Braille Alphabet Quilt

Final Stats

Name: Braille Alphabet Quilt

Dimensions: 42" x 51"

Pieces: Front - 238

Pattern: Thomas Knauer's Braille Alphabet Quilt with some very minor modifications 

Technique: Patchwork

Materials: 100% Quilting Cottons - Kona Ash and various prints

Quilting: Machine quilted on my EuroPro

Started with my usual, asking the expecting mother-to-be, one of my friends and coworkers, what the theme of the nursery would be. This is her second, so she said she'd be reusing her first son's alphabet stuff and grey. Great, except I didn't want to do the standard alphabet thing. A quick internet search later brought up Thomas Knauer's Braille Alphabet Quilt-Along and although he hadn't finished the posts at the time, I figured out the pattern and decided on the size of each square based on the fact that I'm lazy and didn't want to piece the back. So I wanted to keep the front under 44" across. That's how I ended up with 3.5" squares, which ends at roughly 42" wide. I found the backing fabric first and then grabbed two fabrics for each color for the front. I cut up the rest of my Kona Ash for the background.

I laid out the background squares first. The braille alphabet works by having six dots in a 2x3 grid, where some will be raised to indicate the letter. So A has a single raised dot in the upper left section, B has a two raised dots in the upper left and the middle left sections, etc. Applying this to the quilt, each "block" is a 2x3 patchwork where the background squares are the smooth sections and the prints are the raised dots. Seems completely random when you first look at it, but when you know what you're looking at, it makes so much more sense. Thus I got a non-obvious ABC theme. After laying out the background squares I then filled in the prints, trying not to get the same color or the same print right next to each other, although I had to put some of them kiddie-corner to each other in the lower portion where the "dots" became more frequent.

I finished the top of the quilt before I gave birth to my own son in February and then it sat there for a long time. I finally managed to get it basted and then it sat for another long time. In the meantime my friend had had her son, shortly after I had mine. I took it to the DCMQG quilt retreat in November with the intent to finish this quilt, even if I did nothing else (actually it was my second step after finishing my bee blocks). My friend had plans to come to DC for our work all-staff meeting and holiday party, so I wanted to have it done to give to her in person. And I made it. Got it quilted with the cursive uppercase and lowercase ABCs in the corresponding braille letter blocks, and some sort of fun design in the couple "spacer" blocks (I think I did a leaf, a star, a heart, and a swirl). And I got it bound as well. The only problem was that I a) forgot to embroider my initials and the year in the lower right corner like I usually do and b) forgot to take any decent pictures. The only picture I have of the completed quilt is the fuzzy one of me holding it up.

I may have to ask my friend to take a few pictures and send them to me. I really did enjoy giving it to her in person though. Just in case you're wondering, I finished the last of my bee blocks too. :)

I'm Alive!

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in two months. I promise, I'm still alive. Just super busy. I started back to work last Wednesday and before that I was trying to cram as much sewing and baby time as possible into every minute. So I've got lots of stuff to share and don't even know where to start. Well, baby pictures are always good.

Let's see, the Hexie quilt has been set aside. I've sewn together about 12 out of 25 rows, but wasn't even close to finishing it in time for the wedding. So, since I have a ton of other things I need to get done with upcoming deadlines, I figured I'd set that aside and work on other stuff. I have 3 of these panels stitched together.

Then I decided that I should join the DCMQG Bee. Lynne had the first month and I'm queen bee for the second. Here are the blocks I made for her:

She wanted aqua and purple wonky stars with low volume backgrounds. I think I did alright, although aqua is one of those colors that completely frustrates me.

And here is the block I chose for my month. I made two test blocks and they were way more fun than I thought they would be since I don't usually do scrappy improv:

They will become a baby quilt for my nephew Jackson, who is due in August. That's the great thing about having two siblings who are 15 months and 3 years younger, we all end up with babies at roughly the same time (the same year). In this case, three boys who have already been dubbed the Three Musketeers.

Next up we have a whale baby quilt, using the Preppy the Whale pattern from Elizabeth Hartman. I bought the pattern and it made the quilty math so much easier because I had actual measurements for each piece to base it off of, not just eyeballing a design. First I blew up the whale times two, then I chopped the pattern into 4" (finished) sections. There was much scribbling on scrap paper before I was satisfied and I'm happy to say that it worked out.

I also pieced a back, basted, quilted and started making binding for it. But ended up stuck because I didn't have enough red solid to make the binding and the red and white striped binding I had leftover from another quilt also isn't enough. Unfortunately, since we're on a super tight budget until I get paid again, I have been unable to buy more. Hopefully it will get done soon though and I can write a post just about that quilt, because I think it's turning out fabulously! It's for the son of our friends, Kevin and Jess.

I also basted the braille alphabet quilt for the son of a coworker.

I'm extremely happy to say that I received the Pixel Michigan quilt back from the longarmer and didn't waste any time making scrappy binding for it and finishing it off. It's been hanging out on our bed since I presented it to my husband for his long overdue birthday, Christmas, birthday present. Here is a sneak peek, as I'll be making an entire post for that finish as well. It more than deserves it.

I am once again working on the wedding quilt for my brother-in-law and his fiancée. I'm making a Scrappy Swoon quilt, just a bit bigger than the original, so it fits a queen sized bed. Here's where I am with that, I just have to sew this layer together and onto the center and then have one more layer to go:

Although I think the greenish blues really stand out, the purple and the black blend together a little more than I would have liked. You can barely see that the center is supposed to be a star and not an X. But I like it anyway.

I've also done some work on the Layer Cake Sampler QAL and have paired one Sunnyside print with one white solid and drawn the lines on the back. I've even sewn up several of the pairs, cut some apart, and even managed to finish my first block:

I quite like how this first one turned out, we'll see what happens with the rest.

I've also put in some work on my cross-stitch pieces, but mainly on the piece I started most recently. Forest by Satsuma Street. It is coming together much faster than I thought possible, although I haven't had a chance recently to work on it.

I'm making it to go along with the baby quilt for my nephew. My sister-in-law said that she had a pillow that needed a cover, so that's the plan. Not sure how I'm going to "frame" it, but I'm thinking maybe a scrappy border to match the quilt for the front and then an envelope back that doesn't require a zipper.

Phew, that was a longer post than anticipated, but I really have been quite busy. And that's not including the guild meetings and the Denyse Schmidt lecture I attended. Maybe I'll post something about those some other time.

Time Spent Crafting

It feels like I'm getting my mojo back a bit. It could also be that I'm finally starting to fight 10 years of conditioning. Here's the deal, my husband has been working in the restaurant industry for as long as we've been together, 10 years. In that time, we either did the long distance thing and barely saw each other, or were living together but working opposite schedules. So what little time we did have together, I felt this strong urge to at least be near him even if we weren't actively doing something together. Then about eight months ago, my husband broke his hand, he couldn't go back to cooking until it was healed and was out of work for two months. During that time he decided that he wanted to change careers because he actually liked spending time with me and so he spent the next few months trying to find something. Unfortunately that hasn't worked out, but the conditioning of 10 years was still there. So between being pregnant, having lost some of my quilting mojo, and that, it's been really hard for me to tear myself away and spend some alone time in my sewing room.

I also recently celebrated my 30th birthday (Valentine's Day) and on my birthday I always do what I want to do. That included sleeping in, cross-stitching in bed, having my husband cook me German pancakes for brunch, going to the grocery store to grab fruit and some other things I wanted, including a fruit tart, ordering Thai food for dinner, and watching something on Netflix in bed at the end of the day, I also decided to spend time in my craft room. I did and it was quite productive. I finished the top of the braille alphabet quilt.

I also cut fabric and put together one of the three blocks for the November queen bee and got the other two blocks to the trimming down stage.

Not wanting to lose momentum, I've been spending a bit of time each day since then in my craft room and have finished the other two bee blocks.

Made a scrappy improv block for the guild.

And actually got the back of the Michigan quilt put together. I even emailed the long-armer to make sure she was still willing to quilt that beast for me, since it had been almost a year since we started talking about the quilting.

We actually got a snow day today, so my three day weekend became a four day weekend, so I managed to get the memory quilt blocks done for the Bright Modern Baby Quilt and kept working on my leader and ender project.

I realized that I'm woefully behind on my memory quilt blocks and need to make myself a list of blocks I still need to make and then actually find the fabrics I used in my scrap bin or stash. I've got the fabrics laid out for the Braille Alphabet Quilt memory blocks, so I may work on those next.

WIP Wednesday: Sports Fish

I've spent so much time in bed cross-stitching because I was sick all weekend that the first fish is almost done. I started this as a surprise for my hubby's 30th birthday, but that came and went and I didn't actually start this until a few days before and there's still two fish to go. So I got him a few other gifts and told him about this one. He was actually pretty excited about it when I told him what it was going to be and that we would hang it underneath his "A fisherman lives here with the best catch of his life" sign once it's done. This one is a Striped Bass. It's still missing most of the face, a dorsal fin and a lure. Then there's going to be a Rainbow Trout underneath and a Coho Salmon above, with a tackle box and fishing rod respectively.

I ironed the borders for the Braille Alphabet Quilt but have not attached them yet. And I actually pulled some fabric for my long overdue November Stash Bee blocks and started cutting. I have fussy cut the three center sections and cut out the churn dash portion for one.

In baby news, I'm now two weeks away from my official due date. Our to-go bag is packed except for my music, the stroller and car seat are sitting by the door (and Sir has discovered that there is the perfect amount of space for him to sit in the stroller underneath the car seat after initially being very leery about this new contraption).

I'm having more and more trouble getting good sleep. This morning I woke up around 5am to go to the bathroom and my right hip and back on that side hurt so bad I thought I was going to throw up. Not fun. Luckily that was gone by the time I had to get up for work. No amount of pillows between my legs or pads under my stomach seem to help me get comfortable for the night. Part of the problem is that once I'm asleep I really don't move, no matter how uncomfortable my body may be getting. But it lets me know in no uncertain terms once I wake up just what a bad idea it was to sleep with my head on my arm or curled up a certain way. I know I won't be getting a whole lot of sleep once this baby makes an appearance, but I cannot wait to be able to sleep comfortably on my back again.

Braille Alphabet Quilt and More Cross-Stitch

So the center of the braille alphabet quilt is done. I have also sewn together more grey squares than I care to remember and now have four rows of grey squares waiting to be ironed and attached to the top. It might actually get this quilt done at some point in the near future.

There are two other projects hiding in this picture (well, three)... The sashing for my blue, black, and white quilt can be seen below the quilt top. Unfortunately the next block I ran through my machine came out just a bit too small, despite double-checking the measurements, so now I have to rip it out, cut new sashing, and try again. :(

I also still have some of the Charming Kate Spain squares up, although most have now fallen on the floor and been picked up and stacked haphazardly somewhere in my craft room. And finally, that big box is the crib... which is still in a box... and should go in that corner, where everything else is currently stacked. Sigh. But at least our "to go" bag is packed and our letter from the pediatrician is signed saying they are ok with us giving birth at a birth center instead of at a hospital and that they'll see our child within the first 48 hours after birth. Baby steps, as it were.

I also finished the frame for February on my Story Time Sampler and started stitching the door. The door proceeded to screw with my OCD to the point where I ended up ripping out three rows of stitching to make it symmetrical. I set it aside for a bit and then came back to it last night and have gotten the door past the door knob. February is The Secret Garden, which was one of my favorites when I was a kid. So I'm really excited.

My goal for this week is to actually put together the backing for my Michigan quilt and contact the long-armer I started talking to almost a year ago.

Stuff and Things

So life has been interesting lately. We spent Thanksgiving with our family in Michigan last week. Our trip there was alright, except we had snow from Washington, DC all the way through the mountains of Pennsylvania. We passed a car in a ditch and a jack-knifed semi truck on our side of the road which caused a traffic backup. We made it to Michigan shortly before midnight on Wednesday and looked in on my parents and then proceeded to the in-laws to sleep. The next morning, we headed out to my sister-in-law's for Thanksgiving Day, which was filled with amazing food and even better company. Friday we spent with my family, Saturday we went to my husband's cousin's wedding and spent some time with friends, and Sunday we drove back home. We made really good time until we hit a parking lot type traffic jam in the mountains of Pennsylvania due to an earlier accident and another one on I-270 in Maryland about an hour outside of Washington, DC because some idiot decided that the Sunday after Thanksgiving would be a great time to close down a whole lane on a two-lane highway.

On Cyber Monday, I looked for new computers online and was looking at various pre-built models, when my husband finally spilled that he had used his motorcycle fund to buy me a new computer. My brother-in-law had already ordered the parts and they would be arriving within the next several days. Everything but the monitor had arrived by Tuesday, so yesterday my hubby and I put the hardware together. He then spent most of today dealing with the software, installing all the drivers, and the games we play together (i.e. Guild Wars 2 and Civ 5), because... (his) priorities. When I got home, I also installed EQ7 and moved all of my files for it over from our external hard drive. Tested it out, and they all load perfectly. Because... (my) priorities. I did play a bit of Guild Wars 2 with him, to see how good the graphics and speed are (they are both phenomenal).

The last two days at work have been both great and horrible. Horrible because as a night owl, I usually get to work around 9:30 (which is the latest we're allowed to get to work in the morning). The last two days I had to get there by 8:30 because we've had an all-staff strategy meeting. Now, if you think that's not a big deal, getting up an hour earlier than usual sucks big time! People keep laughing at me about how much I'm going to hate having a little baby, who will wake me up at all hours, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Until then I want to sleep as long as possible in the mornings, thank you very much.

They have also been good, because I think the strategy meeting was quite productive and at times downright fun. I also got to see a lot of people from our partnership offices, that I've either never met in person, or whom I do know and haven't seen in a while. We also had our Christmas party today, which was fun as always, even though I couldn't drink this year. While I'm not above drinking a glass of wine or a hard cider occasionally (and slowly enough for my liver to process) even while pregnant, everyone just assumed that I wasn't drinking at all. Oh well, I wouldn't have had more than my usual one anyway. The noise also got to me and so I ended up leaving by 5.

Several of my coworkers are expecting right now, including one of my friends from Portland. So I'm making her a quilt. Her theme is ABCs and her color scheme is grey and white. So I decided on some sort of alphabet quilt with a grey background. I ended up going with Thomas Knauer's braille alphabet quilt, cut all the fabric, and put it up on the design wall. I've even sewn a few of the blocks.