WIP Wednesday : #8

A continuation from last Wednesday's WIP, it's the Fossil Fern quilt.



This picture is actually from yesterday, as I was assembling the smaller rows into larger blocks. Taken indoors as we've been having rain the past 2 days, and mostly to show my brother how it was going too. I have a little over a week left to finish piecing this and to assemble the quilt sandwich and quilt both this and one for my step mom and my dad. Eek!

I realized this morning that I'd also pieced some of the green squares into the orange row of one block, and had to re-do that earlier. Besides what's visible in the picture, there'll be a row of blue and purple.

Somehow this quilt is also a little larger than I thought it'd turn out to be. The top looks like it'll be barely a bit wider than my queen sized mattress. It's mostly meant to be a good size snuggle-on-the-couch (and also a thanks-for-letting-us-stay-here-you're-an-awesome-brother) quilt for a guy clocking in at a little over 6 feet though, and I think that'll suffice.

Presently it sits in 6 large pieces waiting for me to press seams and assemble more, but it's time to deal with the evening's dinner, being Heidi Swanson's recipe for Baked Farro Risotto, which is made with the whole grain Farro, and a dish which I end up finding very similar to Lasagna both taste wise and the way the grains remind me a little of pasta.

WIP Wednesday: #7

I've long been a fan of Jenna's "Dusty Springfield" quilt, which she made for a Kona Solids challenge, and not long ago the opportunity to make one presented itself.

In May Jeff and I will be traveling to the Netherlands and the UK to visit my family. Whilst in Holland we'll be staying with my youngest brother, and I asked him if he'd like a quilt. I had him look through my Pinterest quilt board, to get an idea of what kind of design tickled his fancy. And while his first suggestion was an art quilt well outside my skill levels, he then settled on the Dusty Springfield quilt. Only he didn't want solids, and asked for something with a little more pattern/texture. I suggested batiks, and he did some Google searching and said he liked the Benartex Fossil Fern batiks.

A charm pack was ordered, and I set about selecting squares that would give a similar effect. A kind of rainbow progression from warmer to cooler colors. I decided to make the quilt bigger too. Instead of the 30 squares Jenna used (5x6) I added another row and column and needed to select 42 squares (6x7).



Jenna didn't include a pattern or full tutorial, but posted a diagram on her blog about how to make the white and grey parts in between the charms. I've been keeping track of the amounts of fabric I've been using as best I can, and maybe I'll cobble together a tutorial that has fabric requirements and such in it, after I acquire permission from Jenna to do so. [permission granted! woot!]

The Feline Horde: #1: Shiloh

I figured today I would introduce some of our feline horde.

Back in June 2010, about a month and a half after I moved out of my ex's place into my own, I fulfilled a desire that I'd had for ages: a cat. As there had always been an intention to move back overseas, we held off on pets as quarantining them wouldn't be nice or very fair on the animals. He also preferred dogs and I preferred cats. Then we split, and things changed, and there won't be any moving. So, an opportunity to get a furry new friend!

After heading down to the ASPCA in NYC and having a disappointing experience there, I followed it up the next day by a trip to the local SPCA, where the staff was much friendlier and Miss Matilda and I left carrying a box with precious cargo: a 3-month kitten, later to be named Shiloh.


On her first night at home


Sneaking a nap in the laundry.

I've had and been around quite a few cats, and my first cat Abby was a super sweet cat, but Shiloh almost puts her to shame. Her favorite spot in the house is my lap and she's very attached to me. She doesn't really miaow very well, either they're silent or sound more like squeaks, which has resulted in one of her nicknames: Squeak.

Mostly she likes to hang out and be left alone by the other cats. She likes Isobel well enough, but doesn't tolerate Lieam too well, likely as he enjoys a lot of wrestling and hijinks that she's not into. As our biggest cat, she also manages to be the biggest wuss. And she's also a little neurotic.

WIP Wednesday #6

In between trying to tidy the house and packing to go to PAX East in Boston where I'll be working at the booth for Jeff's company I haven't done a lot, but I did manage to get 3.5" wide strips cut from all the Lizzy House fabrics I have been stashing for a while for the Wonky Stars/Sparkle Punch quilt I'd like to make.







So pretty having all the various colors and shades!

Most of that is just for the full stars. 5 squares per star, of which 85 are needed, off the top of my head. I need some more for partial squares, but much less. I do think I need something like 300+ white squares. Eep!

Boxed In Echoes Progress

I managed to finish my Echo quilt top. After having a burst of early Spring, verging on Summer here in NY, the weather turned frigid, gloomy and super windy, and so I couldn't take any outdoor pictures for fear of the whole thing taking flight. Taking pictures indoors with cats, though, is always such a tricky prospect! If I have quilt pieces on the floor, I have to lock them out of the room or they're sitting on it in under 13 seconds. If I'm trying to hang it up, such as below, well then it becomes a fun curtain to dive under and around.



I haven't quite decided what to do for the backing yet. I have 2 Echo charm packs that I won a while ago, I may use some of the charms in the back with some white and grey solids. The Kona Ash and Coal I have go quite well, though I don't have enough of either to piece together a substantial back yet. Sometimes figuring out how to piece the backs is more complicate than the front.

WIP Wednesday #5

Remember this quilt top?



Well, yesterday I finally got around to basting it to the pieced back I made a few weeks ago. The top ended up sitting in a box for a while, and then it was hard to actually be left alone by the cats long enough to actually put it together. On the weekend Jeff and I rearranged the furniture in our bedroom, and suddenly we have a wealth of floor space! Enough to put down a quilt exactly that size. And it's much easier to lock the cats out of one room, than to try and catch them and sequester them in a room. Now I just need to pick out a matching thread to quilt it with.

With some of my Christmas gift money, I picked up the book Modern Blocks a few weeks back, in part because I really wanted the pattern for Faith's Blocked In block, the pattern she used in her Echino Squared quilt. I decided to use the Echo I bought with some more of the Christmas gift money. I redid the math so that the blocks are actually the size in Faith's Echino Squared quilt, being 18" for each 4-quadrant block, as opposed to 12.5". I wanted fewer larger blocks rather than more smaller ones. A lot of the prints in Echo are larger scale, and I felt it would work better.


My "design floor"

My only real disappointment is having bought what I thought was Kona Snow, and realizing after I'd pieced all the components that while that might have been what I ordered, it wasn't what I received in the mail, and it didn't match my Kona color card either. Doh! Of course I didn't think to check the color when it arrived, assuming it was the right one. It did strike me as being a bit whiter than I thought it was supposed to be as I was cutting it, but I kept going anyway. It's not egregious, and I'm not about to take it all apart. However, given that I bought enough Snow for 2 more projects besides this one, it does throw a spanner in the works with at least one of those projects, namely the one in which I was going to use some Valori Wells' Wrenly, and the background on the birds is definitely not white-white. With the second project, I don't think it'll make a huge difference, so I won't sweat it there. I'm a bit disappointed that I'll have to buy more fabric that I didn't think I needed, just to do my Wrenly version of Jaybird Quilts' Chopsticks. At least white's a solid that will get used quickly enough, but I already had about 6 yards of that lying around as it was, and really didn't need another ~7.

WIP Wednesday #4

It's been a while since I got any real sewing done. The holidays interfered a bit, and some personal stuff too. Recently I decided to start cutting into half of my Fandango layer cake for the Jaybird Quilts' Carnival pattern I've had lying around for a while. I did quite a bit of the cutting the other weekend and on some random days here and there along with a little of the piecing too.



Yesterday I finally sewed together most of the blocks, and then the rows and the rest of the quilt top.

Lieam helped while I pieced the rows...



Blocks all done and now awaiting the borders:



And roughly 5 seconds after laying the blocks on the couch to take the above picture, Shiloh made herself at home on it...



I'm not sure what it is about fabric and quilts, they are like cat magnets! I do look forward to one day having a living space that has a separate room for me to use as a sewing studio, and for Jeff's music things, one where we can restrict the access of the furbeasts (and sometimes even the teacup humans!).

I'm glad I got some more progress made on this quilt though, it felt good to be able to sew anything more than 15 minutes worth.