FO: Rainy Quilt

Rainy Quilt is finished.  

We got these pictures when it was nicely lit but very windy out - the thing actually does lay flat if put on a flat surface, swear.  

I used the last big hunk of Quilter's Dream Cotton Request (the thinnest one) for the batting, and quilted the whole thing with "organic" vertical lines to kind-of look like raindrops rolling down a window.  Hadn't used my free-motion foot in a long time.  Quilted a few raindrop shapes in as well, on the dark fabrics.  I auditioned white, gray, light blue, and dark blue thread for quilting, and Other liked the dark blue.  

The back is another Connecting Threads print, gotten in astonishing quantity from their Cyber Monday sale.  The finished quilt is noticeably soft, which is a nice surprise.  I bound it with the dark blue mirage that came with the Rainy Day fq pack, as well as some of the tiny white-on-blue polka dot that Other said was his favorite.  

The finished quilt is about 36"x42".  

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday at crazymomquilts. Happy crafting!

Rainy Quilt WIP

I just glanced at my traffic stats, and either my mom is very bored and has become weirdly obsessive about checking my blog, or there are actually some people who aren't my mom looking at this.  Hi, people!  Hi, Mom!

Eager to cleanse my quilting palette from the preceding Fugfest, I started chopping up some fabric for a little quilt for my husband.  Everyone else in our little family has a little quilt (and some even fit all the way under them), so it seemed like time to even things up. 

At Connecting Threads's cyber monday sale I got a FQ set of Rainy Day for a ridiculously small amount of money.  (Also got two large cuts for crazy cheap, which will be mostly quilt backs.)  The fabrics above are the ones that made the cut, plus a fq that I dyed in a class many years ago. 

These didn't make the cut.  The grays surprised me, but I was hoping to pinch a bit of each for a different quilt of much gray, so that worked out well. 

Hand dyed

I go back and forth on this one, but it does match the color scheme really well, so it's going in.  

In other random news, my iron finally turned on me and was spitting water - really, really hot water - at me and everything, and then it gave up the ghost.  Just now I considered saying that I'm surprised it never did significant amounts of damage, but I haven't thrown it out yet, so I'd rather not tempt fate like that.  

Here's the replacement, long may it reign.  

Happy crafting!

Can't Wait to Eat It

I have a finish!  

And I just desperately hate it.  Hated it so much that I considered balling it up and putting it away forever, but the recipients liked it, so I pushed through.  I did not try very hard.  The techniques I used to finish it cannot be found in any quilting encyclopedias, Craftsy classes, or incredibly misinformed blogs.  I crossed the streams, made specific and detailed public statements about Fight Club, and put Baby in a corner on this quilt.  

For this quilt, I used the palette builder at Play Crafts to pick fabrics and then sketched up several different ideas and had the recipients pick which one they liked.  The palette builder worked well - the general concept did not.  I love this picture, and the sunflower itself was pretty cool as well.  Maybe it will grow on me, but I'm not holding my breath.  Hey, self: next time just get a big print of the picture you like.  

Feh.  

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday at crazymomquilts, because a finish is a finish, even if it's fugly. 

Happy crafting! 

A mitten story

For a harrowing and difficult eight days, I couldn't find my right Owl Mitten.  (Pictured below, right)



Worse, the eight days fell during the small window of time during the year that I focus, finally and in a panic, on making gifts for my loved ones.  I was in a sea of I'll-never-be-knitting-anything-but-felted-slippers-again-much-less-quilting-omggg.  

I got through this dark time by carrying mitten yarn with me and winding it into balls while making phone calls at work.  

Turns out I don't spend so much time on the phone at work.

I also asked for some more mitten yarn (Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift) for Christmas.  Then I found the mitten at work. 

Two pairs of felted slippers later (yeah, it was only two pairs, but one pair was team-knit in three days), I dove right into a new pair of mittens with the new Christmas yarn. 

Two rounds into the new pair of mittens, I decided that next Christmas will be the Christmas on which I will give all my loved ones colorwork mittens.  Not this pair, of course, or the ones from the green and black yarn above, because all that yarn was given to me as a gift, so it doesn't feel right to give it away.  I'll just knock out this blue and black pair first, then knock out 5 more pairs, then do the green and black pair.  Never have to worry about not having backup mittens again.  


Oh, and also, the stupid plastic mittens that we bought for the bigger kid are an ordeal to get on and can't be any fun to play in, so she'll need a pair of handknit ones, too.  So that's eight pairs, then.  




And there is now fabric and a rough plan for two more quilts. 

Tune in Christmas, 2015 to see how this glorious Mittens for Everyone! Plan turns out.   


Happy crafting!