Binding

After months of work (actually, a few months of work and many months of not-working because of pregnancy and having a newborn) my mom's quilt is finally at the binding stage.

I had originally hoped to just wrap the backing of the quilt around to the front and sew it down as kind of a pseudo-binding, but I didn't quite have enough.  So I guess I'll have to do real binding.  I'm not sure if I'll do it by hand or by machine...probably by machine, otherwise it would take a year to finish.  I'm so slow at hand binding.

After this is done I can finally finish my scrappy log cabin quilt, and then maybe start a new project.  I feel like it's been forever since I've shopped for fabric for a new project...it'll be so nice to do it!

Bee blocks, Mom's quilt, and oh yeah, I had a baby

I'm finally back on my sewing machine after a hiatus of over a month.  I had my baby!  She's beautiful and wonderful, and everything went great.  But the adjustment of going from a family of four to a family of five has been a challenging one and not much time was left for sewing.  Fortunately she's started taking longer naps, which means I can sneak downstairs with the other kids and get some sewing in.

My August bee block is underway!

I think this is the first block in the bee that I'm actually sad to mail off...I wouldn't mind keeping it!  I'm still working on piecing it together (and I actually made more progress since this photo was taken this afternoon) but I already really like it.  The colors are really pretty to me.  I hope the recipient likes it too.

I also got some work in on my mom's quilt.  I'm over a third of the way done quilting, and I'm going to show it to her this weekend.  Hopefully she'll like the direction it's going, since I don't want to rip out all of that quilting.

I also got an urge to start another mini-quilt...a paper pieced Mariner's Compass.  We'll see if I actually get around to doing it...I feel like I have too many WIPs, and I want to finish some before I start some more.

It feels so good to have my hands back in fabric and my feet back on my treadle.

Attachment Love

Today I did a little work on the Carpenter's Wheel quilt.  Nearly at my due date and still able to use a treadle sewing machine - that proves how easy they are to use!

The set-up I use for piecing and straight-line quilting is actually a combination of two sewing machines - I had a sewing machine head that I was able to oil up and use, but the cabinet was in pieces.  I bought a second 27 (I felt sorry for it!) with a completely frozen head, but a cabinet that was at least intact.  They were both made in the same giant batch of Singer 27s in 1901, so I don't feel bad about smooshing them both together. 

Some people may think that the second 27 was a poor purchase, but the cabinet came stuffed with goodies in the drawers - machine manuals (how cool!) and a big box of attachments.  Attachments to make hems, attachments to make ruffles, attachments to shirr fabric, and an attachment to quilt.

There it is!  It's just a guide bar to help you follow lines you've quilted previously.  They still make them for modern machines and they look a lot the same.  They work the same too.

The quilting is not actually that puckered, I just neglected to smooth it out before I took a photo.  Oops.

The quilting bar wasn't expensive - 20 cents in 1901, which is about $5.50 in today's money.  I forget how much the whole box cost, but it was pretty expensive.  I'm so lucky that I found one!

Cat-astrophe

I'm trying to make light, but I'm seriously not amused.

We have three cats - Lucky Lou, Edison, and Juneau.  Edison has the tendency to wake me up around 5:30 AM by walking on my face, and Lucky Lou thinks litterbox use is optional.  I find both of these habits highly annoying, so I often refer to Juneau as "the good one."

Two days ago I finished the quilting on the central star of my mom's quilt.  I decided to bring it over to show her before I finished anything else, to see if she liked the direction I was headed.  I was going to visit her the next morning, so I carefully folded it and put it on the couch so I'd remember to bring it with me.  Juneau promptly curled up on it and went to sleep.  I laughed and thought, That's cute, it's not even done and it's cat-approved already.

The next morning I woke up and found her sleeping on the back of the couch near the quilt.  And the quilt?  Covered in cat vomit. 

I was so upset that I just put the quilt in the basement.  I couldn't even deal with it then.  Last night I brought it back out to survey the damage.  Luckily because of how it was folded only one corner of the back got stained.  However, I needed to wash it, and I couldn't very well put it through the washer and dryer in its half-quilted, half-basted state.  So I hand washed it and hung it in the basement to dry.

Today I'll inspect it in the bright sunlight.  Hopefully all of the stains will come out.  Otherwise I'm not sure what I'll do.  I've already quilted through a big chunk of it...I'd hate to rip it all out and replace the entire back.  I just really hope it all washed out.

This is the quilting I've done so far.  My mom wanted all straight lines, so I hope she likes this.

Oh, and Juneau seems fine by the way - not sick at all.  Honestly, why couldn't she have just jumped onto the floor to do that?

Pressing on

I'm 37 weeks pregnant and still using my treadle sewing machine.  I'm surprised that I'm able to do it still, but it's been pretty easy.  The only problem I had was with winding my bobbin - I usually run my machine super-fast to do it, and I get out of breath. 

Quilting goes just fine, though.

I'm finally at the quilting stage with my mom's Carpenter's Wheel quilt.  She requested a lot of straight-line stitching, which I thought would go quickly...unfortunately, it's become more challenging than I thought since I like my quilting to make an interesting pattern on the back of the quilt as well as the front.  I'm still working on laying it out but I have a general idea.

I've also been doing baby sewing - I sewed up a second flannel blanket for my baby, and a flannel and minky fabric blanket for my cousin's baby shower next week.  I want to make a pair of baby shoes too...I had intended to sew one pair in each size before the baby came, but now I think that may have been ambitious.  If I can sew a pair in the smallest size I'll be happy.

Luckily my sewing area is in the basement, and my kids ask to play in the basement at least once a day...I've been getting a lot more sewing time in.  I love summer!

Mother's Day quilt

Today I gave my mom her Mother's Day present - a quilt top.  

I finished it at my local guild's sew day yesterday.  I'm so happy to finally see it coming together.  I asked my mom how she wanted it quilted, and she just asked for straight line quilting - easy enough!  I don't know if I'll get it basted, quilted, and bound before the baby comes, but I'm going to try. 

I'm itching to get started on this project, but before I do that I'm going to do my May bee block and finish my scrappy log cabin quilt top.  I still haven't decided on what to do for a back for this quilt, and I need some time.

Coming together

I finished assembling the half-square triangles for my Carpenter's Wheel quilt.  Once I square them up and cut out my blue squares, I can start assembling the quilt top.

This evening I laid some of it out on the floor to see how the prints worked together.  I think it'll be okay.

I kind of wrestle with this because this isn't a quilt for me - it's a quilt for my mom.  If it was mine I'd put some orange or yellow in there to make things pop.  But my mom is a very traditional quilter who likes a more muted palette, and I want to make a quilt that she'll like.  No, scratch that...she likes my quilts.  I want to make her a quilt that she'd be willing to have out in her living room.  It's kind of hard when we have differing tastes.  However, I think this is growing on me.  At least the circle pattern kind of breaks things up. 

I'm planning on giving the quilt top to her for Mother's Day.  I can't wait to see her reaction.  I hope it's good!

Planning - not my forte

I'm usually a great planner, but pregnancy has made me absent-minded.  That's not the best thing when picking up a long-abandoned quilting project.

Since it's almost April I got the urge to finish the quilt top for my mom's Carpenter's Wheel quilt with the idea that I could give her the top for Mother's Day. I had shelved the project when I ran out of gray fabric.  The fabric store didn't have it in stock again, and then we found another gift for my mom for Christmas (this was originally going to be her Christmas gift), and I was feeling worse and worse with morning sickness, and then...it just ground to a halt.

Today I went to the fabric store and noticed the gray fabric was back!  Huzzah!  I bought two yards and brought it home to chop up.

But when I got my pieces out, I noticed that I had an awful lot of uncut gray fabric in my pile of Carpenter's Wheel fabrics.  Maybe enough to finish the project...

...and then I realized I hadn't run out of gray.  I'd run out of blue.  And then I clearly remembered that it wasn't the gray fabric they'd been out of...I had cleaned them out of really saturated, monochromatic, forget-me-not blue fat quarters and yardage.  That's what I needed.  More blue.

I'm going to finish my half-square triangles, including trimming and squaring up, to make absolutely sure of what I need before I go back to the fabric store. 

And I labeled all of my materials to keep everything straight.  No more screw ups. 

Although it's not bad.  I can still use the gray on my husband's hexagon quilt. But still...so frustrating.

Blah

Lately I just haven't been able to get into a sewing mood.  Maybe it's because I do most of my sewing after my kids are asleep, and lately I've been feeling so sick and tired that I just fall asleep as soon as the kids do.  I don't know.  But I've lost my sewing mojo lately.

At least the Christmas preparations have been going in my favor. My mom found a Christmas gift that she absolutely loved, so she already bought it and informed my brother, sister, and I that we could pay my dad and that would be our Christmas gift to her.  She also found a gift for my dad that my siblings and I could chip in on, so those are two gifts down.

Unfortunately I've had two setbacks.  My nephew's crib quilt tore apart in the wash (I'm still puzzling out how that happened - it's not like I washed it with razors) and will be in need of repair.  I'm going to ask the good people of Threadbias about the best way to approach that one. Also, today I went to find more gray fabric, which was the background fabric for my mom's quilt top (I'm still going to give it to her, maybe for Mother's Day) and found that the fabric I used is gone!  It's so hard to find gray solid fabric.  I'm going to bring back a piece of what I bought and see if I can buy a couple more yards...maybe the fabric was just on order or behind the cutting counter while I was there.  But I'm reluctant to make more HSTs unless I know I have enough gray to complete the whole thing.  Ugh.

In the meantime I'm going to start something new.  I bought some fat quarters and I'm going to make a hexagon quilt.  I found a website where you can print out hexagons of any size, and another site that teaches you how to draw your own perfect hexagons with a compass.  I just did the print site.  Hopefully I can make a rainbow of hexagons and that will get me back in the mood to sew.  Part of me feels like I should work on my son's teacher's mug rug, but really, that will take no time at all.  Why force it?

Getting back to sewing

I haven't been sewing much lately - I just haven't felt up to it.  I actually stayed home from my local Modern Quilt Guild sew day today, but even though I felt too sick to do anything drastic - like getting out of my pajamas - I did feel up to doing a couple brief errands and then going downstairs and sewing.

Christmas is coming up fast and I'm not close to finishing my list of handmade Christmas gifts for my family.  Today I started sewing HSTs for my mom's big Carpenter's Wheel quilt, and I finished binding my nephew's crib quilt.  I didn't have much to go, I just hate binding SO MUCH...but at least now it's done.

I am pretty bummed out because I finally got an idea for my dad's Christmas gift...a while ago I bought the pattern for these drawstring bags.  I think there are seven sizes in the pattern.  I was going to make him a set of all of the sizes, and I was going to use ripstop nylon for the bags.  I figured they'd be handy for his camping trips, especially his big trips to the Boundary Waters between Minnesota and Canada.  My mom thought that was a great idea...until he bought a few commercially-made drawstring bags recently.

Come on, Dad!  Give me a break here!  I think I may have to buy him something, but he's impossible to buy for too.  Ugh.

Gift list:

Brother & his girlfriend: mug rugs
Sister & her fiance: mug rugs
Son's teacher: mug rug
Nephew: crib-sized quilt
Mom: quilt top
Dad: Who knows.

Planning out the next one

The next new quilt I start will be a quilt for my mom.  I've really had my eye on the Swoon pattern, but I've heard it's a little fiddly to put together. I was thinking of making a giant block quilt, like this one from In Color Order, but a Swoon block instead of a star.  I didn't want to figure out new sizes for all the little bits and pieces, so I was happy when I found this tutorial that shows how to make a Carpenter's Wheel block out of half-square triangles.  It's very similar to the Swoon block and it'll be a lot easier to enlarge. 

I hope my mom likes it.  I'll finish it after I finish the double slice quilt, the Dresden quilt, and my wall hanging, which means it'll be sometime next decade.