Afternoon Adventure to Outer Space

Not too much going on here today. I've been longarm quilting for the last few hours. Here's a quilt I just finished up. I believe the pattern is Yellow Brick Road by Atkinson Designs.
I love this focus fabric - too cute!
And the backing fabric is pretty awesome too.I wonder who the lucky little duck is that gets to snuggle up under this quilt. No doubt the munchkin will have dreams of rabbits & rocketships.

Intervention, please

Seriously, people, it's time. I have a problem. I can't stop starting new projects. Typically I don't worry too much about having too many UFO's laying around, but it's really starting to get out of hand. I thought about making a list, sort of like a confession, but I'm not sure I can remember everything, so I'll save that for another day. For now, here's my latest:

It's the Babette blanket (pattern by Kathy Merrick and available from Interweave Crochet). I know I shouldn't have, but can you blame me? Take a look at the flickr group. Who can resist? Not me. Obviously. This picture is from last week...I know have all 50 2-round squares finished along with 20 4-round squares. Lots to go, but I'm making progress. Not that I'll ever finish it, because, ya know, that's not what I do.

More good news. I dropped my cell phone in a sink full of water on Friday, and the phone no longer functions. The good news about that is that I got a new phone. Isn't it pretty? It's called a rockr, which is cool, but I haven't "rocked" with it yet. My sister-in-law is 16...I'll have her figure that part out.
It does have a 2 megapixel camera on it, which I used to take this picture. A little blurry, but I think that's from enlarging it. And because I can't hold the damn thing still. Whatev.
This is my sad little camera. It's 5 or 6 years old, and a few months ago I dropped it and broke the battery cover (hence the scotch tape). I know, I'm hard on electronics. It's about time for a new camera anyway.

Last but not least, I got a new pantograph in the mail today for the longarm, so I decided to try it out.
It's called feathered curls. I'm really liking it. I think it could work on variety of quilts. I'm really digging how it looks on the back of the quilt.

This is a view from underneath the quilt machine. So if you've never sat under a quilt machine, this is what it looks like. Come by some time and I'll let you sit under my machine. It's sort of like sitting under a table covered by a tablecloth. Except when you sit under a table there is less of a chance of sitting on a straight pin. Yes, I've done that.

We're off on a long weekend to a graduation and to visit my folks, so the blog will be quiet until I get back next week. Have good weekend!

Someone bought my quilt!

Remember when I told you that I was making a quilt for the local community college's scholarship auction? Well, here's the quilt.

And the back. You can't see it very well, but I stitched down the cardinal in red thread, so there's an outline of a red cardinal on the back of the quilt. Cool, huh? (By the way, those white spots are lint...the backing is black flannel.)
And here's the best part....this quilt raised $280 for scholarships! Isn't that great?! I made a quilt for the auction last year, and it was a lot more work but didn't raise nearly as much money. So I was a very happy girl after this year's auction.

Here's something I just decided to do last night. It's a 4-patch stack-n-whack from the pattern 4-Patch Stacked Posies by H.D. Designs. I found the directions a little confusing, but I've done stack-n-whack before so I just went for it. After walking the dog and watching American Idol, I only had time to sew nine 4-patches, but I really like the way they're turning out. I've got the rest cut, so hopefully tonight I can sew them together in between loads of laundry. Oh, and the American Idol results show....can't forget that.

That's not all I've had up my sleeve for the past week or so... more tomorrow!

The nerdiest way to spend a Friday night

I'm sure all of you loyal readers out there (all two of you... hi mom!) are dying to know how someone who leads as glamorous a life as I do (yeah, right) spends a typical Friday or Saturday evening. Never one to leave my fans unsatisfied, I now give you the answer to your question.

That's right, I crochet. Or stitch down a binding or possibly hand quilt if I'm feeling chilly & ambitious (see the stuff to the right of the basket). Usually by the time the weekend gets here, I'm too pooped to do anything but sit on the couch, and these projects flow seamlessly into my weekend routine. Typically I will do one of these three activities while watching a Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Star Wars movie - I have a thing for movies (or books) that are part of a series. Love that. And depending on what kind of a day I've had, I might throw a nice adult beverage into the mix. Just one though... two seem to affect the results of my handiwork.

The crochet project I'm currently working I found here at Bella Dia, one of my fave blogs. It's fairly easy - just double crochet until your eyes cross. I did manage to screw it up - I didn't work on it for awhile, and when I picked it back up I couldn't remember exactly how to start a new row. So a few of my rows are a little short, but no worries, I just added stitches in the next couple of rows to even things out. It sort of looks like someone took a little bite out of the side, but I'll be damned if I was going to rip all of that out and start over. A couple of rows of edging crocheted around the whole thing will help camouflage my mistake. Yeah, sounds like a plan.This is my hand quilting project - my very first. I wanted to start with something simple so that I could concentrate on making my stitches even and not worry about quilting through thick seams. So I used a piece of cheater convenience fabric (this one's from Moda's Sanctuary collection by 3 Sisters), basted it together with a batt and backing, and went to town. I was pleasantly surprised that hand quilting is not nearly as time consuming as I thought it would be (atleast not the simple quilting I'm doing), but it definitely isn't quick either. However, as I said before, it's a perfect complement to my couch sitting time. And that's something I definitely don't want to rush.

February sucks

In Kansas anyway. Today it's cloudy and cold, and there is about an inch or so freezing rain and sleet on the ground. It's getting kind of soupy right now, but after dark it will freeze and form a solid sheet of ice. If it's going to be cold, it should either be Christmas or snowing. Otherwise, I have no use for cold weather...bring on Spring! This weather is also irksome to me today because the bad weather is keeping customers out of the store, so no one has seen me on one of my rare good hair days. Sorry, all of that makes it sound like I'm in a very crabby mood, which I am not. I'd just be happier if the sun were shining... who wouldn't?

The up-side is that I've a full day of longarm quilting with very few distractions. Here is the quilt I just finished...
And here's the back. You can always see the quilting better on the back.

I've been practicing my feathers, so I thought I'd put all that practice to good use. I hope the customer likes it! She lives out of town, so I doubt she'll be picking it up today due to the weather.

My local quilt guild met last night, and for the program everyone brought a project to designate as a (one-month late) new year's resolution. The goal is to finish your project by February 2009 and show it at that month's meeting. It was really fun to see what everyone is working on...one person even had a project that had been started in 1981! We all had a good laugh because I was born in 1980 and that project is almost as old as I am.

Anyway, here's the project I chose.

I bought this Santa fabric and some coordinating pieces in 2005, and I've yet to finish it. So far, I've got these blocks and drawer full of wrinkled strips. I don't have to have it finished for guild until Feb. 09, but I'm hoping to have it done soon enough to use at Christmas. That should be plenty of time, but you just never know with me. You know how I don't like to finish things.

Pajama quilting

Where does a week go? I mean, I know where mine went...I heard the flushing sound at the end of last week that cued the slow but inevitable drain of this week down the proverbial toilet. Sunday was the Superbowl, so I was at the shop in the afternoon and then watched the game that night. Monday went okay until my husband and I both came down with the stomach flu, which put me out of commission through Wednesday. Thursday.... that was just yesterday... let's see, what did I do... oh yes, scrambled to catch up from everything that doesn't get done when you're sick. Oh, and I got a mini-makeover! A quilter friend of mine sells Mary Kay, so we went to an "eyes-cream social" and ate ice cream and got eye make-up done...fun! I ordered a facial highlighting pen and a brow definer pencil. These are two items that are currently missing from my makeup repertoire (which is a very fancy word for the 4 or 5 make-up items that I actually use), but I'm very excited to get them. What a difference they make!

Sorry, that was starting to sound a lot like whining until I got to the makeover part, so let's move on to quilting. I've been using any spare moment I've had at the shop lately to longarm quilt. I'm really getting excited about longarm quilting lately. Quilting is just a fact of quilt-making that I never really considered much before. But now that I've been quilting for almost a year (eek!), I'm starting to spread my wings and experiment a bit more. I ordered Dawn Ramirez's new Pajama Quilter Reloaded DVD, and here's what I've done with it so far.


Cindy pieced this top the last time she was in the shop...before she broke her ankle. (Did I forget to mention that? Well, she did - slipped on the ice. I'm afraid I've been a bit self-absorbed lately =)
One of Dawn's basic flowers...
A flower, a ribbon, and some loops....
And more of the same. This is really just part of the basic stuff on her DVD. I really recommend this DVD if you've been wanting to learn some good freehand quilting designs. You don't need to have a longarm machine.. in fact, in the DVD she demos here designs on a whiteboard. Very easily translated to quilting on a domestic sewing machine.

I've got so much more to learn. As Dawn would say, practice and chocolate will get me there eventually. Sounds like a good plan for this evening, actually....