WIP Wednesday

It's cold outside but the sun coming in the windows is warm.

The perfect day for napping on a mostly-finished WIP.

Or for demonstrating the proper use of an ironing board placed just-so in front of a window.

Happy Wednesday! Linking to WIP Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced.

Scrappy Design Wall

The sun came out! Hooray!  I have the makings of a couple of scrap quilts on the design wall.

I am still deciding what to do with those blue and low volume scraps on the bottom. I have planned to use them as 16 patches and sash them, but I like the look of them together so much! Decisions, decisions. And how am I supposed to get anything done when these two and making a nap look so good?

Linking to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.

WIP Wednesday: Strings (again)

Not much to say here, I am still sewing strings.  Today I started applying the black strings to the foundation pieced blocks I talked about before.

Wilson is enjoy the heat from my ironing mat.  It's a good day to be sewing!

Linking to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Quilting and Feline Disapproval

Today and yesterday were spent nose-to-the-grindstone trying to finish Boyfriend's quilt.  Piecing and basting were finished last night, then there was some applique (ick!) and lots of quilting.

Boyfriend is a pretty tough customer. He likes medallion style quilts best. He like a very narrow range of dark colors and natural tones with pops of orange. He despises white as a background color. And he requested that his quilt be especially "fluffy".

Oi vey. I did my best, and I hope he likes it!  One good thing, he specifically mentioned that he likes stipple FMQ and less dense quilting patterns. Don't have to tell me twice :)

This is what Wilson does when he's fed up with me sitting at the machine and ignoring him.  Right after giving me the Kitty-Snub-of-Complete-Indifference he climbs into my lap and wants to be held like a baby.

Elvis isn't thrilled about the noise of the machine but mostly he's just glad to be inside and warm.  Hope your week is productive and fun!

Linking to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

HST Waves, and There's a Cat on my Quilt!

The HST waves quilt got done this morning. I'm so grateful for the Friday linkups that give me to push to get something done every week.  This one will be a gift for a coworker having a baby soon.

After I got it all washed and dried I took it out in the yard for a photo shoot. Wilson was feeling exceptionally frisky. Apparently "Cat Day" happened this week; someone must have told him!  I couldn't keep him off the quilt so I just shot around him. Of course he knows who the real star of the show is :)

This quilt was meant to be similar to my Gatsby! quilt; I've been wanting to do something with pieced and solid waves blending together for a while now.

The quilting was fun to do. First stitch in the ditch along the curved seam, then just a simple stipple over the pieced parts and this sort of elongated stipple that reminds me of ripples in a pond over the blue parts. I didn't find a tutorial for that one, but I've seen it several places including at Crazy Mom Quilts.

I used the ever-popular IKEA numbers fabric for backing again.  As you can see a bit above, and better in the pic below, I was switching my bobbin thread along with the top thread so the ripples show on the back in blue.

The quilt finished about 42" x 60", a generous size for a baby/toddler quilt.  Here's hoping it will be enjoyed by these 2 little boys for years to come! 

And now that we have all paid homage to the king perhaps he will get off my WIP stack so I can get back to work!

Linking up to Finish it Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Photos from the Quilting Trenches

Quilting is in full swing here today!

The Honeycomb quilt is on the machine, Wilson is helping of course.  Check out the cute little bee FMQ from The Inbox Jaunt.

Back to work!

Linking to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

WIP Wednesday- Basting Party!

I have recovered from my cold, I have a week off work, and I'm back at the machine again! Here's my sewing area this morning. Wilson was insisting on being in my lap, so I brought over a pillow and he consented to stay on that.

I have sewed together 2 quilt backing this morning and today's big project will be getting them basted.  For this LARGE quilt is used an unusual and very stretchy material for the back, so I opted to weigh it down with cans rather than taping it to the floor like I usually do.

We'll see how it quilts, I have my fingers crossed!

Linking to WIP Wednesday.

Today in "Why is my Quilt so Heavy?"

You know when you're quilting along, and all of a sudden your quilt feels heavier? Did part of it fall off the table?

Wait, what's this?

Ah yes, there's your problem.

Check out Wilson and plenty of other pets in the Pets on Quilts Show hosted at Lily Pad Quilts.

Pets on Quilts Show 2014!

Hello and welcome! It's that time of year again. Time for the Pets on Quilts show hosted at Lily Pad Quilting.  You can see my entry from last year here.

Of course this year I have more of the obligatory Wilson-cat on quilts pictures.  As you may already know, Wilson is my very allergic cat and chief quilting inspector.

His chronic lung issues finally caught up with him back in February and landed him in the kitty ICU. Scared me to death!  Basically he now has full blown kitty-COPD.  He has stayed on a low dose daily steroid ever since then and it has made a huge difference in his breathing and quality of life.

Just for fun this year I am including pictures of some of our other house animals. Ferrets! They aren't exactly on quilts, but I did make all their bedding!

Their names are Sister and Bear, (sister is on the bottom in the picture above.)  They are champion sleepers, but when they are awake they go 90mph until they sleep again!

I am entering Wilson in the "Cats or Kittens on Quilts" category. The ferrets are just a bonus!  Be sure to check out all the entries and the cute animals at Lily Pad Quilts and a bonus Wilson post from later today here.

Tie Dye Days

Every summer I get the itch to do some tie dye and last week was the time. This time I decided to try some shibori in addition to other techniques.  For a great primer on tie dye I recommend Amanda's posts at Jedi Craft Girl.

I did all this with a single "Tulip" tie dye kit with a dozen colors.  It did 5 boys large shirts, 2 adult larges, 5 2T shirts, 5 4T shirts, and a dozen onesies in various sizes.

The real technique in tie dye in in learning different folds. I tried a bunch of shibori this time, which involves rolling the shirts around PVC pipe, wrapping with string, and scrunching.

That shirt is part of the set above, after a wash and dry.  Pretty cute :)

As far as the shibori, I really ended up liking the ones done with a single color dye.  The two on the left were done with just blue. After a wash a dry there's a lot more contrast from light to dark within thm.

I definitely like the ones done with a single colors dye best.

Here's a spiral design in progress.  I put a cooling rack over a pot to let the dye drip through.

Here's the finished onesie, along with some others.

Of course Wilson was on hand throughout the process to supervise.

He took time off to stalk some grass hoppers, too.

After marinating over night the shirts were ready to be unwrapped and hung to dry.

As a bonus, the shibori yielded pretty dyed cotton string. I'm think these will be perfect for wrapping gifts.

Baby gifts for the next year, all set!  If you are interested in seeing more of the individual shirts, here  are some below.  Thanks for visiting!

Stay-cation sewing things

I haven't been posting reliably lately, but it isn't because I haven't been doing things. I am having a stay-cation at the moment from work and have been sewing, tie-dying, pickling, and generally crafting to my heart's content. This afternoon I made cayenne pepper hard candy :)

I'll do a more thorough post on the tie dying later, but for now here are some photos of the finished shirts drying and Wilson being "helpful".

After being removed from my folding board, Wilson holds down the laundry basket.

Speaking of Wilson.  If you've been reading here for a while then you probably already know that Wilson is a highly-allergic, generally sensitive kitty.  He basically has kitty COPD now from all his chronic respiratory issues.  For the past 6 months or so he's been on a daily low dose steroid that have helped a lot, and he will probably stay on it for the rest of his life.

Wilson was jealous that Elvis was sitting in mom's lap.

Anyway, it's flea and tick season as you probably know and Wilson can't have the drops between his shoulders because it gives him a nasty rash and makes his hair fall out. We've always done flea collars in the past, so I put one on him about a week ago, then today I noticed that the hair had fallen out under the collar all the way around his neck and parts of it were rashed and bloody!  Needless to say, the collar is off and antibiotic ointment is on.  Sigh.  Does anybody have any ideas for flea and tick solutions for allergic kitties?

I am still managing to stay up to date with the Texas Quilt Along.  We are on the last quadrant now.  That's what is on the design wall. And on the design floor, as it were, I basted this batik quilt I made from the Summer Slice pattern at Cluck Cluck Sew.

 

I had no idea I even had that many batiks until I started cutting in to them!  Have a happy week, everyone :)

Linking to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday.