Mission Accomplished!

I literally hand-stitched the last 6 inches of the binding (that's what's used on the border of the quilt) in a cab on the way to dinner in New York, for my cousin Bill's birthday. I barely finished it in time for his new baby, before I flew out of New York the next morning. Bill sent me a picture of the quilt, since I didn't get to do that before I gave it to him: 

I tried to keep it gender neutral as I sewed it, because my cousin kept the baby gender secret until it was born.

Toward the end, I decided to improvise a more casual pattern on the flannel lining to make use of some cute froggy & monster fabric:

This measures about 50x50 inches. I may post more about how I made this later. I was happy to finally put my hoard of adorable fabrics to use. I'm glad that Bill & his family seem to like it.

It took a long time, so I'm not sure when I'll get around to doing another quilt, but I still want to try to make another. Hopefully it'll get faster as I do more of them ...like the drawing exercises I'm doing now at Imaginism Studios!

In the meantime, my crafting will be on a little hiatus, while I am focusing on my drawing and painting skills in Toronto. I'm not even taking any phone calls or texts until July 4! WILD.

Baby Quilt Sneak Peek

I've been chugging away at this quilt, which has had some odd cosmic coincidences with current events, but anyway here's a sneak peek.

Quilting is a good exercise in patience & planning something that requires many steps. When I've been sitting at my computer too long, it's nice to stretch my back, get some feeling back in my numbed butt, walk over to my handmade project and just complete another step.

Plus, it's a treat to finally put my stash of fun fabrics to use.



This is my second quilt project ever, but my first attempt at appliqué. So I tried out a few different methods before I found one that I preferred. I learned a lot about dealing with different types of shapes and sizes. Maybe I'll blog about that later.



Sometimes I found myself getting distracted with testing the funny stitches on my new sewing machine:



There's even one that draws a tiny bicycle! Or dog or car or rocket! (I figured out later that I should be using the thread-cutter & tack button, so I wouldn't have all those crazy thread ends flying all over the place.)

It's kind of nuts to me what a sewing machine can do, and that you can get one for a couple hundred bucks or less. (Though I know there are fancier ones that run for thousands!)

The other day, my friend Angie came over and noticed that it can stitch greek letters!? --which I frankly think is silly, but... if any fraternities or sororities wanna commission a personalized piece, I guess they can call me?

Uhh, anyway I better go finish this quilt so I can have it ready as a gift for my trip... in a few days!