Final Quilt update

The boys LOVED their quilts. More posting with pictures later on in the week, but they were a great success. They appreciate the "More love than skill" theme and love the quilts because I made them for each one of them - separately. As twins they often get the same present, but since they are such different people it doesn't make sense to me to do that anymore (when they were babies, it was a different story).

Whew!

A Quilting Crisis Averted

I had an AHA moment last night about Brians quilt.

Most of this dilemma has been caused by poor measurement and lousy seams, but in addition, I decided to use a fleece on the back of the quilt and put patches of the same green used on the front as little decorations for the back. There is no easy way that I can figure that I could have lined up the rectangles on the back and front and I didn't want to quilt over those patches. And I really wanted to quilt this one, not tack it as I had done on the blue one for Sean.

Anyway, here is what I did. Lynn had made a suggestion about using light green thread in th bobbin and just quilting over the back rectangles. I was going to do that but was still not really wanting to sew over those blocks, I wanted them puffy. So, by hand I stitched around the back blocks so that the basting showed on the front. All blocks were outlined this way. Then I turned over the quilt and started quilting along a front seam - and when I got to the area that had been basted, I tacked the stitch - and slid the whole quilt down below the bottom of the basted area and continued stitching. This way I get the puffy look on the back that I wanted, but with a good quilted look on the front.

Make sense? I like this solution. Lesson learned - keep thinking about a problem, the solution may come to you.

Scary things

I was just looking at Steve's post for Blanket and realized that I didn't have childhood memories of monsters in the closet. Or under the bed. or waiting in the dark bathroom. I was scared of real things, like what if my parents divorced or died, or if a world war happened again. I was scared that if a war happened, that all the jews would get rounded up again, and I'd be one of them. I was scared to walk out of the house without my cousins...but I was never scared about monsters. or goulies. or bloodsucking anythings.
IFN has "extreme dreams" this week, and again...I have none. My dreams are mostly nice and calming. At least the ones I remember.
I wonder if I am blocked...or just boring?

Self Portrait

At the Portrait Party it is a self love month, where you can post portraits of yourself. I like this idea! I worry so much about drawing others that I get stumped. So I have been using myself as a model. I've labeled this "Sort of Mim" because it sort of looks like me, in that I have hair like that and two eyes and a nose etc. ( but I'm not really cross-eyed) I feel that the features are drawn more generically than they should be - but at least it's only me and I can do another one! Plus I didn't smile which is very unusual for me, but I don't like drawing teeth!

In the one below I experimented with giving myself purple hair. Nice eh?

I like my "Me drawn by Me" better shown in the sidebar . Kinda off kilter but that's OK.

You make my day....

FY, whose birthday is approaching got a "you make my day" award and passed it along to a bunch of us - I think we all make each other's day! As FY says, I am chuffed (and I hope that is a good thing) to get this award from her. It's such a funny thing, I check in most days with my online friends to see what they are up to, see their artwork, watch their progress with portraits, chat, look at quilts, talk about health, commiserate when your internet is down, or when the kids or husband are sick, or when you need money for a kennel.

Hence I nominate (supposed to do 5 - I could easily do many more!)

Snowflakes and Blackvampires

Beam me up Scotty

The Squawkery

Lynn - getting my feet wet

Rue Manual Bis

You may note that there are a few repeats within this list from FY's list, but it's just so hard. All during the week I visit Continuous Line and Pomegrantes and Paper and Teri's Painted Daisies and My Collage Art and so many others. Everyones blog is different, with different themes, and thoughts and artwork. I'm still loving it (even if Switchsky bailed on us all!) Thanks all, you all really do make my day.

And thanks FY - and Happy Birthday to you. Your birthday card is in the mail and I wonder what the list of 70 things to do before 70 will be. I believe it will be long, enthusiastic, fanciful and determined.

Illustration Friday

Blanket - first thing that comes to my mind is a blanket of snow. No time to draw tonight so here are some pictures - actually just one, fooled around with on the computer.

Friday night

I havn'e even thought about IF tonight, it has been a busy night. I am trying to finish up the quilts that I started for my nephews, and of course, since I don't work to a pattern, end up learning something new on every quilt.

The first one is finished, it just needs a tumble dry to get rid of any lose threads. Denim with red patches - I'm sure he'll like it. I learn something new on every quilt - this one was a last minute extension on all four sides, it was just too small. I don't think that I took into account the total amount that the seams take up and it was too narrow for a queen sized bed and a big 15 year old. But the red helps it to pop a bit.

The second one is actually the first one I started way back in the summer and it was the first large quilt that I had attempted. Talk about wrong measurements! I've learned alot since then but decided to go ahead and finish this quilt - as I told the boys - these quilts are more with more love than skill. And they bought it!
On this quilt I learned another new lesson - be careful what you applique. I used a polar fleese for the backing of the quilt, it wasn't going to be that when I started, but with the cold and rain here maybe I just needed to work with some cozy materials. But the fleese that I had is white so I appliqued some of the green rectangles on the back. It looks great BUT the edges of the rectangles on the back don't match up with the rectangles on the front so I am faced with a quilting problem - do I quilt over the the back rectangles or around them. I may just have to quilt over them because there is no other way around this problem. Things just don't line up well! So this baby is still a work in progress.

It after midnight and I've been up since 5:00 am, so time to head to bed!