My "final" selection for Chasing Chevrons

I have so many WIPs right now that I actually have no business thinking about a new quilt, but what can I say? I like thinking about patterns and how I would do them differently. My fiancée likes to joke about my cooking television show - "the tall order chef" - in which I will take a meal that should take half-an-hour and instead make it take 3 hours. Perhaps that is true of my quilting as well, but you never know until you try! I'm going to try the grid method and Thangles for my half-square triangles for Chasing Chevrons - measured my fabric pieces last night so I can figure out the best use of the fabric. Also, instead of cutting all the background blocks and then sewing them back together, I'm going to figure out larger units to cut. This is partly because I don't have 3.5 yards of fabric for my background so I'm hoping those seam allowances will help make my 3 yards and a few inches work, and partly because I like making things harder in the name of making them easier! Also, it has a lot to do with little time in the sewing studio and lots of time waiting around - commuting, waiting for mark-ups to begin in noisy environments where actual work would be difficult, brief lunch breaks, etc.

So these are the fabrics that I think I'm happy with (after pulling lots of other combos). I was going to go with a light gray background, but the background is such an integral part of the quilt design and I love this aqua so much (and other than white or snow or various grays, I don't have huge pieces of fabric in my stash). I've either bought fabric for something specific or I've bought, at most, 2 yards (and usually 1 or even a half yard) for my stash. Of course, since I've pledged to myself not to buy any more fabric for 6 months (or until I significantly use up what I have), that limits my options a bit.

I plan on keeping enough of each print to make a scrappy binding - I think that might look especially good with this quilt.

So I'll plan, and I'll keep trying to clean out the studio so I can work in earnest soon - I folded a bit more fabric last night between turning off the work laptop at 10:30 and falling into bed! Can't wait to have everything organized to my liking! And all because I needed to find batting for Anne's quilt! I found it tonight, but managed to rewrinkle my top and back, so hopefully tomorrow night I can unearth the ironing board, give them a good press, and get that sucker basted!

Cindy and Sarah, thanks so much for your nice comments! I did get to peak at Aileen the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but she slept during our entire visit! She is really cute, though! Her poor mom had been asleep when we got there, and I've never seen Anne look so tired. I have to say, if my most energetic friend was that tired, I'm not sure how Bryan and I will survive a baby, since we're both older than the new parents by quite a bit (and will be even older by the time we get around to getting pregnant). So, I think I should make some baby things for our child in advance, just in case I end up sleeping every moment our baby is asleep! For tonight, though, I should go to sleep while our cat is asleep! She's been giving us practice waking up before the alarm, but I suspect tomorrow I'll be up before her for my Pilates class. I love Pilates...I must to wake up at 6 am! Hopefully I'll get some actual sewing time this weekend, and until then, I'll plan!

Behind again...

I'm behind again on my blogging, but I got in some lovely sewing time on Friday and finished the front and back of Anne's mini-quilt. I added some borders after taking this picture, so it's now about 28" square, I think.

Once again, I love my log cabin scrappy back...just enough fabric to finish it (and hoping the binding I made for the first quilt will have enough left over (planned overs, my mom calls them) to finish - otherwise, I'm in trouble).

I was trying to find batting, which lead to the long awaited major sewing room reorganization. The problem is that work promises to be insane for the next 3 weeks, and I can barely step into the room right now. Not good!

I did finally decide on my fabrics for the chasing chevrons quilt along - will try to get a picture up soon, along with my photo tour of the Capitol Dome!

Sorry for going back to my absent blogger ways...lots to share, but not enough hours in the day (or, rather, higher priorities for those hours...pies needed to be baked, green bean casserole needed to be prepared, and our Porksgiving extravaganza needed to be enjoyed! That's right - we celebrated Thanksgiving with delicious pulled pork BBQ (smoked a pork shoulder all day!), sweet potatoes, spoon bread, Not Your Mama's Green Bean casserole, pumpkin pie and pecan pie. Fresh dinner rolls on Saturday for eating leftover BBQ sandwiches was a real hit, too! Wish we could do it all again next weekend!). We also had a major housecleaning - finished hanging our pictures, and I even finished unpacking my clothes from when I moved in back in March! Not sure what I'll do now that I don't have to step over suitcases on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night! And a vacuumed living room...were we abducted by aliens and reprogrammed...perhaps!

Hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings, too!

Slow progress

I understand now why basket weave sashing is not all the rage! Progress is slow, and without my scraps to keep myself straight, it would be impossible. But, with that said, I'm enjoying the puzzle-like nature of it. I thought about taking it to the guild meeting to try to finish before seeing Anne this afternoon, but I think I'm too dependent on my design wall, so oh well...I'll just have to visit again soon when it is finished!

Update: As of Sunday night, I had completed the top half of the quilt, and it looks fabulous!  I made plentiful use of a new bottle of "Best Press" that I bought at Capital Quilts after the DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting on Saturday - wow - where was that all my life?!?  I have been using spray starch occasionally, but I'm extremely sensitive to scents (aka massively allergic to most scented things - scented candles = itchy, red, oozy, angry skin), so I was delighted to find an unscented starch alternative that isn't in an aerosol bottle.  

Anyway, I did have to do some seam ripping (including the fact that I figured out I'd sewn 1 block incorrectly...you can just see it peaking from the bottom of this picture).  Ah well - that's what seam rippers are for!  But...I foresee the second half being a little easier, now that I'm getting a feel for it.  And, in looking at this quilt all together, I think that there would actually be some easier ways to piece it.  Cindy was right - it really doesn't look anything like the garden fence anymore...I was pretty surprised at how much making the inverse of the pattern changed the look.  Good to know for the future!

So, when I have the whole top together, I'll be asking for your opinions on a new name!  

Lobster and Mushroom Cream Sauce over Pasta - "It's what's for dinner"

On weeks like this, when work is really difficult, exhausting, and frustrating, I like to spend my train ride to and from the city imagining what I would sew if I had more time in my studio. I'm pleased if I can just get dinner done and the dishes cleaned up before collapsing (and I've learned from experience that sewing is a mistake when I'm that tired!). Imagining is definitely the way to go!

Last night, after racing the whole day, I needed to cook a nice dinner for us using the old "what ingredients are in my fridge?" method of meal planning. I was lucky, because the ingredients were pretty awesome!

I had most of a perfectly cooked lobster from my incredibly awesome "Master Chef" series cooking class at Culinaerie in D.C. on Tuesday night (the topic was crustaceans, and the shrimp bisque and jambalaya leftovers had already made for a pretty above average lunch!). So, after getting our hunger in check with a couple of bites of leftover red beans and rice that Bryan couldn't finish on Tuesday while I was in class, I used the new method we learned for de-shelling the lobster (brilliant), cut my beautiful whole claw and tail meat into smaller bites the size of the pieces from the knuckles, melted some butter in a pan, and tossed in the lobster just long enough to warm it. Wish I had an appetizer like that every night! I think Bryan really extra-appreciated how worthwhile my class is as we fed each other warm, buttery lobster! The secret - bring the pot of water to a boil, put in the lobster, and start timing when the water comes back to the boil. Cook for 9 minutes for a 1 pound lobster, adding 1 minute for each additional quarter pound. Pull it out of the water, grasp it with a towel and quickly remove the tail and claws. Toss the claws back in the boiling water for another 2 minutes, and quickly cool each piece as it comes out of the water (run it under cold water or toss it in an ice bath) to prevent the residual heat from over cooking it. My chef-teacher made an incredible Asian-style lobster salad with a lemongrass aioli, shiitake mushrooms sautéed in sesame oil, sesame seeds, scallions, and cilantro (as I recall without looking at my notes). It was fabulous, but lobster in plain melted butter is pretty hard to beat!

Anyway, I then threw together a portabello and button mushroom cream sauce with shallot, rosemary, thyme, and white wine over some Super-pasta, with a side of steamed broccoli. Not bad for a weeknight supper (understatement!), but definitely the explanation for no sewing progress. I'm out with a friend tomorrow, so it looks like Friday night will be my night to finish Anne's quilt before visiting her and meeting Aileen for the first time on Saturday. Hopefully it will go speedily, and if not, I'll finish it by the time they are back from Thanksgiving! One thing I've decided...I have enough stress without stressing over my hobby!

I'll have a cool post, hopefully tomorrow, showing the one really awesome, special thing I got to do today. Here's a hint...

Housework!

So, sadly, the long weekend went by without any sewing. :( Bryan and I are hosting his mom and uncle for Thanksgiving, so we spent the long weekend focusing on getting the house in order. Little things like replacing the powder room toilet, which turned out to be much more difficult than our first toilet replacement in Bryan's bathroom. We'd grown so confident after our first try was so successful, but apparently we need toilet shims or something, since the toilet is at least 1/2 inch off the floor and shifts when weight is applied. Wish us luck - we'll need it!

Our big focus was consolidating/organizing/hanging artwork. Bryan's dad, Claude, is a very talented painter, and we had a number of unframed canvases that we wanted to hang, as well as a huge stack of art his mom no longer wanted but that Bryan kept for the frames. So the process began of trying to find appropriate frames for our favorites. We had some success! A few of the combos worked so well that we decided we couldn't have found a better match if we'd had them custom framed. Check these out!

The sailboat with the yellow mat is incredibly special to me. I am not a painter, but on our last visit to Greenville, I got my long-standing wish of a painting lesson. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Claude paint, hearing him explain how he goes about it, and just having that quiet time with him. Here's my version...and let's just say it will not be framed for viewing, but I'm keeping it with his painting. Someday, I'll be able to show Claude's grandchild the paintings that he and I worked on together, hopefully alongside many canvases painted by Bryan.

Bryan is also a very talented painter, though I didn't know that until that visit. After my painting lesson, Bryan sat down and painted a picture from a photo that he took on our vacation to Croatia last year.   It's the image I put in my mind when I need to relax, and I was pretty blown away that Bryan could paint that well after not doing it for so many years. He gave the painting to his dad - a long overdue promised gift, and I'm hoping he'll paint another version for me someday. Amazing how special art made by someone you know and love can be! Whether it is a quilt or a painting, family heirlooms can be created if the intention to share a special gift or talent is there, and that process of creating together can strengthen bonds in a really unique way, I think. I still think fondly of sewing time with my grandmother and playing in the wood shop with my grandfather, and I miss them more because of that time spent together in a tangible activity that allowed me to get to know them in a different way.

And speaking of sharing experiences, I missed my mom this weekend when Bryan and I ran up to a French pastry shop in Baltimore for one of these! My mom and I love to travel to Paris together. Our last trip was 5 years and 1 month ago, right before I started my current job. It was a celebration of passing the Georgia Bar exam and becoming a "real lawyer", and we celebrated with our favorite - a choux chantilly from our favorite shop - Tout au Beurre. This picture is of the deluxe version of a cream puff - a Saint Honore - from Patisserie Poupon.  It was delightful! 

Great progress and Quilt Along

I've been hard at work on the mini-quilt, except for a brief pause on Monday night to attempt to make my fiancee a sleep mask.  It was not a success, mostly because of a misunderstanding on how he wanted the design.  For some odd reason, he thinks that having a triple layer of tightly-woven fabric completely covering his nostrils might make breathing difficult...what a concept!  (Though he did agree that having the nose piece does really prevent the light from coming in and helps it stay in place!)  As an untrainable mouth breather, it never occurred to me, but that's ok - I'll now have a back-up mask once I finish hand-stitching the bias binding, and I'll keep working on the design in hopes that I can share a little insight.  I've so far learned what not to do, and that's a good first step!

This is where I started sewing last night on the mini-quilt, and by the end of the evening, I'd finished piecing all the blocks and made my scrappy pink sashing (though I still need to iron it - I made one very long piece of pink awesomeness!).  Next step, green sashing, and then I need to think about how I want to piece it.  I'm thinking about trying to do a sort of basket-weavy design to mimic some of the ins and outs of the green and pink...can't wait to play tonight after dinner! 

This is moving fairly far from the garden fence design - I might need to give it a new name (since mini inverse basket-weavy garden fence is a bit long)!  What do you think, Cindy?  Have I strayed enough to give it a new name?  Or do you want to see the finished version before deciding?!?

My binding is already made, so after I get the top done, I just need to come up with a back (which I keep wanting to start on, but I'm waiting to see the final size of the top first, since I may decide it needs a border of the floral on the white background...won't decide until I'm there!)  That back will be the most challenging, as my fabric scraps are getting quite depleted - it will definitely be improvisational, but I'm fairly sure that I have enough - glad I made the binding first (and I saved the trimmings from the big quilt, so I may resort to piecing those little bits if I have to)!  Of course, if I have any leftover, I'm excited to try making a baby bucket hat from the Oliver + S book that was featured on a blog the other day...and the cycle continues!

And in other news, I've decided to try my first quilt-along!  Jennifer from That Girl, That Quilt is hosting a Chasing Chevrons quilt along, and it looks like fun!  I've watched so many quilt alongs, but I have so many projects on my to-do list that I've always felt guilty jumping into a new one.  Well, I've finished a lot of quilts lately, and this blog is making me feel like I can get even more accomplished (mostly because of such great encouragement - thanks for all the great comments, and a special thanks to everyone who is now publicly following me - it is nice to know that I have more readers than just my mom and a few old friends!).

I'm so excited to see how it goes, and I'll try to share any changes I make or different techniques that I prefer, as well! 

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone, and wish me luck!  I'm hoping to finish this quilt in time to enter it in the Sew Mama Sew mini quilt contest on Monday!



Another layout

So this is what Cindy's suggestion looks like on the design wall (though imagination is needed for the sashing-still not wanting to cut it all until I'm sure!)

What do you think? I think it is my winning layout so far. Sarah - I know what you mean about the potential of the sashing to break up the design, but I didn't think it looked right when I tried it with no sashing - too much white, I thought (though I appreciate the suggestion).

Mini, inverse Garden Fence

Wow - I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the positive feedback on the original quilt for Aileen!  Thank you all for making me feel so good - I now understand why people take the time to blog!

I'm a pretty frugal person, and I love the challenge of using scraps from one quilt to make another one - especially because, in this case, the other quilt ended up pretty large, I just adore these fabrics, and I am not ready to be done with them!  I also thought Anne would enjoy having a smaller version to throw over Aileen in the stroller or car seat.  So as I was working on the big quilt, I had lots of strangely sized scraps that I cut into 1" width strips that I could use to make a half-scale, inverse of the original. 

So, I cut 16 (actually 18, because I can't count) 2.5" squares of the white-on-white and then surrounded each square with my 1" strips of the prints cut to either 2.5" or 3.5" lengths.  I ended up with a 3.5" block.  I then cut print pieces that were 1" x 1.5" and sewed them between strips of white that were 1.5" x 2.75".  (I started trying to differentiate between the two sides and was sewing some of the print pieces to 1.5" x 1.75" pieces, but I decided I wanted the design freedom to have them all fit either side, and then I'd trim the extra white off as I pieced the blocks.  There was some level of planning involved at this point, in that I wanted the prints in the outer strip to match what was in each block, so I figured out how many sides featuring each print I'd need (since I'd been fairly random on the blocks, just trying to use up the smaller pieces as much as possible, the prints aren't distributed evenly (because I wanted to save the biggest pieces for the back of this quilt - I thought I had an uncut fat quarter left, but realized that I used most of it for the center square of the back of the other one - d'oh!)).

Then I went to work.  Because many of prints were used in small numbers and I was working from scraps (including extra pieces of the 1.5" white border from the back of the big quilt), the usual method of cutting all the pieces and then chain sewing the units worked well for each little set.  But, I had about 4 prints for which I was going to be using a longer piece, so I used a more efficient technique.  For example, the green with small multi-colored "lanterns" (as I dubbed them) would be 14 sides, or 21" of the print to be sandwiched, so I cut 2 2.75" x WOF strips of the white, cut them down to 22-ish", sewed them to either side of my green strip that was also about 22", pressed the seams open, and then subcut my units from there.  Much faster and more accurate, I think - especially because I could resquare them as I cut along the strip, which I found I needed to do several times.  Also, once I decide on layout, I'll be trimming everything to make sure it is all perfect, anyway, since I'm pretty hung up on precision, especially in a design like this.  I love "intentional wonky", but that's different!

So, here's where I need your help.  I'm very torn on the best layout.  The layout in the first picture was suggested by my lovely fiancee (because he was so helpful in the final layout of the other quilt), and I like that because you see a bit more of the pattern.  But with that pattern, it is slightly more difficult to decide on sashing placement - thus I played with scraps below to try to figure out what would look best.

Then, I decided to try my original idea of switching the sides (below), so that in each block, all of the verticals are one print while all the horizontals are the other print.  And then I thought I would alternate the blocks.  I was then thinking about trying to do a double layer of sashing with the floral print on the white background between the pink and green print.  The downside of that design is that you lose the linking that comes from those little bits of print moving out from the central block.  I should have laid that out, too, but I didn't want to cut that fabric down if I wasn't going to use it.

Anyway, I'd love your opinion and feedback on either of the above choices or on a different way entirely. Another thought is to use the final concept but make it only 3 blocks square, instead of 4, and end up with two tops.  I'd be slightly afraid to try to use them as a front and back, since the chances of me aligning them perfectly seems slim, but I could try.  Or, I could back the second one with one of the fun batiks that I've found to match the colors.  Hmmm...maybe even have a quilt to sell to cover the costs of all the fabric I've been buying for charity quilts of late...that's another idea!

I'll set this aside until sometime this weekend (though it kills me because I want to get it done!), but I'd really like your feedback.

In the meanwhile, I've had an order placed by said lovely fiancee for an eye mask.  I've been wearing ones that I've gotten from airlines for a few years, which is pretty ridiculous since I can sew!  He tried mine the other day and saw the beauty of it (plus, I've never made the black-out curtains that I promised to make back in April, so this will be a good short term solution until I'm ready to tackle that task...after I finish cleaning up/organizing the Woman-cave (aka studio)!).  I'll try to actually take some pictures and write my first tutorial as I go, since I'd guess that these could make fun Christmas presents.  I mean, really...the gift of good sleep is priceless!  And hopefully by this time next week I'll have another completed quilt to show off, and my design wall can once again be covered in a storm-at-sea quilt that I desperately need to finish!

A quilt for Aileen Ruth

I've been calling this quilt "Anne's quilt" over the last few months of working on it, because my dear friend from law school, Anne, was having a baby girl.  Well, I just heard from Anne that said baby girl arrived yesterday, so I can now retitle this quilt "Aileen's quilt". 

(Forgive the strangeness of the picture - I had it turned sideways when we took the picture on Monday night, but through the power of photo-editing, it is now the "correct" orientation!)

I am so incredibly happy for Anne and Cillian on the beginning of their family, and I'm very happy to have been able to be a tiny part of the nesting experience!  Congratulations, y'all!

Anne is one of the first people whom I taught to quilt.  It's hard to believe, but that's been almost 6 years ago now.  Anne wanted to make something for Cillian's sister, Clodagh, for her new baby, and I confidently told Anne that we could finish a quilt in a weekend, no problem!  :)  OK, well, we did get the fabric purchased and the top pieced in a very long day, but I might have underestimated the time it would take to make.  I'm so glad, though, that Anne got hooked, because she has become my faithful quilting buddy, and I think at this point that she's probably finished as many quilts as I have, which is especially awesome since she hand-quilts them.  I love hand quilting, but having finished a huge batik sampler that was hand-quilted over multiple years, I've been sticking to a combination of machine and hand-quilting on most of my recent quilts.

Of course, one thing that also really slows me down is that I like having pieced backs, too.  This quilt, though, took the concept to the extreme.

I had a nice 2 yard piece of the white background flower print that I bought with Anne in mind quite awhile ago, since I knew she liked those shades of pink and green.  (Part of the hint was a great large bag that she made for me out of those colors to haul around my quilting stuff in several years ago!)  But, I really wanted to save that yardage for a coordinating crib sheet, so I was determined that I could make the back using up scraps from the front and the extra fabric we had leftover from making the crib skirt and cushion covers for the nursery.  I came up with this design based largely on what fabric I had left, and I actually like the back just as much (maybe even more) than the front.

In this picture, you can see a bit more of the nursery.  We made the crib skirt together (and I made it way more complicated than it needed to be, but it is awesome - the pattern continues around the ends, even though it is from a separate piece that overlaps to go around the crib hardware!).  I helped a bit with the rocking chair cushion covers, though re-covering an oddly shaped cushion and trying to put batting underneath to block out the former gray cover was way more challenging than I would have expected (or I was having a really off day!).  Anne, though, managed to figure out the bottom cushion while I was throwing my hands up and losing all self-confidence, so there you go!  And Anne made the incredibly cute pillow all on her own - I love it!  She also made a sweet valance that isn't pictured.

These two pictures show a little more detail of the quilting - I did a combination of machine quilting and hand quilting.

I didn't measure the finished size with the binding, but I think it was around 48" square.

The design on the front of the quilt is inspired by Hyacinth Design's Garden Fence, which I first saw in quilt form through Elizabeth Dackson's blog, Don't Call Me Betsy.  I'm so happy that both of these quilters shared their work on the Internet, because I just love the design and plan to make several more in a similar fashion.  I've changed the measurements slightly to accommodate charm packs and "dessert rolls" (5" by width of fabric strips), and I've been playing with ways to make the piecing more efficient.

Most of the fabric was the gypsy rose colorway of the Gypsy Bandana collection by Pillow & Maxfield for Michael Miller Fabrics.  I bought a collection of 12 fat quarters from Hancock's of Paducah for $19.98, and I had a white-on-white star print in my collection that I bought on one of the drives between home and law school 7-8 years ago at Mary Jo's in North Carolina.  I used Guterman 100% cotton white thread for piecing and their quilting weight cotton thread for the machine quilting.  I did my hand-quilting with a pink thread from Mettler.  I used bamboo batting, which Anne and I both love, though I seriously considered a higher loft polyester so that all of those many lines of quilting would show up better.  In the end, though, I wanted the breath-ability of the bamboo so that little Aileen wouldn't overheat!  I used my walking foot to go 1/4 inch from either side of all of the sashing, starting in the middle and working outward.  This would have been so much easier if I were more comfortable with free-motion straight-line quilting, because each 90 degree turn required a pretty major re-shift of the quilt.  If I were doing anything larger, I would use a different design (though I really like how the overlapping stitches worked out at various corners).

I'd been reading in Elizabeth Hartman's book The Practical Guide to Patchwork that she (and a lot of other folks in the modern quilt guilds, like Jacquie Gering of Tallgrass Priarie Studio) are proponents of ironing the seams open, so I tried that, because, well, I am really impressed by both of their work, and I'm always looking for a way to improve my techniques.  I was really happy as I was piecing the top because it seemed very flat, crisp, and accurate.  Indeed, I thought I was going to be a convert (and may still be), but I found I had a hard time when it came time to make the quilt sandwich.  I very carefully pressed my top and back (and I had been pressing my seams as I went along, of course), but when I laid my top on my batting and started trying to smooth and position it, I found that some of my seams were flipping around and being wonky.  I guess maybe that happens no matter how you press them, but because the piecing was so flat otherwise, it made it more obvious?  Also, I missed having the ditch to stitch in - I like how that looks so much, and for a design like this, I think it would be very effective, since there is so much already going on with the fabrics that the quilting was a less important design element.  If I were doing an all-over free-motion quilt design, though, I can see where the pressed open seams would be a real advantage.  More experimentation needed, clearly!

For the binding, I used an incredibly helpful tutorial from Shelley Rodgers that I must have seen a reference to on someone's blog (I'm sorry that I don't remember which one!).  I have always used straight-grain binding before and hand-sewn it onto the back using a blind hem stitch, but I think this quilt will get lots of use and love, so I wanted it to be more durable, and Shelley's arguments about bias binding made a lot of sense to me.  Her method is pretty awesome, plus I like doing math, and using her formulas and knowing how much binding I needed and how much of my oddly-sized piece I had left allowed me to cut off the perfect amount and conserve the rest!

I read several tutorials on machine binding, and I am still working on it.  I attached the binding to the front first, and I thought I'd be able to sew it from the top without being able to see that I was catching the binding on the back, but luckily I figured out on the first side that this wasn't a good method, so I flipped it over and sewed it from the back.  Luckily, the white border makes it fairly unnoticeable on the front, and I was able to fix the couple of places that weren't caught in the first seamline easily.

Of course, I still have some leftovers, so I'm working on a smaller quilt, too, for the car seat or stroller!  It's amazing how many quilts can be made out of a fat-quarter bundle and a little yardage leftover from other sewing projects!  I'm hoping I can get a good portion of it pieced tonight while my sweetie is at a concert.  We'll see if the cat lets me...she'd rather me sit and watch Project Runway so that I can provide a warm lap!

Anne bought some fabric for quilting, too, and she's got a fantastic top put together, too, which I'm sure will be done in no time - Anne is a pretty fast hand-quilter!  Be sure to check it out!

Finally, since this is one of my first big projects since I started the blog that I actually have pictures of (thanks Anne!), I'm going to try linking up to the Blogger's Quilt Festival, as well as Finish it Up Friday!

Blast from the past...a tribute to Carol!

I will be the first to admit that this whole blogging concept is rather new to me. I don't really know how it works, or how to set it up to let me know when I have comments. And so, just a few minutes ago, as I was about to start working on a post about Anne's finished quilt, I discovered a comment on another post from June from CAROL - my friend who I babysat for for several years when I was in my tweens/teens. I can't tell you how happy this made me! I don't even know how she found me on here, but I'm so glad that she did!

My brother, Rob, first babysat for Carol's older son, Frankie, but as my brother got older and more involved in high school activities, I inherited the role. Frankie was a great kid, but he was a kid, not a baby, and he could really wear me out trying to keep up with him (and yes, thinking of that makes me scared as we contemplate starting a family)! If I couldn't keep up with a 3-year old then, what makes me think I'll be able to at 39 or 40!? Of course, Carol is the answer to that question, too, since she had a great career as a businesswoman with a copier company, as I recall, before/during her kids early years.

When Carol had Michael in her late 30s (38?), I absolutely fell in love with this adorable little baby. I didn't even mind that I had to have a special outfit (called my "Michael" outfit...this fabulous knit shirt and shorts from Banana Republic) that I always wore because, without fail, he always spit up all over me at some point in my visit. It didn't matter...I could hold and rock and coo at Michael for hours (even if he fell asleep in my arms!). It was Carol who taught me all the early things I needed to know about taking care of children, and she really boosted my self-confidence/self-esteem by giving me a lot of responsibility for helping with him.

I remember once...I guess Frankie must have been somewhere else (pre-school or with his dad), and Carol and I took Michael to the grocery store. I carried him around while we shopped, and as we were checking out, the clerk made some comment to me about "how cute my baby was". I think I was maybe 12 or 13 at the time, so I was slightly appalled that anyone thought I was already having babies, but I was also very tall (at least 5'8" at that point...though I don't think I'd hit my final growth spurt to get me up to my current 5'11"+), and I doted on Michael like he was my baby, so it made sense. (This was in that strange time before MTV had shows about being "13 and Pregnant", so the concept was foreign to me, but I think I did like pretending that I was his mom!)

Of course, Carol taught me all sorts of things besides baby care. I loved all things "crafty", and my mom really was the opposite of crafty/artsy-fartsy (hysterical now that she runs an art gallery and makes fussy polymer clay jewelry and filgree work), so Carol was my substitute craft-mom. I remember us working on Halloween costumes for the kids, and we tried sewing clothes...a pair of shorts has been a source of quite a bit of laughter over the years, since I kept sewing them wrong...one time they looked like a skirt with an upside down "U" in the front and back. (Carol, I'm still not great at sewing clothes, though still trying occasionally!) I actually still have some of the early outfits we sewed at my parents' house, I think. Looking back on it now, I think that both Carol and my other babysitting customer (next door neighbor Cathy) probably liked having a girl to do girly stuff with, since they both had sons, plus I was a very eager and interested sponge for anything related to home-making/crafts. I was also a pretty mature kid, I think, perhaps because many of my friends from my childhood were neighborhood ladies or the wives of my dad's work colleagues. (When I was in second grade and living in Alabama, I liked to visit "Ms. Sheila" because she'd let me use pledge on her furniture (a big no-no in our home) and then we'd bake cookies...yes...this thought cracks me up now! If I don't have a daughter, I totally need to find a little girl who likes to dust and will clean my house in exchange for attention, kind words, and making cookies!)

This is a long lead-in (and fun trip for me down memory lane) to the story of my first ever quilt. I wanted to make something special for Michael, and I was primarily a cross-stitcher at that point, so I cross-stitched a really cute big bunny in the middle of a large block of teal fabric, and then I made a patchwork top of squares around the central square from dark teal and light teal. I feel certain I didn't bind it properly - I'd guess I did a fold-over binding. I think it was a tied-quilt, since I don't recall knowing how to actually hand-quilt at that point. This was probably about 20 years ago. The fabric was from Jo-Anns or Hancocks, and it had a sheen to it, so I wonder now if it was even cotton. I'm sure I bought it for the color (a color that I still love today). I actually found a scrap of that fabric when I was home in August going through old stuff that my mom has been storing for forever, and I brought it back up here, so I'll have to try to see if I can figure out the fabric content!)

Anyway, in Carol's comment on that other post, she let me know that Michael still has that quilt today! I cannot express how happy that makes me! I haven't seen any of them in many, many years...I got older and had my own high school activities (perhaps even more so than my brother), and then I went off to college and my parents moved away from the old neighborhood, and I lost touch. I saw that I had a follower named Carol, and I wondered who she was because the picture is so small that I couldn't really recognize her (and wondered who this person was, since I only have a few followers!). Of course, now it all makes perfect sense! Who better to see my evolution as a crafter than my first "craft-mom"!

So, Carol, if you see this, please look at my note on the bottom of the earlier post, and please send me an e-mail (ellegtown at gmail dot com) so I can get in touch with you. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to update this post with a picture of that old quilt that must be tattered and falling apart by now! And more importantly, I'll get to catch up with an old friend whom I met when she was just a few years older than the age I am now. Wow...what a fantastic blast from the past!

Progress on Anne's quilt

Today, I managed to get the quilt sandwich put together and pinned on Anne's quilt, and I did my first two lines of quilting. I always get hung up at the quilt sandwich stage, mostly because I don't love mopping the kitchen floor and then crawling around on my hands and knees. However, the quilt sandwich fairy never seems to stop at my house in the night to do it for me so...I finally did it! Can't wait to show off the finished photos, hopefully by the end of this week/weekend! Planning to do a combo of hand and machine quilting, and I've already made a bias binding for it, so as soon as the quilting is done, I can bind that baby and send it off to Anne!

Here's an early pic when it was up on the design wall.

Bryan was quite surprised when he saw it again as a finished top...can't understand why he couldn't tell exactly what it was going to look like when he saw it on the design wall! ;)

And here it is as a quilt sandwich! I need to photograph the back, too, as it turned out to be as cool as the front, I think.
To use up the remaining small scraps, I'm planning a matching mini-quilt (car-seat sized), but as much as I want to start piecing it, I'm going to get this quilted first.

100 Quilts for Kids

I've had so much fun learning about the quilt blogger community over the last few months, and I'm especially glad to have met Katie from Swim, Bike, Quilt. Katie is also a member of the DC Modern Quilt Guild, and for the second year in a row, she's put together a charity event called 100 Quilts for Kids to encourage quilters to make charity quilts for children.

I'm totally inspired by this and have lots of quilts in the works for it, but I only managed to finish one by the actual deadline (today), thanks to being sick and working on my friend Anne's quilt over the last month, since her baby is due in a week, and my friend Talia's storm at sea quilt, which I hoped to present on her 2nd anniversary, but alas...that was last week! (So many quilts, so little time, but lots of big finishes soon to report to all 5 of my followers!!!)

I went to my first DC Modern Quilt Guild Event in September, and it was a charity quilt sew-in on a Friday night. Although I did manage to get lost getting there, it was a really fun event with a lot of really nice women who were all there to help in one way or another with this awesome effort.
I pieced this top that evening with fabric I bought from Connecting Threads, though I still have to put together a back and get it quilted/finished. (This isn't just procrastination - I've got a neat plan for another quilt out of a jelly roll from the same fabric, and I want to use the remaining part of the jelly roll, along with the bit of yardage I bought, to make the pieced backs for both quilts.) I'm still learning about how to use blogger and how to photograph quilts. The first photo is the outside picture taken by my lovely assistant, Bryan! (If he reads this, it may be his last time being my lovely assistant!) The second one is from my "design wall" (aka a large piece of flannel tacked onto the wall of my sewing room!). I think I might like the inside picture better...especially because my legs aren't showing!


For the sew-in, Katie had received lots of great donated fabric from shops, other quilters, and her own stash, and when I saw this Eric Carle "Very Hungry Caterpillar" fabric, I knew I had to make a quilt for a child in need out of it. I love the "cheater print" in the center. I added the columns of color around it, and I like the way it came out.
I had originally planned to make a solid back, but then I wouldn't have been rushed, and that's no fun, so I pieced the back as well as the front. I managed to use up just about every scrap from the front, and I have some of the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" print leftover to send back to Katie for someone else to use for the rest of the prints that she had.
I kept the quilting very simple, and I decided to just use nice white cotton flannel for the batting so that it would be lightweight enough to be a "blankie" that a child can carry around all year. With such bright colors, it is as much about mental comfort as physical comfort! I decided to try a machine binding, so that it will hold up to years of washing, and I discovered that I like it.
I got to try out my new binding clips that I ordered from Hancock's of Paducah, and I love them! They will definitely save me some tired hands when I hand-finish my next binding, too!

I've been trying to decide where I wanted to donate this quilt, since there are so many worthy causes. At long last, I decided on "My Very Own Blanket" out of Westerville, Ohio, which, incidentally, is the town one of my dear friends grew up in. As she has been working with kids for a number of years after teaching in DC through Americorps, I thought it would be a nice tribute to her, as well as a great organization and a great cause. Having known a couple of people who grew up in foster care and had some pretty horrendous stories to tell, I like the idea of helping a child in foster care have something that is his or her very own.

A big thanks, once again, to Katie for putting this great event together. She made it happen, and the goal will be met (especially because I have 6 other charity quilts in the works in one form or another), so that is pretty incredible. Also, I want to give a big thanks to her sponsors, especially Pam at Del Ray Fabrics for the great donations and for a discount for fabric for charity quilts. I bought the red solid from her that I used in this quilt (and it will be featured in another charity quilt in much greater amounts!).

Finally, I can't end this post without a picture of my little helper. She is a very patient kitty, considering that she has really wanted to be in my lap throughout the time I've been working on this quilt. I keep trying to figure out how I can teach her to sew, but alas...I don't think there are enough treats to teach her to do that! For now, I'll just be happy if she'll quit trying to lay on my newly stacked fabric as I attempt to redo the sewing room and organize my fabric!

Thanks for reading! I hope to post some tutorials on my methods for making some cool quilts in the next few months, along with more pictures of quilts that are about to be finished (and someday I'll even post pics of the t-shirt quilt I made for my aunts...I realized that until this quilt, that is the only other quilt I've finished this year!) I'll have to remedy that soon!

Fabric obsession...

OK, I admit it. I'm obsessed with fabric. I love looking at it, thinking about it...even dreaming about it! I had so much fun with my friend Anne on Sunday looking at what was in my wishlist from Hancocks of Paducah and then finally placing my order on Monday night while they were having a 10% off sale (off of my already sale-priced fabric...too good not to buy lots of pretty batiks and Kona cottons). I'm slightly worried about Bryan's reaction when the box arrives at his office (way too valuable to be left on the front stoop!). He is really strong, but it is entirely possible that it will be too heavy to lift! I'm almost embarrassed about how much I bought...almost! :)

I have LOTS of fabric already. I'm hoping to get it all organized soon to take a picture of it spread out on all of my shelves (happy sigh). Indeed, my problem right now is too many fabric choices and not enough time to quilt with it. I'm hoping that will change soon, as I'm finally in the process of finishing up some really big projects.

My aunt's t-shirt quilt is so close to being done...I had thought I'd be able to finish it before New Orleans, but I've learned that when quilting in a hurry, I make time-consuming mistakes. That is part of why I shouldn't quilt late at night...I do stupid things like attach the side panel upside down, add the extra piece of batting that was meant for the other side, thus leaving me 3 inches short again, etc. I have finally figured out how I want to quilt it...right now, it is just quilted "in the ditch" around all of the t-shirts, with hand-quilting details on some of the shirts in a somewhat random fashion. I think I'm going to go back and add some additional straight-line quilting on the vertical columns to give some additional texture. I'm going to do something similar on the side panels, which, truth be told, are one of my favorite parts of the quilt. I did a row of "piano keys" in wonderful batiks...I'll take a picture before I put it in the mail.

N'awlins!

Bryan and I just got back from a really wonderful trip to New Orleans, where we ate, talked with family, ate, met some new-to-me family members, ate, ate, ate...you get the picture. The reason for the trip was a family reunion/crawfish boil at my uncle Dean's house on Saturday. My aunts Casey and Linda drove down from Champaign, Illinois, and joined the rest of the NOLA-branch of the family in meeting my fiancee! It's pretty neat - in one fell swoop he has now met everyone on the Sutherland side of the family save for my uncle Bud, who didn't make it out. I'd imagine it would have been more overwhelming had amazing crawfish not been involved.

I wanted to ease him into the scene, so the first night when we arrived we spent the evening just the two of us with a shrimp po' boy from DiMartinos as soon as we pulled into Algiers, followed by a quick trip to see my grandparents' old house, and then we checked in at our B&B. We stayed at the House of the Rising Sun B&B (http://www.risingsunbnb.com/), which turned out to be the perfect choice! Kevin, the owner, knew my grandmother, and we were barely in the door before I was learning about my family history and finding out that my 3rd cousin on one side and 2nd cousin on the other (hmmm...) was going to be in Algiers on Saturday - what fun! If you want a nice B&B with really wonderful hosts, check them out!

We had planned our trip around food, naturally, and decided to start our vacation with a stop at Commander's Palace. It was truly a dinner that I will remember! We decided that all of the appetizers sounded so amazing that we ended up splitting 4 appetizers, including a crawfish and dumplings dish that I wish I could have a vat of, as well as "shrimp and tasso henican" - described on the menu as "Louisiana wild white shrimp, Crystal hot sauce, pickled okra and five pepper jelly" but described by me as "yummo!". We each had a soup course - crawfish bisque and turtle soup for me, followed by an amazing heirloom tomato salad. We split shrimp and grits for an entree, and we were so full by that point that we didn't have room for the famed desert - Bananas Foster, so we instead split a Bananas Foster ice cream, which, while amazing, was definitely missing the flaming presentation! I want to go back there right now and do it all over again!

On Thursday, after a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit, Greek yogurt, and granola, we stopped in for a quick order of beignets and cafe au lait before heading an hour outside of New Orleans to meet my aunts at Middendorfs for some thin fried catfish strips. We had a nice meal, and more importantly, Bryan had a chance to meet the Sutherlands who I am the closest to - I love spending time with my aunts, and I'm so happy that we've reconnected and become so close in the last few years. Mom and I went up to Champaign last August during Casey's week off and had the greatest time making homemade pizza, eating, and just visiting...not unlike this trip!

After lunch, we followed my aunts back to town to my uncle's house, where Bryan got to meet 3 more relatives! We had dinner on Thursday at a restaurant called Bayona, which was quite lovely. If I had to choose between the two, I'd pick Commander's hands-down, but that said...Bayona's cookbook will probably be gracing my shelves along with the 2 that Commander's sells! Bryan had a lamb dish that was to-die-for, while I had a hanger steak that, while not New Orleansy, completely hit the spot, with its lovely Bernaise sauce, asparagus, and roasted potatoes. We tried to head to Brennan's for another shot at Bananas Foster, but no luck, so we walked down to the original Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter for the ultimate beignet experience - hot from the grease with a big glass of cold milk! What could be better!

I'll have to continue the saga later (and post some pics), as I need to get dinner on the table, but suffice it to say, we had a lovely time!

The Woman-Cave!

So, the move went surprisingly well, thanks to lots of help from my friend Anne, who spent a whole day helping me pack my kitchen and living room in advance, and my friends Talia and Aaron, who carried boxes and furniture on the day of the move. Bryan, of course, gets the MVP award (and he had the sore neck, back, and legs to prove it, since he and I unloaded the truck on our own in Bowie (which meant he unloaded all the heavy things!)). My mom, who helped pack the truck and the final odds and ends that are always impossible to deal with, gets the runner-up MVP award. It was definitely a team effort! We managed to get out of the apartment with a day to spare and very positive comments on the condition of the apartment from my landlord. I'm fairly certain I left it cleaner than I received it, which was my intent. Karma and all that!

In advance of the move, Bryan and I spent a lot of time completely clearing out the room formerly known as the guest room. There was a lot of stuff in there, so it was a big job, but we removed literally everything (even the blinds and old shelf in the closet!), and then set out to clean and repaint it. After priming everything and then painting the ceiling "Extra white" flat paint, the walls in "Morning Sun" "Eg-Shel" (that is how Sherwin Williams spells it!), and the trim in "Extra White" semi-gloss, it looks really fantastic! We used Sherwin Williams Harmony Paint, and I was really surprised at how pleasant it was to paint for many, many hours at a time thanks to the low odor and no VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

I'm so pleased with how the Woman-cave came out! We removed the closet doors to create a larger nook for my studio, and this past week we bought new shelf boards, brackets, and 2x4s to fix the old shelf and install a second shelf, along with a hanging rack in the closet. After priming and painting them white, they are ready for installation. I can't wait for the weekend to put it all up and to start unpacking fabric and getting everything situated! My old bedroom furniture is also in the room, so we still have a guest space, but I suspect the bed will be most useful as a laundry folding area/place for Bryan to lay and read/play Angry Birds by me while I'm creating.

And wow - I have so many things that I can't wait to create. I've been having such fun reading several modern quilting blogs, including www.filminthefridge.com, www.sewmamasew.com, http://tallgrassprairiestudio.blogspot.com/, and www.handmadebyalissa.com/. It is really neat to see women who are actively making and selling quilts that are so modern and interesting. I have a lot of ideas on how I would construct certain designs differently, so I'm anxious to try it out and see why they work in certain ways and whether my concept would work equally well. I suspect some of the differences have to do with the size of the fabric that they are starting from in some instances - a charm pack or fat quarter instead of a larger piece of fabric. I'm also intrigued by the use of Kona solids - something I've really avoided in the past. I'm a batik-girl, and I tend to like everything to have a bit of a pattern/printed texture (aka I'll go for a Moda Marble when I need a "solid"), so I'm excited to try to expand my horizons a bit.

My immediate projects include finishing a nursery collection for my friend Kelly, finishing a t-shirt quilt for my Aunt Casey, and finishing a storm-at-sea quilt that was supposed to be a wedding present for Talia and Aaron. I also need to make some things for around the house. I am going to be using a former shoe shelf to house fabric on one of my two sewing tables, and in order to keep it clean/free of cat hair, I want to create a zippered cover for the whole thing - I'll take pictures as I go, since I think it could be a useful concept for many types of storage solutions. I also want to finish several other UFOs (unfinished objects), including several random baby quilts, a t-shirt quilt for me, several t-shirt quilts for Bryan, a queen sized quilt for my bed out of the most gorgeous batik ever made (I'm thinking of a French Braid quilt for this one), and a few modern lap quilts. I also want to make some new placemats and napkins, as well. So...my studio will see lots of action as soon as it is set up. More details to come...

Engaged!

Well, as you can tell, I'm not a faithful blogger, much to my chagrin. However, I really plan to improve that in 2011! So, here goes!

The big news in my life is that on my 34th birthday, I became engaged to the most wonderful man in the world! Bryan is kind, funny, smart, and perfect for me!

He works as a contractor for NASA in the astrophysics division, and he loves music, good food, and a certain sweet little cat whose name varies by the hour and mood.

Her official name is Pilgrim, but she is more regularly called "Puffin" and "Snoofus", and we would both do anything for her - even serve as a chair! She makes it incredibly hard to type, as she seems to think that my right hand has but one purpose in life and that is to rub her belly. I never knew I could be so in love with a cat (or her owner!), having always considered myself a dog person (plus being quite allergic to cats and dogs), but we've bought stock in Claritin, and I'm a happy cat-momma.

In addition to gaining a fiancee, I'm so happy to be becoming part of Bryan's family. Bryan's mom, Margery, has been so incredibly kind and welcoming to me for the last year, including allowing me to join her family for Christmas and our new tradition - Porksgiving (a pre-Thanksgiving smoked pulled pork feast that included sweet potatoes, spoon bread, and from scratch green bean casserole)! She has exquisite taste, a keen interest in/knowledge of politics, and is just lovely to be around. I feel very lucky to have a future mother-in-law who will be a great friend.

Bryan's dad, Claude, and step-mother, Connie, have also been just wonderful to me. We spent a week with them at the beach this summer, and I learned important things from Claude, like how to make banana pudding and lose gracefully at Scrabble to Bryan! Claude is a wonderful painter, and I'm hoping now that we are getting married he'll be inspired to paint something special for us! Connie is a bundle of energy, and she inspires me by avidly pursuing a wide range of intellectual interests from art to languages to literature. Indeed, her boundless energy and enthusiasm remind me of how I was in college - I'm not sure how she keeps it up! We enjoyed a quick visit when we drove down to Georgia in October to see my family - we got to see a bit of downtown Greenville, have some lovely meals, visit, and really peruse their amazing art collection. I'm looking forward to a return visit!

Bryan's brother, Stuart, and his wife, Anne Marie, are also really nice. They made me laugh out loud by instructing their kids, Dain and Alexis, to call me "Soon-to-be Aunt Elle" at our engagement/birthday get together - I love it! I like being an aunt! Bryan also has a really wonderful extended family, many of whom I got to meet on our beach trip, and I just feel so lucky that I actually like everyone that I will spend time with over the years at family gatherings.

With our engagement comes a lot of other changes and decisions. We've decided to move in together, so we have until the end of March to rearrange Bryan's townhouse to fit most of my belongings from my apartment on Capitol Hill. Luckily, my dad has a storage space here in DC that he has graciously let us use, so we'll have some space for the overflow until we eventually buy a new, bigger house closer to DC. We've made no plans, as yet, for the wedding, except that we are getting married. One big decision at a time!

That's the update for now!

Introduction

Hi,

I decided it would be fun to have a blog to more permanently record my thoughts, accomplishments, hopes, dreams, frustrations, etc. Mostly, I plan to post here with quilting and sewing projects, pictures, etc., but I'm sure that there will be occasional musings, news, etc. It will be my place to record what's happening in my mind and in my life (outside of my frequent g-chat and facebook status updates.)

I've never really blogged before, so who knows how often I'll post or whether anyone will read this, but it seems like a fun thing to do, so here goes!

:) Elle