WIP Wednesday: More Plans than Finishes

First of all, the view out my window as I type this? So pretty:

Now that's done, on to the one thing I managed to sew this week: my completed Drunkard's Path Baby Quilt! Inspired by a comment on last week's WIP Wednesday, I think I'm renaming it the Mod Baby quilt, which sounds cooler. Plus, the little guy who will be its owner has two seriously cool parents who fell in love through a classic rock/Beatles appreciation club that his mom started - I think mod is probably a good style for him! So without further ado:

The Mod Baby Quilt

It took me almost a week to figure out how I wanted to quilt it, and I ultimately settled on diagonal straight lines. It's in keeping with the symmetrical style, and it was such a pleasure to use my cranky walking foot on a small quilt for once; it went off without a hitch! The back looks nice too, I think:

I started a knitting project, something I do for a month or two every other year. I'm hoping to keep my interest up until I at least have two gloves.

I had originally planned to make the gloves fingerless, but changed my mind; when I showed my husband my progress, he asked me why I had decided to leave those particular fingers exposed, not realizing the thing wasn't finished! I've been trying to imagine what purpose a finished glove of this type might serve...

The only other crafty thing I managed to accomplish this week was some fabric shopping.

These will one day be purses, probably for the arts and crafts gallery at my work.

The leftmost fabric is so soft and pretty it can't be anything other than a scarf for me! The other two I plan on making into large purses; if I have my way they will be very cool, so stay tuned!

Awesomely weird Swiss fabric for 25c at Goodwill. For the coffee table, I think.

This one was just to cute to pass up, and from Joanns of all places!

The sheet pile keeps growing... I'm going to get to it any day now, I swear!

So now I'm off to cut some of the fabric I talked about last week, I think starting with the pink/yellow/gray zig zag quilt. I love having the whole afternoon free to get some quilty work done. Happy quilting to everyone else!

Knitting break

I like to do something with my hands while we watch tv at night. Usually it's a bit of handquilting on one of my long term projects, but last night I needed a change. Enter a new pair of gloves, to help get me through thus cold Oregon winter! I'm close to finishing the first one, but only because I was having so much fun knitting again I had to watch an extra movie...

WIP Wednesday

At last, a post coming from the comfort of my own home! Internet access has been established, although I'm still working on adding Wifi. And to be perfectly honest, home isn't quite as comfortable as Starbucks has been, given that's it's been below 50 degrees outside and our baseboard heaters don't really keep it much warmer than that inside. Luckily, there are lots of quilts here to wrap up in! So on to the quilts themselves!

Finished: Disappearing Parisville

Ok, I actually finished this a week or so ago, but I haven't gotten to brag about a finished quilt on WIP Wed for awhile! I'm also really happy with this one, since it's a large full size and is currently living on my bed! It's not the first bed-size quilt that I've made, but it's the first that I've actually finished - there are in fact three WIP large quilts in various parts of the quilting stage! Now that it's so cold here, especially at night, I might have to make an effort to really finish some of them.

In Progress: Drunkard's Path Quilt Along

For my Drunkard's Path baby quilt I now have a top (blogged Monday) and as of today, the back:

It's not exactly what I had imagined, but it will do. I'm just glad it's finished; I must be out of practice or something, because I had to take apart and redo about half of these seams! I just kept sewing the wrong pieces together, and even made some cutting errors (one of my worst fears!) I think I just wasn't as focused as I could be because I'm not really interested in this quilt anymore; I need to finish it up so I can send it off and start something new!

Speaking of finishing projects, I made myself a little checklist to help keep me moving along.

It's fun to check things off, and helps me see where I need to put in my sewing time! Which brings me to...

New Projects: Could there be more things I want to do?
1. Brian's Christmas quilt: I have several yards each of Kona Bone and Schoolbus; I'm just trying to figure out how to deploy it. Ideally something like this, which I've been wanting to imitate forever; although I'm not certain, since I hate all the fabric waste the comes from cutting curves.
2. I have a yard each of seven different pink/yellow/gray fabrics that I bought almost a year ago, and finally decided to make a nice zig-zaggy quilt. I even sketched out a plan:

Alternating stripes will be Kona Medium Gray; there is probably even enough fabric for two quilts!

3. And finally, my vintage sheets collection has gotten awfully large; I think it's time for a new Superstar quilt! I put all of my prettiest, bright-colored sheets in a stack, and will have to refine the collection to eight:

One last thing - since I have at-home internet access now, I'll be starting up my empty little Etsy shop for real, hopefully next week. There will be fat quarters of all these lovely sheets there!

So now to link up and check out everybody else's progress!

Little Quilts

So, I have a job now. Which is a good thing; it means I can justify my fabric spending, plus it gets me out of the house a bit. It also means I have less time for sewing, but that's a necessary sacrifice. And even though I'm not too psyched about being a productive member of my community again, especially for a minimum wage, not-super-stimulating sort of employment, it does have two very exciting, unexpected benefits:
1. I'm getting internet at home! Now that I have my own means of paying for it, I can override Brian's refusal to get it on the grounds that it's overpriced and a huge time suck. And yes, I know that it's both of those things, but I don't care right now, because it should help immensely in my blogging and etsy-ing endeavors.
2. The dessert bakery I'm working at now (I know, dessert bakery; I should be buying as gym membership rather than internet service) runs a small arts and crafts gallery out of their wedding cake salon. On weekends it's open to the public, and displays only work done by employees, which group now includes me! I'm going to see what small crafts I can whip up to put up for sale - maybe some coasters, potholders or bags? A small quilt might be fun, just to have my work out there for people to see. Anyway, I have to work a bit on this, but updates to come!

So while I've been spending most of my time these past few weeks working and eating delicious cake, I managed to finish one little quilt top.

Drunkard's Path Baby Quilt (sounds kind of awful, doesn't it!)

I made this as part of the Drunkard's Path quilt along, and I'm pretty pleased with it so far. I wanted to do a simple version, thus the choice of just two solid colors rather than prints. My grandmother has a bunch of antique quilts, including one really beautiful drunkard's path version in white and red, and I love the clean, classic style of it. Maybe I'll get a picture next time I visit her!
Now that I've pieced this top, I don't love how the values of the blue and gray are so similar- they kind of blend together a bit. On the other hand, this quilt is being made for a baby boy, and I guess babies might prefer a soothing pattern? I don't really know.
I auditioned several different patterns before settling on these sort of circles:

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While I was cutting, sewing, and trimming all those blocks I vowed never to do another, but now, seeing the finished product, I would love to have a full size version. I even bought enough fabric to make it in a nice bright orange and white (as a gift for my husband, as he loves orange). I'll have to think about whether I want to go through that all again!

I'm hoping to sew up a backing and quilt this guy soon, as I think its intended recipient has just about been born! A friend of mine from college is having her first child, and I'd like to surprise her with the quilt. It's the first baby quilt I've made, and I love how easy it is to maneuver with such a manageable, small size!

On another note, I was thrift store shopping last week and couldn't resist buying this baby for a mere $3.99:

It's machine pieced, I think paper pieced onto the batting, or some kind of felt, and then quilted with ties onto a piece of flannel. The fabrics look fairly old, but I'm not sure what decade they are from. It's beautiful work though, and I'm trying to decide what I want to do with it. I may take the layers apart and add some borders to enlarge the top, then requilt it to make a larger quilt all together. It would make a great baby quilt, but I don't have any babies, and I'm afraid it might be a bit weird to keep it around until I do! Stay tuned, but first, check out this detail shot:

So pretty!

Anyway, my next post should be from my own house, hopefully in time for WIP Wednesday, which I've gotten sadly behind on!