Finally finished!

The front.

This quilt is sort of a quilt-as-you-go even though there's no batting. You sew the blocks together and cover the seam allowances on the back with strips. I had started by sewing one side of a strip into the seam and then folding in the seam allowance and appliqueing the other side down. Does that make sense?

The back.

Anyway, one strip was all it took for me to realize I would never finish the quilt if I hand stitched all those strips! So I pressed the strip seam allowances under, pinned the strips over the exposed seams and machine stitched the sides down. It meant the stitching shows on the front, which doesn't thrill me, but at this point finished was the primary goal!

The fabrics: bright pink, yellows, golds and navy. The color combination inspired by the pink and yellow floral on navy background. I had a fat quarter of it, which was just enough.

This would have been done sooner, but I got distracted by "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," which is really good. Each book in the triology has been better than the last. And, the book is so thick you really get a workout holding it up in bed!

On tour without the bus

By tomorrow noon, I will have been to 14 different airports in 33 days. Some of the travelling was vacation and some work with more work travel coming up in the next few weeks. No sewing around here so I consoled myself with a brief stop at the local quilt shop while running errands.

Five fat quarters that struck my fancy. No plans for any of them. Yet.

I picked up five fat quarters and an issue of Quiltmania. I think I need to subscribe. It's pricey, but so much more inspiring than any of the other magazines I have. We were talking about this at the shop. Most of the magazines show very simple quilts that I can easily draft myself and don't really get me excited about making or they are contest winners that while beautiful aren't tops I'll make.

Quiltmania seems different. Not sure exactly what it is. I bought issue No. 76 based on two quilts that I couldn't look at long enough! Studying them I was struck by how the fabric choices made such a huge contribution to the overall look of the quilt. The quilts appear complicated and busy at first glance, but are fairly simple. The pattern, value and placement of the fabrics makes all the difference.

I'm glad I'll have something to occupy me for the next flight. Now, I 'm off to pack. Again.

Carbon dating my UFOs

One of the blocks is turned the wrong way. It's fixed now.

All the blocks for this string quilt UFO are done. It was part of a guild fun night, but as I didn't write the year on the handout I can only estimate that it was started before 2004. Possibly before 2002! And I still like it. Sometimes when the UFOs are that old, you aren't as into the fabric choices as you were when you first picked them out.

This is a summer quilt, meaning their is no batting. The strips are sewn to a fabric square, and the squares are sewn together with sashing on the back to finish those seams. I had enough fabric for 36 9.5-inch blocks and will set it 5 x 7 to get a quilt 45" x 63".

Not sure why I didn't finish it earlier except that the only thread I'd brought with me to fun night was a khaki grey color that I usually use for piecing and the bobbin thread shows on the back. If I'd known what we were doing I would have matched the bobbin thread to the backing squares. It bugged me at the time, but 6, 8 or more years later, I'm over it.

A clean house is a sign of a broken sewing machine

Just returned from a trip (more on that later) where I was able to shop at Greenbaum's Quilted Forest. OMG what a great shop! In 2007, American Patchwork and Quilting magazine named the store one of the 20 best quilt shops in the United States and Canada.

Above is my haul. I was very restrained. Probably because there was so much to look at that I was constantly distracted from one pretty piece of fabric by another pretty piece of fabric. Also because I don't really need anything.

I ended up buying a few bits that related to things going through my mind lately, such as Laura Gunn's Lantern Bloom, the new Gerta collection that I'd read about the night before, and three pieces with text on them, including a half yard of "Housework Whenever?" by Sharon Yenter for In The Beginning fabrics.

That's where I got the title for this post. The fabric has retro images of women with quotes, including:

• I got a sewing machine for my husband! Good trade, huh?


• If I sit here long enough maybe they will fix their own dinner!


• I sent my son to college so I could keep my fabric in his room ... expensive storage!

I also got a couple pieces of Aboriginal fabric to add to the ones in this block I made right before the trip.

The pattern is block No. 6 from the Sue Ross Block of the Month that I'm doing through Material Obsession. This is going to be a quilt as soon as I make more blocks and figure out how to set them.

Speaking of the BOM, here is block No. 7. All done. Piecing was not too hard, and the templates made it easy to cut accurately, which always helps. Appliqueing the piecing to the background is where I have trouble. This was one of my better efforts. Not too wobbly a circle at all.

What's black and white and red all over?

A Kindle cover for my friend Lynn. The pattern by Sherry Cowley was in the January "Quilter's Home" magazine. It was easy to make. Hope it fits a Kindle. I don't have one to test with. Boo.

I made it with the optional pocket. In the magazine, there were reading glasses in the pocket, but isn't the beauty of an eReader that you can make the point size as big as you need it to be?

I love this fabric. It wasn't the fabric I'd planned to use. The fabric I'd planned to use said "Lynn" to me more than this, but I couldn't find it. I'd set the fabric aside with the pattern, and then when I went to make this I could find only the fabric for the inside. I searched for an hour, pulling fabric stacks from the shelves, digging through UFO drawers and various other places I keep fabric. Finally I gave up and picked this because it kept with my color joke and the present was going to be late anyway, but needn't be that late. Then after I cut this out, I found my original fabric. I really should have learned by now that any time I put something in a special place so I don't lose it, I will not find it until I've given up looking!

If you are looking for a good read might I suggest "The Ghost Trap" by K. Stephens? Although after reading that and "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger in tandem, I needed something light. "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn and now "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" seem to be fitting the bill. Both are humorous and written in epistle. The later reminds me of "84 Charing Cross Road," which I read ages ago and loved.

And the winner is ...

ME!

I won this lovely commemorative panel from Sue. I've been reading her blog and others who have been posting about the V&A exhibit "Quilts: 1700-2010." The panel arrived yesterday, and it is so soft and silky. A short post this one so I can go pet my panel and imagine her in various quilt layouts.

Can anyone help me with a Google Reader question? I have added numerous (too numerous) subscriptions to my Reader and have organized them under various categories (Quilting, Fabric Shops, Fabric Designers, Food, etc.). Since then I've tried Following blogs, but then it adds the blog to a new category called "Blogs I'm following." And it seems that if I try to move the blog to one of my categories, that it also stays under "Blogs I'm following" so that I have double the embarrasingly long list of blogs in my Reader. Clearly Google has not anticipated my need for categorization. So I've removed most of the following until I can figure out how to effectively organize Reader without having every blog link appear twice in the list. Any suggestions?

Not much to show from this weekend

Made a little progress on the next Sue Ross block of the month this weekend. Still have to applique it to the orange background fabric (not shown). Despite the complex look of the block, it was fairly easy to piece. The templates made cutting the pieces easy.

I realized I didn't have a picture of the finished Girlfriend's Galore top so I persuaded my husband to hold it up outside where I had a better chance of getting the whole thing in the picture. It was really windy, and this ended up being the best picture I could manage.