lisa’s place

I ordered some fabric scraps from someplace that I can’t remember.  Unfortunately, I can’t remember when I ordered them, either - sad statement about my stash organization.  I do remember that it was a really good deal and I got a bunch of small pieces of all kinds of different fabrics.  Not having a plan for them, I just tucked them away.

Anyway, I was cleaning up in my office/craft room the other day and found them and decided they’d be perfect for making some little sample quilt blocks.  Having seen some really pretty (and simple looking) whirlygig-type quilt blocks here and there, I thought I’d give it a try.  True to my standard form, I didn’t print out a pattern.  Fortunately for me, it was just a little simple geometry/arithmetic (what quilt block isn’t, right?).

This was really quick and really fun.  I machine quilted around each block and then added little squares and rectangles of quilting here and there.  Far from perfect by normal quilting standards, I still really like it.  It has that homemade look, I think.  It really isn’t quite as wonky as it looks in these pictures.  Something went awry when I took them - could be related to the speed at which I rushed through the task.

Because I had such fun with this first little guy, I had to make a second one.  This one I just sketched out and made up.  It turns out that it looks like a bunch of little windows.  I really like the sashing - I used a linen blend (as suggested by Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson!).  The difference in texture isn’t terribly visible in the photo, but it looks and feels really interesting in better light and in person.

I do think I went a little overboard with the color.  Oh well, these things happen, right?

I wish I’d had a dark solid or pattern for the bird, but no such luck.

I think I’ll be trying another one like this soon - maybe with slightly different proportions.

There would be more (and better) photos, but I am having trouble uploading pictures from Flickr again.

(I can’t believe how terribly Flickr has been acting lately - just awful.  Very frustrating.  I always thought the Pro account was worth it - definitely not feeling the love these days).

As it has been so ridiculously long since I’ve posted and who knows if and when I’ll be posting again, I’m choosing to make no excuses

The second quilt is a small baby quilt for a friend.  This one uses some of the cutest bird fabrics I’ve ever seen.  You can’t really go wrong with bluebirds, can you?

The top is just a slice of a log cabin, on a large scale.  There might be a better way to describe this, but I don’t know what that would be.

The back (I think this is my favorite part:

Really, how cute and cheerful is this fabric?

Maybe some knitting next time.  I’m trying out a new browser (Flock) and it seems like it makes posting to blogger really easy.  Guess I’ll find out when I try to post this.

This is both the procrastination and the no surprise part

-25 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

On a more productive, but no less procrastinate-y, note…
Here is the lap quilt I finally finished up for a high school graduation present a couple of weeks ago.

The color is terrible. Of course I finished about 2 am and the light was awful. These colors are a little truer (but still way off):

and a simple strip-pieced back:

and because a girl can never have too many bags!

That’s all for now.

As a strong believer in immediate gratification and what I like to think of as efficiency (but might actually be described by some as impatience), projects that are quick to start and move along steadily and easy to finish are the most likely ones for me to actually convert to FOs. Oh yeah, turning out exactly as I had envisioned no matter what the pattern predicts is also a plus

With sewing, I find that this strategy often backfires. I’ve been trying to increase my level of patience when sewing so that some day I might be able to get to the point that I could make one of these (yeah, yeah, I know there are 225 different blocks and they require a TON of hand sewing and obviously a quilt of this nature must be quilted by hand… but still, maybe after I retire). More pictures from the adventurous souls beginning this journey can be found here.

Back to reality… In one of my moments requiring immediate gratification, I made this bag the other night. It is far from perfect, but there is something that I really like about it.

I spent a couple of hours tonight working on a baby quilt top (it will probably will become a Project Linus donation). I purposely chose something that wouldn’t be likely to show a lack of accuracy in sewing my 1/4″ seams. For the most part, it fit all my criteria for a fun project that is likely to get finished… quick and easy and looks pretty much like I had imagined it. It could have used a better ironing, however.

I suppose that in a perfect world, I would have used a solid color cotton instead of the green polka dot flannel strips. This seems minor and I was trying to use what I had on hand. All in all, I really like it so far. I’m thinking to get something in red for the binding and maybe something really soft (like Minke or something similar) for the backing. I must keep in mind that something stretchy like that could really cause a turn in my feelings about this little blanket when it comes time to actually quilt it.

And… because I can’t pass up a 40% off sale on almost all of the quilting cotton at JoAnn’s, a little fabric stash enhancement:

The 2nd from the top and 2nd from the bottom are not a part of today’s foray, but I thought they looked pretty cute with the others. I’m thinking maybe something like this… we’ll see, though. All right, off to bed now.