WIP Wednesday #3

Well, nothing new and nothing completed, so I'm afraid I'm pretty boring this week.  

Ongoing Projects:

Crosses and Losses - More HSTs and blocks this week - I'm at 15 12" blocks now.  I laid it out on my bed, and I'm thinking I'm not quite halfway there.  I'll keep chipping away at it, stacks of HSTs at a time, and maybe by the time it's cold enough, I'll have at least the top done.  

Tops Awaiting Quilting:

Placemat Pair

Quilted Awaiting Binding:

Spring Zig Zag (still)

No Progress/On Hold:

Curtains for the dining room

Fall wall hanging of maple leaves.  

Secret Project
Orange and aqua throw

Orange and aqua pillow covers

Sisters Sampler
Wedding Quilt
Curtains for the dining room
Old Timey Stars
Dad's Sudoko Puzzle

Hand-quilted dresden plates

This Week's Stats:
New projects - 0
Completed projects - 0
Currently in progress - 14

WIP Wednesday #2

I had a nice long three-day weekend for Labor Day, with two days all on my own.  I felt so productive!  I cut half-square triangles while watching the entire first season of Glee (yeah, I'm late to the party).  


Completed Projects:

Nada.

New Projects:

Fall wall hanging of maple leaves (no pictures yet).  

Ongoing Projects:

Crosses and Losses - Lots and lots of cutting and sewing HSTs and trimming.  Eight twelve-inch blocks down, I'm not sure how many to go.  I'm thinking that I'd like to make it bed-sized, which means a couple more weekends of sewing.  

Curtains for the dining room - One panel is done, one needs to be hemmed still.  But it's pinned up and hanging, so it's a partial win, right?

Tops Awaiting Quilting:

Placemat Pair - Finished the second front and cut batting.  Still debating cross-hatch and organic wavy quilting.

Quilted Awaiting Binding:

Spring Zig Zag (half-bound)

No Progress/On Hold:

Secret Project
Orange and aqua throw

Orange and aqua pillow coversSisters Sampler - found out that I'm more behind than I realized, made a list, and got copies of my sister's drafting
Wedding Quilt
Curtains for the dining room
Old Timey Stars
Dad's Sudoko Puzzle

Hand-quilted dresden plates

This Week's Stats:
New projects - 1
Completed projects - 0
Currently in progress - 14

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!