Distractions

The problem with being pathologically creative is that it's easy to be distracted by other projects.  One of my friends posted this Baby Boobie Beanie (for breastfed babes) on the Pirate Hookers FaceBook group and I knew I had to make one.

I did contemplate how amusing it might be to make a bikini top....

And the teenager decided she and her BFF wanted to be big boobie heads.

OK....I promise to get back to quilting...after the other beanie is finished.

Hoopless

I'm down to the outer 11" of border and I've decided to go hoop-less.

Which is helpful as my cat, who isn't a lap cat...unless she's cold and wet (as apparently I am warm and absorbant)....

spent the morning homesteading my lap and tenderizing my mid-sections.

It is at least theoretically possible to quilt around her without disturbing her much needed sleep.

Sun & Stars

Today I had intended to work on my taxes.

Instead, I actively procrastinated by finishing the yellow scrap quilt.
Overall, I'm quite happy with how it turned out.  The flimsy measures 73" x 90.  I used up all of the grey, most of the yellows and some odd black & whites.  Fortunately, I still have lots of "good" black and whites for another quilt.

I thought I was going to be all done by about 10am.

I was so happy as I finished the 16" wide misc strip....until I discovered that the strip that I had used to determine the length was 18" too short.

Which is quite a conundrum as I no longer had an assortment of yellow strips to frame a black square.  And I really don't have any other blacks that would have made interesting centers.  Oh, and there was only a tiny pile of oddly shaped grey pieces.

My solution ended up being two 8.5" squares made up of every scrap I had left.  It includes some strangely curved pieces left over from a double wedding ring.  And there's A LOT of spray starch forcing them into anything even remotely flat.

Fortunately, I still had a selection of black & whites to lengthen the 16" wide strip...but there was some seam ripping involved to make it all look intentional.

A closer look at these fabrics brings back memories of the original quilts.

The HST that make up the sawtooth border and the pinwheels are leftover from a miscalculation on the pillow cases that I made for my sister-in-law Di

Which I made to go with this Sunshine quilt which I gave her as a surprise when she married my brother.

The section of 2" squares were left over from the OooRah! Quilt.

I had tried to clear out the gold fabric from my stash a couple years ago by putting together a quilt-as-you-go Autumn quilt.  That quilt started as a crazy patch, then evolved into strips.

That project is still in progress as a practice piece for  FMQ.

What was left from laying out the project above, turned into strips for this baby quilt to try a different quilt-as-you-go project.

I think there are lots of the leftover strips in the piano key strips on the right of the new quilt as well as the framing of the black squares.

There are also a few bits of fabric that were left over from this quilt group project where I turned someone else's  leftovers into this donation quilt.


Now all that I have left is a small stack of yellow crumbs that I can see using as applique flower centers, a few dozen strips to go into my "strings" box, and I got brave and allowed myself to throw a hand full of not-very-pretty bits in the trash.

Time for some hand quilting while I contemplate how to quilt this flimsy.

Hurray!

It's taken 3.5 months and a couple hundred hours but the center 48" x58" section of this quilt is finally finished.  The time is purely an estimate based on the fact that in addition to 2 months of football, I also watch 110 episodes of LA Ink while I stitched.  I need to find another mindless series on Netflix that doesn't demand that I pay much attention, but helps to pass the time.

Yesterday, I moved on to the two outside borders.  I'm stitching in the ditch on the triangles, and adding straight (ish) lines on the green border.  After stitching on the white fabric, I'm finding the green batiks to be challenging to keep my stitches small.  I'm using a coated, dark green Coats & Clark quilting thread I had in the stash.  It is too thick to fit in my 12 needles that zip through the tight weave.  The new 11's I bought sew like a pudgy 10 so I'm in a bit of a pickle.

For those of you who are wonderful enough to leave comments, you may notice some changes.  I tried dropping the confirmation message, but I was getting tons of spam - mostly on old posts.  This morning I tried taking away the verification but adding a sign in requirement (Open ID or Google) which doesn't allow for anonymous comments.  No spam yet today so hopefully this will be a successful compromise.

Phobias

It's a shame that my real world friends Emily & JoAnne are Blog Lurkers instead of participating in the Bloggosphere of Quilting.  Because then they could attest to the fact that in The Real World, I am dangerously spontaneous.  And yet, I am deathly afraid of scrap quilts.

In the real world, I learned to ride a motorcycle 10 months ago. I bought a Big Ass 1800cc bike to learn on and I spend sunny days riding with a group of people that thinks that "high of 50 degrees" (10C) is enough of an excuse to ride.

But scraps...

Dude.

I'm OK if I can keep them well behaved, which generally means "limited palate" and "rules".

Here's the design wall for my yellow & grey quilt.
The left side are the random bits leftover from some 
strips from the other sections.

Today I started putting together the predominantly white with black bits, as well as some of the wider strips of yellow in the hopes that I could put together a 16" wide strip, 90" long ...that wouldn't freak me out.

I seem to Do OK if I break it down into sections were the randomness is less annoying.

Here, you can see where I sewed the individual sections into sets of 2-3.

This is me, trying to tame the scraps.

Based upon what I see on-line, I'm afraid that I am the only quilter with color-mixing-scrappiness-issues.  Please let me know if I am not alone, and you are interested in joining my support group.

More Misc

I am on the home stretch on the background quilting on Hearts Infatuation (Esther's Heart's Desire, gone bad).  After I got most of the diamond grid finished, I switched to a smaller, 14" hoop which is easier to manipulate with no awkward spots.  This insane background still takes several hours per hooping so I figure there's about 12 hours left, then on to the outer borders.

Meanwhile on the yellow scrap quilt, I spent a couple evenings finishing the 4.5" crazy pieced triangles to finish up all the yellow scraps.

I sewed them into 2 long strips, alternating the yellow with grey and some grey-on-black from the stash.

This will border the 5 large (16") stars.

This "leftovers" quilt will be a series of  strips, 80" long.  Right now I'm thinking that the stars strip will be off-center toward the right side of the quilt.

Tonight, I finished a set of 8" blocks that will complete another row.   My current placement for these blocks will be to the right of the stars strip, with a black strip between them.

I previously posted some of the other bits and pieces.  I'm still planning on the HST/Grey strip to be the outer right border and Grey/piano strip the outer left.  The random 5" wide strip is now cut in half and will alternate with a similar toned yellow...somewhere toward the left side.

I have one major strip to complete.  It will be 16" wide and primarily yellow/white.  It will use up all the other random bits and pieces that have been accumulating.  There are already some pinwheels and hexies.  Stay tuned to see how this mess turns out.