Odds and Ends

 Summer is in full swing around these parts which leaves little time for much crafting. I find that I usually do most of my crafting in the fall/winter/spring - you know when it is cold enough that you want a lap full of wooly yarn or an entire quilt piled on you while you finish the binding. I have been eeking out a few things.


My mom tends to save and collect things; lots of things. I don't fall far from the tree on that account, which is a good and bad thing. Although when it's good, it's good.

Take this for example -

It's a vintage set of pillow cases with a sweet little flower embroidery pattern on it. It even still had a hand printed price tag pinned on it. That's right it was pinned with a real, silver, sharp pin adhering the paper with the price, not one of those plastic "T" shaped things. I love them. You might not be able to tell since she sent them to me probably three years ago and here they are with just the edging done. But that's how some projects go, relegated to the bottom of a basket and forgotten about. With warmer (read: sweltering) weather upon us I think that it's high time I make some progress on these so they can rightfully take up some space in our bedroom.













Another project that has been sitting, glaringly so, on my ironing board is N's late birthday quilt. Can you call it a quilt if it isn't quilted? There in lies the problem. I haven't really quilted. Sure I've used the walking foot on my machine to do some simple straight line quilts but in my book that's not the same as those beautiful swirly designs that someone hes created magically with their machines. I do realized that a lot of quilts are done at a store on a long arm machine, which although they get the job done aren't really as labor intensive as a person doing it themselves - nor should they have bragging rights about their quilting skills really.

Learning a new skill as an adult is scary. We tend to be hard on ourselves and want it to be perfect right out of the gate. Often we don't bother at all. We stick to what we know and rarely branch out into learning or doing new things. That's me and quilting. It's the newest thing that I've taken up and it's easy to be hard on yourself, especially when there are so many talented modern quilters who's work is all over the web. So after at least a month of ignoring the ironing board and coming up with pretty valid reasons;  N doesn't need a quilt right now it's 90 degrees, most of the time she is running around with just a diaper! I've dived right in.

These are my practice swatches and my tension checks after changing a bobbin. I'm doing just messy simple circles in a peach thread over the entire quilt. I'm about a quarter of the way done. Biggest thing I've learned thus far - free motion quilting takes up an amazing amount of thread. I've already been back to Joann's once and I'll need to go again for more.