Quilting

My number one priority project is to finish the quilt I had started for Mum - it is the Curio Quilt in a selection of glorious Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  Mum and I had made pretty good progress when she was here late last year.  After she left I continue to plug away and finished all the component squares.  All I needed to do was seam it up; the end was in sight.  Or so I thought...



Ahem, if only!  I stitched the first row of squares together - a row of 3" square 9 patches.  I then stitched the next row together which comprised of a mix of the 3" square 9 patches and larger squares.  Aww man!  :(  This 2nd row was noticeably shorter due to a rookie mistake:  I had not cut the squares as precisely as I should (thinking that a teeny tiny bit of wiggle room on each square would work in my favour).  Except that even the tiniest bit of wiggle room causes the row with more squares to be significantly longer than the row with fewer squares.  You can see in this picture how quickly they started to misalign:



It lay like that for a good while:  I couldn't bear to look at it, never mind start taking a seam ripper to it.  Until it was time to get my big girl pants on, arm myself with a seam ripper, and start dissecting then reassembling those 2 rows.  I am pleased to say that this is now done.  I'm hoping that's the last time I'll need to make use of the seam ripper in this project.



I have decided to take a different approach to piecing this together - making big blocks out of the component squares (vs long rows).  This is allowing me to make sure the pieces are lining up better.  I feel much more confident with this approach.  More to come on this soon.  Like I say, number one priority...  I need, and want, to get this all finished up and gifted to Mum.

That doesn't mean to say that I won't get distracted.  First distraction is a bunch of addictive Hexies.  When I met up with some of my crafty friends recently, Stacey was showing us these lovely Tula Pink Hexie kits.  (Stacey is one of my biggest enablers sources of inspiration, and I love her for it :)



I picked up a box and wanted to just give one a go to see if I could do it.  You can't just do one though - these things are addictive!  I really enjoy working on them. 





And I have had help...  yes, this is a typical day at our hone with my little helper, furry friends, and crafts close by.  (Yes, I look like a goof... that's typical too :o)))



Finally I joined Denver's modern quilt guild group this week to see what that was all about (Stacey's influence again :o)))  What a lovely informal and welcoming meetup group.  They just kicked off a quilting bee project that I'll be joining.  Essentially each participant provides guidance on the quilt that they want to create, and provides the fabrics to work from.  Then this box of goodies visits with a different participant each month who creates one of the squares.  Sounds like fun, right?

For my quilt, my guiding design is the Stained glass quilt from Narcoleptic in a Cupboard, and my selection of fabrics primarily Sarah Jane at play with some Crafty Chloe thrown in.  I think this quilt allows each participant to build their own unique stained glass window square.  And some of the fabrics can be fussy cut to give them an almost cartoon strip feel.  I'd also like each participant to add in a little bit of their own fabric, from their scraps bin, to add an additional bit of individuality to each of the squares.  I think this is going to be fun, and look forward to providing updates here.



Here are few versions that I love in blogland, that truly inspired me to choose this design:

• Canadian abroad
• Fairy Face Designs
• Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle

OK, time to rejoin my family.  I've spent a good deal of time fixing this blog, the Bertie's blanket blog, and my ravelry page, after a recent glitch when flickr reset the status of some of my photos to private.  Which means they didn't show on these public pages.  Even when I reset the privacy to 'public' they still remained hidden and required to be manually updated.  6 months worth of blog posts people.  :(  Can you hear the sobs from there?  Apologies for the 'under construction' appearance of the blog while I worked to make these fixes.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Much love,
Sam xxx