'm happy to make George's bed every day.  The Spider web is my favorite:

 I made this quilt for George, with George, in 2010.  I love so many things about it, all the memories, all the fabrics.. The light blue background was a Ralph Lauren shirt of my husband's.  The deep blue border was a print I found a JoAnn's.  Before George was born, I bought baby stuff in greens and browns, the nursery was painted green, his baby quilt was green, blue & yellow.. but after I met him and got to know him.. he's not really a brown kid.  He was much more primary colored.. So I made this quilt with red (at the time I really didn't like red, but it kept creeping into my quilts) and blue.  He was 2 years old, by the way..
(after that he went through a Red & Grey period, followed by a Green & Grey period, then it was just Grey.. and now that he's in kindergarten, his favorite color is Pink.)

Spider web quilts take a long time to make, so I have lots and lots of process shots..
I foundation pieced the triangles onto a paper my husband had written.  And when it was time to remove the paper, George helped.

When the quilt was done (a few weeks after the local annual quilt show, so I didn't get to show it), we used it, and used it, and used it.  I think George got tired of the photo shoots, but I couldn't get enough.

When I made this quilt, I was really in my groove .  Going back and looking at pictures, I was so into quilting.  I mean,  I'm still so into quilting, but lots has changed, life has gotten so much fuller.. I finished grad school, went back to work, wrote a book, had a baby, and stopped working again.  Now I'm a full time mom.  And I mean FULL TIME.  Really, I'd like a break.  Just half a day to sit in the sewing room and play, or clean, or iron even!  So I can look at this quilt and look back on that time.. when things were simpler.  Remember the happiness then and enjoy it.  

  

A note about the quilting... it was an early attempt at free motion.  I did it on my Kenmore.  Ripping the papers out had loosened a lot of the seams so I wanted to quilt it densely for strength.  My lines are wobbly and uneven, but I kept going and quilted it with passion.  I remember enjoying the quilting process.  And now when I run my hand over it when George is tucked in bed, I think, "That was me.  I made this."  And I'm proud of myself for the effort.  

31

Ok, before I get into the body of this post, today is my birthday and I'm 31.  After a discussion at the Metro Mod mtg yesterday, I'm curious to know how old you are.  Please take a second and post an anonymous comment with your age only.
Just trying to get a grasp of blog-reader-demographics.  please play along :)
Ok, now on to the fun stuff..

How wonderful it was that the NYC Metro Mod guild meeting happened to fall on my birthday weekend!  So I baked these, which were so yummy.  The quilting was amazing, as usual.  I am continually amazed at the versatility of these quilters.  One meeting it's EPP hexies, the next a super huge log cabin, and another time it's a totally modern free form block of solid strips.  (Yeah Mary, it's all you).  I love learning about these artisans through just a glimpse of what they choose to share at each meeting.  It's like reading a really good book but you only get to read one chapter every 2 months.  It's not so much drama and suspense, but getting to watch the relationships form and creativity unfold.  I don't think there could have been a better birthday present..

Lisa and I covertly planned to wow them with two finished spiderwebs side by side.  To our surprise, Carol had one to show too!

Nicole's medallion.  Excellent placement of values..

Kim's hand applique.  They give me free-time envy..

I remember discussing this quilt at 15 mins play a few months ago, but I was stunned to put two and two together and finally see that the quilter was Margaret, OUR Margaret.  It was so cool to see this quilt IRL.

Mary's finished quilt from the Threads Together Bee.  I love seeing Bee blocks reach the "finished quilt" stage.

And here's how our scrap challenge project is coming along.  In May I took home a bag of Janet's scraps.  I made a bunch of "housetop" blocks and showed them off at the October meeting, but didn't know what to do with them after that.  Andrea quickly volunteered to add on to it, and we passed it on to Victoria yesterday.  So it has become sort of a collaboration/Round Robbin by accident.  Love it!  Can't wait to see what it looks like by February.  If I had to guess Victoria's path, I'd say she'll either slash it, or add on to make it king size.. what's your prediction?

Accomplishments

Accomplishments today:

• Christmas tree is up.
• found usb cord for the voice recorder (or, well, discovered that the cable from Scout will also work for the recorder..)
• transcribed the first 2 minutes of a 5 minute oral interview for my Pedagogical Grammar paper.
• read two chapters for Phonetics/Phonology class tonight (current topics: ambisyllabicity and stress attracting suffixes.  I LOVE this stuff!) *note: don't click the links unless you're an English language nerd/fanatic
• Took pictures of the Spiderweb quilt which is done done done! (except for a trip thru the wash and burying a few last threads)

I used one of C's old Polo Ralph Lauren oxford shirts for the background and I would have made it bigger except that I ran out of shirt fabric and didn't want to splice in anything else.

The label was my 2nd attempt at piecing letters.  I pieced it into the back and quilted over it, so in case I have more kids in the future, there won't be any arguments over who this quilt belongs to.

I used the tutorial available on Bonnie Hunter's webpage and if I were to do it again (which I'd love to, but i have quite a few reservations), I'd use thinner paper for the foundations and remove it before stitching the blocks together.  I like how Bonnie uses deli waxed paper sheets for some of her foundation piecing, and I'd love to get my hands on a big box of the stuff (prefferably the 12" x 12" sheets) but the restaurant supply shop in my neighborhood is not open to the public and I don't have any friends in the restaurant business anymore.  If you know of anywhere I can look or buy some, please leave a comment!  I loved constructing this quilt and would really like to do another, but I can't do it on notebook paper again...

The next few weeks are jam packed with appointments, To-dos, and deadlines so I'm doing my best to stay on top of as much as I can.  right now I have a note book with 4 pages of lists going.. Do you have any secrets for surviving the hectic month of December?

a great ending to a good day

so I finished quilting the spiderweb tonight, and though I don't have any pics yet I was kind of feeling pretty awesome for just sitting down today and tackling it, especially because the quilting just came out of my hands and the machine and onto the quilt so naturally.  It gave me an amazing rush and it was so much fun..
I thought this would be a great end to a good day, but then I saw this and fell in love.
Oh. 

(and i kind of wrote an inappropriate comment on the pic before I realised it was a self portrait...oops)

Ripping when I need to

I'm not a perfectionist, by any means.  Most often, done is better than perfect and I really enjoy the little nuggets of imperfection that get stitched into my projects because they stand as a reminder of the process and I feel I can remember that particular day of sewing a little bit more.  That said, there are just some ugly stitches that I can't ignore. 
Here's my most recent glowing example:

The lines on this quilt are not supposed to be even or even smoothly curved, but sometimes the "process" gets hijacked by the weight of the quilt and the lack of strength in my shoulders, compounded by the speed of my foot in relation to the speed of my hands.. and, well, you know the story.  So today I ripped.  And then the kid woke up and we had a photo shoot..

Progress on this one is slow going, but for now we are warm enough with the two quilts already on the bed so there is no real need to finish quickly.  I would like to show it off at some meetings and maybe a quilt show though, so I'll keep it at the top of my quilt priority list.
What's on your quilt priority list?

That's one big spider!

Today I started quilting my spiderweb.  The quilt isn't that big but it just seems so bulky to push around under my machine.  I'm trying to quilt all the webs first and then I'll go back and fill in the stars.  I like how the quilting in the webs is coming along (loopy circle-y things), but I have no idea what to do for the stars, any suggestions?

Oh, and thanks for finding me at my new blog, btw.  I thought with Bloglines folding at the end of the month now would be a good time to make the switch public (though I've had it in mind for a few months), and give everyone a chance to update their blogrolls and new Google Reader accounts with my new address.  FYI, I've changed my email as well, the junkmail on the old account was getting a bit tiring to wade through everyday.  If you've just found me through flickr or somewhere, please say hi!