WIP Wednesday: Ron's Glorious Back and the Resurrected BOM

I started the Skill Builder BOM at Pile O' Fabric back in January. I completed those blocks right on time and then... didn't do any more. Not sure BOMs are a great fit for me. ;)

However, this week, I decided that I'm going to try to catch up a little bit. I didn't really have a place for this finished quilt (it's almost a queen size), but I've decided to put it in the room where I stay at my mom's newly purchased house (this is relevant, I promise!) That room has orange carpet. Yes. Orange. In fact, that orange carpet is all over the basement, so replacing it isn't really an option due to cost. So, I thought maybe I could tie in some orange to this quilt so it would look like it belonged there.

But I don't know that I'm loving it. It's not quite as neon as it looks in this photo, but it definitely stands out (it's a rich red-orange, really). So I haven't put the borders on that block, because I think there is a chance I rip it apart and put in something less jarring. I know that a quilt in all blues and greens will look nice--it's a safe choice. And it will look much better in the orange bedroom than whatever is there now (a light blue and yellow comforter--gorgeous!) ;) The full layout looks like this, and theoretically, I could put the dark orange wherever there is white in Alyssa's mockup:

Thoughts?

I've also fully discovered the danger of late-night piecing:

Haha, oops. How is it that those things go totally unnoticed until the whole block is together?

Ron quilt is also proceeding rather nicely. Both the front and back are fully pieced, and I'm hoping to get it basted today (it's fellowship application season, however, which is both extremely sucky and extremely time-consuming... so things aren't going as quickly in the sewing realm as I'd like.) However, here is a preview of the back. I'm pretty dang proud of it. :)

Hope the rest of your Wednesday is grand!

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Memories of Now: Ron Swanson Lives

I'm pretty excited about this one. :)

He's Ron F***ing Swanson. :)

Ever since I saw Monica's "Swansonalong" last year, I've known that I needed a 100% cotton Ron of my very own. And now that is tantalizingly close to coming true. Bully for me. :)

1200 2.5" squares is no laughing matter, so I was pretty thrilled to finish the blocks last night. You know, I used an AccuQuilt cutter for the squares, because I thought it would be nice to have them perfectly accurate (my mom had bought the cutter on sale, so I got to take it for a test run.) I wasn't... overwhelmed by it, to be honest. (I know that's practically blasphemy in the quilting community!) For starters, the squares weren't always perfect. I assume that was in part because I started with too many layers of fabric (six seems to be the absolute max) and that threw the cutting off. So that was disappointing. Honestly, if one is just cutting squares or rectangles, I think cutting with a rotary cutter is just as fast as aligning your scraps of fabric in the cutter and rolling it through, and with a lot less waste. That said, I'd be willing to give it another shot for non-square shapes, because I think it could save time and effort with those.

My grade: B-   For the price, I don't think it's worth it, especially as it did seem to have some accuracy issues (possibly user error, however.) That said, if I were doing a quilt with circles or other applications with more finicky shapes, I would probably love it a lot more!

In other news, I'm also sewing the binding on a Christmas quilt from last year (oops) and trying to finish a baby quilt for a baby who is now three months old (oops again) and who is coming to visit this weekend. I'll post pics of those when I'm finished!

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WIP Wednesday: The Man, The Moustache

Here's what I'm working on this week:

Know what it is? Here are some hints:

--"I’m a simple man. I like pretty, dark-haired women, and breakfast food."

--"Turkey can never beat cow."

--"You had me at meat tornado."

And of course...

--"Give me all the bacon and eggs you have."

Monica at the Happy Zombie had a "Ron Swanson Along" last year and thus instantly became my biggest quilting hero. I've known I must make Ron ever since I saw it, and I've finally steeled my resolve to face all of those tiny squares, and start on the greatest quilt of my career thus far.

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about this one. :)

Linking up for WIP Wednesday.

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WIP Wednesday: Dirty Bubblegum, Drunken Lucille, and a crazy little thing called Love

Hey there! I hope the three remaining readers I have are enjoying life and having a good time sewing and whatnot. I haven't been around much this summer, but such is summer sometimes. It's been good! I've had adventures in Michigan, Kansas City, and Nebraska, and I've enjoyed them all. Follow me on Instagram if you'd like to get a taste of them! (@  c m b husker --with no spaces)

I've actually been stitching up a storm this week. I hate when people have weddings and they just spring them upon you at the last minute. Wait, what's that you say? Weddings often have months and months of previous warning? I'm actually just a procrastinator, so it seems like they are sprung upon me?

I guess that's true. :)

I'm headed to yet another wedding where I will be a bridesmaid next week on the lovely island of Nantucket (fancy, schmancy!) I decided I should start the quilt a few days ago. Inspired by Kelly of Jeliquilts' LOVE quilt, I thought that was just the thing for this particular wedding.

It looks black in the photo, but it's actually navy and Nantucket red--the wedding colors.

I really like the fabrics I chose for this, even though I wasn't pumped about the Nantucket red at first--it's grown on me. My favorite fabric is the "Les Amis" on the left side of the "e". I also really like the salmon-colored camera print--the groom is a photographer, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to stumble upon that one!

The letters aren't paper-pieced, and this top goes together SO quickly (if you don't make three mistakes cutting the large pieces because you are terrible at math, like I did). It's a Tula Pink pattern, available here.

I also started cutting (optimistically) on a quilt I'm calling the "Drunken Lucille." Its real name is "Drunk Zebra," but the back is going to be done in a fabric line called "Spa" and if you're an Arrested Development, hopefully you can figure out how I combined those two. :) The pattern for that is available here. While the design of the quilt is stunning, I'm disappointed in the quality of the pattern. All four pattern pieces are shoved onto one piece of paper, and when it's printed, it cuts off the side of one of the pieces! Since lines are just a little bit important in paper piecing, it's disappointing to have to redraw 56 pattern pieces, especially when I paid $8 to NOT have to do that! Not sure why the designer didn't just use an extra piece of paper and make sure that the pieces had adequate room to breathe. Oh well. The world is an imperfect place.

And I finally finished trimming all of my Dirty Bubblegum squares. Here's the layout:

Not sure when I'm going to get this one done. The baby it is intended for is already a month old! Good thing she lives in Arizona, so she shouldn't be freezing quite yet. ;)

On a serious note, it's hard to believe that 9/11 happened twelve years ago today. It seems so long ago, and looking at the world today, it's had such far-reaching and negative repercussions on such a large portion of the world. It is amazing what an impact a few evil people can have. But I also remember the incredible unity and caring that happened in the days afterwards. All we can do is pray that we will someday see peace, for the wisdom of leaders, and that we will do good where we are able.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday!


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WIP: Back in the Saddle

After a month of sleeping at my own apartment for a grand total of one night, I finally returned this past Saturday, and am enjoying having a place to myself again (though probably not as much as my cat is enjoying having an other-cat-free dwelling!) A couple weeks visiting the boyfriend and a couple weeks at my mother's house trying to help her move, and here I am, almost in August, feeling like I've done nothing this summer! But such is the nature of summers.

My mom's move was an immense project--she and my dad bought that house in 1979, so I'm one of the few people I know who didn't move at least once during their growing-up years. My great-grandfather built the house in 1921, so even though it is almost 100 years old, it has had only two owners! So it's been an emotional move--not to mention a difficult one in the physical sense, since houses tend to accumulate a lot of things in 34 years. :) It is really strange to see the house emptied out. Luckily, she is only moving one block away--to the house my grandparents built. I guess we are a family that prizes familiarity!

Last night I finally returned to the sewing machine for a bit. I've got a baby quilt I need to send to Arizona, since the baby was born, um, last week. (It's not like there's no warning on these baby things, yet I never seem to get them done in time...)

My first instinct was to name this quilt "Dirty Bubblegum" but I might have to rethink that one.

This is my first time using triangle paper. I think I like it, though I hate tearing off paper. Overall though, I do think it streamlines the process. I'll evaluate fully once I get them all done.

I've also started cutting for a quilt that is going to be the best, most amazing quilt ever. I'm really excited!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.


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WIP Wednesday: Earth Mother Quilt and an Apartment

Happy summer! It's actually been unseasonably cool here, but I'm really ok with that, because I know we'll get weeks and weeks of 95+ degree weather at some point, and frankly, I hate sweating and like saving money on air conditioning, so summer can just take its sweet time as far as I'm concerned!

Here's what I've been busy with:

Drove it all by myself for 1200+ miles. Good training for my future truck driving career.

Biggest takeaway? I have way, way, way too much stuff.

This is my real WIP lately.

 

Sigh.

My great mother came out a day after she finished teaching for the semester and helped me move back. So I owe her big time! Don't worry though, she's going to cash in on it. She's moving this summer too. From a house she and my dad bought in 1979. So that should be fun. :)

We had time for one quick sightseeing stop on the way. 

Incredibly, I also managed to finish a quilt top before I left New York. I wanted to get it done so I could photograph it with some lush greenery and pretty waterfalls, but true to form, I finished it, then failed to get any photos of it in gorgeous natural surroundings. So instead, it is photographed in my living room. Quality lives here, folks.

You may remember this quilt is for a friend who got married. Last September.

Sadly, the new place seems to be infested with a vug under the rug:

via

Linking up with WIP Wednesday!

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Just Three: February

It may be dorky, but I enjoy a nice evening of pastel furniture, boldly accessorized caftans, and sassy retirees while I press open a million HSTs, don't you?

"Thank you for being a friend..."

Others have their own forms of relaxation.

I've never joined in with Tracey Jay's "Just Three" link up before, but I've decided to this month! Here is what I hope to get done in February:

1. Finish and send this Christmas quilt to my brother and sister-in-law. Oops. :) Still, with that wide border, I'm pretty excited to do some FMQ practice. I'm feeling bold at the moment.

2. Finish the top for my hourglass quilt. MY quilt. All mine. :) And the one that Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia are helping me with tonight!

3. Finish the top for my friend's wedding quilt. This is woefully overdue. Deadlines are not my strong suit, and I haven't worked on this one for so long that I've totally lost momentum. I need to get this to her before it's another midwestern summer and the thing is totally superfluous.

That's it! Just three! :)

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WIP: The Ghost of Christmas Past

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... *hangs head in shame* 

Ok, so I didn't get all of my Christmas sewing done, and I still have this quilt I need to finish! Yikes--so very, very late. Luckily, this isn't a very involved project--I'm just going to add some very thick borders to this to make it more grown-up sized, so the piecing is pretty easy. Of course, that makes it more embarrassing that I'm still working on it as we approach February.

Such is life, I suppose. It does make me happy to see "Joy" all together like that. What a great Christmas collection!

In other news, I'm about to take the plunge on my first-ever BOM-- it's the Skill Builder run by Alyssa at Pile O' Fabric.

The first block is the "Sound Wave" and it is supposed to look like this:

via

And here's what I'm using for this block:

Here are my fabric pulls for the entire project:

And I found this Jennifer Paganelli "West Indies" print in my stash. I didn't have as much as I thought, which is too bad, because I think it's perfect for the back. Since we're doing QAYG, I'm considering getting another yard and a half and then using just the plain blue for the rest of the blocks.

Speaking of the "plain blue," I'm super nervous about using that as a background fabric for my blocks. My original inspiration for my color scheme was this:

via

Which I love. But when I bought the blue, it seemed so primary color-y to me that now I'm scared the whole thing will look juvenile. Hopefully the relatively subdued and monochromatic nature of the rest of the fabrics will keep it more sophisticated. But I've decided that I'll take some risks on this quilt. If I completely hate it, I can always give it away. :)

Speaking of which, I have two WIPs I need to get out of the way, but then I am DEFINITELY starting my own quilt (not just because it is 8 degrees here either.) I visited my boyfriend last week and totally hogged the quilt I made him! I almost stole it, which indicates to me that I need to finally make myself a quilt.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, where I will no doubt have the lone Christmas project. :)

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WIP: Gray and Yellow, Revisited

I finally finished this quilt top! I don't know why it took me so long to sew those last four rows, because as you can tell, this is not a high-skill assembly and it only took an evening to finish the last rows and sew the whole top together.

Oh well. It happens to the best of us, right?

M's wedding quilt

Please pardon my photography. I wasn't able to take a photo in daylight, but I wanted to share it for WIP Wednesday anyway, as it's rather rare I have something substantial to show. I put some filters and crap on it to try camouflage the fact that I live in a cave, but to no avail. We'll all survive this assault of bad photography though, I hope. :)

Also: I would like to look into embroidering my quilt labels rather than using marker. I've never done much embroidery, so it's all a bit new to me. Anyone have any good beginner resources, or at least a hint of what kind of stitch would be good for someone to learn who wanted to "write" words? Thanks in advance!

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WIP: Just a peek!

Well, I abandoned hope for finishing the wedding quilt in time for the wedding. It would have been nice, but it just didn't happen. I spent too much time watching football this weekend, and not enough quilting. :) (My team won and looked great, so yay!) While I enjoy sewing, I often find I have a pretty limited attention span for it. I know there are lots of quilters out there who can spend days at the machine, but I just can't. I like to dabble for an hour or two here and there. I accept that that is just my style!

I also went to The Great State Fair of New York (the grandiosity of that title cracks me up every time) on Sunday. In between the appalling displays of fried foods of every kind and a whole lot of low culture, I did get some photos from two separate quilt exhibitions. I'll post those in a separate post sometime soon.

I did sew a little bit though. Here's a look at what it will look like!

I really like this pattern. I love traditional blocks with modern fabrics, so I could see myself using this one again. It's designed for charm packs which would of course save you some cutting! I love patterns that allow you to still see the fabrics.

This isn't the greatest picture, because I just took it so I remembered the layout I had planned. Because once again math thwarted my efforts, I miscalculated how much fabric I needed. Instead of buying more, I decided to see if I had anything in my stash (novel idea, I know!) This isn't really my color scheme, so it was a bit difficult. But in the end I salvaged a bit of brown I had bought to make my friend a purse (hope there's still enough left!), some of the plain green from the MSU beach blanket, and some green stripes and polka dots from an American Jane mini fat quarter bundle I got on sale. As a result, the overall effect is more green than I intended, but there isn't anything wrong with that! The bride is the most frugal person I know, so she'd be totally proud that I made do if she knew. :)

Also, my cat is apparently too lazy to even sit like a normal animal while drinking. He'll take his beverage service in the reclining position, thank you very much. Proud moment for Bingley.

Yes, he's a boy and he has pink dishes. He doesn't seem to mind. :)

I'm headed to Chicago tomorrow and Indy on Friday night, so I'll be flitting around the Midwest and cursing the Newark airport this weekend (because it is terrible). Have a great week everyone!

Linked to Freshly Pieced!


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WIP Wednesday: Weddings

It's been fun to read about everyone having time to sew again now that their kids are back in school. Unfortunately, it's just the opposite for me! There are papers to grade, lessons to plan, dissertation chapters to write, and committee members to avoid. :) The semester has started off well, though I am amazed by a couple of things in the course that I'm teaching. The first is how much time it takes to plan it all--I've been responsible for sections before, but managing all of the minutiae is overwhelming me a bit right now! I don't know how high school teachers do it with so many classes per day, every day of the week. The second amazing thing is how very different freshmen are than juniors and seniors. I think the jury is still out on whether it is a difference I enjoy or not.

In the midst of that, however, I decided to start another quilt. Because that makes sense, right?

My hands are really tied, because yet another one of my friends is getting married. Very few are on the wedding quilt list, but this is another one who is on it. Fortunately, after her, pretty much everyone I know is married, so then it will just be baby quilts.

Pretty excited about the back. Got a bunch of this "Nesting" by Simon + Kabuki off of eBay for $5 a yard. It will be perfect!

I'm hoping to make a good chunk of progress on it this weekend while watching the first weekend of college football!!! (So excited!)

The color scheme was new for me, and not something I would ever pick. I had no browns at all in my collection! Initially I was going to leave out the green, but I like having that third color in there and think it brings it all together. I like it a lot more than I thought I would!

I've also continued to make slow progress on my other wedding quilt for the friend who got married in July (oops). I've got most of the rows together. In a perfect world, I'd finish that top this weekend, but we will see--honestly, for right now, the blue/brown/green quilt is of a bit higher priority. Because that wedding is September 8th.

A beautiful day, but weird shadows everywhere! Ah well.

I am awesome at time management. :) Linking up at Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday to take a look at others who are a little better at it than I am. ;)


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WIP DRIP

That's what I am this week. A WIP Drip. :(

I've started sewing together some of my rows for the gray and yellow wedding quilt. I also started cutting out some squares of solids for a very simple beach blanket I decided (unwisely) to try to throw together for my boyfriend before he goes with his family to North Carolina in a week. We'll see if I actually succeed at that. I'm headed back to NY on Friday morning, so I'll probably be a little sparse again this week.

There's nothing worth linking here, but Bethany was hosting at Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday today and she's awesome, so you should go check her out, as well as what everyone else has been doing!

Olympics note: NBC is the worst. Ryan Seacrest and "social media update"? Here's a crazy idea, how about you show sports competitions during the prime time Olympic broadcast? I think people would watch that. That is all.

And since if you bothered to read this, you deserve some payoff, here are a few pictures from the week.

I could enjoy Nebraska sunsets forever. There is just so much sky to see. They are my favorite.

Mom and I gave my cat a bath (one of her cats too). Haha.

Poor baby.

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WIP: Gray and yellow, gray and yellow, gray and yellow

I read my post title in a Wiz Khalifa voice.Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, I thought I'd show my progress on my friend's wedding quilt. As you may recall, she got married last Friday. For my part, I just finished piecing the blocks. But she's known me since 2003, so she knows this is very much par for my course. And she's too busy enjoying sunny San Diego with her new hubby to care very much right now. :)

I think it's going to look great, if I ever get around to finishing it! Right now I'm busy hyperventilating because I have to teach my first college course three weeks from today! Holy crap! Also, it is harder to write a syllabus than it seems like it should be. And I'm teaching a college course. At Cornell. The gravity of the situation is catching up with me. :)

This will eventually be almost twin size, so this is only the first few rows.

Like everyone else, I'm completely digging watching the Olympics. I'm enjoying seeing Nebraska's only Olympian playing well in women's volleyball (Jordan Larson)--Huskers represent! And I really loved watching the women's gymnastics team win gold last night, even though thanks to NBC's much-maligned tape delay, the suspense was gone. It was cool to see them grow visibly more confident as the evening progressed and then to just see on their faces that they knew that they had nailed it. In the interview they did, Bob Costas pointed out that none of them remembered the last time the U.S. won gold in gymnastics (1996). Of course, that's true, but so hard to believe! Kerri Strug sticking the landing on a sprained ankle was so iconic, and doesn't seem that long ago!

Does anyone else find it strange to see NBA players at the Olympics? They just seem so out of place, especially when you see moments like the Tunisian player getting Kobe's autograph. I might be a terrible American, but I kind of want Team USA to lose in basketball. They just seem like such arrogant prima donnas who don't even care that they're there. I've felt that way ever since Kobe floated the idea that they deserved to be paid in spite of already earning $50 bajillion for being an NBA superstar. It just seems a gross contrast to a lot of these other athletes who are happy to be there and who work other jobs to support themselves while they train. So if they magically get upset, I won't really shed too many tears for them. :)

/sports rant

Anyway, Kobe aside, I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday and Lily's Quilts Small Blog Meet!

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Quilt Top and Quilting Conundrums

I finished my Backyard Baby quilt top this weekend! What a great block and quilt design--it went together so smoothly and easily. I'm completely pleased with how it turned out.

I think this is a terrific quilt top design to have in your back pocket for gifts you might need on short notice. Here's why:

1. It's super easy, and goes together really quickly. You could probably make the whole quilt in a day, if you had all day to work on it and a longer attention span than I do.

2. It can be budget-friendly. That's actually what inspired me to try it. I used a 1/4 yard of each print (and that was juuuust enough!) The rest is a solid fabric, which is cheaper. I don't know about you, but while I'd love to fill each quilt with nothing but the latest designer prints, that's not happening on a grad student budget. This was a way to feature those prints, but still only buy a yard total of them.

3. It's a great way to feature a few favorite prints. I think the prints can really stand out with this particular pattern.

As mentioned before, this is based on the Filmstrip Quilt at crazymomquilts. I adjusted the measurements and made fewer blocks than in her tutorial though.

Now, I have to make some decisions about quilting, by far the part of the process that intimidates me the most. I had originally planned to try some meandering squiggles, simply because I've never done that before and it seems to fit the fabric (it's almost like the path that bugs walk in!) But I've been losing a bit of nerve and thinking of various grid possibilities, which would also look very nice and be easy to pull off given the block structure on this one. What do you think?

Bloomin' Spiral                              Gridlines

Rows of Loops                          Meandering Bug Paths

I had a really great weekend beyond quilting. On Saturday, I went kayaking for the first time since I got back from Michigan. I thought I'd be smart and bring my old camera, but I was stupid and put my new card in it and it didn't work. :( It was beautiful though. I love kayaking.

I took this one last summer. Gorgeous, huh?

Also, fifteen years and one day after the publication of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (or "Philosopher's Stone," I suppose), I finished the entire Harry Potter series. I read a little of the first book in the late 90s as a teen, and for some reason, it didn't grab me at the time. But this time, it definitely did! I loved the series, and want to read all of the books again. :) Better late to the party than never!

Happy Monday--have a great week!

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