Baby geese...

Isn't it amazing what you find when you try to get organized?

I was digging through my bins yesterday (a little shopping in my own stash, so to speak, given I've cut myself off from buying anything new until next month) and found this kit that'd I'd bought last summer -- I'm a sucker for Lakehouse stripes. It was on sale at the time, $35 for almost 8 yards -- too good to pass up! I loved the fabrics but not the pattern, and I'd set the whole thing aside for a deadline project and totally forgot about it.

Looking at these in a new light (i.e., a neater workspace), I think they'll work up nicely in the Geese in the Forest pattern. I've been wanting to jump on this bandwagon (however late, I'm 32 blocks behind! Yikes!) ever since I saw the original on Flickr a while back, and this color combination is one of my favorites. It's so cheerful, and I need to rush spring along a little. This winter just doesn't want to quit!

I always like to do my own spin on things, so I decided to make them a little smaller -- 4-inch blocks instead of 6 inches. Before I cut into all that gorgeous yardage, I did a test block with some other scraps that match:

They're so cute! And tiny! Each triangle I added got me all psyched up to make a ton more...and then just short of attaching the two side panels my machine freaked out, producing big, ugly tangled wads on the underside and sucking thread down into the throatplate. Playing with the tension and making sure I had a good hold on the bobbin thread didn't help, so I packed it all up and carted it an hour out to the southwest suburbs for servicing. I almost had an anxiety attack when they told me it would be 15 working days to get it back!

So I'm back to using my Singer, rediscovering its quirks and reminding me why I love the Bernina so much. It seems so loud in comparison, and so much less smooth, and I can't get out of the habit of moving my leg for the knee lift that isn't there.

It's going to be a long three weeks.

When quilt bloggers meet...

I got together with Jacquie for lunch last week!

She was in town for spring break and yes, she's as great in person as you would expect.

Chicago was blessed with a freakishly warm spring day on Tuesday, so we enjoyed a meal outside at one of my favorite off-the-Avenue Italian restaurants and then took our Sugar Bliss cupcakes down to the River Walk for dessert, where I brought out the batik quilt for a little Show 'n Tell.

I felt a little silly bringing it along, but quite honestly my uncrafty friends can look at it and give it a thumbs up, but they wouldn't know in-the-ditch from free motion so I know they're just being kind. I needed a fellow quilter to take a look at it for a little validation of my quilty-ness, as it were. And Jacquie complied marvelously! It was great to get good feedback from someone whose work I respect. I hope I may have inspired her to give my wombly wavy quilting style a try!

Jacquie's Houses have a new home on my quilting bookshelf!

Jacquie left me my very first blog comment, and I believe I have made her laugh once or twice with comments of my own on her blog, so there was no reason to think we wouldn't get along. Like she said, it really was like getting together with an old friend.

It was wonderful to sit and talk shop with someone who shares (and understands) my hobby, discover some other crafting obsessions, and show her some of my favorite downtown spots. Her generous gift of one of her little house quilts was icing on the cupcake!

I hope she comes back soon!

So I'm not all that...

OK, so here's the reason I wanted to learn how to set in blocks: I'm lazy. And impatient.

I thought it would be easier (and faster) to set this red block in than piece the bottom part of this backing and worry about matching up stripes.

I can hear you snickering already.

And I really did want to try something new. It's always good to have another tool in the box just in case.

It probably would have been much easier if it hadn't been such a big block, and if I had more experience with it -- but my practice was limited to what I did in my last post, plus another slightly bigger version. Those turned out OK, so I plunged right in.

Improv backing, ready for fusing

It took a little maneuvering -- I got three sides set in really well, but despite heavy starch, the slightly biased edges stretched the block a little out of shape and the fourth seam was a bear. As a result, the last two corners were pinched a little, but not enough that the quilting can't hide it.

So there ends my adventure in setting in...for now. I'm happy that I didn't have to break up the lines of the fabric with seaming, I achieved the look I was going for and didn't manage to destroy the entire backing in the process, and I now have a better idea of how to execute this better should I ever try to do it again. On a ten-point scale, I'd give it a success rating a six and a half. And I'm OK with that.

It's always good to challenge yourself every once in a while and remind yourself that you're not so much the cat's pajamas as, say, the cat's underwear.

If he wore any.

Set-in my ways...

This might be old hat to a lot of you, but it's brand new to me: notice anything special about this pieced block?

You can't see any seams! The green square is set into the big red square, and the little red square is set into the green one. I've been thinking about trying this for a while, and just needed a block of time to think it through and then just do it. I love learning new techniques! This just took a lot longer than I thought it should.

Here's what it looks like on the back -- the green square came out with 1/2" seam allowances (I guess I'm a little math challenged), but that really doesn't impact how it looks on the front.

Anybody know of an easy way to do this? I used a combination of methods: part Ruth McDowell, part Dale Fleming (in the sense that I ended up using freezer paper, but no glue), part trial and error, and part conquering my own ineptitude. I still need to figure out why my corners aren't coming out clean, but it's a start.

I'd like to use this approach on the back of yesterday's quilt top, but need a lot of practice before I can implement it with bigger pieces. Any advice would be appreciated -- feel free to point me in the right direction.

Thanks!

Two-color improv...

First off, thanks for all the feedback on the "Currents" quilt. Given it was my first attempt at that kind of quilting, your response has been wonderful validation of my efforts. And in cleaning up the mess it all made, I did find enough of one of the purples to do a binding, though I still think it might be too dark. So I'm still thinking it through.

Sometimes it's just better to wait and get it right than just get it done.

With that project finished (more or less), I'm moving on to my Project Improv task. I'm a big fan of two-color quilts, though being a brights girl (the more colors the merrier!), I tend not to produce them very often. But after rediscovering this fabric in my stash when I made my original improv red and aqua block, I wanted to find a way to use it, and this top seems to satisfy both cravings: keeping it at two colors and still be bright as all getout. It will also give me an opportunity to play with the quilting some more, now that I've found my legs, so to speak.

It's not pieced yet -- that panel is just laying on the yardage here. But I like the look! I may just have to try this in some other color combinations.

Time to dive back into the stash!

When experiments pay off...

Last summer when I rediscovered these blocks in my UFO corner, I wasn't entirely sure that I liked them any more.

I believe I likened them to an old boyfriend that I once found attractive but could no longer see why.


But I put them together anyway just to check them off my list, and let the top hang around for a little while before the idea of how to quilt it came to me. It was going to be an experiment, because I'd never quilted anything this way before. It wasn't complicated at all -- just very dense. And random.

You'd think I would have started on something smaller than this? Well, no. That's just not me.

The taskmaster in me, asleep since the Christmas binding fest, awakened and wouldn't let me start (or work on) anything else until this was finished. And it seemed to take forEVER. I battled my Crafter's A.D.D. every step of the way.

Six-inch blocks, set 7x9. Using a walking foot, each row has between 18 and 22 lines of quilting. Which to me seems like a lot.

And oh, it was worth it! Even the uber-chilly trip to Joann's this morning as soon as their doors opened made it all pay off!

Six hundred yards of Signature #40 variegated purple thread and dozens of hours later, I'm pleased to announce that the quilting is finished. And it looks exactly like I wanted it to, all wavy and ripply with a lot of movement, like water. So I've renamed it "Currents."

I love the back...

...almost as much as the front!

I don't have enough of any one of these batiks for the binding, and I'm not sure I want to piece it; I may have to wait until the quilt show in April to find the right stuff, given I'm still on a self-imposed fabric sabbatical. At this point, I'm just damn proud of myself that I saw it through this far without abandoning it for something else!

And in case you're wondering, in my book a binding-less quilt is more or less "finished," so I can guiltlessly move on to my next endeavor. As soon as I figure out what it's going to be.

I'm going to have a beer and think about it.

Drat!

About ten lines from finishing my quilting last night (and long after Joann's had closed), my bobbin ran out. And this is how much thread I had left. I really didn't think I'd use an entire spool up on this thing.

Argh!

So close...

On a lazy Sunday afternoon...

It's a perfect winter Sunday: snow-globe flurries, beef stew in the crock pot perfuming the apartment, Bill Evans on the stereo, hot cocoa with steamed milk, and plenty of time for quilting.

I'm making lots of progress on the batik quilt -- in fact, I hope to finish it either today or tomorrow if I can keep these interruptions to a minimum:

Very hard to resist this kind of plea for attention.