What's Been Going On

Ya know what's annoying?  I can't figure out how to quilt and blog at the same time.  I love quilting and crafting and creating; I love sharing what I've been doing via this blog.  BUT, they are mutually exclusive activities!  If I'm quilting, I'm not blogging.  If I'm blogging, I'm not quilting.  Each is labor intensive and the more time I spend on one, the less I do of the other.  It's annoying.

In any case, I've not been a slacker .. I *have* been busy.

A pillow contest!

Rachel Hauser of Stitched in Color is hosting a "Bloggers Pillow Party"!
Per her blog,

"Spruce up your nest with the pillow of your dreams.  Then share it here!  Each month you can enter one pillow to win Fabric and the Honor of our judges.  Your pillow can be sewn, knit, crocheted - so long as you made it." (within the past 3 months)

So ... I'm kinda proud of the felt flower pillow that I made in early January and am entering it in her February contest.  This verbage qualifies as my "new post" (since I had already talked about it earlier and didn't want to repeat it).  But if you haven't read the former blog post, please do so ... it has all the details about how I came about to make this pillow!





Underground Railroad quilt

First up .. a completed quilt!  It's name is "Underground Railroad" and was inspired by the Elm Creek Quilt books by Jennifer Chiaverini.  I had quite a few hand-pieced 4-patches leftover from a previous project and this quilt used up a good amount of them.  I love how the light and dark columns are created by use of the color of the setting triangles.  I don't have a picture of the entire quilt just yet (I always seem to finish my quilts at o-dark-thirty, which isn't a good time to take pictures) but here's a photo of the quilt on my sewing table, just about to be squared up.

This is a detail of the quilting I did in the dark columns.










Diamond Pillows

I also continued to work on the throw pillow covers with Sizzix die cuts that I talked about in a previous entry .  I made 4 covers .. 3 with dark borders and later, one with a light border.  I knew that I was going to machine applique the Sizzix die cuts to the diamond background but thought, for a change, I would quilt the cover *first*, then do the applique.  In so doing, I would have a more substantial foundation for the machine applique.  Since the 3 dark border covers were like mini-quilts, I decided to quilt them on Lizzie.  I used a single backing fabric for all three and was able to use up smaller pieces of batting.  Because they were so small, quilting was a snap!  It was finished almost before I started.  :-)

I like the look of continuous curve quilting, so that is what I did on all three of the dark border pillow covers. 


Because I made the light border cover afterwards, it wasn't available to be quilted with the other three.  For this cover, I did the "normal" sequence of construction ... the machine applique has been done on the unquilted background fabric.  The quilting will come later on.

I'm not entirely pleased with the arrangements of Sizzix die cuts on any of them.  Some people have a flair for that sort of artistic arrangement ... I don't.  To me, what I've done is kinda .... blah.  I think I will eventually put some hand-embroidered elements on them.  Maybe that will make them look better.

As you can see, I only have pictures of 2 of the dark border pillows ... that's because I haven't done the third one yet.  :-)

Jane Austin mock-up

I'm probably the last person in the quilting world to find out that author Jane Austen (along with her sister and mother) made a quilt.  Dear Daughter #2, who is an English major and adores Jane Austen, fell in love with the Jane Austen quilt.  Because I'm Such A Good Mom, I said I would make her one ... in purple (as that is her favorite color and, in her opinion, the Only Color :-)  )

There isn't a pattern, per se, for it, so I made a baby-sized mock-up just to see how it would go together.  Jane's quilt doesn't have the slab-o-borders, as I have done here, but I was unwilling to do the small pieced border of her quilt for this baby one.  I still need to put an applique "something" in the center diamond and quilt it.


And *that's* what I've been up to lately.