Another finish...

My Kaffe & Kona Zig-Zag is complete, yet another product of my procrastination on what I really should be doing.

When I was picking these fabrics out I had a Bento Box pattern in mind for them, but on the walk home I changed my mind. I loathe triangles, but have always wanted to do a zig-zag quilt -- Amanda Jean's tutorial solved the problem. True to my compulsion to tweak and shrink almost every pattern I use, I only used six stripe colors (instead of nine), so it's smaller than hers.

Before binding

This color combination took me WAY out of my Comfort Zone -- I used Kona Ash for my background, which instantly had a calming effect on all the prints; even that purple polka dot seems less lively. Usually my quilts are bright enough to keep most children awake, but I can see this one as a great napping blankie.

Archie models the binding and backing

Though the binding (Kona Coal) framed it very well and the backing (Dotty) brightened it up a bit, I'm still kind of on the fence with this one. I loved these prints in combination, but so much gray kind of sucked the life out of them a bit too much for my taste.

I have enough prints left over, I think, to do another one of these. Maybe I'll see how they look with white?

If you can't beat 'em...

In case you haven't heard, Amy is hosting a Blogger's Quilt Festival.



 
I'm entering "Jelly Pops," the quilt I made last summer. I found the "Fresh" jelly roll at my all-time favorite quilt shop, The Ice House, on vacation in northern Michigan -- it was too bright and happy to pass up (that, and I think it may have actually had my name on it. I think the clerks do that every summer just to keep me coming back).

I experimented with a couple different wacky, complicated blocks before I decided to Just. Go. Simple.

I have made Overthinking an art form. Sometimes I have the ability to check myself, most of the time not.

Anyway, the jelly roll quickly became this, which is one of my favorite pictures:

After finishing the top back home, I knew I had to have the butterfly print for the backing. The combination of those oranges and yellows with the scrolly blue just put me over the moon, and the orange binding just made it all pop. One more trip Up North to plug money into Michigan's economy, and I got to here...

...which is where it remained for quilte a long time. It took a while to get that binding on --  I'm not very fast at hand sewing, and as you all know have a limited attention span. Then there were all those loose threads to tie up, which took another few months to attack.

Eventually, it was done. I took it down to my friend Ellen's last week to take pictures in her courtyard. She has better light than anywhere at my house, not to mention cooler furniture.

I'm pretty proud of this quilt, mostly because somewhere along the way I decided to scrape the rust off my tech writing skills and record the construction process. It's harder than it sounds, folks -- pattern writing involves wrangling every stray step most of us do intuitively into coherent, accurate instructions. I didn't realize how much of the piecing process is just in my head until I sat down to write, or and how many assumptions I made about measuring until after I sent it out to a few willing guinea pigs volunteers. I got some great feedback and pictures of some beautiful finished products, so I know that in spite of some flawed measurements, the instructions actually worked. Hooray!

The pattern tweaks are still on my To-Do list (surprise, surprise), but I hope to revisit them soon. Thanks for all those who helped in its production! Thanks also to Ellen's husband Ed, who stole away from watching Blackhawk hockey highlights so I could get a picture of the entire quilt.

Back to business...

I was in Michigan for a week without my sewing machine, and boy, was it good to get back! I started sewing as soon as the car was unpacked!

As a result (combined with the fact that I'm putting off my biggest "Spring to Finish" project, the only one with a real deadline), I finished my "On the Road to Spring/Brick by Brick" quilt. Backed and bound with a neon green and fuschia Jan Mullen "Bohemian Melodiez" print, I used narrower strips and made it half as big as Randi's quiltalong recommendation. It's a very happy baby quilt.

I also came very close to finishing a second quilt using those Kaffe prints I was coerced into buying a couple of weeks ago. All it needs is binding!

There's a lot to be said for procrastination-based momentum!

And then the sunset makes up for all the rain...

This is the best part about being at the beach -- watching the day end in glorious color.

Makes weathering the storm totally worth it.

Batten down the hatches...

This morning I awakened at 5:15 to the sound of the heavens opening up onto the roof and a crack of lightning setting off my car alarm.

With nothing but sand between this little cottage and the fifth largest lake in the world, and a 120-year old cottonwood next door, I don't sleep through storms like this one. Typically, I lie in bed wondering if I'd be able to hear the groaning of breaking branches over the thunder, and if the tree would make a direct hit on the bedroom or just graze it. And then the non-freaked-out part of me reasons that that tree has seen many, many storms in its lifetime, and this is just one more.

Then I get up and make coffee in the kitchen on the other side of the house. Just in case.

A calm in the storm, 7am

Miraculously, the tree still stands, but Mother Nature's not done yet. Looks like She has a lot more in store for all of the Midwest today -- hope everybody stays safe and dry!

Oh, to be back...

When I opened the blinds this morning, this is what I saw:

It is forty-five degrees and drizzly, but it doesn't matter AT ALL. This city girl is thoroughly content to just sit and be on the quiet side of the Big Lake.

I only wish I'd brought my sewing machine.

Fabric daze...

I dropped my car off at the mechanic on Thursday afternoon to have him check out a "cluck" in the front end (worse than a click, but not as horrible as a clunk, but not a chicken, either -- it turned out to be a loose bolt, yay). It was a chilly but very sunny day, and I opted to make the three-mile walk home instead of hopping the El and call it my exercise for the week. Subconsciously I knew there was a quilt shop along the way. Sure, I could have taken a different route, but what's the harm in just stopping in? Right?

You know how it starts:  at first, you're just looking, running your hand across the shelf of new Amy Butler prints. Then you see something on one side of the store that catches your eye and might match something on the other side of the store -- and before you know it, you have twelve bolts stacked on the cutting table and you're mixing and matching and taking some away and putting others back, and the other customers ooh and ahh and tell you that pink is too loud but this one over here might work better and the clerk tosses a couple fat quarters down that bring out the purple in that flower print...and the next thing you know, you're walking out the door with a bag of tissue-wrapped fabric and you really have no idea how that happened.

Well, that's what it seems like, anyway.

To rationalize my purchase, I started cutting into them as soon as I got home. And today I have Kaffe and Kona pieces scattered across my kitchen floor.

Better get back to them before the cat does.