Done!

My first Halloween quilt of the season is done :-) From the pattern "Wednesday" by Mountainpeek Creations.

This is the focus fabric. I wanted to use the green indoor scence, but we didn't have enough to do the sample with, This piece is great too though...she's not in this picture but there's a little girl with a hammer. This is by far my favorite Halloween line; it's just just the right level of weirdness to it.

The lighting isn't great but you get the idea. Ripping out all those stitches streched it a little so hopefully Frances can help counteract that a bit. I'm thinking of doing a damask print as the quilting pattern on it, hopefully she has one! But I'm delighted with how it turned out. It's such a quick and easy pattern and it's easily done in an afternoon (if you read the directions and don't have to rip everying out and do it again...)

Here's a close-up of the flying geese. I used the green indoor scene for the centers of the flying geese. I love that print!

My favorite block. I like her just peering over the seam. It makes me laugh every time!

Ripping out stitches builds character...and also rage.

I really, REALLY need to learn to pay more attention to things when I'm sewing and not be so danged persnickety. Yeah, yeah, I know...easier said than done.

So I'm doing a quilt from a pattern called "Wednesday" (I can't find a picture of it for you but I assure you it's super cute), which is meant to showcase a large-scale print. Clearly I had to do this in Halloween...I mean, hey, even the pattern called for Halloween fabrics. You know I'm more than happy to oblige :-)

So I'm using Alexander Henry's line, The Ghastlies to make it all up. I LOVE that fabric.. That little girl with the hammer just cracks me up. But the quilt I'm doing (pictures up soon, once I rip it all out...ugh) is gray, pink, black and green. It sounds odd for Halloween, I know, but click on the link and you'll see why!

Aaaaanyway, so last night I'm just stitching away and I'm putting everything together and I realize "&*%#! The center strip is too big in a weird way!" So I'm sitting there pinning like a madwoman trying to force this pice to fit with the two  large upper and lower blocks lining up in the center of the middle block in the strip. Well sta-hoo-pid me, they weren't supposed to, and I realized this AFTER pinning, sewing and assembling the quilt to the point of having the last border halfway on.

Damn. It. Damn it. Dammit.

So, erroneously thinking I'd have a completed quilt top this afternoon to give to Frances to quilt for me, I will instead be spending my afternoon ripping out multiple looooong seams and finishing it tonight. Oh, and did I mention I cut the long sides for last border from my [very directional] border fabric last night out twice, so now I don't have enough to do the short sides without getting more fabric?

You know, perhaps I shouldn't be quilting and watching Gangland at the same time late at night. lol. Ah well, I see this as a good, patience building exercise (albeit a frustrating one!)

Darwin gets a new friend and I get to rip out stitches.

My roomate Lauren (yeah, I know) just got a new dog to keep Darwin company, and he's so FLUFFY I'm gonna die!

Say hello to Charles :-) Or Char. Or Char-Char. Or CHARMANDER! lol.

You know you live in an anthropology and science nerd house when your dogs are named Charles and Darwin. Hehehe. I love it! We call him Charlie though. He's adorable and Darwin likes him so it's a win-win. Woo hoo! Now if only we could take them sailing on a pint sized Beagle...(if you're a super nerd like me you'll get the reference...the Beagle was the ship that Darwin sailed to the Galapagos on). Aaaanyway...

So we have a bus hailing all the way from Texas coming in about a week to go to the Sisters quilt show and to visit, and after a little mishap with one of my kits, I needed to hop to it and get crackin' on another on to replace the can't-use-it-now one. So I chose to do a Thimble Blossoms pattern:

Super cute, and super simple....IF you're paying attention. Well, I read the pattern no less than 5 times. Seriously. 5 times. Apparently my information retention the past few days has been something awful because not only did I sew the wrong pieces together once, I sewed the new ones on without cutting the focus blocks down, and then had to do it a third time. I forgot to cut 2 strips for the points too. Good grief! Talk about having a case of the dumb-dumbs...so I've been spending more time ripping out stitches and re-cutting things than I have actually piecing! Oh the joys of quilting ;)

It's going to be really adorable though, I'm using Alexander Henry's Sew Much Fun as the large blocks, and Robert Kaufman's Sew Happy for the block points, and then an assortment of other matching prints for the neutral blocks.

Poor lighting, blah blah blah, but I assure you it's adorable. Oh, and third time's a charm, right?

It calls for a Layer Cake, but I'll level with you: I don't like Layer Cakes much. I think they're a great idea, don't get me wrong, and I do use them from time to time. But I really enjoy the process of choosing the fabrics, and I feel very limited when it comes to Layer Cakes because all of the colors are chosen for you. They're wonderful when you need a project done yesterday or if you're not wanting to go to the trouble to pick out 30 fabrics and cut them all to size (which admittedly, can be a pain), but I enjoy the process so I'd rather do it myself.

Hopefully I'll have the top pieced today so I can send it to Carol to be quilted tomorrow, or at latest, on Friday. Whew, nothing like flying by the seat of your pants!



Wait, what? It's June all ready?! Shut your mouth!

Indeed. June all ready. Where have the last 6 freakin' months gone? Just wondering because apparently I've been asleep, zoned out or something. ::blink::

So. Those of you that know me know that to say I'm a workaholic is a disgusting understatement. I always manage to get myself stretched six ways from Sunday and then wonder why I'm so dang tired all the time. Lets put this is perspective for a moment, and then determine my sanity (oh, and a preemptive shut up to the peanut gallery :D). I have a "for real" job, and a "fun job." My "for real" job is mornings and part time, my "fun job" is close to full time (not including work done outside). I have a house, dog, family and friends that sometimes want some of my attention - thankfully I don't have to add a boyfriend or husband to this. Up until December, add full time credit hours at University to this, too, and last January (2010) I had a THIRD job in the mix. I have a side project that I'm working on and pushing through the system, that's super exciting (to me) and eating a lot of time (and patience...not my strong suit!). I'm a workin' machine! Honestly though, this isn't a complaint whatsoever. I love it. I'm one of those weirdos that doesn't know what to do with herself when she has "free time." Heck, I can't even manage to sit and watch my WWE without having to do something else at the same time...cross stitch, applique, sew, Sudoku, whatever...

I'm not trying to toot my own horn here (even though that's definitely what it's looking like, I know) but in the last month, I finished 3 projects. Pretty darn good for me I'd say! I'm a notorious project starter but not finisher. I forget/get bored/get frustrated and leave it alone for a long time/run out of fabric *gasp* and just plain don't finish. I'll start 3 projects for one I don't finish. UFOs GALORE!

That being said, in the last WEEK AND A HALF I have picked up 4 new projects and I have 1 quilting job I need to do for someone. Luckily only the latter has a deadline...

-I've got a super cute fall table runner, which will be neat...it's got little appliqued pumpkins on it.
-There's that damn chicken quilt, which, by the way, the pattern was wrongity wrong and I'm 5 flippin' inches short on my last border. Thanks for nothing, pattern! *grumble*
- There's a 900+ piece quilt from the latest Australian Quilter's Companion I'm doing...still gathering black and whites for that though...it'll be cool when its all said and done but good LORD I don't want to piece all that nonsense /whine.
-As of yesterday I picked up a row quilt out of a Guatemalan border stripe. It'll be pretty rad looking because I fussy cut the buh-jeezus out of the stripe, but I gotta get some go-withs to fill it out.

All in all, looks like I'll be staying off the mean streets of Keizer (I can't say that with a straight face...bahahaha. Keizer's pretty calm except for this guy, who after seeing him on the news I'm pretty sure is the posterchild for bat-crap-crazy

(True Keizer Story. I'm not offended by the sign, I mean, hey, beauty of the First Amendment right there...it allows you to demonstrate to the rest of the street what a looney toon you are. What I find funny as all get out is the fact that he originally had the spelling of neighbor correct, then changed it to a misspelling. Yeah I know, of course that's what I would take away from it...a grammatical error)

Well, after that dose of crazy, I'll leave you with my hound, telling me with his big ol' bug eyes that he wants me to stop trying to bind the quilt...little Lord Fauntleroy over here wanted to lay on it instead, but I kept moving it as I was stitching...I forgot, who is it that owns who? :)



Why yes, I DO know better. But that, my friends, doesn't mean diddly.

So yeah. My machine hates me. Which, by "my machine hates me," I actually mean I totally screwed it up myself. User error.

I know better than to sew over pins, which is why I always take them out before my needle goes over them. who am I kidding? I don't. I leave them there...like most imperfect quilters (is there such a thing as a perfect quilter? Ooh, quilting existentialism). But in the back of my brain I know that there is a risk of breaking a needle or the pin if the the needle actually hitis the pin. apparently it's way back there in the back.

To the untrained eye, it looks like I'm being a diligent machine owner and cleaning my machine after using it. Yeah, that beast gets duuuuusty. I wish I could say that this is why I have got everything dismantled. Alas, I ran over a pin and the unexpected happened....

See that? Yeah, the pin didn't break like one would expect it to, and nor did the needle....The damn thing sucked itself into the feed dogs and got itself crimped and stuck therein. You should have heard the noise. It was ugly. I think my roomate dang near jumped out of her skin, because there she was minding her own business, watching Futurama, and KA-CHING-CRUNCH - pin, meet feed dogs, they want to devour you.

So what is the moral of this story? You probably shouldn't run over your pins. Will I run over my pins again/still? You betcha. But I will change my needle and watch things a little more closely.

Somewhere out in the wild and weird world of the interwebs, there's a Quilt Police Officer taking down my number so they can smack me upside the head with a ruler. 

The Sunbonnet Sue Saga, Part II

This has become a MONSTER! Had I known what a huge project this would become...yeah, I still would have taken it on. I'm just being dramatic (what else is new?). I decided to halt production on my Sues in order to organize the project because quite frankly, I was getting overwhelmed by all the hundreds of pieces and fabrics flying around.

So I let my OCD side come out and play! for those of you that know me, you know I have my "Aw, screw it" side and my "Sheldon Cooper" side. I was trying to loosen up and let this quilt be serendipitous but it started to get to me in a big, big way. So I stopped trying to go against my nature and I started organizing. I cut out all my fusible pieces for each Sue, and each Sue got her own plastic sandwich baggie to live in; all the pieces are in the bag and the bag is labelled as to which Sue it is (Wales, France, Tahiti whatever). Whew. Feeling much calmer now!

So after getting that done I decided I would work on a couple new ones...this bring the count to 9 I think. Only 40 more to go! *groan*

One day I will have for real, normal lights in my house and I will have a for real camera...but until then please excuse the crappy lighting. It skews all of the colors! The background is actually really a light, cool toned gray.

Atlantis. Ariel with a seahorse! :D

Mexico. Something tells me in rural Mexico they don't carry cactuses like that.

Saudi Arabia. I was happy to get this one spot on with the clothing! That red plaid was a difficult find. Hooray for Mom's stash :D

Even still, I am finding that rooting through my 2 huge bins of scraps is giving me more headaches than making this whole thing easier, so I think I'm going to get even MORE meticulous and sort out my scraps into categories so I can actually find a skin tone or floral or whatever when I need it. You wouldn't believe how long I spend rooting around those bins for the mermaid's Ariel's tail only to find it had fallen out of the bin without me noticing. Dang it! Then I'm thinking I'll just fuse and cut everything out for each Sue and then assemble them all at once, assembly line style. That organization style worked well when I did the Bigfork Bay Wolf and Lion patterns, so I think following the same principle here will do just fine. Next time (if there is a next time...yeesh) I think I will forego the serendipity and just stick to over-organizing. Hey, whatever works, right?

Quilt Police! Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna when they come for you?

Okay, y'all who know me personally know I am a rant-o-holic... I have a soapbox and I'm not afraid to use it! As my brother so delicately said (as has been joked about ever since...) when I get annoyed it's "screech first, ask questions later." I don't claim to be a patient person 100% of the time :D  So what am I standing on my soapbox and screeching about this time?

The dang Quilt Police. Or, the people who think they are. Ask them; they'll tell you!

So what brought this on? Well, first of all, I was watching my DVR-ed episode of Fon's & Porter's Love of Quilting and I've more or less decided I am not the biggest fan of Miss Marianne Fons. Her information is all right, I use some of her methods and some I don't. But I find her all kinds of snooty, at least as she hosts the show. Her way is the best way. Period. Tonight she was particularly eye-roll inducing so it got me to thinking about uppity "my way is the only way" kinds of quilters. For the love of Pete, if you fall under this category...  r  e  l  a  x. There are other ways.

But then I was bouncing around the internet looking for links to share on the newsletter for the shop and I stumbled across this rather irritating little nugget on another quilter's blog, in an article in which she discussed her opinions of a local quilt show she attended:

"I have to say, a lot of the art quilts just were not doing it for me this year.  This is a little internal war I have with myself whenever I go to a quilt show.  On the one hand, I am so glad that nontraditional techniques have been embraced by the quilting establishment.  I’ve read about the controversy when Carol Bryer Fallert won at Houston with a — gasp! clutch pearls! — machine quilted quilt in 1989.  (Perhaps I should put “quilt” in quotation marks, as every right-minded member of the Quilt Police knows that only hand-quilted quilts deserve to be called quilts.  Sniff!)  Ahem.  Anyway.  I’m glad that those of us who machine quilt, use fusible web or Paintstiks, etc. can all play in the sandbox too.  Which is why I get uncomfortable when I find myself standing in front of a quilt at a show and thinking, “That’s not really a quilt.”  I don’t want to be a part of the Biddy Brigade, but at the same time, I don’t want to be so open-minded that my brain falls out." http://sarahlovesfabric.com/tag/quilt-police/

So. Someone has acknowledged the big, rude elephant in the room. Number one, how exactly does finishing methodology determine what contitutes a quilt? Artistic technique changes over time and norms evolve. Granted, this is difficult to accept in a lot of ways for all generations involved - there's the way it was being confronted by the way it is, there's the nostalgia and stereotype existing in contrast with the reality. I get it. Heck, I studied that in depth (that was my thesis in Anthropology for goodness sake!). But for people to discredit the art and deny a quilt the title of Quilt because it wasn't done by hand is positively ludicrous. It goes back to the shift in purpose and the evolution of the art - if a craft is to survive it cannot remain static; new method come in as others fade away or simply remain (the latter being the case with handquilting...I have a blog entry about handquilting even).

Her mention of Quilt Police got me to thinking about Quilt Police in general. Every quilter knows a Quilting Police Officer. This person is usually undercover, but they may be in uniform:

Maybe something like this?

Or this? The Official Quilt Police Website. They have their own T-Shirts and ballcaps! Egad.

But there are the folks that, on a consistent basis, are the ones to find and point out a fault in what you're making. They're the ones to tell you you're doing it wrong on the basis that you're not doing it their way, not because you're actually doing it wrong. They're quit to criticize, and on the flip side don't take it well if someone in turn points out a mistake they made. These are the people who discourage personal preference and improvisation because "everyone knows" that there should be 20 stitches per inch on bindings (which should all be cut to 2.5") or the pattern said "this piece shall be blue."

I've only been at this in seriousness for 2 years, and I consider myself a pretty confident beginner, but jeezy chreezy! I have some pretty strong perfectionist tendencies (ask mom...I can be meticulous...which is putting it nicely lol) but if that's how quilting is supposed to be, then cuff me, take me to Quilter's Prison, lock me up and throw away the key because I think that blows! 

We're all ready our own worst critics; we don't need another person assessing our artwork or our skills and telling us it's crap. It happens way too often; ask your quilter friends or read the blogs about the dark side of the Quilt Police in the blogosphere - I think everyone has (or will have) an unpleasant encounter with an unruly Quilt Police Officer. So how do you handle it? Well, I'm not the best person to ask, honestly. I'm a little too quick tempered to handle it with grace no matter how bad I'd like to. Usually I just say, a little sharply that "Yeah well, that's how I prefer to do it/Yeah well, I'm happy with how it turned out/Yeah well, I like these colors a lot, but I guess it's an acquired taste." Probably the better why to handle it is to smile nice and big and just let them know that the beauty of quilting is that every quilter has their own unique eye and taste in color and thank God there aren't any quilt police because there's just no "right" way :D

How do we stop Quilt Police? We don't! That behavior is part of any art - the gallery snobs, the cinematic elitists, the comedy purists - the line is drawn where criticism ceases to be kind, contructive and supportive and and begins to be elitist, tactless and know-it-allish. I know I find myself letting their negativity color my view of my work, and I know others do too. No one likes to be told their work or methodology is mediocre or sub-par, especially if it's something they're happily sharing at a quilt show, like the gal was talking about in the blog quote above. But that's where we have to take it upon ourselves to remember that the beauty of quilting is that everyone has a different vision and these Quilt Police hold no sway in the satisfaction and pride we have and take in our own work. We all have our Quilt Police moments. Not everyone will like everything you, me, our friends, professional designers make and that's okay...the key is being respectful of the fact that someone put love and effort into their work and that is reason alone to be tactful and just admire the meaning behind the piece for the person who made it even if you think it's bum-ugly :-)

*facepalm*

Today has been completely lame. I'll be happier when I can go home and just brainlessly cut out appliques, because really? Yeah. Today can be over now.