March - Big Events for My Boys Month

I haven't posted in two and a half weeks...gosh, I wonder where I might have been! ;)

If you need a hint, "Eolmana ma?" is how you say "how much for a yard?" at a Korean fabric market. Sort of.

And this is what 15 yards for $45 looks like.


And that other thing we went to Korea for...I think that went well. Honestly, I'm not going to breathe again until we get initial approval. But, we met the Little Man and he flopped right down on the quilt I made for his foster mother and hugged it, so I like him already.

Sewing


Both long-time UFOs, so good to knock those off the list.

Some smaller projects...

...a table runner for a friend...


...a pillowcase for the Dude...

...and a birthday table runner. For my NINE YEAR OLD.

Quilted

Central Park Sudoku / Reverse Hearts - Hearts is now bound but not all the threads are buried. CPS is waiting for binding.


Piecing

Spin Cycle - adding a few blocks every week. By the way, who bet on 2.5 months before Little Miss Fluffy Tail ripped the design wall down?


Bedtime Monkey {my NewFO} - done to the applique. I can't decide if the monkey ought to have shoulders. He looks a bit weird without them.


Striped Tablerunners - I took a class on these at the beginning of the month and whipped together a few more. Only the birthday ones have been quilted so far.

Weekly Churn Dash - quickly polished off the last two {bottom row} this weekend. The darker teal is from Boardwalk, and the other is, of course, my most favorite fabric ever, the Lovely from my Celtic Solstice. {Does it count as a scrap if you're not done with the quilt yet?}

And speaking of Solstice, I didn't do any sewing on it this month. In fact, I unsewed. I decided the pinwheel centers in Block B were too distracting, so I used the 12+ hour plane rides to rip some seams, and the down time in Seoul to sketch out a plan.

And I dug out Toy Story 1 and discovered it was a whole six seams from finished. So now it's a top.

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Chunky Log Cabin - Finished!

Hmmm, what shall I post about finishing first? There's starting to be a pile-up! I'm still hand stitching the binding on some table runners, so Chunky gets top billing.

Oh, Chunky. What can I say? I got swept up in the fervor when Denyse Schmidt's first line for Joann's was released, and bought a whole stack of reds and blues for no good reason. I don't even remember if I thought they were pretty - Blogland said BUY!

I believe I picked the log cabin because DS is famous for her wonky ones. I am not wonky, so they are nice, normal, boring ones.

I just pieced away with no plan until they were about 14" big. Then I played around with the layout for a while. A loooooooong while. {Circles? Furrows? Streak of Lightning? On-point or medallion-ish? I know at some point I must have considered and rejected - without photographing - a barn raising.}

Finally pieced them into the furrows, because that is the most symmetrical of the layouts. {Clearly, the ability to do wonky log cabins is in my near future.} Then I swore I wouldn't let the project sit - I was going to put the borders on right away! Hahaha, yeah, so a year+ later...

I'm not too sad it got set aside. After a lot of practice on the long arm, I got brave enough to try feathering the individual "furrows." I did a little bit of block stuff on Swoon, but this was the first time I really focused on a block design instead of an allover design.

Flowered borders, flowered quilting...I had about 8x5" of this border print leftover after carefully cutting it apart and piecing it back together. #winning

The backing is Daisy Mae, a subsequent DSQuilts line. Obviously I had to get it, what with the name and all.

I let my husband pick the binding - I had enough leftover of the pink dots or the blue with little red flowers. I was leaning toward the blue, since I tend to prefer bindings that blend into the border. No idea why...lazy? Afraid of trying something else?

Anyway, he picked the pink, and since it's my least favorite of the fabrics, I agreed mostly to use it up. And huh...it looks kind of...not bad. Kind of like a nice frame. Maybe there is something to varying your bindings. ;)

So that ends another quilt that spent a veeeeeeeeeeery long time in progress. Most of the leftover red and darker blues are heading into my Trip Around the World quilt...you know, the one I started cutting last year and...that's as far as I've gotten. Ah, it never ends, does it?

{Oh, so I took all of Lori's advice, and went to a nearby park. {Get it? Picnic? Fairground? Park?} Paid attention to my lighting and shadows, got some posed shots with the help of the Dude, even climbed up the slide ladder to get a shot. And then some people started playing at the park and it became creepy again. I'll never make it as a photographer!}

Size: 62x74"

Gratuitous kitten shot! But Momma, I'm not touching it!

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Weekly Progress - Still Moving Along

Still doing a pretty good job knocking things off the UFO/to-do list. It helps that I have so much stuff allllllllllllmost done, plus nervous energy to spare. 

And I know this is the home stretch - in less than a month, the Little Man should be home with us, and my sewing time will be severely limited. Since I've been waiting, oh, almost two years for this, I plan on enjoying the break.

Finished
Skorca! - and after promising it to the Dude for two years, it was a good finish to knock off the list!

{Oh, and there's a giveaway on that post. You might want to check it out.}

Quilted

Chunky Log Cabin and Central Park Sudoku - Chunky just needed the borders, and CPS was pinned to my zippers, so it got ahead of Reverse Hearts. I do have binding for Chunky, but not CPS, so it'll still be a while before CPS becomes a finish.


Piecing

Okay, it's not quite piecing, but I cut out the letters for the growth chart that went with the H is for Henry quilt panel. That meant the teal leftovers were finally free to...

...become a Weekly Churn Dash. Henry was my first ever long arm finish, so of course one of his teals would make it into the churn dashes.


I started a table runner based on my Hearts and Cabin, for a friend. One more heart and it's into the quilting box!


More Spin Cycle blocks, slowly moving along here. Really wish I could get a good shot, but we've got some rainy, dreary weather out here.

And I strip-pieced the main body of the Monkey quilt. It's supposed to be a "bed," with the white as a sheet and the blue dots as a pillow. I can't decide if the monkey applique is too small - it's only about 10" on a 44" quilt body. But the monkey will also have paws and a tail appliqued onto the "sheet," so... I don't know. It seems like a lot of white space for a kid's quilt!


And gratuitous kitten pic. What, were you USING this?


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Skorca! - Finished

Just running right through the list of UFOs. This is another longtime one - finished the top in March 2012. I covered the problems I had with quilting it earlier this week - short version, that many bias seams and a walking foot do not make pretty.


The longarm makes a huge difference, and changed my love/hate relationship with Skorca to just a simple like. The top still has some puffiness to it, but it's not a disaster like it was before.

Oh, right, so there's this show, the Penguins of Madagascar. It's basically awesome, and the best episode of all is Skorca.


The penguins at the Central Park zoo are afraid of the Sky Orca - the Skorca. I swear, the first time we watched this, I laughed for five minutes.

As I remember, I started Orca Bay with Quiltville right from the start, and it was renamed by the Dude to Skorca within the first week. Skorca was my first time doing a mystery quilt, and eh...it was a learning experience.

{That bear peeking out is hands down my favorite scrap in this quilt.}

I didn't do a good enough job picking fabrics - some of my black and whites had too much white, and the blocks aren't as defined as I would like, as you can see above. I solved that by letting the Dude draw on some of the blocks.

The quilting, which you can almost see in the above picture, is a looped swirl with a meander in between.


The Dude picked more than the name - the borders, backing, and the quilting were his picks as well.

Oh, and there's a story behind the layout, according to him. The penguins {border}, obviously, are on the icebergs {stop border.} The black and white blocks are the orcas, swimming in the blue {block} ocean. And the red is the BLOOD OF THE ORCAS' VICTIMS.

Living with a boy is super fun.

I also discovered I hate - and I do mean HATE - string blocks. I will never make one again. If pattern calls for them, I'll just substitute a single solid block. Don't try to convince me that they make the quilt better, because...

My hate is your gain. As I cleaned out my scrap boxes, I've been stuffing everything under 1.5" into this box. It's about a gallon size bag or so of skinny strips, selvages, and some random triangle-y shapes.

Want 'em? Enter with Rafflecopter. You don't need to comment or like me on Facebook or Tweet about it. However, there are scraps in there from Joann's and Hobby Lobby, as well as "quilt shop quality" - so if you don't want them...don't enter.

Oh, and sorry - since we're leaving for Korea shortly, I'm limiting this to US entries. I just don't have time to make it to the post office and find the proper stuff for international.


{Why yes, that is a Perry pillowcase from Phineas and Ferb, our other favorite show.}

Quilt Details
Fabric: hahaha, you're kidding, right?
Backing: from Hancock Fabrics
Binding: more B&W scraps
Size: 66" square
Pattern: Orca Bay by Bonnie Hunter, now found in String Fling

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