Project Simplify - Day 25

I'm pleased to introduce you to "Flower Garden".

Sooooo pretty, isn't she?  Wish I'd had her for Easter.

The pain of top-stitching this quilt is but a distant (ok, not that distant) memory.  I really am glad, (and maybe kinda sorta a little bit proud) that I stuck with it.

We did have a little boo-boo.  Remember that thing I have about not letting the same print "touch"?  My helper & I have absolutely NO idea how this happened!

Oh well ;).

For the back, I still had some of the Robyn Pandolph I used for the last quilt back.  If I'd planned things out a little better, I'd have saved it all for this one - because the quilt top is mostly Robyn and I just like doing little things like that - but never mind.  I took a bit more yardage from my shelf (yay!) to complete the back.

Stash Redux:

• Yardage - 3.7 yds / 3.3 m
• Weight - 1 lb / 0.5 kg

For a grand total of:

• Yardage - 39.6 yds / 36.1 m
• Weight - 13.6 lbs / 7.4 kg

Wow, can you believe it?  I'm halfway through the book!  Five quilts done - four more quilts & four pillow covers to go!

Oops, I Did it Again!

Ever since Camille gave me permission to blog my way through her fantastic book Simplify, I've been trying to think of a way to thank her. 

So when she mentioned how much she liked this bag I made based on her quilt pattern "Sugar Rush", I absolutely insisted on making one for her and I asked her to pick the fabrics.

Hmmm, I wonder what she chose ...

I'm off to the post office now! ;)

Project Simplify - Day 24

Kay.  You'd think I'd be used to making a fool of myself.  I admit it's getting easier, but still ...

See, when it comes to all things quilting I usually can pick up a new skill relatively quickly.  I think that must be why I love quilting so much - it's one of a VERY few things I can do well with little or no practice.  And I really thought that with the amount of time & effort I've invested already on this particularly elusive element of quilting, I'd be a lot further along by now.

Here's the latest damage ... (wimper).

This is supposed to be a neat, symmetrical design.  Not this wonky, amoeba-shaped ... mess!

It LOOKS so easy to do ... why can't I GET this?

I had a little (ok, an embarrassingly huge for someone my age) tantrum - which I kept on the inside, but let me tell you I was craaaaabby!  I thought, "Keep trying, you'll get better."  I didn't. 

I once heard that the definition of insanity was repeating the same action but expecting different results.  Well, it's official.  I'd gone banana-nuts-crazy.

But after, like, an hour of unpicking all 12 of these very badly stitched designs (seems my helper has lost interest in the job for the moment - I think I burnt her out), possibly a few bad words and an imaginary blog post in which I shamefully admit defeat, a light bulb came on.  I thought of trying a new tactic - s.l.o.w.i.n.g d.o.w.n.

And suddenly ... voila!

Still not as good as I'd like, but waaaaay better than when I started. 

But here's the thing ...

You know that saying "Can't see the forest for the trees"?  In this case, I think it means that if you look too closely at the details, the occasional imperfections that exist on a tiny scale can ruin your ability to appreciate a perfectly decent quilt.

This happens to me a lot - when I'm making something, I notice every.little.mistake.  But more often than not when it's all bound, washed and in situ, the little "blemishes" disappear into the overall loveliness of what I made with pretty fabrics and a pretty design and then, well ... just never mind the trees, I love the forest!

Here's a look at all three FMQ designs together in the quilt.

So if it's not too arrogant, I think I'll give myself a C+ or B- for execution ... ok, maybe a B ;) ... but a big fat A for effort! 

I can pretty much guarantee that I TOTALLY would have given up on FMQing by now if it wasn't for Project Simplify.  Thank you Camille for graciously giving me permission to blog my way through your book.  I know it was a big leap of faith on your part to let me - a virtual stranger with a fledging blog - use your book this way. 

And thanks to all you quiet and vocal visitors for hanging out here with me.   Your advise, encouragement & support mean so much to me.

I'm feeling much better now. :)

Laugh Lines

"Mummy, is there such a thing as extra-medium?"

I love her. 

Project Simplify - Day 23

Sometimes I can think outside the box and come up with good ideas on my own.  But for now, I still need a crutch for deciding on a FMQing design.  So why not copy (again) what is shown in the book?

Camille's used three different FMQ designs on this cute little quilt:  stippling, that loop-dee-loop from "Little Man" and a sort of scalloped flower thing.  At first glance, I thought that was a bit ambitious for me to attempt, but it is a small quilt and if I want to improve my skills, I might as well go for it.  (You know, broadening ones horizons and all ...)

Here's my practice run.  Not bad, eh? 

The results:  not perfect - still a little jerky here and there.

And a little accidental loop ...

Is it just me, or is it easier to get out of a tight spot with swirly twirly?  Stippling just seems a bit less forgiving.

And then there's my old nemesis - tension.  Hmmph.

One of these days I'll remember that if you practice your FMQ stitching with fabric/batting/thread that's not exactly the same as your quilt, you must double check your tension when you start sewing on the actual quilt!  At least this stuff was easy to pull out.  I gave the fun to you-know-who ... little Miss Loves-A-Ripper.

I'll show you the embarrassing part next time.  That's right, dear friends, I'm not through humiliating myself for your entertainment!

Project Simplify - Day 22

Whoever invented these bent basting pins should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Quilting. 

Seriously.

I held out for a loooong time thinking my regular safety pins still worked so why should I buy new ones?  Yeah, smack me upside the head!  Best $5 I ever spent. 

Project Simplify - Day 21

Chapter Four is a sweet little table topper called Coming Home.

At Quilt Market in Houston last fall I met Robyn Pandolph and got a charm pack of her new line "Scarborough Fair". 

I love it. 

I also bought the FQ bundle. 

I know, you're shocked ... ;)

Except for a few squares that I used in Last Chapter's quilt I haven't made anything with this fabric yet and I'm excited that I finally get to play with it.

Since the taupe/cream background fabric I'd planned for the last quilt didn't turn out, I'm going to give it another try for this quilt. 

And FOR SURE this time I'm going to use pink for the border.

Promise! :)

Love Thy Neighbor

Especially if he's a carpenter and you bought a 1952 bungalow (14 years ago) with a "fireplace" that looks like this:

(Sheeesh, I still get the heebie jeebies just lookin' at this photo!)  Yes, that's a bizarrely located electrical outlet.  I know ... I don't get it either. 

I could not paint that thing white fast enough, which was a MAJOR improvement, but still ...

A few months after we moved in, I found a salvaged fireplace insert (dated 1951).  I was so excited thinking I'd solved our living room eyesore.  And it was almost perfect, but in our attempt to make it fit we (meaning not me) removed a few tiles and chiseled away some of the concrete.  

And this is as far as we (again, not me) got.  It’s looked like this for about ... well, 14 years.  Ugh.

There's just no disguising those unsightly air vents.  The duct work was moved a while back (that's right, not by me ... see, I'm the IDEAS girl, NOT the muscle ...) and the vents relocated to the floor, so these grills are now purely, uh, "decorative" for lack of a better word.

I can never not notice this ... this thing.  Let’s face it, it's just ridiculous.  And I'm always embarrassed by it when people come over.  I mean, it IS the focal point of the room, but for all the wrong reasons.

So recently I was chatting with my neighbor (the carpenter).  Long story short, I drew him this ...

And he turned it into this ...

(cue the angels)

I KNOW!!! 

Like I said, I'm the IDEAS girl.   I've been fantasizing about this moment for soooooooo loooooooooong.  It's so beautiful I could weep.  Wait'll Santa sees the stockings hung here.  Thank you neighbor!

Now, can anyone out there tell me how to dress this mantle?  I'm not good at that sort of thing.  All I know is that now the mirror's way to small and I have a whopping 17" deep shelf! 

I'm trying to figure out how to have an afternoon nap up there. :)

Hope you have a great weekend!

Project Simplify - Day 20

Woohoo!  Look who's getting all fancy with her swirly twirly FMQing by throwing in the occasional heart ...

and

This was fun (after I got over the trauma of my really lousy daisies and breaking thread and all).

When I was putting the binding on I did that silly thing of twisting the two joining ends ...

I love this gently scalloped edge.  It's so much easier than severe scallops with all the inside corners to manouver.

The jury is still out as to whether the variegated thread was a good idea or not.  What do you think?

Do you ever play that game with yourself where you try to pick your favorite block in a quilt you made?  I thought it would be fun to ask my helper which was her favorite .  She had a hard time deciding, but she chose this one ...

and this one ...

and this one ...

and this one ...

and this one ... :)

Mine is this one ...  In fact, it was the inspiration for the name my helper gave this quilt.

She was telling me how she didn't like this one block because it was the only one with a dress on it.  All the others had flowers.  I told her I liked that one little block because it was daring to be different from the rest and that it looked like it was going to a party.  Then my helper said, "Hey!  I'm going to call this quilt Garden Party!" 

Love it.  Hope you do too. :)

I'm regretting a little bit that I went with the yellow border instead of the pink (I already got an "I told you so, Mom!").  I think it turned out a bit too quiet.  Oh well.  It still looks nice.

Now, I usually try to use up leftovers for the back, but since the fabrics came from my scrap bin, I luckily found some older Robyn Pandolph yardage that did the trick.

Stash Redux:

• Yardage - 4.4 yds / 4.1 m
• Weight - 1.2 lbs / 0.5 kg

For a grand total of:

• Yardage - 35.9 yds / 32.8 m
• Weight - 12.6 lbs / 6.9 kg

Feeling good!

Project Simplify - Day 19

And now back to our regularly scheduled blogging. :)

Remember this sweet, innocent-looking spool of lilac variegated RAYON thread?

Yeah.  It's evil.  But I'll get back to that in a minute.

I decided that after my poor "daisy flower" FMQ results I should stick to what I know for now - which is the "swirly twirly".  Fine.

But things were not going well.  I'd only done about 5 minutes worth of stitching and the thread broke, like, at least 20 times!  I rethreaded, checked the tension, everything I could think of to fix the problem.  I was having a serious hate-on for the thread.  But when I started testing out different thread I discovered that the lilac rayon was only half the problem.  The other half?  Well, turns out you really do need A DARNING FOOT on your machine to do FMQing.  The open-toed applique foot won't work.  (Oops!)

When I finally clued in to THAT little oversight, my darning foot decided to punish me for ignoring it by falling off and breaking (another) needle.

Sigh.  So by this time there were so many stops & starts in my top-stitching I figured I should prob'ly take it all out.  I hate unpicking almost as much as I hate practicing.

But ...

Guess who discovered that the little helper girl L.O.V.E.S using a stitch ripper?  (This photo was her idea.)

She was all over that job!  Especially after I showed her how to cut every third or fourth thread and then after a few minutes do that oh-so-satisfying long thread pull.  :)  drrrdrrrdrrrdrrrdrrr!

I sent her off to her Grandmas with the quilt and the ripper and she happily undid my mess.

Then I showed her my secret weapon for removing all those annoying little bits of thread ... masking tape.

If you've ever had body hair waxed ... you get the picture ;)

I love this girl.  Who knew 24 hours of labour followed by a C-section would pay off this way?