Done and Dusted - (my new favorite phrase!)

Twinkle Twinkle is done done done!  Woohoo!

Just a few quick photos of it in its new natural habitat -

The last binding stitch was stitched last night, and the quilt was tried on for size.

I'm a bit pleased with it.  😀

I've been working on this quilt for so long, that I couldn't remember when I started it and had to look it up.  My here-we-go-with-a-new-start post was back in October of 2015, so it's been a rather lengthy labor of love.  (Click on the 'Twinkly' tag over there in the sidebar to follow the whole story!)  The original plan was to finish it last year in time for my daughter and son-in-law's 20th anniversary, but I missed by a year.  This was partly due to procrastination (one of my other hobbies!) and a fear of messing up the quilting (and therefore the quilt...)

Ah, well.  Better late than never.  (That would be my motto, if I had a motto.)

The whole time I was handstitching the binding, I kept thinking "I love this quilt so much!"

There's a very grave danger that I might start another one.

Twinkle Twinkle II, coming soon to a quilt blog near you...

And miles to bind before I sleep

The quilting is finished!  The quilting is finished!

Straight lines for the win!

With some moderate changes of direction in the cornerstones.

And just plain lines for the borders, spaced 1" apart.  (I marked one with chalk pencil.  Then I got smarter and got some painter's tape.  Much easier, faster, and straighter!)

Round and round I went.

I found the most glorious perfect print possible to use for the binding.

It echoes the blues in the body of the quilt and the cornerstones, and pulls blue out to the edge.  I love it!

Now I'm trudging along with the hand stitching part of the festivities, which I always enjoy.  Binding is peaceful work!

Next photo will be the finished quilt.

Back to my stitching!

"March, march, march" said the little plaid hen

This little plaid hen sent me down the Metro to Washington DC to attend the March for Science.

It was a little crowded, with lots of people from all over smiling and carrying signs.

We spent a lot of time elbow to elbow -

 and most of the day was spent squelching along in the rain.

But luckily we were dressed for rain, because science had warned us that it was coming!

I had a lot of fun, reading signs, and laughing as chanting was attempted, but since sciencey people tend to be a bit skewed to introverts, it was hard to get any real chanting momentum going...  It was a terrific day celebrating the importance of science to all of us.

Today I was warmer and drier, and got some sewing done.
There was glitter

and another multicolor chicken to join that other little clucker for April's RSC cluckers blocks.

And a few hourglasses got thrown together as leader/enders.  Though it wasn't until I'd set the blocks out for this photo that I realized that I'd made an error on the little plain hen - she's going to have to go in for a tummy-tuck!

And for those keeping score -

I'm this far along with Twinkle.  Step by step, inch by inch...


Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday (a day late, but better late than never, right?) and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

It begins...

My machine is de-linted, my needle is new, and my bobbins are full.

Here goes nothin'!

Where does the time go?

I thought I had posted earlier in the week, but it seems I was wrong.  (It's possible I dreamed it...)

Here's the little rascal that has sucked up so much of my time lately -

Her name is Chuckles, and she's the sole survivor of a litter of fifteen.  This photo is the best I could get of her - it's blurry because she Never. Stops. Moving.   (She's playing with a ball here, which is her second favorite thing to do.  Eating is her very favorite thing, of course.)

The only sewing I've managed to squeeze in is finishing the back for the Twinkle quilt.  I laid it out on the big dining table to get it ready to baste.

I had a bunch of triangles left over, so I've used them to piece a strip for the back.  This was partly for interest, and partly so I wouldn't have to drive myself crazy piecing short narrow bits together to make the backing wide enough.   (I had two 3.5 yard cuts of this pretty striped fabric, which I got long before the top was finished, thinking it would be plenty.  Optimism continually bites me on the butt.)

I had the back laid out on the table and was smoothing it and taping it down, when it dawned on me that it should be upside down.
Doh!
Finally, after much wrangling and starting over (because I realized that I was going to have to lay it out with the width of the quilt running the long way on the table because ginormous table isn't ginormous enough for ginormous quilt), I started pinning.

Hopefully the quilting can commence in the next couple of days.  Yay!


Linking with Quilting is More Fun than Housework, for Oh Scrap!  Come join the fun!

Finally a sewing day!

Last week a three day snowstorm kept me from my studio, and just when the snow was showing signs of melting, we had some newborn piglets in distress that we've now been bottle feeding for a week.  (They're finally at the stage where they can go two hours between feedings.  This is a wonderful step up from the every-45-minutes that we started with.) 
Anyway, today was the first time in two weeks that I could head that half mile down the road and spend an afternoon at my sewing machine.  Hallelujah!

Naturally my first thoughts turned to chickens.

I still have no idea what I'm going to do with my RSC assortment of cluckers, but I'm having fun making them and that's the part that counts, right?

The little red hen was actually constructed as a leader/ender for my main project at the moment.
I'm building a backing

including using some of the leftovers from the front of the quilt

because I'm working on this quilt again.

Finally.
I realized that I was procrastinating on it because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to quilt it as well as it deserved.  But it has dawned on me that my walking foot opens all kinds of new possibilities, and it really doesn't matter that my free-motion quilting still needs lots and lots of practice.  I'm not exactly a whiz at walking foot quilting either, but it's much more approachable for me at this point.  Tally ho and quilt on!



Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday, and with Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come see all the fun!

I'm only checking for the UPS guy once every 10 minutes or so...

Quick post while I'm waiting for the new computer.
Twinkle has all the pieced borders attached, and I laid it out to measure for the outer borders.  I like to measure each edge and through the center, hoping that the three measurements will end up within shouting distance, for both height and width.   I was quite gratified to find that there was only a 1/4" variation between them, which is close enough for anybody's galloping horse.

Next I'll be holding my breath while I cut the final borders and get them stitched on.
Which means I had to run for the top I'm going to machine quilt first as a practice piece for the Big One.
Anyone remember this?

Yay, Garden Party!

A nice orange border,

and a flashy flowery orange back.

Nothing like some nice fall colors as we lurch into spring!

And I finished the center medallion for the 365 Challenge quilt - here it is at midpoint,

and all put together.

That's an 18" block, which just seems tent-like when you consider my usual scale.  It sure felt huge as I was sewing that last set of pieces around the outside.

(By the way, I've checked three times for the UPS guy while typing this and loading pictures.  Not yet...)

I didn't get any other piecing done, what with wrestling giant blocks and endlessly long borders, but I'm still plugging along through this book looking for the actual name for some of the blocks I'm making for the RSC. 

It's an interesting book, but weirdly organized.  The blocks are divided into categories like 'square', 'diamond', and 'circle', with each category filled with every block that could be said to have a square, diamond, or circle anywhere in it.

To me, categories like 'four-patch' or '60degree triangle' would be more useful and easier to search, but this is the book I have, so I continue thumbing through a dozen or two pages whenever I have an idle moment.
The problem, of course, is the problem I have thumbing through any collection of quilt blocks.

Wouldn't all three of those make great scrap quilts?  I certainly need more ideas, right?

First Purples

It's March, so this must be purple!

Because who can resist a purple batik piglet?

And what's a piglet without a kaleidoscope?
Or two.  

Or, er, um, several.

And I'm going to have to cut some more bits for the Twinkle Star borders, because I'm almost out of what I'd cut ahead.

Now that I know it's safe to proceed, having tested the borders and finding they're going to fit, that is.  (Always a worry...)

I've got the right side border on, and will be adding the others as soon as I can trust my brain again.
(I've found it's best not to push it too hard when in the throes of a cold.  Especially when there's this much matchy-matchy stuff going on.)
(If ever there was a time I'm likely to sew a border completely reversed, possibly twice, this is it.)
(Go on, ask me how I know.)
(If I run out of parenthetical comments, can someone send me their extras?)
(I think it's time to wrap up in a fleecy blanket in front of the woodstove.  With my feet up.  Night night!)


Before I go, though, I'm going to link up with Angela for ScrapHappy Saturday.  I'm late for the party!
And as long as I'm at it, I'll link with ScrapTastic Tuesday, as well.  There can't be too much scrappy fun!

This winter has been a real whackdoodle

Yesterday we had freezing rain, so despite the fact that a newly charged battery meant I had wheels again, I sat home.
Today, however, was glorious.  Temperatures in the high 50's, blue sky, mud up to your ankle bones - a perfect spring day.
Of course, it's not actually spring yet, so when all that mud and mushy snow freezes back up tonight, it's going to be slipperier than snot out there tomorrow morning...
Eh, tomorrow can take care of itself.
For today, I got an afternoon of quality sewing time.

First on the list was trying to get a little more caught up on the 365 Challenge.  I tackled those 3" Ohio Star blocks, and they actually went smoother than I could have hoped.  Even the one that had those itsy 4-patches...

Once again, I had a hard time getting those little doozies to lie flat long enough to get a good picture of them.  This section of the quilt is probably going to be bulletproof, given how dense it is with all those seam allowances.  I'm betting it's going to be one heavy puppy, too, when it's done.  Which sounds good for these upstate winters, so I'm not actually complaining.

 I put together some blocks for the RSC - NOT kaleidoscopes.   Though I admit I caught myself a couple of times with 2" strips in my hand, headed for the sewing machine.  Other people have to order themselves to Put The Strips Down, right?  It's not just me?

I had been thinking of these blocks as Hovering Hawks, but that block actually is a 4x4 grid rather than this 3x3.  Bonnie Hunter calls them Jacks, and I've seen a couple of other references to variations of that name.  I like them because they're dirt simple to make and have a lovely old fashioned look.

I might make a couple more this coming week as we wrap up brown.

And one of the things I had to do today was cut some 3.5" squares for my traveling Quilty 365 kit, since several days of not getting to the studio had made supplies dwindle.
As long as I had browns out...

I cut some other colors as well, including this one for today's orange peel.

It came off the end of a strip of border fabric for Big Twinkle, because the border construction has begun!

And last but not least, meet Checkers the pig.  He's sweet, but a bit paranoid. 

He insists that he's being watched...




I'm linking with So Scrappy's ScrapHappy Saturday and Quilting is More Fun than Housework's Oh Scrap!  I can't imagine a better place to spend the weekend than checking out all the scrappy links they'll have.  Come join the fun!

Before anyone sends out a search party...

I've had a couple of emails asking if I was okay - thanks, and yes!  I've just had a perfect storm of visiting family, viciously cold weather, and a non-functional car, so my attention has been diverted from important stuff like quilting and knitting and blogging.  8)
The car is still ignoring me when I turn the key (I've got an extension cord on the way so I can use my battery charger.  Drat being parked too far from an outlet.), but the weather has finally warmed up enough that walking down to my studio isn't a prelude to frostbite.

While the kids were here for the weekend, we auditioned the greens I'd ordered.  (Yes!  The UPS man turned up!)
One of them was an immediate 'no' - way too grassy green.  It's attractive, but totally wrong for this project.
But one was just perfect.

(Ignore my knees in that picture...)
It's a perfect match for one of the colors in the sashing.

Daughter, Son-in-law, and I all agreed it was just the thing for the border.  Yay!

 I also really liked the third color, which is actually greener than this next photo makes it appear.

 Maybe it'll turn up as the binding?

Ah, the binding.  Another thing to dither about.  Is it too soon to start?

I tried to make up for lost time in other projects, too.  A couple of 365 Challenge blocks:

 A couple more Chantal's Pinwheels:

 And for Turid, I made a Wonky Star in RSC colors:

(She's now making piglets!  There have been piglet sightings in Norway and Australia.  Will 2016 be the Year of the Piglet?)  (I hope so!)
And somehow I ended up making some more brown kaleidoscopes.

I swear I don't know how it happens.  One minute I'm cutting strips of fabric, and the next thing I know I've got that ruler in my hand and all these triangles are appearing.

So now I've got 7 blue/violet blocks and 8 brown/pink blocks.
I may have to find a better hiding place for the ruler...

And you know there had to be another piglet, right?

Yeah, another piglet.
Another ridiculously adorable piglet.

If I start making kaleidoscope piglets, someone will stop me, right?