swoon and may sticks

Last week I left you lamenting about my longarm and the Swoon debacle.

After I finished blogging, I went up and made the binding.  Using the fabric trimmed from the back.  And I sewed the machine side down.  It went fairly fast, all things considered, and seemed to only grow about two extra sides.

Gabby supervised...

...but it took so long, she melted.

A few days later, I stationed myself in the comfy chair in my sewing room for a long stretch of binding.  Gabby also helped with that...

The back has grey kitties on it, so she fits right in!  Silly little dork was purring her head off, snuggled right up to my leg.

But let's backtrack a bit to go over the whole Swoon adventure, shall we?

In May of 2018, this bundle of kitty fabric my mom had given me previously...

...demanded to be made into the Swoon quilt.  I purchased the grey fabric it is sitting on and off I went.  Rereading some of my early blog posts about the quilt (May of 2018), it seems the construction of these blocks also gave me trouble.  Despite this quilt wanting to be made, it sure has given me a pile of troubles!

I worked my way through the nine blocks needed for the quilt top...

...and in a few months I had all the blocks finished.  (Though this collage makes them look quite a bit different, all the photos were taken at different times, some in different places even than my sewing room, so they look less cohesive.)

I sewed the blocks together and, as it always seems to do when I'm ready for a photo shoot, the wind helped!

A few months later, I found a perfect fabric for the back!

It may not be obvious here, but the fabric is directional.  I didn't realize it until after I had pieced it and was loading it on the longarm.  The bikes are what is obviously directional.  But whatever.  This quilt is such a hot mess, this is the least of my worries right now.

So last month, the stick for a longarming project came up as Swoon.  I was kinda excited because I've loved this quilt (the pattern) for a long time, even before I made it.  And then I was excited to get it finished despite my ability to procrastinate.

A week ago, it was finally time.  I had put it off until the end-end of the month and it needed to be done.

And then all heck broke loose.  I complained quite a bit last week, so I will just leave you with "all the things went wrong" and move on.  Because I DID get it done.  (Though I found one small section I missed in one corner, but I'll deal with that another day.  It is fine for now.)

Once I was done pouting, I got the binding sewn on.  And the hand-sewn side done as well, while snuggling Gabby and listening to a number of podcasts.  Then, because it was still daylight, if not sunny, I took it outside for a photo.  The wind was even relatively cooperative (but you know, as soon as I got it on the clothesline, my phone/camera took its sweet time to turn on and the wind moved it...twice...) and I shot a few quick photos and headed back inside.  It looked like it might rain.

The lighting makes it easy to see some of the quilting.  But this is as close as you're going to get.  I mean, it looks okay from here, but if you get in there too close...nope!

Pattern: Swoon

Designer: Thimble Blossoms/Camille Roskelley

Size: 80x80"

Pieced and quilted by me!

So let's see about the April sticks:

Longarm Swoon - check

New quilt top Molehills - check

Scraps project from rainbow bonus HSTs - check

Non-quilty project knitting loom - check

Not everything was finished into something.  The socks are ongoing (that is tedious!) and the bird blocks I want to add to (The HST project), but don't want to dig into making a bunch more half square triangles just yet.  So that one will hang out and I expect, in time, I will create more, one way or another.

That brings me to the sticks for May!

Oh boy.  Arcadia Avenue.  The one quilt on the list I'm absolutely terrified of.  I've actually considered sending this one out to someone who can do the intense quilting I think it deserves.  I'll think on it for a bit, but in the meantime, I think it was the only quilt on the longarm list that didn't yet have a back.  Yesterday I went shopping!

Once I saw this, I couldn't look at anything else.  There was no way anything else in the store could be this awesome.  But there was only a little over three yards and the quilt says it is 72x90, which means I need more like six yards.

So I picked up three yards of this print.  (Pardon the mask ties sitting on it - I thought I already had a photo of this fabric and took this for the ties, but, well...I didn't...)  And I have already pieced the back!  (They don't match perfectly, but better than these two photos might lead you to believe.)

The scraps project is using those from my 100 blocks quilt I did a few years back.  It was all pink and grey, but the bin has since become a sort of dumping ground for all sorts of bits and pieces.  I've pulled from it to make my Project Quilting projects, small bits for other projects and even, in the photo above, the grey fabric to make mask ties!  But I will officially sort the bin and try to make use of some of the cohesive scraps.  Or decide it's time for them to go if they're just too small.  Having a catchall bin is not a good idea for me.  I need to decide to keep it and put it away properly, or get rid of it.  Some of you may like this system of a bin, but I'm bothered by it, so I'm going to fix it!

The other two sticks are amigurami - crocheting tiny little creatures - and a quilt made using acrylic templates.

I've had the amigurami book for a long time.  And the projects vary in difficulty, but I'm hoping to be able to learn how to crochet enough to make a simple little something.  And maybe get good enough to do some of the more complicated ones eventually?  In my spare time!

I picked up a set of small skeins of cotton yarn/thread and an appropriately sized crochet hook (thank goodness the packaging on the yarn told me what size because I would have bought something way smaller! - but I could hardly read the tiny print...uh oh...) and, since the book isn't terribly helpful at teaching you to crochet from the beginning, I'll be watching some videos this month.

The two patterns in the photo both use acrylic templates.  And I have them.  (Which, in my head, was part of the requirement.)  I've been leaning towards Steam Punk for a while, so I think that is where I'll end up.  Debating, though, on doing it in mostly purple and greys or funky, even fussy cut, fabrics of all colors.

Because all of these projects require too much thinking, I ended up piecing the quilt back earlier today and plan to make masks once I'm done at the computer.  (I also vacuumed out my car...I'm a very, very good procrastinator this weekend!)

The masks...while I was shopping for a quilt back, I caught sight of some cute watermelon fabric.  Okay, twist my arm - this will be cute for summer.  While I'm out, let's peruse the July 4th fabrics, too?  There were a lot of stars that did not appeal to me, but I found one that wasn't too old fashioned or loud.  I mean, sometimes I like loud, but these were too much.

I decided to make three of each - one for me and two to share with coworkers who might like them.

And I matched them up with some stash fabrics for the insides.

But wait!  There is about a half yard extra of the zebra fabric!  And THIS is a kind of loud I can get behind.  Literally!

And holy cow when I went to my grey/black stash to look for something to put inside, this lept into my arms.  I mean, how can you NOT put that inside?  (It IS too much for an outside, but this is the best pairing I've seen ever, I'm pretty sure.  Right up there with chocolate and peanut butter.)

I cut and pressed the fabrics for those that will get ties (mine), but then the hubby wanted lunch, so I got derailed.  I'm still derailed from the masks, but there are just so many things to do!  (And my car did REALLY need to be cleaned out.)

The coming week is going to be a little off for me.  At work, our freight truck has come on Tuesdays for a long time, but starting this week, we've been moved to Wednesday.  So the one day a week I always work (all hands on deck when that semi hits the dock!), the one day that anchors me to know what part of the week it is, has changed.  Not drastically, but enough.  I'm sure once we're all used to it, they'll change us back, but the trucking company is struggling to get and keep enough drivers, so if this is the way they manage getting our truck to us on time (which it hasn't been very often lately), we'll work with them gladly.  It's much better than getting sent home on Tuesday to be told to come back Wednesday to find out the truck won't be there until Friday and then it shows up on Thursday!  (True story.)

But in the grand scheme of things?  Not a big deal at all.

Time to go find something else to do than sit here in front of a screen.  Probably make some masks!

Happy quilting,

Katie