sewing weekend

I'm super busy at work today (two days' worth of work jammed into one) and don't have time to post much.  However, I did make yesterday a sewing day (my Honey even brought me breakfast and dinner while I worked!), which I had to interrupt only for a quilt guild board meeting in the evening.  I was able to finish up the Civil War Chronicles border and backing on Friday and Saturday, and got the shoes all set into shelf-like sashing boxes on Monday morning, so I rewarded myself with beginning a new project on Monday.

I had not yet made my Honey his own quilt although I'd bought a fat eighth bundle of Panier de Fleurs, which I thought was refined (prints) and masculine (colors).  I'd been tossing around ideas for a pattern forever until I won and received the latest Quiltmaker 100 Blocks issue.  Coincidentally, it's Lee Heinrich's block - it was at her blog, Freshly Pieced, that I won the issue - which I chose to make my Honey's quilt with.  I bought some Moda Bella solids that coordinate well with the line - Stone, Tomato Soup, American Blue - and used one of the alternative layouts that Lee featured on her blog.  I cut out the pieces while watching the 25th anniversary production of Les Miserables, which was very moving (especially on Memorial Day when working with French General fabrics!) and pieced a first block to test before I went through all the marking and piecing of all the parts which made up the block.

(Sorry about the shadow - it's hard not to get a little bit of shadow in a photo in my sewing room!)

As I worked, I thought about a title for it which would suit both the fabric and my Honey.  He is a big New York Yankees fan, and asked for a quilt which memorialized that, so I thought about backing the quilt with an applique logo in the center to make it reversible.  The Moda Bella American Blue really reminds me of the Yankees' blue, and the colors just strike me as so vintage patriotic.  I liked the word Yankee as he is a transplanted northerner - a freethinking atheist here in the Bible belt - but so many of the clichéd expressions with Yankee in them are so negative.  So I thought I might simply call it "Yankee Husband."

I am string piecing the rest of the quilt so I will probably not have another photo to share until all the blocks are done.  I love how crisp the solids look in Lee's Cathedral Square layout with the Panier prints mixed in.  I should have a few more sewing days on my agenda coming up so I think it will be done before we know it.  To speed the sewing of multiple blocks, I did sew 2" x WOF strips of stone and red together and crosscut the pieces next to the flying geese, and the flying geese method makes four at a time, so I can't imagine this won't go super fast.

Both Civil War Chronicles and Spanish Treasure to go my longarm quilter this week, the former to be basted and the latter quilted, so progress is being made right and left.  Yay!

weekend progress

Well, another Mother's Day is in the books, thank goodness.  This is one of those awful holidays that it seems everyone else in the world but my family celebrates.  My Honey calls it a "Hallmark holiday" which is true, although he does take his daughters to shop for a gift and card for their mother.  This year I did get a text message from my son - last year he forgot it altogether - and because I asked, a quick phone call.  Both my mother and my MIL are deceased so there is no one for me to honor.  Still, it stings a bit to read blog after blog full of family celebrations, breakfasts in bed, cards, gifts, and I-love-yous from children.  That won't ever be part of my life, but since being a mother is all about sacrifice, I guess it's time to suck it up.  I had a child to leave a bit of goodness to the world, not to get thanks and cards.  I guess I'm doing all right on that score.

It did feel like a nice long weekend since we weren't traveling for the first time in four weeks.  My Honey and I had date night Friday, and got up early Saturday morning to go to a number of local yard sales.  I perpetually have a list of things I have an eye out for should I see a bargain, and I was able to cross one of them off my list.  We also got to one of my favorite local places, Black Dog Salvage, to pick up some Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.  I've seen some amazing things done with it and am looking forward to working on a couple of pieces in my son's room ... but first I need to clean out all my mom's stash that is waiting for me to resell myself.  On Saturday evening we ran a 5K, and I met my goal of finishing under 45 minutes ... but I'm still paying for it in aches and pains today!

Also on Saturday I received my copy of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, volume 5 that I won from Lee at Freshly Pieced!

On Sunday I slept late and did some sewing.  I'm really trying to finish up the border blocks for Civil War Chronicles, but getting my new 100 Blocks made me motivated to do something fun.  I had started a little wallhanging from one of the previous issues called "Shoe Boxes" and I sewed another block for that before calling it a night.  I continued with two more tonight.

Even though Mother's Day is not a holiday in our home, my Honey still pampered me as if it were.  He brought home a little DVD player for my studio - all I had was a VHS player - and made me a delicious dinner complete with homemade blackberry cobbler for dessert.  And then he beat me at two consecutive games of Scrabble, which NEVER happens.  So it was a nice Sunday.

Now just to finish the rest of these.  I have slightly more than half finished, but like my running, sometimes it's easier to get it done without really knowing how much further I have to go.

post-weekend update

Hi and welcome to so many new visitors and followers from the Quilting Gallery Blog Hop Party!  If you're looking for the giveaway post, please click here or scroll down to see the jelly roll and pattern I'm giving away and enter to win.

My Honey and I had a wonderful weekend away together.  We went to a lovely B&B in Goshen, Virginia called the Hummingbird Inn, saw a hilarious one-man Christmas show at the American Shakespeare Center, and had delicious dinners at Brix Wine Bar in Lexington and Zynodoa in Staunton.  We also enjoyed a wine tasting at Rockbridge Vineyards and did lots of holiday shopping, but for me the best part was finding a new quilt shop - the Quiltery in Fairfield, Virginia.  They don't have a website but it was SUCH a lovely find.

One purchase at the Quiltery was a Honey Bun of Moda's "Neptune" by Tula Pink.  I'd never seen the line before, and that's probably because it was released in early 2009, when I was moving from Baltimore to Roanoke and had a million other things on my mind besides being up to speed on new fabric releases.  But I just LOVED the colors and could not resist buying it:

I am toying with the idea of a log cabin quilt with the coral shades in the centers.  Or maybe a Bento Box-style quilt. 

And then, I learned that the Quiltery carries the entire Marcus Fabrics Civil War Chronicles line that my BOM is from!  Oh, I wish I had known that earlier when I had the little cutting accident, ran low and had to use a different fabric! But I did buy the 108" wide backing fabric from them on Saturday.

Speaking of the BOM project, here is what I have put together/laid out so far.  Yes, I worked on it a little bit when I got home last night:

It's getting so big that it's becoming hard to photograph.  Not only that, but my sewing room is shrinking!  Well, not really, but it feels that way.  In the top right of the photo you can see a few of my mother's sewing machines that I blogged about here.  I finally heard back from the local sewing guild and they will help me in finding new homes for all of my mom's stuff, but in the meantime, it's taking up space, and there will be more (patterns, books, notions) coming home with me from my dad's house this coming weekend.  In addition, this is generally where I hide and wrap Christmas presents, so they are also stacking up at the edges of the room.  But when I get downstairs, I'm in the mood to sew, not wrap!  Still, I need to do something before the weekend, since my Honey's daughters will be coming this weekend and I am headed north to spend it with my son, so I will need to clean up and stash presents so they're not found - intentionally or accidentally.

What do YOU do to help stay organized during the Christmas season?

some time to sew

Honey's on the road so I got some time in my sewing room last night.  I went right to my Civil War Chronicles block of the month - we're in the home stretch now.  I cut the fabric and put together one of these King's Crown blocks, measuring 7 1/4" unfinished.

After I sew the other seven, there are instructions for completing the quilt top before borders.  I'm hoping it goes together as well as the first part of it did (shown again below).

To clarify, it will have four corners put onto it, not rows on the square sides.  I should be able to at least start that process tonight, I think.

I had not been completely lax in my sewing room.  One day, I managed to get in there for a brief project.  When cleaning out my mother's sewing room, I took her bulletin board off her wall and moved it home with me.  I decided to cover it with some home dec fabric I had laying around so that it would be slightly more visually palatable.  It now hangs above my cutting station and is a convenient place for all the slips of paper and fabric I want to keep handy.

One of the things I've posted on there is an article from the latest McCall's Quilting magazine entitled, "Quilt Happier in 2012."  It had a lot of great advice I need to remember so I put it up.  Two of my favorites are getting rid of UFO's and making something for myself.  It's amazing how much the mental weight of UFOs hangs on me, and they do tend to be the projects that I'm making for myself but put on the back burner to be able to do something for someone else.  I have a few that date back into the 90s!  I think that going forward, I am going to have a goal of finishing (or disposing of) two UFOs each year.  And I know which one is first up in 2012.

I want to post separately about the Quilting Gallery Blog Hop Giveaway that starts this weekend, so I will do that next.

a sewing night

I left the office right on time yesterday to head home, get comfy and start sewing.  The first thing looking at me when I entered my sewing room was, of course, Ready Set Star!  I rearranged it a few more times and I think I've found a layout I like:

And so it sits until I start trying to piece it together.

I wandered around my sewing room for a bit trying to decide what I really wanted to work on.  Baron von Quilthausen wasn't threaded for Dark Star, so I passed on that.  Whatever it was, unless it was Dark Star or Ready Set Star!, it was going to require some cutting.  And then I remembered that I received my Block of the Month for the Civil War Chronicles series.  Remember that?  This is the finished picture:

And this is the partially constructed top:

I also have the four larger blocks in the corners done but not photographed.  This month I received one of the two smaller blocks that go into the corners and so last night I cut them and began piecing.  I had to finish one in its entirety before I could call it a night.

It measures 7 1/4" with seam allowances, so it's definitely smaller than most of what I've been sewing for this quilt.  I was happy with my seams on this, but is just so much bulk on the underside - even with snipping off the dog ears - that I went a little nutty with the Best Press when I was finished.

Frankly, I'm surprised how fast the year has flown by - this BOM is almost at an end.   Each month I enjoy getting the squishy packet in the mail, reading the story, and admiring the fabrics.  I really believe that undertaking the entire project as a whole would have been too much for me right now with all the other junk I have going on, quilting and otherwise.  I'm glad I spent the money to do this since I'm really enjoying it and I'm actually keeping current with it.

Speaking of stories, yesterday I bought and downloaded Tori Amos' "Night of Hunters" album and I have been unable to stop listening to it.  I even put it on my phone so that I could sew with headphones and not miss calls.  From Tori's website:  "Night of Hunters is a 21st century song cycle that finds Tori drawing on themes from Satie, Granados, Chopin and other great composers. It tells a modern love story that is only unraveled after a journey to Ireland's mythic past. Guests include such esteemed players as The Apollon Musagete Quartet and the Berlin Philharmonic clarinet soloist Andreas Ottensamer."  Her 11-year-old daughter Natashya also sings on this release.  I love both Tori Amos and classical music and frankly, I was worried that whatever she released next would be a disappointment after Midwinter Graces.  Each of the songs is inspired by some classical piece - Wikipedia has the list - and I will be listening to this one compulsively for quite some time. 

Today I'll work from home in the afternoon so that the plumber can come fix our hot water heater.  I wish "working from home" meant sewing, but not quite.  My Honey and I have plans tonight when he gets home but if he heads off to man night later as is typical for his Thursdays I might do a little more work on these Civil War Chronicles blocks.