A Quilt for a Friend

It is finished!

The front

Random blocks on the 'back'

This quilt started life as a sheet set. Add in a few prints here & there, quilt & bind... presto- a new quilt, perfect for snuggles on the couch.

This one is:

1. the largest quilt I have ever made @ 47 x 72 inches
2. the first recipient of free motion quilting. (the best way to describe this method is to say that the needle is like a pen & the quilt is the paper. I move the quilt & the needle draws on the pattern.) It took a little bit of time to get into a rhythm, but I eventually got there. I LOVE the effect!
3. my first time following an actual pattern. I used Stitched in Color's brick pattern found here. (if only for a small section)

 Most people start their free motion quilting with a 'simple' stipple pattern, which is a meandering line that looks sort of like coral to me. I am not sure why I jumped in with both feet and did a leaf pattern! I guess it just suited the prints better & I didn't think (worry!) about it before starting. I hope I can keep up this fearlessness! I am very grateful to my good friend who was trusting enough to let me do whatever I wanted (fabric choices were hers). I think that having a recipient that I know is not overly critical & the fact that there wasn't a fortune in fabric involved, I was able to be a little more 'free' than I normally am. Funny that the brick pattern on [what I think of as] the front was my first time following directions for piecing... but the quilting itself was very relaxed.

Here you can see the quilting a little better :)

While taking my photos, I discovered that this size works just fine as a quilt for a single bed. There is not a lot of overhang, but it still looks nice to me :)

Now...generally, I keep my kitties away from my quilts. Cat fur loves fabric! Since I knew my friend wouldn't mind, I allowed Mira to come explore...

Testing the waters...

She quickly got comfortable!

Possibly *too* comfortable?

Cathedral Window Pillow

I LOVE this pillow. You may have heard me talk about it on facebook...but now I'm talking about it here, so it can be entered into a contest!
It was made to go along with a custom quilt order. The quilt took much longer than I expected & I knew I had to do something 'extra' with the pillows. I had never done (or even thought seriously!) about using the technique that I did. I have had a blog post in my favourites for about a year now, that I just liked to look at, thinking '...someday I'll try that...'  {a la mode's blog post}
Then, before I knew it, I was cutting the fabric for them! I am usually super cautious about trying something so new & I procrastinate (me? no way..!) Maybe it was because I was already feeling the time crunch & messing around for weeks wasn't an option.

I l.o.v.e. it. It was a learning experience & I will do some things slightly different next time. Haha, as I was folding/ironing/sewing it, I was thinking "I will never do this again!" But it was really worth it, so I will.
 

Quilting Bee

Okay. So there is a little bit of a back story to this post. Here goes....
If you know me personally, you know about my friend Amber.
In November of 2009, she was battling for her life, in & out of the hospital. Effing cancer. I had the idea that I should make her a quilt to try & make the hospital time even the tiniest bit ...more bearable. At the very least, I hoped it would remind her of all the friends & family she had pulling for her.
I am still just learning the quilting ropes & a quilt can take me a good chunk of time, depending on what else is going on with life. Of course, I know now that I don't feel much like quilting when I am sad either. Anyway, at a certain point, I realised that I probably wouldn't have time to finish a quilt for Amber. And so I never started one. Amber's time ran out....
To this day, I wished that I would have at least started her quilt. I could have showed her what I had done so far... maybe I could have gotten it done in time to at least give it to her, even if she didn't have much time to enjoy it. Maybe I could have finished it late & given it to her amazing husband. You know, all those "I wish.." thoughts.
Soon after her death, I decided that someday I will make a quilt to donate to the hospital she stayed at, for them to give to someone else battling cancer. It won't be the same. But it will be something.
This is something that I will do when I can. Until then, I'm happy to have the chance to participate in a quilting bee I found out about on a blog. There were so many participants that the blog hosts have decided to make 2 quilts in the first round & then do round 2! I am in round 2 which will probably start in March.
This is how it works: Everyone who wants to participate is mailed a package of fabric bits with which to make a quilt block. The block (square) is to be made however we want with the provided fabrics & then mailed back. 'Sew Fresh Fabrics' will then take all the completed blocks & sew them together to make the quilt top. Add the batting, quilt it all together & bind the edges and there you have it! The 2 finished quilts will be given to a charity, Project Linus. This is a quote from their site: Our mission is to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need through the gifts of new, handmade blankets and afghans, lovingly created by volunteer "blanketeers."

http://sewfreshfabrics.blogspot.com/2011/01/wont-you-join-us.html => The blog post that started it all.


So... I will be a small part of something I've been wanting to do for a while. I'm excited about it! There is a flickr group for the first round & I will be watching it to see the blocks being posted!

time flies

Wow. the last time I blogged was May '09?! And I haven't missed it one bit! lol
Back soon with a new real blog though. Promise.

Okay, so I'm one of those people who's mind races at night when the rest of me wants to sleep. Not always, but sometimes. Some of those sometimes I just ignore it & *bam!* I'm asleep. Sometimes I try really hard to ignore it & I toss & turn & then eventually fall asleep. Some of those times I toss & turn, I make a promise to myself that I will remember to think of it (whatever 'it' may be) in the morning, and it still won't go away. Those are the times I need to turn on my lamp, look for my pen & grab the post-it's I keep for just such occasions. After it's written down, it goes away & sleep comes. Knowing that, you'd think I'd go straight to the post-it's instead of possibly wasting hours trying not to write things down. Maybe some day I'll learn...!

Last night was a post-it night. I couldn't shake a number of crafty things floating around in my head. A couple new ideas, thoughts on how to finish the tote I started earlier this week, thinking about which type of craft will be best suited for my fb friends participating the the 'handmade giveaway' thingy I made a note about. Six friends & six handmade items, but what do I make for whom? (I never really got a straight answer for that one, the pen only writes what I make it write, unfortunately!) It also hit me that I finished a quick little bag on the weekend & completely forgot to add my 'twelfthzodiac' label to it before sewing it up! Blasphemy!

The wooden handles I ordered on etsy came in the mail & they're so cute I wondered why I only bought one set...then I started thinking about all the fabric I own that would look good with the handles(at this point I almost got out of bed to search through my sewing room for the perfect fabric - but it was cold outside of the covers!), all the fabric on etsy that I'd like for the lining...if it would look best with pleats, or maybe a square bottom? Would it need a magnetic clasp, or is it maybe too 'casual' for one of those (not that they are super fancy, these were the thoughts of a person on the brink of sleep remember!) Anyway.
I turned on my lamp & drew/wrote furiously for a few minutes & then turned off my light and tried to get back to sleep. ~ Three times! lol! I couldn't get it all out in one go...and when I thought two was enough & it was lights out, nope! The neighbours might have thought I was using my light to convey something with morse code. Probably not though, right? That would be weird of them.

It was a fairly fruitful night though. I came up with something totally new...ok, you got me! Not *totally* new, but a new take on my recycle pin that people like but I don't necessarily like making. And I made a prototype today already, so that was pretty productive of me! I also came up with something I called the 'Chloe Zip' - I was thinking of a friends child that I've never met when I came up with it. It's nothing revolutionary, but I think Chloe would like it!
At the end of my blue & pink post-its all covered in purse drawings, is the last post-it. It reads, "GET A NORMAL SIZED NOTE BOOK UP HERE!" And seriously, 17 post-its in one night, they just weren't meant for that kind of thing.

New Etsy Shop, kinda

yay! a new etsy shop....kinda! it's filled with all my old stuff (& hopefully some more new stuff soon)... so I just moved, basically. I wanted to have 'twelfthzodiac' be my shop name, cause I love it so! And now it is...yay!
there's a link to my previous shop so potential buyers can see my past crafty items & my positive feedback. it's not ideal, but hopefully I will build up feedback @ twelfthzodiac quickly =)

have ideas, need time+energy!

Well, I guess I'm pretty bad at this bloggin business! No surprise really I guess....!
I have a list of crafty things to try ...and a list of things to crochet! Ok, mostly just scarves, but whatever. All colours of scraves, skinny scarves, soft scraves, fringed scarves! Scarves scarves scarves! hehe...calming down now...
Also on the list, a tutu for S.T, a fleece bandana for X, warm felted slippers for myself. I just had a yummy Thanksgiving dinner @ my sister's house and saw the felted potholder thingy I made for her a while back, now I wanna make more of those!
Oh! I've got a wool dryer ball felting in the wash right now, so there will probably be more of those in my future!

Time to go create some supper for myself! Luckily, I have leftovers in the fridge! ;)