Quilts
A lot has happened since that last post. I stuck some stuff in my shoppy shop shop. I finished a quilt top, decided it was too ugly to give as a gift, decided to make it into a summer quilt and give it instead to the kid who swears she likes it, ordered some seersucker for inside the summer quilt, decided to order enough for the second kid to get a summer quilt, then started piecing together that quilt in an improv process that is meant to mimic the crayon drawing she did for me about 2 years ago.
This is the ugly quilt. The red just doesn't work. I was very faithful and just used stash for this, and really should've just gotten my hands on more purpley blues.
Needing a backup plan for the gift quilt, which is for a woman who took care of the kids what's turning out to be awhile ago now, I called up all those 2" squares I'd been sewing together as leader/enders. Yoinked a pattern from someone else in the quilting group on Ravelry, and WHAMMO:
Today I basted this bad boy. Man, everything looks better in glowing sunlight, doesn't it? Maybe if I'd taken a picture of the ugly quilt in glowing sunlight, it would be done and given by now.
To my great joy, the kids have decided that quilting with me (i.e. the big one ironing things for me and enduring frequent lecturing about the Proper Way to Iron, and the little one DJing on my computer) is the most fun thing that can happen. I blame the pandemic, but in this case it means tons of quilting time, so I'm not and will never complain.
I'm trying to get up the will to stipple this. Straight line quilting would be by far the easiest, but I like the way that stippled quilts crinkle up, so stippling it is. I've changed the foot and tension on my machine, broken open a new spool of thread so I don't have to use two different lots, dropped the feed dogs, and found my quilting gloves. But I haven't stippled a quilt this big in a long time, and ripping out quilting is even worse than ripping out cross stitch, so the stakes feel high.
Baby Quilt
In other news, a friend of mine from school is having a baby in August, which I'm very excited about for her, and only a little bit more excited that it means that I can make her a quilt, AND she likes lavender/mint/gray, which is the best color combination. I used my quarterly buying day to get a nice bunch of lavenders, which my stash is terribly lacking in. Did I take a picture? I did not, sorry. But I will.
Fabric Buying
I thought very carefully about it, weighing the pros and cons, then I blew my pledge not to buy any more fabric this quarter, AND I plan to do it again if the world's most perfect backing fabric ever arrives at Hawthorne Supply Company, which it said would happen in late April, and it is now May and I'm still waiting. Not so patiently, you might have noticed. Because I won't have to stipple that quilt.
Cross-Stitch Thing
I finished my cross stitch and I think it looks great. Folded and sewed it up, have a dowel rod and beads, but haven't found the gray cord I need, so it's stalled waiting to be washed and hung up.
Ummm, what else?
I think that's pretty much it. Hoping I'll have a finished quilt or four to show the next time I post.
Happy crafting!