Things never go like I plan!

Well, so much for blogging every day.  And so much for quilting every day.  I guess my goals were a little too high.  What is that keeps me from quilting?  That's what I need to resolve.  I really do enjoy quilting.  I'm so happy and calm when I'm sewing, so why don't I do it more?!

It just seems like there are always things I should do, before I do what I want to do.  I thought that when I stopped working, I would have plenty of time to quilt.  Ha ha!  It's mostly my own fault, I know.  I've gotten myself involved in too many other activities...knitting, bunco, bridge, bingo, knitting club, the social committee in our community (planning parties), going placed with my girlfriends, etc., etc.  Just not enough time at home, still.  I keep telling myself that I need to set aside specific times to immerse myself in my quilting, but so far I haven't managed to do that.  And then I decided to start a business making and selling doll cothes, so now I get to feel guilty when I'm not working on that project, also. 

Anyway - I did finally make some progress on Trinity's quilt.  The borders are sewn on, and the backing and batting are prepared. 

Now I just need to pin the layers for quilting BUT I'm chicken.  I need to do free motion outline quilting on this project, and I need some serious practice before I tackle Trinity's pretty quilt.  So - I'm preparing some fabric that I got from the quilt quild I belong to (shout-out for Citrus Belt Quilters in Redlands, Californnia) to make a community service quilt.  The fabric is printed to look like quilt blocks, so it's perfect for practicing my quilting skills (or lack thereof!).

Ok, so there's my next goal.  Get that fabric washed, pressed, and pinned, and start quilting it!  Hopefully I'll be back to tomorrow to report some progress.  Yes I will!  (I hope...)

Planning Day

I didn't get to do any quilting today, but I am planning my next project.  Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to start on it.  So here's the beginning of the story of Trinity's quilt.

I was with my Red Hat Ladies chapter on a trip up to Oak Glen for lunch and (of course) apple pie.  After lunch we browsed around some of the little shops in the area.  My favorite is a little gift shop that has a corner of quilting goodies.  I saw an adorable printed panel, mostly pink and green, with fairies, butterflies and flowers, and thought it would be perfect for baby Trinity, since her momma said she wanted pink and green for the baby.  The nice lady in the shop helped me figure out how much to buy for borders, backing, and binding, and I brought it all home (thanks to my sister's financial assistance).  It has already been sitting on my shelf for a couple of months while I focused on other projects.  BUT...no more excuses!  I am committing right here to get started on this project tomorrow!

First I need to measure the panel and then cut and attach the borders.  My goal is to get at least that much accomplished tomorrow...

Here's a quick pic of the fabric:

And no, this is NOT a cheater panel.  I prefer to call it a SMART panel.  No piecing, but lots of free motion quilting.  I really need the practice!

Every Quilt Has A Story

So I've decided that maybe if I blog about my quilting projects, I will make more progress on them.  It's kind of like having a list of things to do - I like checking them off.  I'm going to start with what I'm working on right now, but in between the days when I can show progress on projects, I'll backtrack and show some quilts that I've made in the past.  One of the things I love about quilting is that every quilt has a story, so I'll use this blog to tell the stories of my quilts.  First, I'll just warn any readers who might stumble onto this blog, that I am very new at blogging, so this will be a learning process.

First off, let's see if I can figure out how to add a photo...

Bingo - I did it!  Now then, this particular quilt has a long story.  I'm trying to remember how many years ago my sister and I started on this project...I'm thinking it was at least five years ago.  My sister, Sue, belonged to a strip club (!).  Now don't get excited - it's just a "club" where the internet store sends out a set of coordinated 2-1/2" strips each month, along with a pattern to create a quilt from those strips.  This particular pattern was supposed to have 3 different colors for the stars, but since my daughter Christie had mostly black, white & red decor in her apartment at the time, we went out and found some red fabric with roses (because Christie loves red roses) and used that instead. 

Sue has some health issues that prevent her from standing more than a few minutes at a time, so I did all of the fabric cutting for this project.  Sue did all of the piecing and then the project came back to me (a year or so later) to pin baste the layers for quilting.  Then after another year or so, Sue decided that she didn't have enough room to do the quilting at her house, so the quilt came back to me again.  Well, I had other projects going at the time, along with a new-found addiction to knitting, so it was almost a year before I got around to doing the actual quilting.  To be honest, I was a little afraid of messing up Sue's beautiful piecing work, but I finally screwed up my courage and dug in.  I outline- quilted the stars with red thread, did meander quilting in black on the strippy parts, and black channel quilting in the outside border.

Whenever Christie came over to visit she would see that unfinished quilt and prod me to get busy on it so she could enjoy it.  So then the next step was the binding.  I had cut the binding strips when I did the original fabric cutting for the quilt, but it took Sue awhile to find the box containing the strips.  When Sue brought me the strips, I sewed them together and ran in to a big PROBLEM.  There was not enough binding to go all the way around the quilt!  Since we bought the fabric so long ago, there was not much likelihood of finding the same red rose fabric, and we were just not happy about using anything different for the binding. 

I should mention that Sue lives almost an hour away from me, and with gas prices so high, we mostly only see each other when she drives out here for a meeting of our knitting group.  Anyway, I asked Sue to bring me the box with rest of the fabric scraps so that I could try to piece together one more binding strip.  But, first she had to locate that box again, and then remember to bring it when she came out for knitting club.  She finally did, and a few days later when I opened the box, I found one more strip of binding fabric!  Back when I did the original cutting, I had clipped together the binding strips and put a label on them, but I guess somehow one strip didn't stay in that clipped set.  What a relief to find that!

Life was busy  - for instance, I needed to finish knitting a baby blanket for a shower - so it was a few more weeks before I finally got back to work on this quilt.  Since my husband and I were planning to spend a few days up in Pismo Beach, I suddenly got in a big hurry to get the binding sewn on to the front, so that I could take it along to hand sew the binding to the back.  Since we were RVing in December, it was really nice to have this nice warm quilt in my lap while I sewed!  I was so excited at how pretty the binding looked, that I had to snap a quick picture to send to Sue:

I had to finish the last side after we got home (usually when I'm hand sewing the binding, I'd swear the quilt has at least five sides!), but I did manage to get it completed in time to present it to Christie at our family Christmas gathering yesterday.  That's Christie and her significant other, Jason, holding the quilt in the picture.  (One of the few ways I can get a picture of Christie is to let her hide behind a quilt!)  Christie and Jason say those big red stars look like ninja stars, so that's the name of this quilt - Ninja Stars.  By now Christie has mostly abandoned her black, white & red decor, but she says this quilt will go over her white duvet on the bed.  Maybe I'll manage to get a photo of that some day.

So there we have my first quilt blog.  Lots more to follow...I have quite a few UFO's, but I guess first I'd better make a baby quilt for my sister's new great-granddaughter - who is already several months old!