Today's post is brought to you by the letter E

E is for the Empty space where my machine used to be...

My machine is off taking a little spa vacation so not much sewing going on here.  It had been starting to sound a bit clackity-clack and with houseguests arriving and several trips coming up it seemed like a good time to take it in for a cleaning.  Dropping if off at the store was harder than leaving my firstborn at camp but hopefully it'll be home soon!  In the meantime I'm hoping to work a little magic on the empty desk it sits on.  I "rescued" this from the dump.  It works but it's not pretty!

E is for Enders and Leaders...

I also cut a stack of 2 1/2" squares from repro scraps to use as enders & leaders so I'll be ready to go once my machine comes home.  Once you get in the habit it's so nice not to have to worry about big thread knots and it lets you know if you have tension issues before you sew all the way down a jellyroll strip.  If you don't know what I'm talking about you can check out Bonnie Hunter's website http://www.quiltville.com/.

E is for Elly Sienkiewicz workshop project...

With no machine I had to switch to handwork and this has been in the UFO pile for at least 7 years.  It's not really my style so I don't know what I'll do with it when it's done but after doing all those french knots I really should finish.  I love applique and once the prep work is done it's portable.  Yesterday I took this to the pool to work on while watching the kids swim.  Boy did that get a lot of funny looks but if this heatwave keeps up I'll be done in no time!

It Takes a Village...

With summer here my quilting schedule seems to fluctuate between flat-out and nothing.  After a not so relaxing, non-quilting week of vacation in Maine and another few days of catching up/recovering from said week in Maine, we had a horrible, cold, rainy Friday.  I had planned to take the kids to the pool again but with that out they parked themselves in front of the TV and declared it movie marathon day.  I've actually surpassed my quota for viewings of MegaMind so I snuck off to my quilt studio for some much needed quilt therapy. 

While I am in the middle of a few projects with so much time away I wasn't feeling particularly invested in any one of them and they were sitting with a stack of UFOs so I stared at those for a while also.  Last summer I'd pieced this top with Tula Pink Hushabye and started quilting it.  I wasn't happy with the quilting design and ended up ripping some of it out before tossing it in the "maybe later" pile.  Way back in May at the BMQG meeting the lovely Lia brought her Hushabye quilt.  This was her very first attempt at FMQ and she invented a beautiful paisley design with hidden hearts.  Her idea had been niggling around in the back of my mind and seemed like the perfect thing for quilting the owl stripes.  I owe her a HUGE thank you for her inspiration!!!

So I stared at her Flickr photos for a while and then I practiced... and practiced... and practiced...

until I ran out of thread.  So I pried the kids off the couch and dragged them off to our LQS which is so conveniently located only 7 minutes away.  Even better, they've just opened an ice cream shop across the street.  The better to bribe the kiddie's with: )  We got our thread and ice cream and I was ready to go for it.  So I quilted... and quilted... and quilted.  The first stripe was done and I could almost see the finish line on the second when I ran out of thread, again.  3 inches left to quilt and I run out of thread, probably a sign that it was time to go to bed anyway.

Luckily that LQS is still only 7 minutes away so in the morning I was able to zip back over and get another spool of thread to finish.  It's so important to support our local businesses!  I often find myself buying online because it's cheaper and delivered directly to my door but it's situations like this that remind me how lucky I am to have a brick and mortar store in my village.

I love how this came out!  Now it just needs to be bound so I'll probably make yet another trip to my LQS tomorrow to choose a binding.  I have enough of the brown raindrops but I'm still auditioning other options.  I love binding quilts so I'm not worried this will return to the UFO pile for another year but it may have to wait for another rainy day.

My First Quilt

This month's Boston Modern Quilt Guild meeting was share your first quilt.  I couldn't make it to the meeting but I figured this was a good time to blog about my first quilt.  I have to confess, I started quilting before the renaissance, before blogging, before the modern quilting movement, before rotary cutters... way back in 1993.  I did grow up with some quilters in my family but I certainly didn't know any other 20-somethings who were doing it.  Nevertheless, one day I woke up with a compulsion to learn to quilt and promptly signed up for a class at the only quilt shop around, Tumbleweed (if that gives you an idea of their fabric selection) oddly enough in Harvard Square. 

Back in the day most quilting was done by hand and was taught using the Sampler Quilt method.  Lesson 1: choosing your fabric, no precut fabric collections to make life easy.  From the awesome selection of calicos (at least we'd moved in to the era of 100% cotton) you were instructed to pick a "blender fabric" and then 7 coordinating prints in a range of lights and darks.  Solids were frowned upon, "they make your quilt look flat!"  Is anyone surprised my first quilt is pink and green: ) 

From there we made plastic templates for each block and assembled increasingly difficult blocks.  Curved piecing, the dreaded Y-seam, applique... I will say it was comprehensive.  Session 2 moved on to sashing with cornerstones and borders and finally our tops were completed.  Now it was time to sew baste our quilt sandwich and learn to (hand) quilt.  I dutifully stitched 1/4" from each seam line and did some crosshatching in the sashing but then totally punted on quilting the outer border.

I liked it so much I promptly made another one as a Christmas gift for my parents.  You can't really see it in the pictures but on this one I got really fancy and quilted feathers through the sashing and borders. 

Despite all the effort I was hooked and have quilted pretty much continuously ever since.  It actually took me an embarrassingly long time to switch to machine piecing/quilting and my beloved Bernina spent it's early years gathering dust before I committed myself to becoming as proficient with my machine as I was at handwork.  I still think I actually quilt faster by hand and with football season approaching I better start thinking about a new hand quilting project to keep me warm; )

Excuse me while I gush

I LOVE this quilt!!!  I love that I got to try some new techniques while making it.  I love that it stretched my creativity and is my own unique design.  I love the way the quilting enhances the design.  I love that most of the fabrics came from my stash.  I love that it's soft and cuddly!  I just love it!!!

A friend of mine works for an adolescent psychiatric treatment center and we've discussed how some quilts could warm the place up a bit but never got around to specifics.  In my mind I wanted to make something soothing yet interesting.  Something that the more you looked at it the more you saw.  I call this Keeping It Together.  There is a mix of traditional nine patch blocks and crazy nine patch blocks.  Without revealing too much of my own insanity, I see it as the tidal pull between chaos and structure.  The fabrics are batiks I've picked up over the years mixed in with a few trips to my LQS.  I quilted it on the longarm with a wavy pattern called Happy Times and after I picked the thread I found out it's named appropriately enough, De Nile.  I love a good pun!

Then came my previously mentioned binding tizzy which I decided to view as an opportunity to stretch out of my perfect world comfort zone and do something creative.  I asked myself "What Would Rachel (my incredibly imaginative friend) Do?" and decided even though I actually still had fabric to make more matching binding I'd use something else.  Rachel pointed out that modern quilt goddess Alissa also had the same problem/solution so I'm not sure it was really as risk-taking as it felt but it definitely worked with my philosophy for this quilt. 

What I love most about this quilt is that it has reminded me that my quilts should capture MY vision!

Race to the finish

A few months ago Dex's teacher asked me if I would help the kids make a quilt.  I probably should have given some thought to what this would entail but of course I just said yes.  This turned out to be a lot of work but it was fun and the kids really enjoyed the process and the final result.  The kids each drew a picture of a family tradition which they then drew on fabric.  I backed the muslin for the pictures with freezer paper which gave it some stability and helped keep it from stretching.  The drawings were done with Sharpies which seemed to bleed.  If I did it again I'd look for markers made for fabric.

Another day I went in and helped each kid sew a strip of sashing to the side of their picture block.  At each stage a few kids were absent so there were more visits and delays...  Last week I decided I really wanted to get this done before the end of the school year.  I sewed in 2 blank squares for the stragglers and finished up the top.  I'd ordered fabric for the back and binding on-line so I was stuck anxiously awaiting it's arrival knowing I was going to be in Maine for the weekend.  It showed up Friday afternoon so I spent the rest of the day piecing the back together, making binding and basting the quilt. 

That night I pulled a marathon quilting session with some help from the Twilight saga and Starbucks and got it all quilted and the binding sewn on.  A 2 hour car ride is always good for getting a binding tacked down so it worked out perfectly.  I put the last stitches in the binding on the way home Sunday night and was able to drop the quilt off to his class yesterday.

Teacher's Pet

We're wrapping up another year of school here and that means it's time for teacher gifts.  My "craftiness" is well known so I always feel compelled to produce something handmade.  This year Audrey's class did yoga so I suggested as our year-end gift we could get her teachers yoga mats which all of the kids signed.  To go along with the theme I offered to make eye pillows.  These are so quick and fun to make, I went a little overboard: ) 

For Dex's teachers I added a pack of relaxation mints and tied them up with some raffia.

These are loosely based on the tutorial at Make It Do and filled with a mix of lavender (which I definitely did NOT grow myself) and flax seeds.  I was a little concerned when I saw that lavender was priced at $51.49/pound but I used a 1/4 cup in each and was able to make 10 pillows with about $5 worth.  These are perfectly sized to make with leftover layer cakes and I had fun mixing in linens and voiles for different textures on the back.  I suspect I'll be making a few more of these...  I'm thinking hostess gifts for all those summer BBQs!

The gap

When I originally planned this post it was going to be about quilting this on the longarm... but I forgot to take pictures.  Then I figured I'd just slap the binding on and rhapsodize about how thrilled I was with how this quilt has turned out.  In the spirit of "using my stash", I had a leftover binding I was going to use up even though it totally didn't meet my current exacting standards.  Of course I just assumed it was big enough.  Eyeballing it I thought I'd have enough but I didn't actually check before I started sewing.  You know where this is headed!

OH FUDGE!!!