I'm still here!

Sorry for the long pause, but little ol' me got PNEUMONIA! I can't believe it, except that I feel horrible so it must be true. I'm on the up swing now, thank goodness. so I'll be back to being crafty and quilting soon enough.

Last weekend I made a couple more patchwork pillows for a friend. Her 15 m.o. has been carrying them everywhere he goes, so I'm gonna say they are a hit!

I hope everyone has a great 3 (or more) day weekend if you're in the U.S. I'm gonna spend mine sleeping if all goes as planned!!

Patchwork Pillows

Aren't they lovely?

Here they are in the (gray) sunlight I was able to catch when I got home today. 

They are similar, but not alike. Both of them have the same blue back.

I reinforced the patchwork-side of the covers with interfacing like Elizabeth from Oh Fransson! did here. I'm hoping it will help them look this nice for a while.

Training Days and Rain

This week is going to take FOR-EV-ER. I'm in a training course for a certification I want to get for my job and boy is this thing boring. Luckily I like the content. That's the only good thing I can say about it. And it gets me out of going into the office for 5 days. (which can be good or bad)

It's pouring buckets here today so being locked in (I'm joking) a basement room in the middle of the city doesn't seem as bad as it would if it were sunny out. Hopefully the weather will break so I can walk around during our lunch breaks. Here's for hoping!

This past weekend I finished two pillows for the living room. I'll post pics when I get home. They were supoer quick and easy to do and they look fantastic. I need to decide what to do to the larger ones still. I'm thinking big and bold.

I think this is the first weekend this year that I didn't start or finish a quilt. GASP. It seems wrong to say that now. It's ok, I still love you quilting. We will be back in full swing this weekend I promise.

Wonky Pinwheels in Progress & completely non-quilt related banter...

You know what's funny? The fact that I assumed I would start this blog and talk less about quilting and more about random stuff. Like, we recently watched the Butterfly Effect 3 (who knew there where 3 of them) and it was not that good except for one this joke:

"What do you get when you cross a brown chicken and a brown cow? - Brownchicken browncooow" (said like that bad 70's porn music sound)

(This still makes me laugh out loud, btw)

Or that I really enjoyed Avatar even though I couldn't believe any of the hype and ditto about Twilight. Wow, this sounds a whole like like a movie blog right about now. You can tell what I do when I'm sewing on bindings can't you?

But I guess I always started this as a quilt outlet for me. A way to participate in the list of quilt blogs I read every-single-day. Thank goodness they all exist. They have made my journey through quilt discovery and learning a lot better since there is always someone answering a question I have, or showing me a new creation I can't wait to try myself.

ANYWAY, enough ramblings, back to the quilt-ness.

So I finished sewing together the top of the huge wonky pinwheels quilt today, created a pretty backing for it, pinned it all together then realized I didn't have enough thread to quilt it. Sigh. It was a good reason to by more thread, including clear this time, blades for my rotary blade and more ruler templates. I'll finish it next weekend.

Yesterday I went shopping with my friend Jane and picked up some pillow forms. Sean has been asking me to make pillows for weeks (months?) now. They were on sale this time (40% off!) so I bought two 18in. and two 16in. squares. I think I'll make the fronts small square patchworks for the 16in. ones and who-knows-what for the bigger ones. I'm sorta happy to work on them since I know I can finish at least two of them in one sitting.  Gotta love speedy projects right?

Monday, Monday...

It. Is. Done!

This weekend I finished the Odyssea Quilt:

I decided to go simple on the quilting and stitch in the ditch around the big squares and little squares. I think it turned out really nice! The back is just the print. Originally I had a strip of pieces from the front framed with white strips on either side to go on the back, but after I had them sewn together and everything laid out I didn't like it so much. I like the simplicity of it just the way it is.

And here is the big wonky pinwheel quilt on the design wall:

I think it is totally freaking awesome, and I hope to finish it before next week.  Now of course I can't be working on only one quilt at a time, so tonight it's time to choose new fabric and a new design to work on. I think I'm going green or blue this time. Not sure yet though.

Work in progress

Happy Friday! 

I chose I pattern for the purple and black and gray fabrics finally - wonky pinwheels! Not just regular wonky pinwheels for me... HUGE, like HUGE HUGE pinwheels. This is gonna be interesting... I hope it works out like I think it will. The one good thing about huge is, if I don't like it I can always cut the fabric and make them smaller or into something new. This is what I'm telling myself at least. 

So I don't know about any of you, but cutting fabric is the worst part of making quilts as far as I'm concerned. I wish I could go directly from idea to sewing, or even better, idea to binding. Putting the binding on is my new fav. I dunno why since it takes for-ev-er. Maybe it's the watching tv while doing it part since I don't get to do that too much. Or the sitting on the couch part, which I also don't get to do that much. Probably a little bit of both. 

I just looked at the table and my fabric is still not cutting itself. Boo. Another item to add to the list of things I want to teach Meatball to do...

Anyhoo, I don't want to leave this post un-pic'd, so here you go:

This was the second quilt I made this year. It was for my friend Amy who said, "I love pink...wink wink". So, she got a pink quilt. She thought I was kidding when I said I bought pink fabric. Silly girl.

I think this was the beginning of Meatball's fabric addiction. He'll never be the same... cute little Meatie!!

Fabric in the mail is the best!

Guess what arrived today...

The fabric for the back of the Odyssea quilt! Yay! Fun times for this Saturday. :0)

In other news, I am trying to figure out what my next quilt will be. I picked out the fabrics:

Now to find a pattern for them. I've spent an hour or so combing through Flickr for inspiration. It still hasn't come. I want to do something simple but awesome. No pressure at all. At first I was thinking another new wave quilt (because they are awesome!) but my husband suggested I try something new. Sometimes he's right. (Shh, Don't tell him I said that)