One Month

Here he is, my Prince Charming, at one month old:

We have been having the best time, and though things haven't returned to the "new normal" yet (MIL is still here and helping out A LOT), I'm sure they will fall into place as the weeks move on.

I finished Jack's baby quilt a couple weeks ago:

(Excuse the crappy postpartum mom-hair)

A take on Denyse Schmidt's "Any Way You Slice It" pattern, which I have never seen, but followed instructions for here at Blue Elephant Stitches.  It was fun and easy, and I realized I love it so much because most of the fabrics are ones I bought myself (as opposed to scraps or unwanted fabric I received from friends).  The palette is "me" but masculine, and I love that he's already been using it..

(You may have seen a similar photo on Helen's blog, she's a better blogger than I am, hehe)

We also received a gift quilt in the mail last week, all the way from Hokkaido~
(will edit to add a photo soon!)
Thank you Mrs. K!!  I miss you~~~

White

Of all the modern quilting trends, the concept of needing to use more white in quilts was one I hadn't grasped whole heartedly yet.  Sure, I've used white in quilts, but I think I'm still at that "learning about color and balance" stage in my quilting.  I go back and forth between wanting to do color studies and wanting to just dive in and create with whatever fabric is in my hand.  Let's just say I'm not always so confident in the "planning" stage-- I'm much more of a "Let's wing it and see what happens next" type quilter.  (Incidentially, I'd like to know, which one are you?)

So as my SV quilt progressed, I naturally started thinking I needed a bold or dark border to "tone it down" a bit.  But I don't have a big stash of solids and every dark print I held up just added more to the chaos.  And I began to wonder if I could make the whites in the centers of the A block pop a bit more if I used a "white" border.. This off white mushroom print that I brought back from Japan in '07 (yes, I still have most of that fabric horded..) went perfectly with the blues in the A block, so I decided to go for it.

Once the borders were on, I had a breakthrough-- the white border actually made the entire quilt look brighter.  And I couldn't believe I almost darkened the whole thing with a colored border.  Who would have guessed?  I always opt for a dark border.  I think this may be a breakthrough..
I'm still going to put a pieced outer border on to make it twin size, but I am very happy with it so far.

Balance sought, not yet found

At the start of this teaching session I warned you it might take me a while to find some balance, but now, here we are 7 weeks into classes and it'll all be over next week (we teach 2 sessions each university semester), and still, I never found a way to balance work, quilting, blogging, and housekeeping.  Well, that's not exactly true.  Life does have a balance, but blogging just never made it smoothly into the equation.  I go to work, prep after class, clean the house as necessary; we've scaled back on our play-date schedule, but we spend lots of quality time the 3 of us.  Every night I cuddle with George in bed as he falls asleep and I've somehow found a way to slow it down and really enjoy those moments, instead of wishing he'd fall asleep faster so I could get up and go do something else.  I think AmandaJean's new year's resolution to be more intentional has found a place in my life as well, but I'm not just trying to be intentional with my sewing, but with all of my actions.  If it's not worth it, I don't do it, and then I release myself of the guilt and don't worry about it either.

A few weeks ago I sorted through all the big pieces of fabric in my stash (haven't tackled the fat quarter bins yet).  This was brought on mostly by the fact that they had migrated off the shelves and onto lopsided stacks all over the futon and the rest of the room, and I needed the futon to be cleared off so I could use the space to organize another project.. but the process was really insightful.  I touched each piece of fabric and decided if it was something I wanted to work with this year, or if I should shelf it for "later".  I have this goal to bust stash, and you can't really bust efficently if you don't know what you have.  You can't make quilts you like if you can't find the fabrics you love, and for me, they were all there, I just couldn't find them.  So I sorted and I thought, "What colors and patterns do I want to have around me?"  Out came all the strange prints that I loved but didn't know what to do with, and a stack emerged of balanced neutrals, small prints, and sentimental fabrics collected on trips here and there.  those are the ones I want to live with..  I'd take a picture if the light in the sewing room weren't so bad (damn overcast day)..
But hopefully you'll see those fabrics put to use over the next few months. 

I'll end with a photo of the pillow I made for my mom for Christmas.  I sent it off to her before I could get a good photo, but snaped this one when we went to Chicago in January.  The center fabric is one in my "neutrals" pile.. I'd like to use up the rest of that piece this year..

Happiness

warm cuddly quilts on the couch = happiness.
a quilt done in the first week of the new year = happiness.

I love having this quilt on the couch.  The seed of inspiration came a looong time ago on a photo on Luckybeans' blog (which I can't find now) of a basket weave quilt with red center strips.  Thanks Katurah.  Never knew I'd actually make it, but now that I did, I'm glad I remembered where the idea came from.

Inspiration for the flowers came from a bunch of places, this one from the Material Obsession book, and this one by Nifty mainly.  Renewed love of applique thanks to Shelly, as I mentioned before.

the quilting, oh the quilting.. at first I thought I'd try clam shells..but a test piece didn't work out so well, so I opted to play around with flowers and swirls.  It was fun.  Some worked out the way I wanted, but I need more practice with meanders because I didn't always know how to get out of the area I had just quilted.. move up?  move right?  the pattern lended itself to going in a L--> R direction, but then I had issues rolling the whole quilt back up and shoving it under the machine again.  Thank goodness it was a small quilt.

I backed it in a soft vintage (1980s?) purple that I got out of the Atlanta guild's ugly box in 2003.  I had 4 yards of it, taking up space in the stash for years.. It just worked so perfectly with this quilt, I'm happy it found a home.   What is it with me and purple these days?  I think I just have so much of it and I was tired of feeling like I couldn't use it because I live with two guys.  Yeah, whatever.  A quilt is a quilt.  If I buy floral fabric or girly colors, I need to use it!  Enough of my self-imposed rules-- I commit to make what I feel like making~

On my label I used both nengajo stamps-- the bunny from 2011 and the sea horse from 2012.  God it feels good to have a finish in 2012 already...

the December crunch

I spent 7 hours working on this quilt on Thursday, from basting to attaching the binding.  I tried to take some pics along the way and thought I'd share my process. (I had really wanted to write this post Thursday, but once I started working, I didn't want to stop to post, and then once the quilt was at a good stopping point, my arms were too tired to post, haha).

I timed myself during the basting and binding, and found that it took just about an hour to baste, and then only another 60 minutes to cut, join, press, pin and attach the binding. 

At the end of the night I took the quilt down to the living room to show C, shook it out and said, "Ta da!" hoping he would be as impressed with my progress as I was. 
Me: "Look, I did all this today"
Him: (not really phased) "how long does it usually take you?"
Me:  "For the amount of work I did just today?  About 8 naps."

I would have liked to take more pics of the quilting and squaring up, but it was already dark and I knew they wouldn't come out that great.  I did snap this one of my improv binding holder-- usually I wind binding around a piece of cardboard as I press it so it's more manageable to attach to the quilt.  Well, I cleaned the sewing room last month and couldn't find a piece of cardboard anywhere.  But, george had been playing with his train set in the sewing room earlier, so I grabbed one of the track pieces and.. it worked perfectly.

Part of me thought I should just push on through and hand stitch the binding like a mad woman so it could be done for a Friday Finish.. but that didn't happen.  Guess there's always next week..