The quilts so far...

I just went through and re-tagged a heap of posts, since I stopped putting quilt numbers at around #6.

#1 is the big rainbow quilt.

#2 is Maddy's quilt.

#3 is Levi's (friend from work's baby) quilt.

#4 will be Mama Jan's quilt, which got a number when it was in planning stages - that's how long it's been on the gunna list.

#5 is the retro quilt

#6 is the BlueGreen quilt

#7 is the purple quilt (not yet completed)

#8 is Esther's quilt

#9 is Dad's quilt cover (quilted, but not assembled)

#10 is my wonky Mingle mini quilt.

#11 is what came to be known as the Bubble and Squeak mini quilt (which has also gone to live with Esther, not that it will ever get used because I tied a bow around it in matching fabric and Helen thinks it's too pretty to unwrap)

#12 is the Honeycomb quilt I finished today.

Now I need a way to put that somewhere I can remember it - on the sidewall or something.

***Childish Squealing***

Eeep!!!

It's like I'm a real quilt blogger... With real photos of real accomplishments, not just crappy mspaint mock-ups of what I want to do...

Even though I got it finished a few days ago, I wanted to remake it's cover to be a bit neater, and didnt get around to it until today. Also, we finally got some sunshine at a time of the day when I wasn't stuck at work selling people cancer tubes, so I could get outside and take the pretty photos.

I even love the back, because I pretty much just went over the main seams with the fantastic little wavy stitch that's on the 45 year old Elna but wasn't on the brand new Toyota I owned for 15 hours before returning late last year. So you can almost see the pattern from the back too.

I found the photo taking thing a bit hard though. The part of the clothesline that would have been face onto the sun was in the shadow of either the house or the rest of the clothesline, and at the angle I had to take it at, the crinkles put parts of it in shade and the sunlit parts look all washed out and weird. But at one point, it caught a gust of wind and was all in the shade, and this came out okay.

In spite of the fact that its a hideously simple design and only measures a bit over 120cm each way, there's a fair bit of smug pride going on. With no books, no formal training, no help from anyone at all, I made a quilt, with triangles, hell, with stars, with pretty, wavy quilting, that's still suitable for a boy, that I am now, quite selflessly, going to give to someone I've never even met.

Eventually. I'm not sure when, since his mum is still off on maternity leave, and I've no idea when I'll be seeing her again to give it to her, but still.

Nice feeling.

Quilt # 3 washed up beautifully, babycat is just under 300g, has opened his eyes and has learnt how to drag his fat little belly around his nesting spot, and I'm wondering what to do next.

Mama Jan's quilt would be the logical choice, as I've got all the fabrics and it's pretty much organised, but it's really just squares, and they're a bit boring, so I'll probably stall on that one till it's really needed.

Spotlight is currently between sales (they usually go for 10 days from Thursday till the Sunday week) so there will be no going in to buy more stuff and from all of the fabric I have now, I cant seem to put together enough to do something nice. The retro quilt needs it's unifying background fabric, the PinkBrownGreen quilt is still scaring me too much to start, and having decided to do the randomised pastel squares quilt as a queen sized blanket, I'm stalling on that one too, for when I'm not trying to do it around full time work.

So, there's two things I could do. No 1 is get the bundles of fabric that are coordinating really well but aren't numerous enough to make into a quilt, and fill in the missing pieces. There's a really nice blue and green lot that I've been putting together slowly, but is still only at 6 when I need at least 12, and a really bright lot, that I have over a dozen pieces for already, but that I cant seem to sort out into a cohesive design - naturally, I'm assuming that buying more will fix this problem. And of course there's the retro one, which needs perhaps a half dozen more mixed fat quarters, or maybe just a metre or so of a solid... What I really need to do is take them in with me when I shop, instead of just buying something and hoping for the best.

The other thing I want to do is but some fat quarter bundles off of ebay. I want the Eden bundle, even though I already have a half dozen of the fabrics, and I've found all 30fqs for less than $100 including postage, which is not too far over my standard $3 per fat quarter. I've found the Soire'e bundle for $100 before postage (usually about $15) and that's got 36fqs so that, technically, is even cheaper. Or I can get the 40fq Hunky Dory bundle for about $120, which is in budget. But some of the fabrics I'm not as keen on, and it's a bigger outlay, and I really should stop spending money, so...

I'll just keep getting out my fabrics every night, and spreading them out and making new piles, hoping new ones will magically appear and give me a perfect set to start my next project.

Ugh... So... Tired... Must... Finish...

Quilt # 3 is finished but for tying off my little bits of thread. I'm feeling a bit naff now that I said I was giving it to Kylie's baby, because I really do like it, and, naturally, want to keep it. It looks like a proper quilt, not that the others don't, but it has angles, and wavy stitching, and is very cool.

Have had a shuffle around in the bedroom, got the proper sewing cabinet in here, though the height adjuster still terrifies me - It's been at least 3 months since last time and the little bruise is still under my thumbnail. Damn thing is vicious.

Also realised that I quite much prefer the free arm to a completely flat sewing surface (there's a plastic thing you put in when the arm is level with the bench - so you can free motion I suppose) because it gives you some air space to grip your fabric properly. But that is just my opinion.

And now I have to tie off my little threads (9 lots of them, due to the slightly awkward path I had to sew around to get all the big seams) and wash it before I work out how I'm gunna get it to it's new home. They're giving her the rest of her presents tomorrow morning, but I really want to wash it before it gets passed on, as I've no idea how the bamboo will hold up in a wash. There was no info on the label on how far apart it could be quilted before there would be shifting - each point of the stars is about 8" from point to centre by 5" wide, and the internet said that there were other bamboo battings claiming you could go 8" between, so I'm hoping this one is okay. Nonetheless, I will be testing it, on cold and drying it naturally, just to make sure, since I don't want to give it to them, have them ooh and ahh over it, then have it shit itself on its first wash.

Annoyingly, Honeycat at this moment is sitting on it, probably to get back at me for making her get off the keyboard while I typed this. Babycat has opened his eyes, but I'm getting worried about the size of his belly and the fact that I still haven't seen any babypoop.

Days off are more tiring than workdays...

I ended up getting 6 cot sized ones (that was all they had) and one queen sized one, total cost $130.

Quilt # 3 is bound but not quilted, because spotlight had sold out of the stripey fabric I was going to use for the binding, so I had the most pathetic strop in history, and did the cheat fold-over-the-backing binding thing. It still looks nice, if a little more boring, and it means that I'll have to do a neater job of my start/finish points of the quilting, but I'm feeling good about the progress I've made - even if it isn't finished, it almost looks it, but for the pins.

I also concluded that my current setup of sewing machine on shoebox on dresser is killing my back and is generally bloody inconvenient, so I've started the process of getting a bit better setup, by bringing the proper sewing cabinet, with the height adjustment and stuff, to my bedroom, not that I really have room for it. I've had to tub a whole lot of stuff, and those tubs are going to have to be shedded till I can get rid of the dresser, which I can't do till honeycat is willing to let babycat move out, and put the tubs where it is currently. I've considered and quite quickly disregarded the idea of going back to a single bed now that I no longer have a boyfriend to share it with, but as soon as honeycat leaves the nest and goes back to sleeping exactly where I want my knees to be, the extra bedspace is necessary.

The only problem with having the sewing cabinet on the other side of the room is that of course there is no powerpoint on that side, so even though I've done the heavy lifting and would like to celebrate by getting this quilt finished so I can stop stressing over it,* I cant finish it because, of course, we have no free extension cables at the moment.

So I'm thinking I might instead go and finish the last of the prewashing... I put it in the machine before I went in to do my shopping and haven't got around to putting it in the dryer yet, but it would probably only need 20 minutes before it would be fine to iron... or, I could sit here, and go on facebook and ebay, and waste yet another night off.

Haven't decided yet.

*Not that its bad, in fact, I'm actually worried that its too good to give to someone I've never met, who's already been bought $100 worth of presents by the rest of the staff... Should we be sharing the babylove instead of spoiling this one particular baby?

The Sale Dilema...

Lincraft is having a 30% off sale for the next few days, meaning it's only going to be $16.10 for a pre-cut cot size bamboo cotton quilt batt. The thing is, do I go mental and buy up big, or do I think, maybe, or even probably, I will get bored with the whole quilting thing before I get around to using them, leaving them languishing in a tub for a few years, till the next cat to show up has a baby on them?

That sort of thing does tend to happen with me, because I think of myself as a "soft engineer" and I enjoy much more the process of figuring out the best way to make something, rather than the actual making. Once a design is worked out, sorted, easy to do, it becomes boring. Maybe that's why I wanted to do this blog, because I spend (waste) countless hours working out the best/easiest/quickest ways of making various things, then, once that is done, I make one or two to show people and move on. Usually leaving behind the dozen or so lots that I cut out to make, now that I had it sorted, as well as all the stuff I bought specially for them.

That said, I currently have 4 in progress projects that are about the right size...


The baby quilt (quilt#3) is now into its nine star-patterned blocks and will be made into one big bit tomorrow, and hopefully, basted and quilted immediately after.


Mama Jan's quilt (quilt#4) will be made that size, because my sister was quite blasè with regards to directions, and that is my biggest hate as a crafter, so she will be punished with a 120by150 quilt no matter what size she was expecting.


The retro quilt (quilt#5) is officially sized at 120x160cm, but I can shave a bit off of that without much hassle.


The PinkGreenBrown quilt has no number, because I'm still a bit nervous about it and its triangles... its official size according to the paint document I've been using to try and get my math sorted out is 136cm square, so I'll be holding off on that one.

The rainbow pastels quilt also has no number, but it might get bumped up and end up being a decimal placed number, because its one that's all squares, and totally for me. It's pretty much going to be a pastel coloured copy of quilt#1, which looks like this...


And which is way bigger than it looks in this picture - its actually big enough across for my queen sized bed, even if it is a little short on the up-down way, by about 3 rows. Each of those squares is a bit over 8cm, if you want some idea of scale. That one however was done completely randomly, and there are some fabrics only in there once, or only in there on the far right side (because it was originally going to be square, and made in 4 days for a competition - when I found out is was not that thursday but the next thursday, giving me an extra 7 days to do it in, it was increased.)

The pastel rainbow quilt though has been specially bought for, and as a result I have, for the most part, about 20 squares of each colour, so I could do it a bit more uniformly, although I cant help but think that that would kind of ruin it. So I'm gunna wait on that one for now. Also, since I already have about 350 squares for it, and the maximum number of squares for a cot sized precut is 270, I'd probably be doing it on off-the-bolt wadding.

Nonetheless, that's still 3 precuts that are pretty much definite, well, 2 that are definite and one that is highly likely, and since maddy's quilt (quilt#2) was done on a precut, and I really like that size for a casual couch blankie, I'm thinking I'll probably be aiming my sizing math at that it in the future too. But does that justify buying 9 or 10 or them? Should I just get 5 or 6 and maybe buy some meterage as well? It's the same price for a metre of the 2.2 wide stuff as it is for the precut, but for just one big bit, say, possible pastel quilt sized (1.8x2.2) its $30, and that seems so much more expensive, even though, by square metre, its about the same.

I've allowed myself $160 to stock up, which is either 10 precuts or 6 precuts and 1.8 meters off the bolt... I guess I'll decide when I get there.

Been feevin...

In spite of all the big plans, my list of achievements for today doesn't quite match expectations...

Prewashing didn't get done.

Baby quilt got some progress made, but not quite enough, cause I had to go...

FEEVIN!

I was expecting it would be terrible, stuck in a car with a drunken dad and the bad sister, but the good sister had been drinking in town, so we went and picked her up before we went out, and we stopped at the pub on the way, and I drank a cruiser.

Now, for the most part I don't drink. I can, and occasionally do, and have been known to consume up to 17 drinks in a single night, but that's just the thing. As soon as I stop, I'm pretty much done. I get a headache after the second one, and if I stop then, I immediately get sleepy. What I need to do, if I'm drinking, is consume at least 4 in the first hour or so, then at least 1 an hour after that. For me, there's no such thing as just a couple, or a casual drink. Go hard or go home, that's pretty much the family motto, and most of the time, I'd rather go home. I've usually got prewashing to not-do.

But tonight, I had a cruiser, and enjoyed our pointless little trip, and now I'm going to break what I think is the main rule of the bitchy stitcher, which is don't drink and quilt.

I got it all lined up before we left, so really I'm just going to be running it through the machine, and I think it should be okay... Certainly wont get finished, but my 20cm squares will be back together, then its just turning them into 40cm squares, then joining them into a quilt top.

I made the pillow top as a practice first, and it looks quite nice, though I ironed the seams to one side, which I don't normally do, just to see how it would go... I wont be doing it again. I split my seams. It's just better.

The post office has no more fabric to give me...

My last pouch of fabric is here, and I've gotten it all wadded up ready to wash... tomorrow.

I'm very much looking forward to my day off and plan on washing/ironing this bundle in the morning, going into town for the middle bit then coming home to make some serious inroads on my next quilt.

I've decided to go with the star design, but a bit more casual with the colour positioning - scattering the designs within the two shades because the math wouldn't give me an economical way of making the repeating pattern smaller - I would still be needing the 16 fat quarters, but 75% of eight of them wouldn't be getting used. 10 fat quarters split between the two colour schemes makes a 120cm blanket and a 40cm cushion cover, so I'll be doing that, in blue and brown, to maybe give to the baby of one of the girls at work.

I hadn't planned on making it for her, and noone suggested it, and I haven't told anyone I'm doing it, so if it fails miserably, or I get distracted and it takes forever, then I'm not letting anyone's expectations down.

She had the baby a couple of months ago now, but he was a bit early so she had to stay in Adelaide with him for a while. They're all back home now, but she hasn't bought him into work for a meet and greet yet, and if I can get it done nicely in the next week or so, I'll probably give it to them. If not, the 7 year old likes blue, or the kitchen is blue, or my aunt is pregnant again, and so are two of my cousins, so its not like I haven't got anyone to give it to. If its terrible, that cat has a new blanket.

I've cut the 22cm squares for it and they're all nicely ziplocked with the shape piece for cutting the corners off, and I'll be doing what I can of that tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully.

Best laid plans and all of that.