lookin' for backs in all the wrong places

I'm currently auditioning patterns and color schemes for my soon-to-be nephew's quilt. Haven't quite hit it yet, but we're getting closer. I like these enough that I think they deserve a non-basement scrounged backside, which is all the justification I need to hit every quilt shop in St. Louis this weekend, wahoooooo!

Good grief Charlie Brown, I LOVE zig zags!!

This poor little guy was the sad seam ripper project yesterday. I had fatter sashing in there and it was ruining our relationship. I'm pretty happy with the half inch gray though.

what I will be doing today

the good old days

Still plowing through all those unfinished projects and piles of destination-less scraps, and every once in a while I am running across real treasures. These blocks are the remnants of the very first (and probably best) quilt I ever made. I remember being inspired enough by these 30's reproduction prints to actually take a stab at sewing (maybe should have left well enough alone and gone skiing that day after all...) I do have fond memories of sitting at the sewing machine with my mom and learning the ins and outs of cutting strips, constructing blocks, chain piecing and so forth. The large version of this quilt was a BIG undertaking, but this little guy was a fun walk down memory lane.

inspiration

I seldom come up with my own ideas but I am a cracker jack imitator and THIS is next on the list.

lucy in the sky with diamonds

And it looks like I was doing drugs when I picked out the fabric for this thing. This poor quilt top has been in a tupperware for years. It was recently rescued from said tupperware, quilted and bound as part of my "take back the basement" movement. Most of my quilts remind me of something. This one reminds me of Amy Butler vomit. I saw a quilt made up with this pattern in a shop and loved it, and I can't remember now what I loved about it...oh yeah, it looked really cool, but I did not follow the directions, and mine looks slightly less cool than I could wish. There were all these templates which kind of freaked me out at the time, and then I was supposed to do the "light-dark-medium" thing, which I obviously missed the boat on. But I learned some things. For example, lightcolored fabric with huge dark colored patches does not equal medium colored fabric.

Alright, now that I've ranted a bit I think I've come to peace with it. The diamond quilting helped ever so slightly to bring out the disappearing diamonds, and if you never saw the inspiring original it's really not so bad. And now it's graduated from inhabiting the inside of a tupperware as a poor unfinished top to garnishing the outside of the tupperware as a newly knighted completed project. Felicidades.

project: attack the stash

You all know I have an appalling fabric stash. My latest goal is to diminish it as much as possible in order to replace it immediately with the latest and greatest (kinda reminds me of my relationshop with calories). Piecing this quilt was kind of a zen experience in that I was not allowed to spend much (any) time actually laying it out and trying to put pieces together so they would look good. I put the scrap drawer on my lap and sewed everything together in exactly the order it came out in. AND...I think it looks kinda good!