Out of the closet and finished!  I don't know how long this lingered in the UFO pile but it is out and finished.  YAY!  My son's dog is visiting today and could not figure why I would spread the quilt in the driveway.

While this was in the washer I pulled the next UFO out of the closet.  I have been reading Angela Walter's books and am using these projects as quilting samplers.

I am linking this up to Amanda Jean's 'finish it up Friday'

climbing out

I've been in a bit of a funk for awhile now.  Haven't been keeping up with the blogs I love to read and certainly have not been blogging.  I'm figuring the only way to get out of the funk is to climb out, so I am starting to get back into a routine.

This is  a quilt I made for my nephew.  I saw a pic of a similar one somewhere and figured I would do some applique.  Generally I don't like applique but this was just circles and it was fun to do something different (not that I am lazy and didn't want to piece them!)  The orange circle doesn't show well in the photo.  It really does have dimension and has some fun quilting in it.  A plus was he loves it and now my other nephews want their own quilts.  One of them even wants to be hands on for his.  That will be really fun.

I have been sewing and started and finished several projects that of course I didn't take pictures of. I got seven quilts in the mail to the Sandy disaster relief, that felt good.  A couple of them were new finishes and several were UFO's that I hauled out and finished.

Now I am working on cleaning some of the UFO's out of my closet.  Then I can start on my stash.

Using up some scraps

I was using up some batiks that have been in a drawer for years and cut off so many of these triangles I thought I needed to sew them together.

 This went together fast then I quilted them with pebbles.  I like the look of pebbles but phew!  they take alot of time and lots of thread.  I am really glad I tried them on a small piece before I went straight into a queen or king.

Hopefully soon I will get the original top quilted, but I sure know it won't be with pebbles (maybe boulders)

Ugh, tomorrow starts 5 days in a row of work.  I haven't had to do 5 straight for a long time.

Lazy??? What the heck!

A few weeks ago I finally got my copy of 'quilting modern' by Jackie and Katie.  I gotta say I love this book.  I really want my boss to get it for the store, so I made a quick sample from the book. 

I straight line quilted it. ( In retrospect I would have done something a bit more creative but I really did want to get it into the store.)  So I was showing it to my boss and she was NOT impressed and called it lazy.  LAZY????  I think she was talking about the straight line quilting.

Is there really anything lazy in quilting?  Just an hour before she and I were looking at some panel fabric that had just come in and she was saying you don't even have to cut them apart and sash just put a border on and pft, pft, pft it is done.  And what about using the computer on a long arm to do your quilting for you? Or a stitch regulator!

I think all these things make getting the job done a bit easier.  There is a time and place for each one of these shortcuts(?).  What is lazy to some people may be the only way another person can finish a project.  It all depends on skill and comfort level and personal preference.  In defense of my boss tho, she is an amazing quilter and I do learn alot from her,  maybe even 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all'.

and yet another baby quilt

 What is it that when I hear about someone I know having a baby that I sit right down and make a quilt.  It is especially bad when it is my first grandbaby,  man, that kid is going to be covered in quilts.

 I love the colors in this quilt.  The quilting is just crazy windey (that sure doesn't look like the right spelling but I can't figure out how it should be spelled!) roads.  When I was doing the borders I was imagining telling him that is how he will be driving in a couple years.  Crazy!

The backing is super soft flannel.  Yum

 This is a quick little improv piece I made this weekend.  It measures about 2 ft square. I hand stitched a couple yellow lines to continue the diagonal piece in the middle over the machine quilting lines I did.  This is the smallest quilt I have ever made.  Usually I make queen or king size.  It was fun to be able to start and finish in a weekend.

I work at a LQS and they have no samples with solids so I thought I would bring one in.  I bound it like an art piece.  That was the first time I tried this kind of binding.  I like it  for hanging, I think it makes the edges look cleaner.

Oh baby.....quilts

I whipped this up a couple days ago just trying to use up stash that I don't particularly like anymore.  I figured our new grandbaby could use it as a play quilt.  We don't know boy or girl so I slipped in a square of pink as a thumbs up for a girl.  We will see if it worked or not.

Got rid of a couple yards!  Yahoo
I'm figuring for every quilt I make for our grandbaby I will make one for someone else's baby.  That should help diminish the stash.