In Irene's Path

I missed WIP Wednesday this week, which I feel guilty about - but I haven't made any progress except for finding out I'm more behind on my Sisters quilt than I thought.  This weekend will either be very productive or see no work at all - we're hunkering down tonight and expecting Irene to hit at some point tomorrow.  If we don't lose power, I'm hoping to make some progress on Sisters blocks and some quilting. If we do lose power... hey, maybe I'll finish that hand-stitching of binding by candlelight or get my Singer treadle functioning!

WIP Wednesday (#1!)

I'm joining in the Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday for the first time this week.  It seems like a perfect linky for me - I love lists, and I have plenty of things in progress.  

I've been a little stalled in progress because of a living room makeover (involving *three* trips to the furniture store, one failed delivery of a couch that wouldn't fit, and four to seven more weeks of waiting) and a smelly washer, but I have made some progress!  I'm hoping that this linky (and especially those stats at the bottom) give me a push to at least move some things from the "On Hold" list to the "Ongoing" (or *gasp* "Completed"?) list.  

Completed Projects:

Sewing Machine Cover - This one was new *and* completed!  Start to finish in two days!  It's not the most shapely, but it will keep dust off and out of my machine.  

New Projects:

Crosses and Losses - Fabric acquired (Kona? Ruby and White), but not even washed yet.  I did do a mock-up in purples of my cheater plan for the block - all HSTs and squares means no evil bias triangles.  (The mock-up block doesn't count as a project, does it?)

Ongoing Projects:

Spring Zig Zag - Finished quilting and attached binding, just need to hand-sew the rest of the binding, add a hanger and a label!  Just in time for fall!

Orange and aqua pillow covers

Placemat Pair - One top is finished, and then I ran out of a fabric.  I'm trying to decide what quilting to do on these - crosshatch, squiggly lines, or taking another stab at free motion.  

Tops Awaiting Quilting:

I really thought there was something to go here.

No Progress/On Hold:
Secret Project (need to get moving on it!)
Orange and aqua throw
Sisters Sampler - held up by wedding and now sister's summer school schedule
Wedding Quilt
Curtains for the dining room
Old Timey Stars
Dad's Sudoko Puzzle - I have all nine blocks for this one, I just have to decide how to sash and set them, and if I want to make the quilt bigger somehow.  

Hand-quilted dresden plates
This Week's Stats:
New projects - 2
Completed projects - 1
Currently in progress - 13

Perfection

I've been struggling in my quilting with perfection.  Not that perfection is a problem, but my desire for it has been holding me back, making me afraid to try something lest I screw it up.  To illustrate: I have four projects sitting in my living room that are half-quilted.  (Okay, so part of that is that I have a lot of loose ends to weave in before I move on, and it's been HOT.)  But I keep second-guessing myself on how I want to quilt something or if I can execute what I imagine.  I'm making a resolution to go ahead and just finish some things.  If I botch it, I have my handy seam ripper and I will learn something from the process.

All that said, this (found here) is exactly how I want to finish quilting my zig-zag quilt - yes, the same one I've been waffling about since, oh, March?

Diamonds are a Man's Best Friend

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but my husband is crazy.  I've gotten him into quilting, and he made a very nice, simple, Christmas lap quilt in December 09:

I really should take a better picture with natural light now that it's sunny and it's all finished and bound.

And now he's upped the ante.  Remember those reproduction prints I posed about?  He is turning them into a bed-sized quilt of pieced diamonds.

Which means matching points and offsetting pieces so the allowance comes out right.  It's taking some trial and error, and he's still working on his quarter-inch seam, but I think it should come out pretty well.  How he plans on quilting a full-size quilt on my very basic Janome is still a mystery - I don't think he's thought that far ahead yet.  For now, diamonds:

Happy Fourth!

Happy Fourth of July!  Nothing like a solid deadline to get some projects finished!  We went to the Boston Pops dress rehearsal concert last night - and I realized Friday morning that we had nothing to sit on!  I took a top that I made in high school and had no idea what to do with:

I got the set of fat quarters as a freebie from a Shop Hop back in the day - and they are so wild they don't match anything else in my house or tastes.  So I threw on the borders, and in between other projects I got the whole thing quilted with a denim backing!  I finished the quilting with minutes to spare before our bus, so we took it unbound and sat on it.  No action shots from last night, though, because my husband liked it so much he wouldn't get up!  

A note about the photos - this is the first time I've really done a photo shoot of my quilt projects.  For the top one, I climbed up on a stone wall to put it up there, and may have attracted some strange looks from my neighbors (the downside of living in a city).  And then I decided to take advantage of our blooming hydrangeas and get more creative:

So, maybe it will get bound before we go out to the fireworks tonight.  For now, I'm nerding out with 1776 and homemade burgers, potato salad, and cake!  Yum!

I have a confession - I am a nerd.  I am actually a nerd of many kinds - a science nerd, a history nerd, a quilt nerd, a museum nerd, a Park Service nerd.  And yesterday, my dear bloggies, those last three collided in a fantastic way.

Last Sunday my husband and I took a trip to the New England Quilt Museum, in Lowell, MA. We took a detour on the way into the NPS Visitor Center to pick up some yardage woven at the Boott Cotton Mill (we saw the exhibits there on a whole other trip, and that's a whole other post).  We also picked up some repro prints at NEQM at the end of the day (more on that later) - so, yes, we went to Lowell to buy fabric.  (I repeat, I am a huge nerd.)

From the Bancroft Collection, Marcus Fabrics for NEQM.

The current exhibit at the New England Quilt Museum is One Foot Square, Quilted & Bound - a collection of quilts (including several Civil War hospital quilts) constructed with quilt-as-you-go techniques that result in "potholder" blocks, which are then whipstitched to assemble the quilt.  Many of these were signature blocks, and the curator's speculation (which seems quite plausible) is that this construction method was a way of speeding up construction of bee quilts.

The biggest downside to the museum, in my mind, is that they do not allow photography in the exhibits.  So this post will be picture-poor, but I will try to describe our favorites the best I can.  On the plus side, they did give out a mini-catalog of the exhibit that lists the titles, dates, makers, and sizes of the quilts exhibited.  My not-so-inner museum nerd loves it, and only wishes they'd included catalog numbers for future reference.  While I'm on the subject of the collection, the museum does have a very limited online gallery; however, only the Cook-Borden star quilt is currently displayed.

Two of the standout pieces are actually sister quilts, both made by the Portland Ladies Aid Society in Maine in 1864.  They share fabrics, embroidered and appliqued motifs, and makers - which makes them incredibly rare.  As a quilter, I think they are pretty; as a historian, I think they are amazing.  They feature motifs of cannons and mortars, Masonic compasses, and an observatory that was a landmark of Portland.  One is in much better condition than the other - not surprising given their age and the use of silk.

I was struck by a third Maine Civil War quilt as well.  There was a red and white Crosses and Losses quilt made with the same "potholder" technique.  It is dated 1863, but with the two color solid blocks it could have been made by a "modern" quilter yesterday.  I have added Crosses and Losses to my to-do list - now the question is solids or prints?  Two color or rainbow?

The final highlight for us was a diamond quilt made in New Hampshire in 1876.  It was essentially a nine-patch made out of diamonds.  Eric was fascinated by it, and studied it while I looked at the rest of the exhibit.  Each block was individually bound - they started with a red stripe, and apparently ran out and replaced it with a red check.  It was a signature or presentation quilt, and Eric was finding patterns in the use of the red check and common surnames.  This is the quilt that inspired Eric to go back to the shop and pick out reproduction fabric.  He's been playing with drafting his design, and it may be taking a more modern direction, which will be fun.  I'm still having visions of those period prints in diamonds on my bed, though...  So there might be two diamond quilts in our future!

I'm Back!

After a month and a half of silence, I figure I'm due to check in.  I've been AWOL so long because life got pretty busy leading up to my wedding last weekend!  I'm now an old married woman (of 6 days) and I can move from wedding crafts back to quilting crafts.  My mother was amazed at all the crafts that went into our wedding - handmade invitations, announcements, pieced table runners, flower arrangements, etc.  I will do a wedding recap shortly with pictures to make up for my silence.  Now on my WIP list - picking up my star blocks with my sister, and prepping and piecing the signature blocks we collected at the wedding.