Hurrah!

I have finished quilting both Bob's quilt and the new one.

I had to take a break in the midlle to let my foot pedal cool down.

It's going to spontaneously combust any day now, but it's a good excuse to stop and go snacking.

Tommorrow daytime I'll be doing my bestest to get them bound, and then come late afternoon, I'm gunna get my drink on.

Here. At home.

Why do people not stop me?

You know what I really need to learn how to do? I need to learn to not go onto youtube. Because it's after 3am now, and I've done nothing but watch videos for the last 2 hours.

What's worse, they're all quite short. I'm fairly sure, not that I've ever loaded anything on youtube, but I think there's a 10 minute max, which means that when you're watching it you can't really do anything productive, because you've got to click on a new video almost straight away. So although I was fairly productive till about 1am, as soon as I ran out of Time Team and got onto the internets, production pretty much ceased.

Buuuut, if I'm honest, I didn't mind. Because, really, straight line quilting is bloody boring. Still, I've realised that my work in progresses are fast becoming unfinished items, and maybe I should start turning all my lovely tops into quilts. Bob's quilt had a back and was all basted already, and I went into Spotlight to try to find a backing fabric for the new one but couldn't find one, but I did find a heap of sheetings for $3p/m, one of which went quite nicely with my second-last of 2010 so I basted that and got quilting on that too. Neither of them are finished, because that would be obvious and straightforward; instead I've done about half of each. But still, that's pretty good progress.

The other thing I got done today was the finishing off of my Newsprint Mingle quilt top.

When I planned it, I was gunna do it with a regular pattern repeat, but then I didn't like the balance so I've tried to even it out more. The fact that most of the stripey ones are across the middle is less obvious in real life; it's the brighter red that pops the most, and that's the one I've concentrated the most on spacing.

The handy thing about this is that the only points that match are the ones of the big blocks (well, in the middle of the all wonk block too, but they don't count) so there were no wonk-to-wonk points that I had to match up, as that was my big struggle with the last mingle quilt. I've still got 4 mingle bundles left, two each of the blue-orange-brown (what I used for the first one) and the purple-green-brown, so I'm not done with the fabrics yet, but this one's all done.

Unless I decide to give it a border. I've never given a quilt a border before, but all my trimming meant it ended up quite a bit smaller than expected (about 110 by 130) so this might be my first time.

Sunday.

Today I simply could not focus. After helping Mum pack for a bit, since they're pissing off around the country for a few weeks, I put the fabrics for today's top in the washing machine. Then, while that was going, I decided I'd to a tiny quilt, well, not tiny tiny, but the size of my leftover bit of batting, which was around 65cm wide by about 1m. So I got all the scraps from quilts numbers 13 and 14 and laid them all out on the batting, but then I couldn't sew them because there was a really quite interesting documentary on the Melbourne Cup on TV and anyway, Casey was asleep on my bed. So I faffed about a bit more, and cooked myself some chips, and read the newspaper, and helped Mum and Dad re-cover a card table, and, eventually, (much later) A teeny tiny quilt top got made. Then I couldn't find any pins, so I basted it to the batting, and attached the back (from Soiree by Lila Tueller) with save a stitch iron on webbing tape. Just as an experiment.

Tonight, while doing more faffing about instead of doing this post, I quilted it, quite nicely I feel, in a wavy-stitch-pseudo-free-motion-thingie. It needs binding before I can wash it and see if the webbing has affected the final condition at all, but for now it looks nice.

Anyway, obviously, that wasn't my actual planned quilt top to make today. Around having fish and chips for tea, missing both Offspring and Bones but watching Juno yet again, only with ads this time, and cooking myself some chocolate cupcakes, I got this made.

 

Apologies for the crap photos but I couldn't be bothered sweeping the floor so I could take a nice overhead shot, and I didn't want the batting to get all dirty.

Helen's probably a bit excited since she bought the fabrics above for Bob's quilt, but for everyone who didn't know, That's Bob's quilt. Bob is the big brother of Esther, who missed out on a quilt when he was born since I wasn't actually quilting then, but here it is. Upside down, but I also couldn't be bothered turning it around, and this was the end with the couch to stand on.

I'm so hugely proud of the fact that the fish are all the same way up. I rock.

Some kind of backing will be pieced tomorrow so that I can get it properly basted, even if I don't get into the actual quilting for a bit. In case you were wondering, I have since found more pins.