Something Going On Here

Eye Candy

Judy's Baby Quilt

Ethel's appliqued quilt

Took a couple of pictures at quilt class on Tuesday night at New Moon.  Didn't manage to get pictures of everyone's projects, partly because several of them were in that amorphous, not-ready-for-prime-time state.

First up is a baby quilt that Judy is making for a friend. The bright colors are a bit of a departure for her: she mostly prefers working in soft pastels and 30's repros are her favorites. She's been finishing up several quilt tops from the grandmother and great-aunt, for her own kids and her nieces and nephews, all by hand. I'll see if I can cajole her into bringing one or two by for photo purposes!

Shyla

Fascinated by the patterns and t he noise

Ethel's been working on this one for a couple of weeks now. Last week, she appliqued the flower blocks and then t his week assembled the top. By the end of class, it had acquired a mitered piano-key border. Hopefully I can get a picture of that next week!

Anne was putting a border on a quilt covered in pink hearts, a request from one of the residents in her community. Again, no picture yet.

Sigh. Don't they know that they are supposed to let me take lots of pictures?

When I came home from knitting group today, this is what I saw in the guest room:


Shyla. Out in the open, giving me that "Whaaat?" look.

My little hidey-cat is getting a lot braver and spending more and more time out in the open. Good progress. She really does want to be a pet!


So tonight (because I was tired after knitting and took a nap) I was uploading pictures and listening to a CD on the laptop.

HiHi was immediately attracted to the noise and the flashing colors, and sat there mesmerized. Which was a good thing, because I was working on the "other" sewing machine.


This is one of the quilts that I found in that tub I mentioned a while back. Again, this is one I thought just needed binding, so tonight's project was just going to be a quick stitching around the edge so I can trim off the backing and cut it into binding strips.

Not quite sure of the vintage on this quilt--or any of the ones in the tub, really. Probably early 90's is my best guess.

However, the green fabric in this quilt is a match to a blue one that I am using for one of the quilts that I just sent off to be quilted, so there's not telling. The florals are definitely 90's though.


I wish I could remember more of this quilt's history.

It's obviously had kind of a  hard life--the batting on the edges is pretty ratty.


It was partially quilted, with invisible thread, but there was a lot left unquilted. So I pulled out the pins and decided that the thread I had on the Brother would do just fine for finishing this little t hing.

It's a very awkward size--I think it's pretty small for a baby quilt, too big and clunky for a wall quilt. Most likely was going to be a shop sample, but at this point? Who knows?


So I started working on quilting it--just some simple cross-hatching through the middle of the blocks. Went right over the old quilting.

Looking much better already.

Of course, The Cat was trying to help, and didn't like that I kept twisting and turning this out from under him. I got the Cat Back of Disapproval.

The Cat Back of Disapproval

Sorry, HiHi!


I'd originally thought I'd get it finished tonight, but after running through two bobbins I decided the Universe was telling me to pack it in.

Tomorrow is another day. I'm planning to spend the day working on quilts and doing laundry--so exciting!

I might even knit.

Progress

So far...

Progress Report

Today was rather a productive day. For one  thing, I got the last border on this quilt. Then I did a little digging around and found a perfect back for it--pink, with white "lace" butterflies on it. The pink is almost a perfect match.

Pictures when it gets back home.

Yes, this quilt got packed up into a box today, and sent off to the long-arm quilters I've used before.

They do good work and are (relatively) inexpensive.

I love this quilt! The fabrics are fun and it has a nice "hand." I requested a soft batting for it, too, so we'll see how it comes out.

Also, the Tumbler quilt has joined it on a journey north to the longarmer's!  I gave it a good press then laid it out on the guest bed. Partly, this was to make sure it was good and dry before boxing it up, but I also wanted to see how it would fit on a real bed.

The guest bed is a queen, and while I didn't want to move all t he pillows on it, I figured I could get a good idea of how it would work.

So on one side it comes down about as far as the quilt that's on there...

but on the other side it's much longer. That's because I put it on sideways.

Hey, it's hard to juggle a large quilt top when you don't want to spoil all the hard work that went into ironing it.

Have I mentioned that pressing isn't my favorite part of quilting?

Pressing isn't my favorite part of quilting. But it sure makes a difference in how the quilt looks!

So this one has a 108" wide backing in a 30's red and white small floral print. I asked for a butterflies-and-lace motif for the quilting. We'll see how it comes out!

Also off to the longarmers are four more quilts--check out the sidebar! Might not be 6 FOs, but there are now 6 quilts that are going to be another step closer to DONE.

I had fun assigning backings to the tops--having to keep in mind that the backs need to be 4-6" bigger all the way around than the quilt top. That was a challenge.  But, I was able to find backs for all of them, and only one has 2 different fabrics for the backing.

That's the Chicopee quilt. The two fabrics I chose are pretty compatible--one is a peachy-greeny sorta-stripey print, and the other is a light olivey green tone-on-tone. I asked them to use a variegated thread with peach and green, hoping to unify the two halves. Should be interesting. I have to admit that my favorite part of the Chicopee fabrics is... their name. The two colorways are called Fairview and Waterfall. Chicopee is my home town; I'm from the Aldenville section, and my cousin still lives in the Fairview section. The Chicopee River runs through town and Chicopee Falls is where the--wait for it--waterfall is!

The other quilts that went off are the Yo Gabba Gabba one (found it a royal blue solid back and asked for variegated thread to perk it up); the one with the busy Lily of the Valley print (green butterflies to match the Art Nouveau quilt); and the blue and pink Twisted Sister quilt (blue and white wavy print).

There will be more pictures when they come home! In the meantime, if you click on any of the links, they'll take you to my Flickr set with more pictures of the quilts and my furry helper!

And not that I'm counting or anything, but I believe that all together today some 34-36 yards of backing fabric went out of here. But who's counting?

First Finish!

There may be some rearranging of  this post after it's published, as I can't seem to get the  photos to line up the way I want them to tonight! So let's start with a little winter eye candy--the big camellia bush by  the front door. It is looking rather sparse these days, not sure why, but it's gotten a little top-dressing of camellia food for starters. Meantime, it's blooming away. These blossoms are so packed with petals, it's incredible!

Red Camellia

Now on to finished objects--I actually did get my first FO of the year done before the end of the month! (I'm not counting the little lime green sweater till its buttons are on, which should be tomorrow.) This is the back of the red-white-and blue quilt. It had kind of a hard time of it at first.

Remember this?

Back of the quilt

Pink and white camellia

Quilt class

But  it's now finished. The picture of the back is terribly washed out, not sure why unless it was the fluorescent lights in the sewing room.

You can kind of see the design--it's simple stitch in the ditch in the blocks, and then diagonal lines through all the squares. All the quilting is done with red/white/blue variegated cotton quilting thread.

Camellia blossom

Quilt class

More wonkiness in the picture uploads! Camellias and quilters, oh my! Tuesday night was a busy one, which is always fun. Lots of creativity in the air!

Front, closeup

And, back to my finished quilt! Here's a closeup of the front. The colored thread shows up on the blocks, but it seems to be a better choice than the clear thread I was using originally.

You know, the stuff that puckered and that I had to take out. I'm not sure what kind of batting is in this quilt--I didn't piece the top, nor did I do the layering, so it's kind of mysterious. It does have a nice soft hand, though, and I'm sure after it has its bath--which it's getting as I write--it will look and feel wonderful.

Here's the whole thing, pre-bathing.

Finished!

And I'll leave you with a picture of my helper, my constant companion these days--well, unless he's napping in the sunshine upstairs, leaving space for his "foster sister" and sworn enemy, Shyla, to get her cuddle time in! He misses his buddy Simon terribly, and really would like to be friends with Shyla, but she's not having it. Oh well. It's taken her almost two years to warm up to me, so maybe another year or two and she'll come to accept the fact that she's landed in a two-cat household!

The supervisor--quality control a la Hi-Hi

Catching up!

Can't believe it's been a week since I last posted. I guess just "thinking" a post doesn't put it on the page...who knew?

There have been distractions, like a birthday party for N8. As you can tell from his picture, he's 5.

He's a pretty good bowler--a whole lot better at it than his memere, that's for sure.

The girl cousins are getting big too. Audrey (A1) is now 5, and Abby (A2) will be turning 3 in a couple of weeks.

Sorry these are pretty poor pictures of them all...hard to get a good picture of a blur. That's mainly why there are no pictures of Garrett here--he literally wasn't still long enough for me to snap a picture!

Trying to quilt is always a bit of an adventure when there's a cat around. This particular quilt seems to be a cat magnet.


This is one I really want to get finished up. Would dearly love to have at least one finished quilt by the end of the month. You know, something to make that UFO list over there look a little less intimidating.

As well as making the finished list look a lot less lonely.

Oh yeah, he's helping.

If you ever need a quilt weight (you know, one of those things like a paperweight, only large and fuzzy and good for holding down quilts to make them harder to work on) he's  your boy.

The deception here is that while HiHi was helping with the red-backed quilt, I was actually working on the blue-backed one.

Quilted the stripes into the mitered border. Went around it three times, then started doing some diagonals through the blocks. Not sure what's in this one, but it "feels" flimsy. So I wanted to give it some extra quilting to make sure it stays together.

Massive boredom has set it. The soundtrack to this picture would read along the lines of "purrr....zzzz...purrr... snore...purr..."

On to slightly more interesting things. I did finish sewing down the binding on the red and black stars quilt. I had thought it only needed binding...

oh no. As I was sewing binding, I realized that I had been stippling in the black areas, and was about half done.

This is the back of the quilt--lobsters and clams and other accoutrements of a real old-fashioned clambake. Makes me salivate just looking at it.

Couple of close-ups of the quilting. Looks to me like smoke-colored invisible on the front, and a red/black/yellow Sulky on the back.

Oh joy--imagine trying to match thread from 10 years ago. Yes, I estimate this is at least t hat old--probably even older.

Guess what. There are a few advantages to being a packrat. I found two bobbins wound with this thread. I think it will be quilted on the Bernina, since there's no point in trying to rewind bobbins. Besides which, the Brother seems to have a little "hangup" using invisible thread.

See that picture of the blue back? That's not the worst part of the quilting. It puckered. It looked awful.
It hadn't looked that bad when I was doing it, and I found that if I put a little tension on it, it would smooth out. Apparently that was what happened when I was quilting it, and once it had a chance to relax overnight, it puckered.

Cat magnet.

Cue a Friday night with a marathon of mind-candy TV and some quality time with Jack (the ripper--doesn't everyone name their tools?) taking out all the nasty puckery stuff.

The up side is that I did some test quilting using cotton thread on the top as well as on the bottom, and it doesn't pucker. So, this quilt is going to have red-white-and-blue quilting on both sides.

The red-backed quilt looks fine. I'm not sure exactly what happened with the blue one, but I'm not going to worry about it. I have a solution to the problem, and it's going to get DONE.

Have you met Shyla yet? She loves this quilt too.

She's been getting much friendlier lately with me. Not so much with HiHi, but at least she's not spending all her time hiding in the bathroom cabinet.

When I was doing all that ripping, a good part of the time she was curled up next to me in the chair. If I moved my elbow, she'd rub her head on it. She really does want to be a pet, and I'm glad to see it happening.

Now if she'll just stop growling and  hissing at HiHi. After all, he was here first!

I am lucky enough to live near the Norton Simon Museum.
If you watch the New Year's Day Tournament of Roses Parade, you've probably seen it, adorned with a gigantic rose on its front--it's right at the corner of Orange Grove and Colorado Blvds, where the floats and bands and other participants join up to start the parade.
It's home to a bronze version of Degas' Little Dancer Age Fourteen. Today the museum hosted a talk about the statue, featuring lots of pictures of sketches Degas made for the statue, and an analysis of his working methods.

The Little Dancer

Goodnight, Mr. Simon's museum!

Very interesting! I'm currently reading The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro, which involves a Degas masterpiece--one of the ones stolen from the Gardner several years back. Lots of analysis of Degas' methods in the book--I am assuming the information is pretty factual, even though the story itself is fiction.  I love that sort of thing. One of my favorite books is The Poet and the Murderer, by Simon Worrall, about the master forger who not only created a new/fake Emily Dickinson poem which was good enough to fool experts, but also a whole lot of Mormon documents.

I may have to get that out and re-read it for the umpteenth time.  Also the other books on art forgery I have.

For now, there are baked potatoes beeping at me.