Hands2Help Quilt Finish

I finished the Hands2Help charity quilt this past week, and it is boxed and ready to ship off to Emily for Happy Chemo.

This was a really fun 16-patch quilt to make.  My stash seemed to be over-weighted in pink, so I started by pulling some of those, as well as some reds, teals and aquas, and started stitching.

This was started during Sarah's Sweet 16 Quilt Along a few months ago.  I used one of the tutorials she had featured for the Hands2Help Challenge a couple years previous, featuring guest blogger Amanda Jean from Crazy Mom Quilts.  You can find that tutorial HERE. 

I had an idea to use a different fabric in the center for the background fabric.  Both the center background fabric and the outer background fabrics are Denyse Schmidt/DS Quilts.  That's about as "coordinated" as it gets!  There's a little bit of everything else in the 16-patches, which is just how I like it.  

(That reminds me of a song by Dawes: A Little Bit of Everything.  Those guys can write a song that tells a story, folks.  Have a Kleenex ready.)

This quilt finished at 57 x 68.  I quilted it in an overall meander with Aurifil thread in a silvery gray, which blended in nicely.

It's a snuggly one, and packed along with it are wishes of comfort, hope, and love to the recipient.

Linking to:  Whoop-Whoop Friday

Flimsy and Flotsam

First up, a flimsy.  This is for the Sweet 16 Quilt Along, and it will eventually be donated in the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge to Happy Chemo.

This was a fun one to put together, although it didn't use nearly as much of the pink stash as I thought it would.  I seem to have a lot of that, for some reason.

As I made the bed today, I thought I'd capture another 16-patch quilt that I made last summer.  This one has brightened my room for a couple months, a very welcome thing this winter.

Then I went rummaging in the closet for the St. Patrick's Day mug rug (by the way, there's a tutorial for that HERE).  Ended up having to drag out the whole cache of mug rugs and minis in the process, because it's never the one right on top when you go looking.  

I could use a better system for storing quilts and wall hangings and smaller things than piled willy-nilly on the shelf of the closet or stacked on the cedar chest (on top of some quilt books on the right, I see; so that's where they went...).

Do you have a system for storing quilts, etc.?

Since the light was decent at that time of the morning, I laid the minis out on the bed.  Now there's a bright bunch, huh?

If that hasn't given you a headache, let me tell you about a dream I had the other night...

Razor Brain
I dreamed I had a routine medical test of some sort, and in the process it was discovered I had a razor blade embedded in the center of my brain!  Now, I know of no "routine" test that includes an x-ray of the head, but just go with me here. 

(Oh, Homer...Not my brain)

The weird thing is I felt perfectly normal.  In my dream, I was back at the medical facility to get more imaging studies done, and I could not wait to find out how it got there!

Which isn't something anyone could tell me, I realized, as the dream became somewhat lucid.  They would look to me for that answer, and I had absolutely no clue!  It's not like you can snort a razor blade up your nose like I snorted that rolled up Flintstones Colorform back in the day.  Even that didn't end up in my brain, but rather went through my sinus, and with a couple more vigorous and somewhat panicked sniffs, I swallowed it.  So it ended up further south, presumably.

These are the things you never tell your parents, by the way, at least not right away.  Fifty years later, maybe (hi, Dad!).  All's well that ends well.  Except for Fred Flintstone, the Colorform.  

Do you remember that heady vinyl smell of Colorforms?  Or the taste of Play-Doh?  Elmer's Glue?  Chapstick?  Just wonderin'...

Anyway, the dream ended without any resolution, unfortunately.  The weird thing is, I'm still curious!

No mystery with this guy, though.

(Sharp mind you got there.)

Sweet 16 QAL Update

After Sarah showed the quilt she made last week using Crazy Mom's tutorial, I was inspired to start another 16-patch. 

I pulled several different red, pink, and aqua fabrics from the stash, plus a couple others.  I put these together the same way as the previous one, sewing 2-1/2 inch WOF strips into sets of four and sub-cutting those into 2-1/2 strips, then selecting four at random (more or less) and sewing those together into a 16-patch.

In one of the tutorial pictures, the 16-patches were shown on the design wall with the outer setting triangles but the middle part was still open, showing the white design wall beneath.  That gave me the idea to use a lighter colored fabric in the center of the quilt.  I used two DS Quilts fabrics (one a 2011 print and another a 2012), and they seemed to work pretty well together.

It is on the design wall now, ready to be sewn together.  I think it has kind of a vintage vibe, no? 

I may add a stop border in one of the red fabrics, and then an outer border in the darker fabric, same as the setting triangles, to make the quilt a little bigger.  If I don't, though, it's a nice lap quilt size as is.  It will be donated as part of the Hands2Help Charity Quilt Challenge.

Linking to the Sweet 16 Quilt-Along.

On and Off the Wall

Today I got the 16-patches and X-blocks up on the design wall.  It's all ready to be sewn together.

I was down to the nitty-gritty with the hand-dyed fabrics in the colors I wanted to use in the outer border blocks.  Things seemed to be weighted toward the dark values, so for a little variety, I used a bit of a variegated batik in my stash to round things out.

Boy, I really like this quilt.  It's going to be a little hard to part with it!

In order to make room for it on the design wall, I had to take down the improv quilt flimsy that was in that space.  Since I had the backing and batting ready, I went ahead and pin basted it.

And now for some non-quilt related meandering...

There Can Be Only One
If you ever watched Highlander in the 1990s, you'll recognize that line.  I watched Every.Single.Episode of the TV series.  Not that I'm all that big a sci-fi fan, but I very much enjoyed Adrian Paul. 

Especially in a kilt.  Mercy.

So Norm went to Wizard World Comic Con this past weekend with instructions to get a photo of Adrian Paul, who was appearing there, if he saw him.

Now, he could have stood in line and paid $$ for a photo of or with Adrian Paul, but being the frugal man he is, he just obliged me from afar.

It's a little grainy, because, well, afar—but that's him there on the right!

And then he stood up and looked right toward Norm...almost like he may have sensed another Immortal (cue the slow-mo and sound effect)!  Wait, is he reaching for his katana?

Thankfully, he just needed a stretch (and everyone kept their heads).  Pretty exciting though!

Also, he saw the original Batmobile from the 1960s TV series.  It was bought at auction in 2013 for $4.2 million.  Holy hubcaps, Batman!

Marei's String Geese

Fellow quilter Marei sent me a photo of her String Geese quilt top she finished recently.  Marei doesn't have a blog, but I asked if I could share it here and she agreed.  I think it's fantastic!  That large dot outer border just elevates it a whole other level, doesn't it?   It's like they're flying among the clouds!

Marei's String Geese Quilt Top

She said she was inspired by my recent Plaid Peaks wall hanging, and both of us inspired by Bonnie Hunter's Geese on a String.

Closeup of Marei's String Geese

Her string geese measure 11 x 5.5 each.  She used 2-inch shirt strips left over from another project.  Overall the top measures 48 x 54 inches.

Thanks for letting me share your beautiful quilt top, Marei!

I'm still making X blocks for the 16-patch quilt.  It's going...  I've got all the squares made and over half of them sewn together into blocks.  I'll get the rest finished tomorrow.

I saw these super-cute vintage Melmac cup pincushions over at Three Old Keys the other day (her pictures are so much better, go see) and clicked right on through to Etsy to buy the red one! 

It came wrapped inside the box like this, in a sewing pattern.  Isn't that clever? 

It fits nicely with the current turquoise and red Pyrex display.  

I wasn't even thinking of that when I bought it, but it seems to have found a home there for now!

Sweet 16 QAL Progress

I am making headway on the 16-patches for the Sweet 16 Quilt-Along at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

I started cutting the hand-dyed scraps into 2.5-inch strips.

Then I started making strata of four strips, each about 10.5 inches long, and then cut those into four pieces 2.5 inches wide.

Once I had a bunch of them, I started arranging the pieces into groups of four.

These are the 16-patches I have ready to sew together.

I'd like to make this quilt about 60 x 60 inches, and I'm hoping I can squeak it out of the scraps I have.  After the 16-patches are made, I'll still need a couple hundred 2.5 x 2.5 squares in the hand-dyed fabrics for the corners of the X blocks and the border. 

Here's the first X block. 

So we'll see how it goes!

I'm piecing this quilt on Brother Everett.  Things were humming right along until the time I forgot to change the default stitch setting after I first turned the machine on.  It defaults to 00, which is a straight stitch with the needle in the left position (WTH, Brother?), which would be okay—if I didn't have the 1/4-inch foot on.  Unfortunately, I did.

When the needle came down and hit the metal foot, Everett let out a very grumpy sound.

The machine stopped itself and the display read "ERROR."  No kidding, Everett.  No need to rub it in.

On any other of my machines, this would have meant a broken needle for sure.  But once I got the right setting entered, we were good to go.  The needle may have bent very slightly, though, because the next time I tried to use the automatic needle threader, it didn't work.  Hopefully, it'll be okay again once I change the needle, and Everett doesn't hold a grudge.