WIP :: 10/31/12

[read in your best Count voice] Happy Halloween!  Ah, ah ah!

There wasn't much festivity at work today so I pulled up Pandora's Halloween-Party station and had a blast with some great tunes for the holiday: Purple People Eater, Little Red Riding Hood, Monster Mash, etc.  Snagged a few pieces of candy as well.  Yumm!  Most of today I helped the Curator change out quilts in the gallery.  So much fun!  I love working with the quilts and getting to see the backs of them while we take down and put up again.  We went with some Fall/Winter types and there are a lot that I hadn't yet seen hanging so that's exciting.  A whole lot of new quilts to learn names and talking points.

in progress
I'm still quilting away on J's quilt this week but it's almost there.... Just a sneak peek again this week.
Then I'll have to start working on his 2nd quilt idea which will be definitely more challenging!

Everything else is 'in the works' - clearly I need to spend more time in the sewing room!

sunday snapshot #13

Happy almost Halloween dear readers!  The weather has cooled off and there's more color in the trees the last week. 

I've spotted some fun decorations around town and finally managed to snap some pictures.  These are around Lowertown and must have been fun to paint!  I haven't yet spotted first place though - will keep an eye out for it tomorrow.

BQF Fall 2012

It's exciting to participate again in the Bloggers Quilt Festival again!  I'll tell you it's hard to decide on just one quilt to showcase though - they all become favorites when trying to choose.  Since last time I used one of my early quilts, today I chose a recent finish to share.   

If you've blog hopped your way here for the first time - welcome!  This is my first Christmas quilt and I've already pulled it out some evenings to snuggle, so it's going to be a favorite for sure.

A little quilt history, if you will.  Momm & I have been to the Houston Show several times now.  On one of our first visits, I couldn't resist a layer cake of Moda's 'Merry & Bright' fabric line.  It sat in my stash for a couple years as I couldn't decide what to make with it.  This year, I finally decided to just use it already!

quilting detail

I'd picked up a copy of Simplify, Camille Roskelley's book at work and found the perfect pattern: Sweet Pea.  Instead of cutting my fabric down, I opted to just use the layer cake squares straight up.  Less trimming and it made the quilt bigger.  I still wanted it to be wider though, so I went looking for some good fabric to go with it.  Surprisingly enough, I found the same blue plaid print from the line this summer, on sale, in a shop in WI! I went with just the one side strip to make it a bit edgier (is it okay to make a Christmas quilt edgy?) and really love it.  I used the plaid again on the back in addition to some other prints I had in my stash.

I had the most fun quilting this one!  I did free motion holly leaves & circles all over the quilt in my bright green Aurifil 50 wt. thread.  On my little Brother machine it's definitely tricky to wrangle any decent sized quilt but it turned out well and looks awesome.  I've already pulled this quilt out some cool evenings to snuggle with and it will be a staple come winter. 

Quilt Stats

Name: Merry & Bright Christmas Quilt

Size: throw sized

Pattern: Sweet Pea, by Camille Roskelley, in her book Simplify

Fabric: Merry & Bright layer cake, for Moda, 

Christmas prints & green solids for backing & red solid for binding

Quilting: Free motion holly leaves & circles by me!

Techniques: machine pieced, Free Motion quilting

#384

Best Category: Fav. Throw Quilt, Fav. Home Machine Quilted Quilt

Hope you enjoyed this little history & a peek at my new Christmas quilt dear readers.  Be sure to check out the rest of the amazing quilts at the Festival!

WIP :: 10/17/2012

This weekend I had every intention of working on quilt-related things.  Of course, the best laid plans of mice & men.....  Instead, I ended up trying a new recipe - Pumpkin Soup - which is awesome and so easy to make.  I've been enjoying it all week for dinner.  
I also went to the Symphony which was beautiful!  There were 2 high school students that had won a contest, and they played solo pieces with the orchestra - so cool.  The violinist was amazing and the piece: Korngold's Violin Concerto in D Major was gorgeous.  Going to the Symphony always inspires me to pull out my clarinet, so I did and it was good.  Also instead of quilting, I bought some mums for the balcony and a green plant for inside to brighten up the room during winter.

in progress

almost finished sorting & stacking

In between all of that and watching James Bond movies, I pulled out my box (and bags and piles) of scraps and determined to sort them out somehow.  I sorted by colors first, then shrunk those piles into teeny bits, strips and then larger chunks.


I don't really have any way to keep them all sorted out nicely all the time so they sat on the floor for a day or so.  I ended up using oblong paper plates and stacked each color group onto a plate, then stacked the plates back into the scrap box!  It's certainly not ideal, but at least will keep them contained (for now) and color-sorted.  
The teeny bits went into ziploc bags (L).  Now I feel ready for a scrap project!  :]   (Clearly this organization bug has infiltrated my work time too as I've been clearing out & rearranging things at the office too!)




complete

*rawr*

This cute little guy now has eyes!  He's ready for winter so I can display him all the time. I used the same grey for the binding so it looks more like a window frame. [I just noticed I forgot the white circle for the top of the hat...will get right on that!]
 I'm waiting to label it until I give him a proper polar bear kind of name - like Lars.  ;)

That's about it for this weeks WIP update.  I'm not going to bore you with the list of un-worked on projects this time - hopefully they will be in the progress bar for next week.  Linking up over at Freshly Pieced! Edited to add that I'm linking this up over at Finish it Up Friday too!

WIP :: 10/10/12

I wanted to have some more time to spend on quilting this weekend, but ended up shopping [scored some fun red shoes at Kohl's] and cooking a lot instead.  I tried a Penne Rosa and some pomegranate-white chocolate chip cookies via Pinterest and made pizza as well!  Everything was so good and are keeper recipes for sure.

in progress

- Polar Bear wall quilt - (see this post for the back story)  I sat down and quilted this tonight.   Now he needs binding and buttons for eyes!

- J's quilt - planning to work on this soon

other projects
(These are still 'in progress', but not top of the list right now)
-Swoon
-GS quilt
-Roman Stripe blocks
-FMQ sammies

That's all for this week dear readers!  Linking up over at Freshly Pieced - better late than never.  :)

polar bear pals

Here's what I found in my living room the other day:

Just too cute.  :]   Bears are my favorite animal and as I flipped through the new Quiltmaker, I loved the You Got Cookies? pattern at first glance.  Perhaps it was the cute polar bear peeking into the frame of this little wall quilt?  [hehe]

Clearly, my polar bear pal had the same reaction!  I think he was subtly hinting at my next quilt project, don't you?

  So last night I pulled fabrics, then went to buy black ink so I could print the paper foundations.  Stay tuned readers for the finished look!