My first *real* quilt

I finally did it, I stippled a quilt! I was going to use the scrappy quilt as my first try, but it is just sitting there waiting for me, so it was too much pressure. Instead, I made a new quilt on Sunday using Rainy Days & Mondays fabrics and some Kona white. It seemed appropriate since it was raining and almost Monday.

It was an easy quilt to piece and get ready for the dreaded quilting. I spent Monday and Tuesday after work quilting it. I'm not really sure why I was so scared to do it! Don't get me wrong, this white and pure looking quilt is definitely "R Rated" now after all of the cursing I did. I had so many things go wrong during the entire making of the quilt:

1. I slightly burned 2 squares while I was ironing it. What. the. hell. I think I need to clean my iron.
2. While I was quilting it, the backing folded under on one corner and I didn't realized for a little while. Crap. What a pain in the butt that was to fix. Then it happened again!! This has never happened to me before, and now it happened twice.
3. I was *almost* finished quilting, about to run out of thread, and my sewing machine decided to go ape-shit and skip stitches, have inconsistent tension, and generally piss me off. This is where most of the cursing took place. I stopped, cleaned the darn thing, then everything was fine again.
4. After ripping out all of those god-aweful stitches I didn't pin re-pin the quilt before finishing and I have a nice little fold (tiny-ish, but still!) on the back. Sigh. I left it since I was already running out of thread.
5.While binding it, I pricked my finger and got a couple of drops of blood on the back. Did I mention the back is completely white? BAHHH!!! Thank goodness it came out in the wash. I'm not sure how, but it did.

So anyhoo, after all of those mistakes learning experiences it is done! I washed it yesterday, and I love it. So does Meatball, can't you tell?

I definitely have some practice to do to get this stippling thing right, but for a first try I am really happy with it. I can't give it away because of the burn marks (you can hardly see them, but I know they are there) and that wonderful fold on the back, and like I said it is so full of curse words it would be wrong to give it to someone so I will love it as my own.

Quilt in action

Quilt from Erica
Originally uploaded by GirlKacey

Isn't it lovely? My good friend Kacey took a better picture of the New Wave quilt I sent her for her birthday. I love her photos. I say photos, because I take pictures, but she definitely takes photos.

I'm worked on two new quilt tops this weekend. I'll spend the week and next weekend finishing them off. I want to make another new wave quilt, too, but I need to pull myself away from that pattern so I don't get stuck there for too long. It's kinda hard, though, when it's such a great pattern!

Also, I need to get working on the two Raven's quilts I need to make. I ordered the official Baltimore Raven's fabric last week and now I need to find the perfect purple to go with it. I haven't decided what pattern I will use for the quilts, nor if they will be the same pattern or two separate ones. Any ideas?

Saturdays are my favorite

This new blog thing is going to take some getting used to. Like, I need to proof-read the hell out of my posts so I don't re-read them the next day and realize I forgot whole words or could have worded things better. Bleh! I would like to make the disclaimer to the world (and to myself) that I am not perfect and I will forget words and mistype or mis-spell and I'm not going to go back and fix them later because this is supposed to be a fun thing and not work. So there. Whew! Glad that is done.

So anyway, I love Saturdays. It's the one day of the week that Sean and I have off and we get to be lazy bums or motivated I-don't-know-whats if we want to. Yay! Lately they have been filled with quilt creations by mwah and him giving me creative help when I need another opinion. Oh and he loves to play video games so he does a lot of that, too. It works out well since we are both doing what we love to do when we waste time but we are in the same room so it's like we are doing both activities together but not. Good times!

I ordered a walking foot and a quilting foot for my sewing machine last weekend. I am finally going to try out this stippling thing I've been putting off for way too long. I'm completely afraid, but I really want to stipple a quilt (or a hundred, HA!) so I need to just DO IT. The quilting foot is staring at me so I guess I should get off of the computer and get to it. eeek! Wish me luck!

My Second New Wave Quilt

New Wave Quilt
Originally uploaded by emcquiston

I'm so excited to share this one! I made it for my awesome friend Kacey's birthday this week. Isn't it purdy? I wish I had a better picture of it. Well, I kinda have one as the banner for my blog, but when I cropped it to fit I cropped the original so, yeah. I asked her to send me a pic of it in her apt and she's better at taking pictures than I am so hopefully I will be saved. It was hard sending this one off. Like, I contemplated making something else to send off at last minute but I really did make this one just for her so I sent it.

So I think this is my new fav pattern from Oh Fransson! I added two add'l rows so the waves go up instead of across. I did the same to the first one I made, and I like the final size. I think next time I'll add those add'l rows and also two more colors and make it even bigger. I mean, seriously, how could you NOT love even more new wave quiltness?

This weekend I'm thinking more squares. I love quilt tops with squares. My husband makes of me (in a good, encouraging way) because I am afraid of narrow points. All in good time I guess, right?

The blue and gold one

The blue and gold one
Originally uploaded by emcquiston

Here is the quilt that started it all again. It now lives on our bed, and I L.O.V.E. it. There is one problem, though. It is huge. And I mean huge huge. Bigger than a king size quilt and it's on our queen size bed huge. I haven't made any this big since then, and I don't plan on doing it anytime soon. I'm sticking to lap quilts and baby quilts for a while.

That cute orange cat is Maceo. He's one of my 3 quilt inspectors, the other two being Meatball and Roxy. You'll meet them soon enough.

Ta Da!

So here I am. I have been contemplating this whole blog thing for a month or so, and I finally decided to take the plunge. I've started making quilts again after putting that hobby on the shelf for 5 years. So far I've made 14 since January. I think it's a crafty addiction that will be around for awhile, so I might as well document the journey. So here we go.