pq 12.6 and other projects

First let's talk about the final prompt from Project Quilting: "ab intra."  It translates from Latin to "from within" and holy cow could that go ANY direction!

My first idea was to use a bunch of dog ears trimmed from blocks to show chaos.  Because I feel like my head is often a big swarm of chaos.  I even put some thought into how to get them stuck down and whatnot, but then it it hit me.  I'm a science geek.

Science.

(And this one could be a pincushion, too!)

I drafted it, but, as you can see, I made notes as I went along.  Sometimes what I thought was going to be the right size was not.  Thankfully always too big, but some days math is just harder than others.

Before I even knew it, I had all the letters made and sewn together!

Since it is laying right there on my cutting mat, you can see how small it is.  I'm pretty excited about this.  I enjoyed making these letters and kinda want to do more.  I pulled out my bin of strings and rummaged through each color until I found some I thought played nicely together.  In my mind, I used brighter colors, but I like this just as well.

I added final top and bottom borders, backed with some batting, and quilted it simply.  And then layered it to make a pincushion and yet again left myself only a tiny opening to turn it.  One day I will get the hang of that...

Oh, the back?

Another scrap and exactly perfect!

I made a big mess with the crushed walnut shells, stuffing this.  For whatever reason, they didn't want to just pour down to the bottom.  So I was smashing and being generally frustrated...which did not help my focus in keeping the crumbs in the bin I should have been working over...

But, I was determined and now have a final pincushion!

I showed my hubby and he was like "another pincushion?"  He likes it, though.  (I honestly thought about, during the election season, putting a sign in my yard that, instead of stating my candidate preference, simply said "SCIENCE!" because I'm such a nerd.)

And with this being the last challenge for the year, there may not be any new pincushions for a while.  Though I am tempted to make some with naughty words.  Or maybe "quilt" on it?  Hmmm...

For the fifth challenge, I actually won the "Ultimate Sponsor" prize.  I didn't even know what it was, there are so many amazing, varied, prizes, so when I got the e-mail, I had to go look.  I won a bundle of fabrics!

It came a few days ago...

I kinda cut it off on the card, but it was from Fat Quarter Shop...the inside?

So pretty, but it is not lost on me that these arrived as I was working on a project trying to decrease the turquoise in my stash!  But some of these are calling to me...I may have to come up with a project sooner rather than later to use them...

Speaking of the turquoise quilt.  My March stick directing me to make a quilt from a pattern I've downloaded has progressed nicely in the past week.  I first layed out the blocks on the design floor.  And moved them until I had a layout that was pleasing to my eye.

Somehow I had made one too many of the half blocks - I had cut it out and everything, despite counting as I went.  Apparently math foils me yet again!  But one too many is way better than one too few.  I labelled rows and carefully picked them up and headed up to sew.

I had a lot of help...

Toby is being a little brat to her and she spends most of her days hiding.  Often that is under the couch/chair in my sewing room.  But if I close that door, she will come out and be herself.  Obviously.  (At night, Toby gets closed in my bedroom with me - food, water and litterbox all present, as well as toys - so she can roam the house and stomp on the piano and shred papers and generally create havoc.  And he generally snuggles and is happy.   But I am very much hoping for a return to normal in time.)

So anyways, the quilt took a while to get together.  Setting blocks on point always seems to take longer than straight settings, but this quilt loses something when you set it straight, so on I went.

Though this may look like a whole quilt, due to cropping, it is actually about half.  Today I took the whole top out for a photo!

There's a bit of a sun flare there in the upper right corner, as it is early yet, but I am SO not complaining about sunny days!  Though this gives me a different perspective.  Laying on the floor inside, it seemed to have a darkness around the edge due to all the partial blocks.  It is less dark here.  But now I'm debating on binding colors...dark grey? light grey?  Any thoughts?  If I do turquoise, it may be scrappy, but I also think that's not the right direction.

With this done, I knew the longarming project was next on the list.  The quilt is called Peppermint Float (but I didn't know that until yesterday - I made the whole project and never looked at the quilt name in the book!) and was the Christmas quilt I put together last summer.

How to quilt it?  I dragged out the book and doodled.  I also doodled on my phone on a photo of the top so I knew where to go when I got to the longarm.  The plan came together fairly quickly, but called for ruler work.  Not my favorite, but I need to get better at it, right?

So I loaded it yesterday (after piecing the back), and got to work.

I finished longarming it yesterday evening, but used the blue water-erasable marker to mark stop/start points and it is now draped on the longarm, drying, from the second round of spritzing.  It was a new marker, so it will probably take a few rounds.  So no photos just yet of a finish.  But I promise soon - I'm hoping to get the binding on soon as well.

For the most part, I'm pleased with my efforts.  There are a few bobbles with the ruler (more early than later, but practice makes perfect!), but this is for me and much of the quilt is busy enough that it probably won't ever be noticed by anyone but me.

And finally, more masks.  At work on Friday, my boss asked me to make her some.  It's literally been a year now, but apparently she has tired of the paper masks.  And the cloth ones that have been made as "one-size-fits-all" that are about as accurate at fitting everyone as all other clothing sized in that manner.  She offered to pay me, but I don't want this to turn into a business.  I just want to keep folks safe.  And I can say no.

But she is a horse (or, more accurately, mule and horse) person as well as a dog person.  Guess what I am not?  So I made a quick run to the store to see what I could find.  It doesn't take much fabric, so I was willing to invest a little.

Horse fabrics were not easy to come by.  I figured out the horses in the border print could be fussy cut and would be just about perfect for the center of a mask.  But I had to buy extra because that horse that looks grey?  Well, close up he is more blue and CREEPY!  Unfortunately, the way the previous cut had been made, I had to buy about a half yard to get the non-creepy horses with enough on either side to make it work.  (From a distance, here, they aren't so bad, but believe me, they are way worse up close!)

And why are all the paw print fabrics in rainbow colors?  I mean, yeah, that's fun, but seriously?  Can we make an animal-type print that isn't geared to a 4-year-old?  Maybe just one?

I also was hoping to get some fabric printed with realistic jelly beans to make some Easter masks to wear and share, but no dice.  That was gone.  I should have picked it up when I was there last!

Home to wash and press and do some stash diving for not only insides for these, but also a few more.  My goal was 10.  Since she is full-time, and doesn't often get more than one day a week off, I imagine having a few more than days in a week would be good.

These weren't exactly what I had pulled to start, as I edited a few when I went to cut, but I think I have some nice pairings.  I hope none are too wild, but it's hard to know what someone else will want on their face.  The left fabrics are fronts, the rights are insides.  (And maybe some would say I should do the inside fabrics on the outside, but darn it, I like fun stuff - I mean, I have a ninja mask and one with glow in the dark vampire teeth - so this is hard for me.)

It took the better part of Saturday afternoon, but I got them done!

The colors here a bit off, as it was dark outside, but there you go - 10 masks.  And you can kinda see how the horses worked out.  I work tomorrow (I somehow had the weekend off, but will NOT complain!) and will hand them over then.

So that has been my quilty week.  The hubby has this week off (his birthday is Friday), so I have no idea how productive I might be - never mind the beautiful weather - but I at least want to get the binding on the Christmas quilt!

Tired yet?

(Everybody loves the poof!)

Happy quilting!

Katie

PS I got my first vaccine last Monday afternoon.  My arm felt like someone had lobbed a baseball at it for a few days, but was otherwise just fine.  The vaccination site was well organized and EVERY SINGLE PERSON was wearing a mask.  Correctly.  First time I've seen that level of compliance and I was so pleased.