In Progress
The last few weeks have been unproductive. I’ve been unmotivated, mopey and bingeing on books and tv. Relaxing, sure, but detrimental to sewing or any other sort of blog-able activity (or blogging itself, for that matter). I’m trying to get out of that funk, because I have a lot of stuff waiting on me to get to work:
-10000000000. Vest
Top priority, slow progress needs to pick up a bunch so I can get back to quilting. Welt pockets may be the death of me.
0. Applique Project
I’m in a bi-weekly (more or less) class that is covering applique. At first I was going to do a project of my own creation involving a tree, flowers, and a swing. Here’s a sketch showing off my amazing drawing skills.

Then I decided that since I’ve never done real applique before, maybe I should stick to something a little less ambitious. So I chose about a gazillion different free applique projects from allpeoplequilt.com over the course of the past two weeks. I finally forced myself to make a decision (deadline to have my freezerpaper templates all made up was looming, so that helped). This is the project:

As described by allpeoplequilt.com, it is a flannel pillow. Mine’s going to to be made out of basic quilter’s cotton and will be just a wall-hanging, not a pillow, since part of the class is focusing on machine quilting techniques and binding and all that. Here’re the fabrics, unless I find something better the next time I go to the store. It’s a dangerous place, the fabric store.

It wasn’t required for the class, but the instructor had Applique the Basics and Beyond by Janet Pittman at the last class. I bought myself a copy, and while I haven’t actually done the applique yet, she describes everything very clearly. It looks to be a great resource/reference book to have in a collection. One of its strengths is showing how to adapt the various templates in the book for multiple projects.
The tree, flowers, swing thing is something I do want to keep in mind for the future though, so maybe you’ll see something like it next year?
1. The Miniatures Nine-Patch
I’ve talked about this one a bit already. It hasn’t progressed much. I have a pile of nine-patch blocks with many more to make.

2. The Blue/Green Printed Damask Quilt
This is the quilt I intended to start in mid-Feb, but then the Miniatures arrived in the mail. I have some of the pieces cut out already. I started with a very different selection of fabrics, but when I went back to the store to find one last perfect piece, I found this whole line of matching ones and scrapped my previous ideas. And then I went back again for some other fabric and found even more replacements. In fact, none of the originals are still in the mix (although I do plan on using one of the old fabrics for the backing, since I have so much). All of the fabrics are from JoAnn Fabrics. It’s intended as a gift, but I’m kind of in love with the fabric line, so hopefully I’ll have leftovers. I’m a sucker for damask floral patterns.

3. Jelly Roll Quilts
I’ve picked up two books (Two from One Jelly Roll Quilts & Jelly Roll Quilts, both by Pam and Nicky Lintott), a jelly roll of Buttercup for Fig Tree Fabrics by Moda (see it at Fat Quarter Shop), and this half-jelly roll of blues and taupes from JoAnn. What will become of it all? Who knows, but it’ll be next after #2 most likely.

I also picked up that twin-size sheet set from Target’s clearance aisle for < $5. I know that it has a much higher thread count than quilter’s cotton, and traditionalists all say “no, no, you can’t use sheeting for quilting, oh the horror!” but I’m not listening. I love the print, and it’ll go well with that not-really-a-jelly-roll roll. If it doesn’t work out, I’m only out less than $15 in fabric. I’m willing to spare that for learning expenses. (If you’ve had success with using sheeting in quilts, I’d love to hear about it!)
And I think I’ll be using these two patterns, but nothing is fully decided. The first for the half-jelly roll and sheet, the second for Buttercup.


Free-motion, free-motion!
Since I last posted, I also took a free motion quilting class at the LQS Tiger Lily Quilt Co. It was nice to meet some other local quilters and meet Thomas of Way Cool Kid/Thomas Knauer Sews in person. The experience has reenforced my desire to get a better sewing machine, since I had to stop at least 3 times, take off my foot plate and clean out bobbin knots. Here are my amateur attempts at the various patterns we went over.

I should probably learn how to write cursive again, because I do like the look of free-motion quilting words. Cursive is a sore spot of mine from my childhood.
I plan to try out my new skills on the above projects!
So, this should all keep me very busy once I snap out of my mopey mood. What are you working on?
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