Studio Kit

With some encouragement from Amy at Park City Girl and my online friend Crystal as well as Beloved Spouse), I've decided to join in on the fun and play along.

So, this is my entry in Amy's "My Favourite Quilt" Festival!

It's the third quilt that I made, which I called "Saucy Divo" as it was for my dearest friend, a male opera singer. I wanted it to be as "saucy" as he is, so the fabrics in it are lame, chenille, silk taffetta, velvet, a lovely dark red batik and some others; all beautiful shades of a rich, luxurious red. And then I quilted it with metallic red thread!

This is my first finish as part of the Spring to Finish challege by Jacquie at Tallgrass Prarie Studios.

Originally, for lack of a better name, I called it "Elephants in the Park", but I'm now calling it,

"A Day at the Zoo."

I decided to join Jacquie's challenge over at Tallgrass Prairie Studio: Spring to Finish!

I know, I know, some of you may be thinking "Didn't you join Oh Franson's Quilt Along? What happened there?" Well, it turns out, I just don't like following other people's patterns!

Although I cut out all the fabric (which I'm kicking myself for now); as I watched hers develop, I f0und myself thinking "Where is the joy in having a quilt that looks like everyone else's?" Yes of course, everyone's will be different because of their fabric choices, but the "sameness" of them all just didn't appeal to me. I'll do something with that fabric some time, but probably not what it was intended to do! Which is no fault of Franson's, by any means.

I know that at this point, my quilting abilities are not up to the task of meeting my quilting expression, but I don't think that following someone else's pattern is the way to get there. Not for me, anyway.

All of that said, Jacquie's challenge (to complete as many works in progress as you can in the month of April) is much more doable for me, because it fits in so well with what I want to do anyway! (See how that works?) *w*

I have so many WIPS or "UFOs" as I call 'em ( Unfinished Objects). And the more tops I make, the guiltier I feel about the tops that are waiting to be quilted, and the projects that fell to the wayside in various states of "undress" while I wandered off to fufill some other fancy. If I work on this challenge this month, I can make tops galore through the spring and early summer and not feel guilty at all.

In addition, this will be a great opportunity for me to experiment with other ways of quilting. I like meanders and swirls and stippling and free hand hearts; and I seriously need to practice them more to get my hand/foot speed cooridnated and get stitches the right size, but I'm so TIRED of meanders and swirls and stippling. I want to do OTHER kinds of quilting but I'm just not ready yet.

*SIGH*

This challenge will force me to quilt more, which will make me learn more, which can only make me better at all of this quilting business, right? So say I, anyway. :)

I haven't got a chance of winning the prize Jacquie's offering, because I do have a day job and can't devote ALL my time to this project, or even all of my free time; but I bet I can take a good bite out of my UFOs!

I can think of the following WIPs off the top of my head sitting on my shelves:

Isn't it Romantic?
Spring Forward
Autumn Steals In
Man's Fans
Monopoly Coins
Vincent's Song
A Sampler, Darkly
"That Ugly Black One" (Okay, I won't REALLY call it that)
Last Fall, in Spring
Elephants in the Park
Unnamed Bento Box

In addition, I have some unnamed ones in baskets too - including a lovely black and gold that's been cut but hasn't even been sewn yet, and has been languishing there since this time last spring!

So, I expect I'll have a busy April. As for what you can expect - expect a lot of updates as I post the work I've completed; or expect none as I bury myself in quilts!

'Til then, happy spring! Make it beautiful.

Today, I finished the top I blogged about in my last post, which I'm tentatively calling Last Fall, In Spring . I know what I mean by this, but I'm not sure my meaning will be clear to others.

Last week, as I looked at a post-it in this bright, fresh green, I thought how wonderful it would look with some fall-coloured fabrics I had in my stash. And as I put together my wonky blocks in various combinations of spring green and fall colours,

I have.

Last week, I spent a fair amount of time taking the border off Spring Forward. I decided to do a bigger version (5 inches) of the second border detail

as a final border, but do it in green and white only. So, I had to remove the original border, then take it apart into it's 5 inch patch portions, iron those, put them away, and then start making the new border. I only got as far as cutting the fabric for the new border, when a brainwave took over.

I was at work, writing on a sticky note that was a particularly fresh shade of spring green when I realized that that exact shade of green (which was sitting in my fabric stash) would look lovely with some vintage (70's era) cottons that I had squirreled away.

This is just a corner of the block (as a teaser) and is the truest version of the colours in the cottons and most accurate representation of the green.

So I went home that night and immediately began cutting and sewing. The blocks went together so quickly that I finished nearly all of them the first night (I'm making 64 8 1/2 inch sqaure blocks), I only have another 15 to make!

That said, since then, I've taken a bit of time off sewing - we entertained three times in the last 10 days and that always makes me want to take a day or two off from everything! (a day to get ready before entertaining, a day to clean up), so I haven't gotten any farther.

Tonight's date night with BSP, so I won't get work done tonight, but I'll be sure to continue tommorrow.

I may have something new to post as soon as Sunday!

Of course, I still have to finish Spring Forward, begin quilting a UFO (in keeping with my promise to myself to finish at least one UFO every month); make the disappearing nine patch I have planned, do another version of Spring Forward in the luscisouly girly version I had originally planned (blocks are already made), and I think, cut down Spring Forward to a Queen Size rather than a king.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that my skills are not yet up to quilting a king on my ordinary sewing machine.

A fun April ahead though, whatever happens!