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.

Saturday Sewing

So I actually managed to get some sewing done today.

First I put the corners on one of my remaining X pieces for the X and Plus blocks. I also sewed the corners into bonus HSTs and trimmed those down to 2" square. I'm thinking about turning all of those bonus HSTs into blocks when I'm done.

Next I finished up the started Modified Bento Box block for my mom's quilt.

 

Finally, I pulled out the fabric for my memory quilt blocks from the Riley Blake Challenge quilt.

I thought about putting together the ones for my brother-in-law's wedding quilt as well, because I have fabric set aside, but realized that I don't have the binding fabric yet. That didn't stop me putting together the memory blocks for my brother's wedding quilt, but I figured I'd do scrappy binding for that one so just picked two random pieces to anchor the sides of the DWR melon.

Jacquie Gering and October Update

I wrote a guest post on the DC Modern Quilt Guild blog here. It's about the amazing trunk show by Jacquie Gering that I went to in Baltimore on Monday. It was hosted by the Baltimore Modern Quilt Guild. In case you don't know who Jacquie Gering is, here is a link to her blog Tallgrass Prairie Studio. Go check it out, you won't be sorry. Here is another picture of the trunk show that I didn't post on the DCMQG blog.

This is the quilt the publishers didn't want to use in her book, because they didn't like the antennae on the TV's. No sense of humor, so sad. I love them.

 

I finished cutting fabric for my plus quilt! I started laying it out on the floor and just started sewing. Next thing I knew, I had sewn together 21 rows.

 

Here is just a small sampling of the many fabrics used in this quilt.

 

I ended up with tons of extra grey cut fabric which I will be using on the back. Each row is 19 "squares" long and as previously mentioned, the quilt will be 21 rows across. It will be a king sized quilt and will finish at about 95x105. I will be getting this quilted by a long-armer, just need to narrow down my choices. But that won't happen until after the wedding next June, because my FSIL and I had discussed using fabric for the guest book and incorporating those fabric squares into the back of the quilt.

 

Other projects that I am actively working on include the following:

 

The Christmas quilt: I have now run completely out of cut Kona Snow and need to start cutting some more.

 

A second low volume baby quilt: need to mark more of the fabrics so I can turn them into HSTs.

 

Japanese X and Plus blocks: finished cutting all the grey end squares and need to concentrate on the center pluses.

 

Color Bee Shocked blocks for October: I have cut the red fabrics for one and have picked out the pink fabrics for the other.

 

Scrappy Swoon Wedding Quilt: I have sorted out all of my purple, blue-green, and black fabrics ready to be cut. I have decided to make the pattern a bit larger and will be using 4.5 and 5" squares.

 

Memory Quilts: I made a second octagonal block section and a second Double Wedding Ring "melon"/"football"/whatever from the fabrics I used in the Plus Quilt.

 

Left: Toucan Quilt; Right: Plus Quilt

Top: Plus Quilt; Bottom: Toucan Quilt

 

This crafting every day thing is really working. I did actually get some cleaning in and have put away all of the fabrics that I had finished cutting. Not to mention all the cutting and sewing I've been doing recently.