Thirty Three

You know when you move or at least do a major clean you uncover a wicked amount of crap... er, stuff? Yeah that.

Yesterday two of my local quilty friends, Andrea and Lee, came over to help me get prepped and start moving my scattered quilting stuff to my new space in the basement. It isn't quite done yet, hopefully by the end of the week. But the closets are in and were ready to be loaded. So load and fold and inventory we did.

I love my fabric, but I must finally admit that I do indeed have enough. I've really got to use more before I buy more. Or find it a new home. But I've known that for a while. What was more.shocking to me was the amount of quilt tops, WIPs, and intentional quilts that I had.

O   M   G

Instead of burying it all back in bins and ignoring that I might perhaps have a problem with starting and not finishing quilts I decided to actually inventory all those piles. And because I believe in full disclosure of my faults here is a full listing of all the projects awaiting my attention. I've numbered them for full effect.

Quilt Tops - Ready for Quilting

1. Anniversary Quilt
2. Cosmos Blocks
3. Wine Gums
4. Improv Sampler
5. My version of Checkerboard from Sunday Morning Quilts
6. Slaveship Quilt Inspired by The Book of Negroes
7. Gum on Concrete, my version of Splash from Sunday Morning Quilts
8. An old Amy Butler quilt top I picked up a sample sale

Quilts - Basted and Started Quilting

9. Girlie Quilt
10. Low Volume Circles

Works in Progress

11. Mid Mod Bee - Blocks to be assembled into a top
12. Unscripted Bee - Waiting for a couple of blocks, then to be assembled
13. Hand Pieced Diamonds - always ongoing
14. More Cosmic Burst blocks - I have a whole other set of blocks for a baby quilt
15. Voiles - Still cutting and piecing every now and then
16. Name quilt for my daughter - haven't done anything since this post
17. Chandelier quilt - was so close, then discovered a big mistake and have never fixed it
18. Mountain Meadows - have made no more blocks since
19. Liberty Circles - I make a handful every now and then but I'm still not assembling the top
20. Blue and green Christmas Tree quilt - I cut the pieces last year then promptly put them away
21. The alternate pink/black/white blocks I started when working on the girlie quilt
22. Respite - a project started in a Bill Kerr design workshop
23. Pieced Stars - a BOM I started years ago when I wanted to do some precision piecing breaks when doing a lot of improv
24. Japanese Curves - Fell in love with a Japanese fabric and a curvy pattern, took a class, never finished
25. The Water Quilt
26. Maple Leaves

Class Samples (Pieces I work on while teaching, as examples)

27. A values quilt in neutrals
28. Green/Yellow/Orange Improv blocks

Intentional Quilts

29. Sympatico and Organic solid stack
30. Lucky Penny Bike Path
31. Some vintage feedsacks intended for Amanda's quilt from Fresh Fabric Treats
32. Turkey reds, blues, and whites for a striped project
33. A collection of screen printed and low-volume favourites

To cap all this off, as Andrea and Lee were leaving the mail arrived, and in it was a fat quarter collection of Architextures, my friend Carolyn's new line.

O  M  G
!

Wink Wink

Wink Wink

34" by 44''

Special Techniques: Improvised Curved Piecing

Bloggers' Quilt Festival Category: Baby Quilt

Made with and completely inspired by Mark Cesarik's Cosmic Burst line. It came out months ago, but I've been playing with these blocks and this quilt since March. That whole baby, new book, working, summer thing got in the way of finishing this top though. The last stitches in the binding finally went in over the weekend.

Check out all the process posts here:
The Fabric
Making Blocks
Layout Options 1
Layout Options 2
Finished Top
I absolutely love sharing the process like this. I don't always do it in such an intense burst (minus the finished quilt) because I'm always working on a million things at once. Or nothing at all.

And, as much as my little girl would love to keep this quilt for snuggles and fort building it is on its way to a baby boy. My husband actually commissioned the quilt for a friend and we'll be delivering it shortly.

Sharing this as part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival that Amy Ellis does twice a year. She is an awesome lady! And make sure to check out all the other quilts.

Lucky Penny Stripes

With no discredit to the designer, whenever I write the words in this post title I automatically default to Lucky Stripe. Blame it on Mad Men or a lack of sleep. I can say, however, that this fabric is a helluva lot nicer than a pack of cigarettes.

The colours are incredibly rich in the Lucky Penny line. I fell in love with these wavy, dotty stripes as soon as Allison Glass previewed them. The rest of the line is gorgeous, but I was definitely smitten with these. So much so that Allison sent me this stack of fat quarters. I've been fondling them since they arrived, a little too much like Gollum and his precious ring.

Those of you who know my work can recognize that the colours are a bit earthy compared to my usual choices. Sometimes, however, you can't explain the love you feel for something. It might be the arrival of winter, it might be that the richness is tempered by the amazing grey and that awesome chartreuse, it might just be because the fabrics are so damn pretty.

I'm not entirely sure what will become of these. Perhaps something that does indeed connote a lucky stripe, or some curves or, or, or...

Green Scraps

Much to my dismay, I'm still not getting much time to quilt. I would love to sit at the dining room table and make a giant mess with this gorgeous fabric. Alas, the mess being made in my house is from the painters and tilers working away in the basement. This, of course, is a very good thing. But between that and this, all I can manage on my mountain meadow quilt is a little organization by value.