Talk to Me Tuesday #41

In which I talk about this blog, a quilt I'm planning to make (and can't find the right fabrics for), and some fabric postcards that I got in the mail. One of these days I'll even post about the postcards.

(Talk to Me Tuesday is this. )

Finished Project: Playday Posh Tot quilt

This finished project goes allllll the way back to January 25, 2011. It was my second finished project for 2011. I want to keep a record of everything I work on/complete this year, hence this post (and a future one on a wall-hanging I made for my mom).



This is a gift for my boss's new baby, Ronan Quentin, who was born (early! hence the late quilt) on January 13, 2011.

The pattern is called Posh Tot and can be bought from Blue Underground Studios. It's about 36" x 48" and I made it using Kona cottons in Windsor, Chartreuse, and Brown, and a Robert Kaufman print from the Playday line. I didn't pick out any of these fantastic colours myself, I actually bought a kit from one of my favourite online fabric shops, Mad About Patchwork. (I also bought the Posh Tot pattern through her site, but the last time I checked I don't think she had it avaiable. Or maybe it was just the kit that's no longer available. Hm.)

WIP: Cherry House Quilt-along Quilts 1 & 2

Brown baby quilt a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

Late in January this year Cherri House (of City Quilts fame - and if you haven't read that quilt book - yes, read it! it's worth it even if you don't do any of the projects - you really should) decided to do a quilt-along of a simple, but very lovely quilt. (All the entries about it are here. Scroll down the bottom and make your way back to page 2 to get them in order.) One of my favourite online shops, a Canadian one!, Mad About Patchwork, made up kits for each of the four versions that CH came up with.

I wasn't going to start any new projects this year, but somehow two of those kits made their way into my life. I picked up a kit in brown and blues and one in various pinks. They're both completed tops, at this point, but need to be quilted.

Pink baby quilt a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

They're very small quilts, about 34-in x 36-in, which means they won't take terribly long to quilt. So long as I can talk myself into actually doing it. I have bought thread and decided on backings - the pink will be a plain pink backing, the brown will have a print with tow trucks and cranes and that sort of thing on it - and even picked up batting. I just need to stop thinking about quilting them and start actually quilting them.

These quilts are both made primarily with Kona cotton, though the pink one has some sprinklings of Back Porch Bouquet in Pink and Tan Dots. The colours in the brown top are: Espresso (background), Ivory, Aqua, Robin Egg, and Sky. The colours in the pink top are: Pink (background), Baby Pink, Carnation, Pearl Pink, and Garnet.

To Do Pink: Completed.

To Do Brown: sandwich, baste, quilt, and bind.

Finished Project: Pink and Brown Baby Quilt

Pink and Brown Baby Quilt a photo by hold your spin on Flickr.

I'm calling this a finished project, even though it's just a quilt top and hasn't been quilted/bound, because I'm sending it off to be donated to the Linus Connection in Texas. So, you know, finished, but not finished.

This is a project that I started in the fall on 2006 when a block of the month group started up on Livejournal (Block of the Month). I was trying to do the BoM in two different versions - this one using a line of fabrics called In the Pink (plus two extra fabrics - the blue and the green are from a different line) and a second one using a purple batik with black and white prints (eventually I added a nearly solid pink and solid white to some blocks). I didn't finish either of them.

I've been having an on-going freak out about having too many unfinished projects (many of which I am totally disinterested by, these days) so I pulled out a stack of shoe boxes, each of which have a different project in the, and chose these two BoMs to send away.

For this quilt top, I only had six blocks made, and it felt sort of lop-sided because I had three blocks with the green in it, two with no additional colour, and just one with blue. I decided to make two more blocks with blue so that I could try to balance it out a little.

There are a lot of things I would change, if I were to start back from the beginning, mainly to keep the same background colour on each of the blocks (two of them look like they're floating on the background and the rest don't) and to use more of the dark brown and less of the warm beige colour. But it's done, and done is good.

The eight blocks on point with a 3.5-inch border is about 41-in x 58-in if I'm doing my mental math correctly. In any case, it's not terribly big, but it should do for a little girl somewhere.

I didn't take any pictures of the 16 blocks I sent off in the purple group. I have pictures of them, but not as a collection. I should maybe have made tops with them too, but I wasn't sure if it would be better to make 2 smaller quilts with 8 blocks each or one larger quilt with all 16 blocks. This way the volunteers at Linus Connection can decide for themselves.

The Unfinished Adventures...

I know there are a lot of Work-in-Progress Girls out there, and Guys too, probably, but lately I've been feeling a bit like my identity as a crafter is entirely caught up in the things undone rather than the things that I've finished. (It's possible I read too many blogs written by people who never seem to start anything, but always miraculously are finishing something.) I have finished a few things, a handful of baby quilts and a lot a lot of small projects, but I haven't ever finished a quilt that was big enough for an adult. I haven't finished any of the quilts I've set out to make for myself. I haven't hardly put a dent in the pile of fabric known as my stash.

In my dream world, I wouldn't have a stash. Or anyway, not much of one. I'd like to be able to buy what I want, when I want it, and actually use it, but instead I have a small mountain or three of gorgeous fabrics that I won't probably like any more by the time I finally get around to using them.

I'm not a very good blog writer. I get bored too quickly or forget to update or can't decide what to say, and eventually just sort of peter out, but my goal is to write once a week about an In-Progress Project (or an I-Wish-It-Were-in-Progress Project that I've got fabric and plans for). And then hopefully once also a week about the progress I've made on... something. (Hopefully those "somethings" will more often than not be my WiPs rather than anything new, but a girl's gotta have some variety, so...)

I hope, eventually, to get my hand-drawn header of WiP Girl put up, but, well... it's in progress. And I'm not a very good drawer. One of these days, anyway...