Fun with Fabric

It's snowing here on a gloomy Northwest Sunday, but it won't stick. I ran a few errands yesterday and was sort of surprised to see all the Christmas shoppers. I still equate Christmas with snow, not rain, so it never really seems like real Christmas. Maybe if all my family descended upon me for the holiday I would feel differently. I'll work on that.

Before starting on the repro quilt, I needed to wash all the fabrics, so while they were washing I dug out the pieces to the Octopus Garden quilt that I started five years ago. I finished piecing all the blocks (they are machine pieced) and laid them out on my board. I still think it's a "right purty" quilt (Tennessean for "nice-looking"), but I think I'm more of a traditional gal and will probably stick to the thousands of older style patterns from here on out. However, I'll finish this one and figure out something to do with it.

I've assembled the squares in the lower right corner into rows and then joined the rows. I almost decided to give it to my sister, because her last name begins with "K" and there are thousands of K's in the quilt. But then I remembered my mom telling me that her husband had received a horrendous number of quilts from his family members. For some reason he felt they should be stored flat (not a bad idea, actually), and when he piled them up on top of each other, on top of a spare bed, they reached to the ceiling! No, I don't think they need another quilt.

In the evening I work on hand-sewing, which means quilting the little Christmas quilt and piecing the repro CW quilt. The actual old quilt has squares on the checkerboards that vary from one to one and a half inches. Many are not exactly square, so it was hard to tell what size they were supposed to have been. I started out with one and a half inch squares because I have a great template set from "Come Quilt With Me" for that size square and its accompanying half square and quarter square triangles. I started piecing it and realized it would be too big to feel like the original quilt. I started over, this time with one-inch square, and I like it a lot better.

In the meantime, I finally found border fabrics that I can live with. The green is the right shade but is not really solid. Oh well. I could use the back of it if I wanted to, but I don't want to.

The second quilt that I brought home is in much, much better condition than the first, and Jojo has declared it his favorite. I particularly like how each point of the star is pieced with several pieces of fabric, as is done in crazy quilting, although this isn't a true crazy quilt.

Knitting? Not happening here. Maybe Janine will inspire me when I go to the Feral Knitters' meeting tomorrow for the her auspicious visit. I can't wait to see what she's been up to!

Posted by Sheila at December 5, 2004 09:27 AM Posted to Quilting | TrackBack