Too Much to Tackle?

My Works in Progress are getting out of control.

That slight echo you just heard was 'Stache shouting "Amen!" He's been a great sport, but ... given the opportunity to heave a beleaguered sigh - he will heave a beleaguered sigh.

Things on the radar:
(Note: My storage cubes are stuffed with projects that have fallen off said radar. I have a very good track record for finishing projects ... eventually. The stuff in storage will probably get done, but it might take a few years.)

1. Linen quilt.

Last week I ran a nicely appointed little sweatshop making my summer clothes, which are all about LINEN. I can't wait to show you, but Munchkin hasn't quite mastered the camera and I'm always knee deep in supper preparations when 'Stache comes home. But anyway, I took the scraps that were leftover and made a cute little modern quilt.
Prospects: Dim. This one's actually teetering on the edge of the radar. I don't have a baby in mind for it, so my motivation is struggling. (If anyone wants to buy this one, though, I'm pretty sure the motivation would perk right back up!)

2. Mei-Mei's Liberty toboggan. 

My sister gave me Liberty yarn for my birthday, and I knit a little vest for Mei-Mei and made this toboggan from the leftovers. This is how you wake up one morning with a huge stash: You get yarn for a vest, and you have a nice bit left over, so you make a toboggan (aka ski cap, aka touke, aka beanie), but even though you had gobs, way too much to toss, you don't have enough, so you need to buy more, but then you have leftovers from that ...
Prospects: I love love love this yarn, because it's soft and wonderful and wool (down with acrylics!) and because it's New Mexico colors, which always remind me of 'Stache, which is a little funny because he isn't from New Mexico; his grandmother was. So to see this project is to be inspired to finish it, but I will have to go buy yarn to do it. And I feel guilty buying yarn when I have so many many things to finish.

3. Justin's sweater. 
This is my brother-in-law's Christmas sweater. Clearly still in the planning phase. I've done my swatch and I've gotten the measurements from my sister, so I need to sit down and do the math to design the sweater.
Prospects: Reasonably sunny. Definitely going to be done by Christmas. (Knock on wood.) The plan is to take it to the beach, where I will actually see my brother-in-law, which should be fairly motivating.

4. Cushion for boys' room.

I have a beautiful vision for the boy's room which involves making a window seat out of a metal trunk, so I want to sew a cushion for the top of it. Clearly I have some work to do.
Prospects: I really want to finish the boy's room, so I'm very motivated, but I still need foam and I'm hesitant to make the cushion cover without the stuffing and Joann's trips are a little arduous with the boys, so it might be a bit before I manage to buy the foam.

5. Slipcover for boys' room. 
The other major part still lacking from the vision for the boy's room is a slipcover for a chair we're moving in there. This chair has been through the wars: we got it several years ago off of the sidewalk when our neighbors moved, and it is definitely due for a slipcover. I have found fabric I'm crazy about but haven't bought it yet.
Prospects: Again, very motivated, but you need lots and lots of fabric for a slipcover and upholstery fabric isn't cheap, so this might need to wait until next month's paycheck hits. However, I should do the math and check if Memorial Day sales make it doable. Also: making a slipcover = lotsa work. Might be a long project even once I have the fabric.

6. Molly's quilt. 
Once upon a time, my sweet sister got married (to Justin, of Christmas sweater fame) and I made her a quilt top using heirloom quilt squares that belonged to our grandmother. I promised I would hand quilt it and ... I have not. And now, with two kids, soon to be three, I think I've resigned myself to the fact that it just isn't going to happen. I think I need to unpick the handquilting I've done and machine quilt it.
Prospects: Still going to be hard to manage. I don't have a space to lay the quilt out to rebaste the backing, so I have to find a space somewhere else I can commandeer. Also, I'm nervous because this is a really special quilt, and I'm something of a machine quilting newbie.

7. Mosaic table. 

This project, for which I saved broken plates for 7 and a half years, is one I'm pretty excited about.
Prospects: Good. It's standing on our porch, impeding traffic, which is fairly motivating. Breaking plates with the tile nippers is simple, though hard on the hands. I hope to have it done soon.

8. Twinkle's hat 

I'm making this from a really cool Noro yarn that is like a very thin roving. Think knitting with raw wool instead of spun yarn.The knitted fabric is very fluffy and warm. I'd like to make Twinkle a new toboggan and mittens for Christmas.
Prospects: Right now I'm on fire for finishing, but I've only just started. Also, the weight of the whole list is making me wonder if I should work on something else just to get something off the list.

9. 4 (count them, FOUR) Christmas gift bags. 

I'm making reusable gift bags out of the leftovers of another quilting project. I love these bags and reusable gift bags are great when you have inquisitive toddlers who can unwrap a present in a New York minute but can't manage knots yet.
Prospects: I've done all the piecing, which is the biggest part, but I still have to iron on interfacing, make linings, make drawstring cords and assemble the bags. Right now the bags are still on the radar but we're taking a break.

10.  Hedgehog mittens.
I am making Munchkin hedgehog mittens for Christmas. I love love love the way these are going to look (pattern coming soon!) and I love everything hedgehog-related, but I am seriously running out of steam doing the prickles. They take an AGE.
Prospects: Eh. Definitely done by Christmas, but motivation is pretty low right now. Also, they appear to be missing.

11. 100 Wishes Quilt.

In northern China, which is where Mei-Mei is from, they have a lovely tradition where when a couple is expecting a baby, they collect pieces of fabric from 100 of their family and friends and make a quilt. Then when they wrap their baby in the quilt, it's as if they are wrapping their baby in the well wishes of all their family and friends.
Prospects: We're still collecting and I hope to have all the pieces by the end of June.

So, if you know us and love us and want to participate in this wonderful project, send us a piece of fabric or clothing that at least 9"x9". Any kind, any color. Comment or message me if you need our address. We will think about you every time we see it! 

"For I Am Sure"

A month ago, a friend of mine had a Terrifying Medical Thing happen. She’s going to be fine, although getting back to 100% may take a long time. Since she lives rather far away from me, it wasn't practical for me to offer to take care of her kids, run errands, clean her house, or any of a dozen things that a friend who’s dying to be helpful might offer to do. But what I could do (other than pray for her, which I did and do) was to help keep her warm. Thus, a quilt was born.

Because I wanted to make it quickly, it couldn't be too intricate, but I wanted it to be personal. I was inspired by this quilt, and I asked my friend’s husband if there was a slogan or Bible verse that was particularly meaningful to them during this time. He said that they really loved Romans 8:38-39, so I decided to put that verse on the quilt. I used 4 red fat quarters (fat quarters are pieces of fabric that are approx 18”x22” and fabric stores often have them pre-cut) and 7 gray fat quarters. I cut them width-wise into strips 2 ½” wide. Then I shuffled them up into a roughly random/roughly consistent pattern, and sewed them together, varying the seam allowances by as much as 2” to get a staggered sort of effect. I had a few strips left over.

 Now, Rom 8:38-39 has a lot of words (50, including the reference, if anyone’s counting), so appliqueing the words was right out. Embroidery would have likewise taken an age. So I decided to draw them. I got a fine tipped permanent fabric pen, and very very slowly and carefully drew the letters. First I drew them with single strokes, making the letters fairly big, and then would go back and draw a second line and color in the space in between to make letters fatter. This method worked fairly well, and I particularly recommend it for the amateur calligraphers out there, because you can correct your mistakes and nobody will ever know. After first drawing the letter, for instance an “o,” you can draw the second line outside the circle to make the letter larger or inside to make the letter smaller. Or if you magically drew it just the right size, you can use the first line as your middle line and draw lines on either side to fill in.

There is something about writing words slowly and looking at them a long time that makes you doubt yourself and your ability to spell, and I’m still not 100% sure that there are no spelling errors in this quilt. If there are – well, it was meant to be a labor of love, and it will not stop being that if there are spelling mistakes in it. However, I think I’m probably just making myself paranoid. When I was making an appliquéd plaque for my sister the first Christmas after she got married, I became briefly convinced that her name was Richardson instead of Richards. (It's definitely Richards, by the way. I checked.)

I pieced together the backing out of some black fabric and a few fun black and white prints. 

Paw prints! And daisies!

I'd like to apologize for my very boring picture of a gray quilt against a gray house. Somehow when we were buying our home, picturesque spots for photo shots didn't make the must-have list. Also, I swear this quilt is a rectangle. It's just the clothespins that are making it look like a wonky hexagram. 

I also incorporated the label (the red square) into the middle of the backing. (The label has an inscription; you just can’t read it from this distance because I didn’t make the letters thick.) This label in several ways made life a bit easier.

1. I didn't want to have to sew on the label by hand, and I was going to have to sew pieces together anyway to have fabric big enough for the backing.

2. I am new to machine quilting, and I knew that less experienced, uneven quilting tends to make fabric shift/slide/stretch. If I had put the red label on one of the edges, there was a fair chance it would have ended up more of a trapezoid than a square, which would have driven me bonkers. Putting it closer to the middle kept it square.

3. Two of the sides of the quilt had very uneven edges because I was deliberately sewing the strips together in a staggered way. Because of the shifting/stretching problem, I planned to do the quilting first, then trim all the edges to make them straight. If I had put my label on one of these edges, it would have ended up a rectangle instead of a triangle. 

4. I wrote the inscription on the label before quilting it. If I had make a mistake in the inscription after quilting the whole quilt, it would have been a royal pain to correct it.

5.  Because I was writing the inscription before quilting, I had no idea exactly how the quilting lines would go across the label. I didn't know if they would be spaced awkwardly in relation to the lines of writing, or if the quilting might be wobbly. If I took pains to make the writing perfectly straight and then the quilting lines were less than perfectly straight, it would have been very obvious. So I wrote the description on the diagonal instead and it worked quite well.

When I was squaring off the edges of the quilt, I discovered that the edges that needed trimming were almost exactly the length of my coffee table. This made the squaring off unprecedentedly easy. When I lay the quilt out on the table, Twinkle (who had seen me sewing together strips but had not seen the finished quilt) said, “Oh wow! Mama make the blankie!” How cute is that? 

When I was taking this picture, Munchkin insisted on taking some pictures of his own. Unfortunately my cell phone does not have a “macro” function, so these art shots were a little less artistic than could be desired and rather more like a three year old taking pictures with his mother’s phone.

After squaring off the edges, I made a bias binding and sewed it on using this technique, which is now my hands-down favorite for attaching the binding on machine-quilted quilts.

And then it was done! I’m so happy with how it turned out. This is such a fun, easy way to make a very striking, modern quilt, and I think the pattern is well suited to incorporating any sort of longish quote. What do you think? 

Title: For I Am Sure

Design: Staggered gray and red strips with a Bible verse written on the red strips

Materials: 100% cotton fabric, polyester batting, permanent fabric pen

Finished: March 2015