PMQG Block Swap

The Portland Modern Quilt Guild has a challenge for this month, to make a 12" block out of solids. We swap with someone from the guild this month and then we're assigned an, as of now, mystery project to make with the swapped block. Once we swap we'll make a project with our swapees block then trade back next month. Fun! My sister has been grumpy because I've gotten nowhere with her quilt so to appease her a little, I thought I'd make the block using colors she likes and then give her whatever it is we'll eventually get. Clear as mud? Good!

This is the block I've made:

I can't believe I haven't made a post in a month! This February has been just nuts. All of my free time has been devoted to other endeavors, like searching out a good elementary school for our daughter who will start kindergarten in the fall (lots of round-ups, open houses and applications), filing our taxes, working on the quarterly GIG newsletter, starting seeds for the 2011 garden, not to mention all the regular stuff that needs taken care of. Happily it's almost over. ;^)

I have spent exactly two hours in my sewing room this month so not a lot to show. I worked a bit more on my sister's quilt and I also started cutting out the fabric for the Love Bubbles quilt.


Just to show how busy I've been I couldn't even manage to finish a mug rug for the PMQG meeting.

I managed to get it pinned but nothing else! How sad.

I did manage to sneak out of the house twice this month on quilt related sojourns. The first to the February PMQG meeting. Those are always so much fun. I even won glue! I've never used fabric glue as a way of basting and with my curved piecing coming up it might be handy.

I also went to a local quiltboard.com meet-up this afternoon. It was really lovely to meet such a nice group of women! We had a fat quarter swap and there was a lot of show and tell. No one appreciates a quilters work like other quilters.

Top: Terry (Theresa), Mary (CrazyBaker), Me, Jen (sew cornie), Roxanne (roxannebcb)
Bottom: Karen (KarenBarnes), Laurie (quiltingnonie), Trish (trish b), Kelly (madamekelly)

Sew On

I had a super fun time at Cherri's open studio, Sew On. It was really nice to get to talk to some of the PMQG members outside of a meeting environment. Such sweet ladies, all of them!

Also Cherri's studio was dreamy and it was great to give her longarm a spin. Seems like a lot of the women there really enjoyed it too. I wonder how many of us went home and straight to a quilting project? ;^)

PS: Thanks for the cookies Cherri!

WIP Wednesdays

Portland Modern Quilt Guild
I went to the PMQG meeting Thursday night. Click the link to see what we're up to. Want proof I was there? Third picture down (on the PMQG blog), that's me in the black hat right behind the lady in green. What? You can't tell that's me? lol Sadly I didn't win anything this time around but it's still fun to be excited for those who do get the give-a-ways.

For the FQ swap I wound up with a cute little green one - my favorite color!

Hexagon Quilts
Also it was *awesome-possum* to see Tania finish the bulk of her squid hexagon quilt - so cool! We both started our hexagon quilts at the same time. She's super speedy. I loved getting a chance to look at all the fabrics close up. We had a nice little chat after the meeting about hexi's. (Yay for crazy english paper piecers!)
And I didn't know they took a picture of my hex in progress... ::grin:: Yeah, it's been stalled out a little bit but you can see I've finally finished the orange star. Next up with that project is to add in the diamonds around the blue star and attach the teal and orange stars so it's all one big piece. Then I can start working on the outer stars. What? You thought that was it? No, no. I am insane. Ha.


Kaleidoscope Quilt
Sunday was not a good quilting day. I was in the middle of working on my sister's quilt when...

...my kiddo comes into my sewing room with a red permanent marker. Yes. You can imagine what happened next. I nearly knocked her over in my rush to run from my sewing room to the laundry room, quilt in hand, to hit the effected area with a stain remover. The good news is, I was able to get most of it out.

You can hardly see where there's just a little bit of the red pen mark left.

The bad news, it was sitting there mostly stain free but also with a couple of spots of stain remover on it. The stain remover isn't supposed to dry on the fabric so I really needed to wash it out. However, because it's still all mostly pinned together, there's no way I could put it in a washing machine. I knew if I didn't treat it right away though it'd have a permanent mark. So after I sprayed it, I tried my best to rinse out just those spots. There was a big drippy chunk of it that then needed drying. I draped it over the shower curtain rod in the bathroom where it took all day and night to dry out enough to move back into the sewing room.

After all the rinsing and scrubbing I couldn't find any mark once it was dry. Whew~!

Apron
So in the meantime, instead of working on my sister's quilt I started the apron my daughter's been begging me for.

The Lola Apron

She picked out the pink fabric and I chose the coordinating fabrics to go with it. I'm not planning on any rick-rack (as shown in the pattern) since she said she didn't want any. I love how sophisticated this will all look together.

The pink will be the main body, the light grey patterned one will be at the top chest and for the pockets, the solid as the binding.


Here it is all done and sitting on the work table long after everyone else had fallen asleep.


She tried it on the next morning and it fits her perfectly!

Making myself work on UFO's

Sometimes I have a hard time working on old projects. So last night in a fit of desperation (ha!) I hit up Modern Domestic for a sewing session. I brought only *one* UFO. I paid $10 to sew there for three hours. There were no other projects to "escape" to! And I didn't leave early because paying to sew when I have a perfectly good sewing space seems *crazy* to me... so it was best I used the full allotted time. Anyway, I didn't get nearly as much done as I would've at home in those same three hours because there were a lot of other women there from the Portland Modern Quilt Guild and so I was easily distracted by a lot of chattiness and show and tell. Not to say it wasn't fun and I didn't have a great time, cause surely I did! but not sure how conducive it was to working. lol... Still I made some progress and had some "girlie" me-time too - woo!

I've not been on-line in the evenings because I just want to sew and have been like a fiend. It's good. I think I finally found a rhythm that works for me. Work a little bit on a lot of quilts for a short amount of time. I've been putting together blocks for my sister's quilt, and working on the 30's repo quilt that I'd already half assembled a few years ago, hated, ripped this past winter and now I'm sewing all the pieces together again in a different pattern that I like so much better. In fact there's a kinda funny story about it.

My BFF had come up to visit a few years ago and she'd picked a pattern and bought fabric for this quilt (you know the one, the one we just finished this past weekend in one day!):

So she was asking to see all my UFO's and I popped open a box I'd completely forgotten about, the one with my own set of 30's repo pieces in it. Guess what? I'd chosen the same pattern and mocked up four blocks about six months ago. Great minds and all that... lulz.


Also thought I'd give you a little peek at the hexagon quilt I've been working on. It's nice to have a traveling piece.


I took it out while at my daughter's Tae Kwon Do class and my BFF thought it was such a nice take-a-long project that we had to run right off to the fabric store after the class finished up so she could put together her own little kit. I love the fabrics she chose. I can hardly wait to see her make some progress on it.


I might have mentioned that they gave out a bunch of salesman sample strike offs (headers) of quilt fabric at last month's guild meeting (PMQG) that someone had picked up (yay! whoever you were!) from some conference or other. I got a bundle before they were gone and the little stack has been staring me in the face since. Tempting me.


I don't know why but I'm completely fascinated with them and well you know me, I love a new project! So in between working on everything else I've been cutting fabric and sticking it to my design wall.... If I can just keep working in the evenings I can easily see finishing up this quilt in a few weeks. (Pattern is Schnibbles X-Rated quilt - it'll finish at about 60" x 60" I think)

Portland Modern Quilt Guild

PMQG has a great little give away going on now... go check 'em out!! There are 10 different things you can win and you don't even need to be local.
PMQG Give-a-way!