My, My! It's been awhile, hasn't it?

The Blitz.

Time just flies when you're having fun doesn't it?

 Charity comes first as they say. Over the last few weeks the guild here has had a Charity quilt blitz, we all sat down and did nothing but sew, sew and sew over a weekend, since our donation pile ended up being a whole pile of 3 from over a dozen! I wasn't able to get pictures of the other quilts made since they are off being quilted right now, I did manage to get the ones I did or helped with:

I found three more baby panels jammed in a corner of our fabric stash shelves, shook my head, took them home and quilted them since they are obviously in need of being owned by a special little person. The pink & blue top is a BQ (don't ask me what it stands for .. broken quarters? no idea :D), 4 of us worked on this one, the other 3 did the cutting and seaming of the pieces and I put all the blocks together and since I hate the sandwiching part so much, I am avoiding that like the plague and instead am offering to quilt it when it's sandwiched lol. (Good excuse right?!) Somehow I also managed to volunteer myself to quilt 4 or 5 other quilts on top of the ones I've pictured here.... I don't know how that happened!

While I was on a blogging break, (1 case of tonsillitis, 2 major cases of the flu, 3 days of exhaustion, 4 days of nothing but sewing and quilting, 5 days of running around like a chicken with my head cut off and a partridge in a pear tree..) I was not overly idle with my own stuff:

Mug Rug A

Mug Rug B

 I was doing some applique for the mug rug swap over at the Quilting Gallery blog, I made some minor placement errors but I really like how they turned out anyhow and I hope my swap buddy likes the results as well.

 Still continuing on with a couple of skill building samplers, I was having fun creating my own blocks and playing around with half square triangles.... I am not exactly sure where I messed up with my measurements except I think I was going to do try a half rectangle and did a square instead... meh I like it anyway!

 I also did my February BOM for the 2013 Craftsy.com BOM, my January ones have apparently gone AWOL...

I am currently working on these two little projects... TEASER PIC!!!

:P







Honestly, I think taking a small break was a good thing, it gave me time to gain perspective of what I really want to do. I was reading another blog earlier that I quite enjoy- Stitched in Colour - she has expressed my very thoughts in her most recent blogs.

Broken Diamonds is complete!

I have been questioning what I do, I think it is very easy to get caught up in following trends and wanting what you don't need or can't afford and feeling like you'll never get anywhere without these things.  Not only that, most of the people I know that are quilters tend to follow patterns & buy what they need rather than using what is on hand. That's not me and I am finding it a bit difficult to connect with my guild in that sense, if you understand?

Miz Carli over at Good Earth Quilting really flushed out my feelings about the way I quilt, she coined "re-crafting". I simply adore taking what I find and changing it from useless to useful. My Broken Diamonds is a perfect example, I did not buy ANY fabric except that black and only because I couldn't find anything black to match either in thrift stores or through connections (Yes I have fabric connections ;D), all the strips came from left over upholstery, work shirts or scraps that I have a tendency to acquire.

If you know anything about me, you'll know my love of vintage knows no bounds at all. Lately I've felt like I had to apologize for my preferences and really it's bummed me out, bad enough that I hadn't touched my sewing machine for nearly a week!!! (GASP!)  However sanity prevailed and my little machine whirred sweet nothings in my ear to entice me back to where I belong.  I really got inspired the other day and I am wondering if I was a little over inspired...

I was looking all over the internet for something to put inside the large cross blocks I did on one of the small quilts I did at the beginning of January, it's been hanging on my project line for over a month with no progress. I came across a fabulous artist who does fairy tale and fantasy works and provides a small selection of simply outstanding sketches for free. I was originally looking for some inspiration for applique but when I came across these drawings, I knew I found what I was looking for.

I printed out the pictures and used a transfer pencil to put the outline down and then just FMQ'd each one, I wasn't sure it would work and silly me I didn't do a test piece first.
I think they turned out stunning though and I was surprised at how well my machine handled all the tiny little stitches. Oh before I forget, I did batt behind these with tear away stabilizer at the bottom, I figured it would be just like an embroidered piece on a machine.  I think the stabilizer made a difference since I did not have any fabric movement once I had pinned down the corners, but as a con the stabilizer didn't allow for a lot of travel stitching (2 or 3 lines max) so I had to be a little creative at times to get back to where I needed to go without breaking thread.


 The centre square is part of a mandala drawing I found really inspiring, I did not use the outer 4 quadrants because I thought it would be too much, as it stands right now it seems a little lost in all that pink, but once the quilting is complete it will pop out of the centre like a medallion.
The same will be true of the fairies as well, I intended to use the gold like beige for their background and the pink thread for the background of the medallion, I did toss around the idea of white thread on the white squares, I even made up a sandwich to test the idea and I really just did not like the look of all that white with pink on top, the beige looked much better.


Passionately being Crazy.

Chris.

P.S.
When you square up your quilt... don't talk to a bunch of people while doing it... your quilt keeps getting smaller and smaller.....

It was 80x 80 and is now 74x74 finished! (Go ahead... bust a gut... I did!)