Time for Tea, Take Two

Is there such a thing as too much alliteration? Probably, but it makes me smile! Today was a work day, I had a dress for homecoming come in that needed to be done at the last minute. A dress that was very encrusted with beading and needed to be taken in. So that means removing beads and securing threads so the rest of them don't go flying with every movement, plus the actual sewing. So that took up a nice chunk of my day.

I did have time this evening to do a little spot of quilting as well as filling a custom request. I finished this set of quilted shoe bags - made for a dancer who wants to protect her shoes when she travels! They came out very cute, and my photography skills have vastly improved since I listed my original bag two years ago. I think I need to retake some of those!

Then I worked on finishing this little quilt. It is made from leftover scraps after cutting triangles from strips. The pieces were too big and pretty to throw away, and this is the second quilt I have made from them. I thought it might be fun to put some pictures of the quilt in progress in the listing. So I am going to share them here first! I think my heart skills are improving. A lot of these actually looked like real hearts, not my usual heart or leaf? shapes. I suppose there is hope for my limited drawing skills after all!

Stitching the binding on - and you can see another good looking heart! I am so in love with the method of sewing the binding on totally by machine - it is so fast, and I have it down to a science. It makes binding go so much faster than stitching by hand, and I think it looks great. I also put a couple of borders on a panel for a baby quilt. So I just need to figure out what to use for a back and I have another one to get quilted. I'm glad I'm getting some of these projects finished up, it will really help unclutter my sewing room, and it's nice to add some new items to my Etsy shop!

Slow, but steady

Of course no one can be super productive every day, but I wish I could be! Not too much done on the quilting front today, but a group of us from the quilt guild got together to work on the design for the 2010 raffle quilt. Everyone brought books and magazines, I brought my laptop and EQ6, which turned out to be a huge help. We set up a design wall and put our blocks up (12 beautiful 18 appliqued quilt blocks designed by Piece O Cake designs). As we played with the arrangement in real life I rearranged the settings, was able to look at finished sizes and experiment with sashings and borders. We scoured the quilts shop for fabrics to audition and ended up with a fabulous green for our setting triangles, and a nice neutral and red for a border with swags.

I've been playing quite a bit lately with the EQ6 fabric and have discovered that Moda offers jpeg files for their collections that are fabulous! Just download, unzip and you can load them right into EQ6 and they are ready to go. I have yet to explore the other company's websites, have been too busy grabbing moda fabrics for my virtual projects - so they are really on top of my list at the moment.

I discovered some fabric to go with the Jelly roll I received as part of my prize package from the Jelly Roll Challenge. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my copy of the book, I hear that it debuted at Fall Market! I think that's part of the reason I feel so unsettled lately, I am really excited to see how my pattern and quilt look. Anyway, my mind is starting to work on the jelly roll, so I hope to come up with a quilt soon out of that (in my pile of future projects!)

I got this quilt listed today in my Etsy shop. I'll bet it gets lots of views, it's really a striking quilt!

Keeping up the pace...

I spent the afternoon working on more projects today. I finished binding the two quilts I quilted yesterday and took pictures of them, even though it was a cloudy day. It feels really good to have two finished projects!

The first one made me think of the song "Stray Cat Strut" but I didn't think that made such a great title for a baby quilt, so just called it Cats on the Fence. The second one is a panel with pieced borders that has the words "Ever After" so that will be it's name. I think this would make a cute baby quit, or even a housewarming gift. Kind of folk art looking, I think.

I also added the final border to the ribbon star table runner I have been working on, and finished writing the pattern for that. Now I just have to make some non-holiday samples of it and I will be ready to get that printed up.

I got two quilts basted, my second version of "Candy Heart" that was not quite what I wanted, and the scrap quilt I made from the leftovers of this. I used a little piece of Strawberry Shortcake fabric that I have had in my stash for many years for the back of the little one - it will be adorable when it's finished!

So I am pretty happy with me efforts this weekend. I feel like I have been a bit "blocked" with my quilting, but it felt really good to go from project to project this weekend and just move some of them along toward the finish line. Hopefully as I have some spare time this week I will continue to chip away at these projects and even have time to start some of the new ones that are flitting around the edges of my thoughts.