Sunday, February 12, 2012

I have to admit, I feel a little inadequate compared to my favorite crafty podcasts. It sounds like those ladies are always finishing something, while I seem stuck in crafty backlog. Of course my favorite quilty podcast ladies have higher-end sewing machines, have been sewing much longer, and do more by machine than I do. Still, how do they get everything done? Most of them have kids and full time jobs, and still finish enough projects to make me envious.

*I'm still working on the wildflower shawl.
*I have about 2 inches left on the sweater I'm knitting for my niece, then I have the sleeves to pick up and knit.
*I'm quilting the Firefly wallhanging.
*I'm cutting strips for the hidden star log cabin quilt.

Today, my goal is to finish cutting log cabin strips and start working on the background for the TARDIS hanging. I want it to be a giant hexagon made out of triangles of two different fabrics. I have a ruler for the right kind of triangle, but I'm going to enlarge it. Those two have to be in Memphis by March 20. I'm a little nervous about making the deadline, since I haven't started on one of them yet. Well, I should get off the computer and get going.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Monthly update! As opposed to forgetting to blog for, like, 3 months. I'm calling it progress.

I'm still working on....I think most of the things I talked about before. I'm quilting the first Firefly wallhanging. This one is Wash's quilt. I'm really happy with how it's coming together, I just wish it was coming along faster. This weekend, I'm going to start working on the Doctor Who quilt. This should be interesting. I also want to start on a log cabin quilt from the Jelly Roll Quilts book. I bought fabric in November, finally figured out what to do with it about a month ago, and still haven't started. *sigh* C'est la vie.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Here we go again.

The idea for this blog was to sort of be an idea notebook for me, and I need to get back to using it. Yes, yes, I've said this before.

Okay, most of what I've been doing lately is knitting. Here are the knitting projects I have on deck:

1. A wildflower lace shawl, which is a very simple pattern, but this time, I'm going to try a knitted-on lace border. I'm using Madeleine Tosh merino light in Geranium.
2. Sweet Fern fingerless mitts in a nice worsted weight green wool.
3. A baby sweater for my niece, in hot pink cotton.

I've actually got several other lace shawls on tap, or at least I have multiple skeins of lace weight or sock weight yarn in my stash, and shawls are so lovely.

Here are the quilting projects I have lined up (in my head):

1. (WIP) a whole-cloth Provencal-style quilt, which got put aside to work on Christmas presents.
2. A winter lap quilt in reds and greens. I bought a bunch of fat quarters for this, and have added to it since. I think I'm going to use a log cabin/hidden star pattern from the Jelly Roll Quilts book.
3. A Japanese-inspired quilt using Kate Spain's Good Fortune line. I bought a layer cake with some of my Christmas money. I'm going to buy a yard of a print to use as a border and some solid navy blue fabric to use as background fabric, and I should be good to go.
4. I have a pattern from Fig Tree Quilts, from the newsletter, Fresh Figs. It's a translation of a vintage quilt, with red tulips set in a lattice. I wanted to make this for myself in red, aqua, and apple green. I might still, but the sheer volume of quilts I want to make and keep, just for this year, is disturbing me a little. I'm thinking of making this with pink tulips for my sister for her birthday.
5. I have a Ruby jelly roll that's burning a hole in my stash, and would pacify my need for something in the red, aqua, and apple green color palette. There is a quilt in a magazine I wanted to make that was alternating snowball and 9-patch blocks with a wide border that had swags of thick green rickrack and yo-yo flowers. I had been collecting fabric for this, but I have a similar pattern in the Jelly Roll Quilts book, and I think I could easily add the elements that I like from the other quilt to this one.
6. I want to make a classic Dresden plate quilt in 1930's reproduction fabrics.

So that's my wish-list. What am I going to do first? Well...

Neale had an idea about a year ago to make science fiction art quilts, and display/sell them at the art show at MidSouth Con. I've kind of slacked on this. It was one of those things that I thought I'd do when I got a more lucrative job, to buy the materials, but stuff happened. So I'm going to try to start small. We'll see how it goes.