Diary of a Mad Fabri-Holic

Dakota blues

Now that this quilt has finally made it to its new owner, I can show you the final pictures.  

Dakota is the newest addition to the family of an old friend (his older sister got this quilt when she arrived).  I have a feeling he is going to be a very mischievous little guy- he tricked everyone into thinking he was a girl at ultrasound #1, but revealed himself truly in #2.  Good thing I was running behind on starting his quilt, or he might be rolling around on something pretty and pink right now!

When I discovered Project Improv, it was the perfect starting point.  Rather than use a pattern, I bravely played with fabric and my own ideas.  That's really tough for me- so I started really simply with this one.  But I think simple worked well.  I quilted it super simply too- diagonal lines across the quilt in a soft yellow thread.  The back is a minkee-esque fabric, a soft yellow.  I had big wild plans for the binding- a fabulous wavy striped batik- but I went with a simple dark blue batik instead for a calming element.  So it turns out I accidentally made the quilt in the colors of Dakota's mom's alma mater- go me!

Working on this one was a wonderful journey- making a quilt for a friend's new son AND enjoying the creative process- I think I am luckier than Dakota.  Now to finish the next Project Improv piece AND get inspired to start a new one...

Snowy Sewy Day

Some of you may have heard that we had a wee little bit o' snow in Denver over the weekend.  Just a tiny little foot or so dumped in our backyard over 24 hours... 

But it was my favorite sort of snow- CO spring snow!  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Basically, we got a fabulous Saturday Snow Day in the house- I sewed, the kids did crafts and watched a movie, and The Hubby chilled when not helping with said crafts.  And then, it all melted away, leaving us with temps near 80 degrees by today!

Before the weather got so darn gorgeous, I did take advantage of that snow day, as I mentioned.  More pink/purple/orange blocks!

Hooray!  I seriously could have kept going and going and going, but...  this is a baby quilt and I wanted it to be a manageable size for the baby.  When finished w/white-on-white borders, the blocks come in at 12 inches...

See?

Isn't it fun?  I've been enjoying playing w/out borders lately but I really really love this matryoshka fabric for a little girl.  And it ties it all together so nicely. And makes the size just right.  And also is good for me- using up that much of one of my favorite fabrics has been a big step in my battle against hoard-itis!Actually, many of the fabrics in this quilt were ones I would have previously hoarded.  Like some of those amazing new Brandon Mablys.  My god, I want them all. Oh- and wait til you see what I picked out for the binding...

But what is fabric for if not to be used and enjoyed, right?

Now I need to get of my bum and baste and quilt these last two tops.  Both are for babies not yet here, but, they will be eventually. And I have one more to go.

I also finally finished the 2 blocks for Jacquie's Project Improv auction quilts.

They are *finally*getting mailed tomorrow, I swear!

And then, after we survive Annie's big 8th birthday on Thurs and our first time ever hosting a slumber party on Sat., I'll move on to another Project Improv piece.

Free at last!

Deb wanted an update on my new fabric organization system, and if it has helped shake me out of my rut.

What do *you* think?

I'm awfully pleased with this!  I let loose and worked on two of my biggest issues- 1) the matchy matchy fabric and 2) hoarding my faves.  See all those recognizable designer pieces in there?  I was really careful to try and avoid more than 2 of any one line.  And see some of my faves in there?  I cut pieces out of fabrics I have been hoarding for ages.  And you know what?  It felt GREAT.  Having the fabrics sorted by nothing other than color really did help me- I pulled anything I liked, regardless of what category I might have put it in before.   My focus fabric is that Heather Ross matryoshka.  It has such great colors in it, and is so adorable.  Everything else built around it. And by the way, did you happen to notice that I managed to make my pink and orange quilt into a pink and orange AND purple quilt?  It's a gift, I tell you.

So here's where I'm going with these: 9 improvisationally pieced blocks of varying sizes, to be finished off in white on white, and put together w/white on white outer border, then REALLY bold binding.  I whipped out 6 blocks last night while watching the first 3 episodes of Buffy on Hulu.

I would have gone on longer, but I really needed to sleep.  As soon as I finish our taxes tonight, I'll make more. And more. And more!  Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

How Sammy got her groove back...

For the record, I despise being called Sammy.  And yet the only way the cadence of that title worked was to suck it up and use the dreaded nickname.  Can't really remember why I have always hated it, but, as far back as I can recall, I have...  So don't go getting any ideas about having a new pet name for me, okay?

Now that I've got that out of the way- hey, look, I finished my 1st Project Improv top!!

And I LOVE it.  I know I went super simple with the pattern on this first attempt, but hey, it made for a good warm-up and confidence builder.  And I love the simplicity of this top, and how it shows off the fun fabric choices.  It's lively and fun without being over the top- always a danger for me...  For the first time in months and months, I am truly excited about how a project came out.  Not just happy to have finished something, not just happy to have used the cute fabric I couldn't resist buying, but actually thrilled with an end product and proud of it.  What a feeling- I'd forgotten just how good it was.  My happy quilting endorphins seem to be coming back.  I'm already planning some other projects in my head...

Between pushing my own quilting boundaries AND having the free time on Mondays to follow through on my ideas, I'm feeling pretty good.  Last week kicked up some surprise stress- we had calculated the economic impact of my Mondays off, and while it won't be super fun, we'll make it.  But then we got some more news from work re: my paycheck, and it looks like I will be taking a bigger hit then we thought (unrelated to the 8 hours off).  ACK.  Not good.  But after only 3 weeks I can already feel a difference in my stress level and so we've found a way (love you, mom) to make it work.

And hey, I had another revelation about my fabric-line buying habits.  You know when I started to really get trapped buying a coordinated line instead of just random pretty fabrics?  It started when I began predominantly buying my fabrics on-line.  The inter-web, my love and passion, tricked me!  On-line retailers organize fabric by manufacturer and then collection- making it really easy to find one you like, and then the 7 that conveniently go with it...  Oooh, sneaky.  The worst culprit?  The fabulous Fat Quarter Shop- those gorgeous bundles of new lines, color coordinated and packaged like wonderful presents- are like crack to me.  I may need to rethink the organization of my stash- I have one shelf of batiks sorted by color, 2 shelves of basic colors sorted green/yellow/orange/pink/purple/blue,a bin of red, a bin of blacks and whites, a shelf of Kaffe, a shelf of novelties, and one shelf of designers by line.  I think what needs to be done is that designers-by-line shelf broken down by color and mixed in with the random fabrics.  Maybe that will help free me up mentally?

We shall see!

A Night at the Improv

(Except really it was part of one day...)

Stuck-in-a-rut is a good theme for this blog these days...  The blog itself barely exists and ain't so very impressive when I do bother with it...  I got stuck knitting socks and only socks for the better part of a year. I basically stopped sewing at all.  So much fun to read about, right?

So when I saw Jaqcuie's blog post about Project Improv- and I saw it late due to my blog-reading rut- I was very very excited.  Maybe to get excited about sewing again, I needed to get pushed right out of my complacency.  I never used to be one of those people that bought a bunch of fabric from one line and made it into a quilt.  In fact, when I worked at a quilt shop, I kind of secretly scoffed at people who weren't brave enough to play with their OWN fabric choices- the ones who came in with a picture of someone else's quilt and said "I want to make exactly that".  When I started quilting back in college, the first and foremost draw to me was--- picking out fabrics!  Mixing color and patterns!  Playing! 

So how did I become this boring lady who sees a line, buys a stack of FQs, and goes to town?  (I admit, if I look at the last few years of piecing, that's not ALL I do, but it does make up a goodly portion of it...)

First and foremost, I blame the designers.  Yup, I'm calling you out Kaffe Fassett, Joel Dewberry, Heather Ross, Anna Maria Horner, Heather Bailey, Denyse Schmidt, and of course Amy Butler.  A long long time ago, Kaffe was the only man who could claim my true fidelity.  I've always loved nearly every single piece he's put out...  But then, out of the blue, these other amazing, modern designers started popping up, making the niftiest fabric lines in the funkiest colors, ever!  Who could resist buying bundles of them?  And then, they all looked so pretty together, well, why would you mix them with anything else?  Slowly but very surely, I became the person who buys the bundle and makes the Yellow Brick Road. 

That right there is the other problem I've been dealing with.  My inherent lack of patience, combined with my full time job and two small-ish children, not to mention a husband who likes to spend at least SOME time with me, have left me with not so very much sewing time, and a desire to finish as many things as possible in that time.  Challenging piecing and designing became the absolute last thing I wanted to touch.  Give me a super simple cut and piece and be done with it project any day...  Patterns designed for FQs are often just the ticket... and I just happened to have all those FQ bundles laying around. 

Do you see the trap I laid for myself?

So there's the really long explanation for why Project Improv is exactly the kick in the pants this boring quilter needs to get back in the creative saddle.  (Let's see how many metaphors I can squeeze into one sentence there, eh?)

I'm starting slow and gentle.  Let's call this first project out of the gate my warm up.  I spent Monday- my new day off, hooray- playing in my sewing room. Well, and also cleaning, but that's NOT exciting or inspiring!  I have a recipient in mind for this one already, so that dictated color choices.  I luxuriated in spending a huge amount of time pulling fabrics from the shelf and playing.  I browsed around Flickr more than I have in months, seeking inspiration- and I found tons of it!  I changed my project idea several times as more and more fabrics seemed to want to a role in this quilt.  Eventually, I cut different width strips from all of them and laid them out in a big row.

They all got sewn together, and then brutally hacked apart a few moments later to form striped blocks, inspired by Flickrite and blogger Annaleih...

And that is where my time ran out... Had to pick up the girl at school, and then we stopped to pick up some white-on-white for sashing. My original plan was to use some plain turquoise Kona cotton, but even for me and my bright tastes, I think it was too much.  Right now I am debating cutting the striped blocks to slightly different sizes before adding the white sashing.  The quilt will probably be 3x3 blocks- small- and I wonder if having them the same size will give it a nice fluid but slightly dull look?  If they're all a wee bit different, will it be more interesting?  Look at me go!

I'm sure that like any new workout regimen, I'm going to be excited at first but then want to backslide into my old routines.  So I'm hereby publicly stating my goal of making several more progressively more adventurous pieces.  Now I can't slack because you all will call me on it, right?

Wish me luck!