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.

Lemme know...

This is just a test post to see if I can steal photos from facebook.

So here, maybe, is Esther (with a h)'s quilt.

And the back (with creases:)

And a closeup of the back piecing (my first time doing diagonals)

If this works, it wasn't as hard as I thought.

Woop Woop...

I gave up at about 3.30am after my bobbin got stuck and my brain melted. I had 6 more lines to sew and then the binding to do but I just couldn't. I hit my wall and went to bed. But don't worry though, I completed it today with the sheer force of my awesomeness.

No pictures sorry because it's currently in the washing machine, and I need to go to work.

Esther got chopped out about lunchtime, so she beat the quilt by a couple of hours, but, assuming mum remembers to bring it to me at work so I can take it up to the hospital tonight, I will have done it in time for the first meet.

I wish I'd just been brave enough to put the flowers on the back now.

OCDitis.

The backing fabric that Helen chose is in the machine, along with some other random green bits that needed doing too.

To be honest, it's not what I would have chosen. It's a green with some very sparse peach and grey swirls on it, and even though it's very nice, it's a different shade of green than the green on the front, and being a bit OCD, that makes me twitchy.

I should mention though, that with regards to quilting at least, for me OCD stands for Over-Cautious-Disorder. I get really worried that something will fall apart, or that someone will notice some other little fault of part of it that isn't quite right. It's why I double sew my bindings and use an almost wastefully wide seam allowance. It's why I unpick 1/4 of what I've just sewn and ironed because the pattern that I never intended to put in there in the first place is wrong. It causes me to go and re-buy half the fabrics I've chosen because they're not quite exactly right and what if someone notices?

I'm fairly sure that noone, at any point, is going to ask me why the fabric on the back of someone else's quilt is a fairly cool shade of green when the fabric on the front is a very warm green. But if they do... It was the pregnant lady. She picked it.

To be fair, it goes quite nicely with the binding, and we did choose it in about 15 minutes, having only been to 1 store.

With regards to the back piecing, despite the fact that it's getting cut out in just 18 hours, I'm still not being told what is coming, so instead of the pretty flowers (because we are thinking girl) it will be the little stars on white in red, black and blue as well as a pastel blue stripe that came in the mixed bundle from fabric.com (because it might be boy)

And if it is a boy, and there's flowers on the back, and someone even looks like they might mention it, I will spontaneously explode from embarrassment.

Lunch break...

Of course, now that I look at the photo (after I've string pieced and ironed out my pairs) I can see my glaring mistake.

Probably no-one will notice it. I was trying for random - well, actually, I was only concerned about not having a row of the paisley going up or down.

If you still haven't picked it, its that all the paisley blocks form a diagonal line with their outer sides. Except for the red ones :(

Actual unpicking would be 6 pieces. That's not as bad as I was expecting.

I'm running way ahead. I may as well. I will feel better about it.

Also, the test swatch of the purple quilt boofed up nicely, so I wont be bothering with more quilting. Here's how it's at currently.

So I only need to trim the edges and bind. Nice feeling :)

Progress report - 4am.

The purple quilt isn't finished, but I'm hoping the quilting is.

I planned to quilt across the seams and leave it at that but the top is a bit loose on a couple of the rows.

So, as per usual, I've done a square and chucked it in the wash with my work clothes and the fabric I'm using as binding for the Make Life baby quilt. Hopefully it will boof up, reassuring me that the quilting I've done already is enough (please please please) and I don't have to do some more across the blocks.

Also, even though I said I wasn't gunna, I made a start on the Make Life quilt. It's up to what I've referred to as quarter blocks since doing the retro star quilt, because each one was one quarter of the star block. So really, all I've done is reassemble my cutting from this evening, giving me the 48 blocks to arrange into a quilt, to match one of the patterns or otherwise.

I did a test to see if the staggered design would work with the blocks being the same colour on both sides 

It does.

I also had a play with a scattered design too.

Which also works. So I figure I'll be having a play around with the real thing tomorrow at some point.

Speaking of tomorrow, dad seems insistent that he will be getting me up at 9. I've put up with this whole "don't do stuff late at night" shit for the weekdays, but it's not applying tomorrow. It's a Saturday morning. If I had said I was going to be out till 3 partying, he would be actively encouraging me. Hell, he goes out and gets shitfaced 3 nights a week, so what the fuck is so bad about me being considerate, and only taking up the whole living room once everyone has gone to bed? Would he rather me be spraying fumey basting spray when Maddy is in there? When food is being cooked? Would he rather me fighting with Mum and Casey over bench space so I can have some room to press my seams, while they spread out cooking?

He whinges when I take up the floorspace for basting. And he whinges when I stay up late so I'm not in anyone's way.

But he doesn't whinge about the fact that Becky owes him, me and mum HUGE sums of money. Or the fact that Casey spends as much on alcohol and nights out with her friends as I do on fabric.

Staying up late on a Friday night to get shit done. It's not the worst crime in the world.

Helen's Choice

A note to remember - these prints aren't to scale. For real, there will be about 3 rows of dots on one of the narrower pieces.

Me personally, I'm not totally keen on the first one. It's identical to the Soiree one in the last post, but it really needs matching prints to work right.

The middle one is a lot more complex than the last one, because each block has the 3 fabrics, whereas the last one has 2 fabrics per block. But because of this the second one looks more scattered (even though it's not), and maybe that's a good thing.

Helen's choice.