It's Christmas in July! (+ A Giveaway Announcement)

60x60 inches of machine pieced goodness

Finishing a big project seems to spur me on to crossing other things off my list, it's just addictive once you get a taste of that satisfaction. It is perhaps the most pleasant part of being the kind of person who starts a lot too many things at once—you also get to finish a lot of things at once and the giddiness that causes is more than enough to keep me adding things back onto the list. Yup, it's a vicious cycle!

I finished this quilt top when I got back from Michigan and—gasp!—it's actually a quilt that I will be keeping to use in our very own home. I wanted to have something special to put out around the holidays each year that would become something of an heirloom. Yes, it's a bit loud. But, as I've mentioned before, this fabric instantly reminded me of the childhood classic "How The Grinch Stole Christmas" and all the crazy colors the animators used to depict Whoville. It is, therefore, our "Whoville Quilt" and keeps alive all those memories of childhood christmases. I definitely like the idae of snuggling up under all of that!

I have this draped across the couch in my studio now as I'm not quite sure how I want to finish it. I *think* I want to add a 2 inch white border all the way around and bind it in the red snowflake fabric. On the back, I'd like to repeat the LeMoyne Start block (aka my poinsettia/christmas star) and a block with embroidery noting when it was made and all that good info. As a nerdy museum person, I love finding any bit of information attached to a textile that's been handed down so I think incorporating that with embroidery is something I'd like to keep up on all my quilts in one way or another.

P.S. I have an announcement about the giveaway my last post! I want to give more people the chance to enter so I am extending the deadline until tomorrow at noon. Please enter and pass the word along and I will announce the winner tomorrow afternoon. Good luck!

From This to That

The past few months of my life in one big stack...

I *finally* finished my semester last week and am thrilled to be able to divert my attention to other things for a while without feeling guilty...even just being able to listen to whatever I want on my laptop as I type without getting distracted is completely freeing! I really enjoyed my classes  and feel I've found the right path, but have been eagerly awaiting the freedom that the summer months offer to a student. Between the gallery and the historical society, I am still working a ton but at least have some room to breath a bit between projects now and am geared up to spend as much leftover time as possible sewing up a storm and getting my etsy shop ready for the holidays so that I don't have to worry about it once the fall semester starts up in August.

Curling up with all good things in the falling light
(ahem, yes that is the new special edition of DOMINO!!! Hark, do you hear the angles singing?)

Since submitting my last research paper, I've been indulging in so many of the things  I love that I haven't gotten to enjoy much of these past few months...lots of extravagant cooking, a weekend camping get-away to the cape, a little lot of fabric stashing, and staying up late with my favorite magazines, embroidery, and darning work, while curled up with my cats, husband, and several seasons of How I Met Your Mother. The rewards in life certainly are so much sweeter when you know you've earned them several times over!

 

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...some yardage and fat quarters of AMH's loulouthi velveteen, cotton laminate,
and quilting cotton, Heather Ross' FFAIII in the  pink colorway, some Liberty of London from my Purl Soho trip,
AMH's pastry line and rare centerpiece, and a whole yard of Michael Miller's Vintage Stroll

Ok, so yeah, the above stash hoard is a bit more than I was planning on when I began picturing the reward I'd planned for myself upon the completion of a successful and utterly crazy semester. Luckily I was able to hunt down some sweet deals and it is lovely, ya?! It pretty much just has me smiling every time I look over at the freshly piled stack on my worktable and all I want to do is fondle it and ignore all other responsibilities. THERE, I admitted it!

   Soupe å l'Oignon Gratinée

One of the more elaborate cooking adventures we've managed as of late was Julia Child's recipe for cheesy onion soup, or Soupe å l'Oignon Gratinée, if you're feeling fancy. It's the third recipe I've tried now from her classic "Mastering The Art of French Cooking" and every single one has been superb..of course. The other two were the ratatouille and the riz a l'orientale, which is basically a rice bowl (but o so much more than that and my favorite so far)—who knew such a thing as French comfort food existed and was so completely amazing? Umm...ok so probably lots of you but yeah, I'm learning here folks.

I'm looking forward to being able to blog more often again now and hope to be sharing some finished pieces with you soon...until then, wishing you all just as many good things to be distracted by!

A Little Christmas Spice

Now available in my etsy shop!

I am almost free for the semester and have been able to spend some blissful time working in my studio as of late. I have my list of christmas gifts that I need to work on and have organized all my supplies for those but I couldn't help but put in some time on something that is for us! As a result, I am almost done now with my "Whoville" quilt top. Well, that is what I decided to call the quilt because the colors and style of the fabrics remind me of the animated version of Dr. Suess's The Grinch. For some reason, when it comes to Christmas, I am ALL ABOUT the older, vintage, slightly gaudy retro decorations. You will find none of those "frilly angels sighing dark red velvet with gold trim" type decorations at my house, no sir.

As I was going, I decided to use some of the leftover fabric for some pillows in the shop that are inspired by our quilt. I resized them (insert brief but mind-numbing confusion over how to enlarge a LeMoyne Star from an 8 inch block to a 12 inch block without a pattern...) and used some bright white cotton as a counterpoint to the cheery colors of Michael Miller's Christmas Spice collection fabrics. I love that the LeMoyne Star in the red and lime is appropriate both as a Christmas star and as a poinsettia and I think I'll be making a couple to complement our quilt too so that I can change out our usual pillow covers for holiday ones soon!


P.S. Did you notice the fancy schmancy new favicon above and facebook/pinterest/etsy/flickr buttons on my sidebar? Check those shiny suckers out! My husband, who is in a web design program as he transitions from graphic design, made them from scratch for me and I am o-so-proud of him for figuring out how to do it for me. I should also perhaps mention how patient and calm he was as I tried to describe the exact watercolor look I wanted for the buttons. He is just a good man, what can I say?!

Whoville quilt progress..at last!

Ok, I couldn't stay away any longer because I couldn't wait to share this with folks that I knew could get just as excited about it as I am! I have a few personal projects that I am bouncing between this week (as soon as i have a bit of time to myself I tend to get visions of grandeur and put way too much on my plate..) but this one is definitely the one I am most thrilled to see the progress of.

It took me forever to draw out a quilt design that I thought worked but I am very happy with how this one is coming to life and how it takes advantage of the all the colors in this fabric collection (Michael Miller: Christmas Spice) and the various size/scale of the patterns themselves.

lemoyne star quiltblock

In particular, I've been a bit giddy about finishing up the first LeMoyne star! I picked it because the star design fit with the central star on the Whoville christmas tree as they all sing around it and with the Christmas theme in general. But as an added bonus, I like how the alternating red and green make it look a bit like an abstracted poinsettia!

I am waiting on a bit more of this fabric to arrive since I didn't have quite as much as I needed with just the fat quarters and seem to have snagged up some just in time as it is getting harder and harder to find on the ole internets. In the meantime, I'm going to get to work on a few other things that I hope to share here as well in the days ahead and the next time you see this, it will be a finished quilt top!

the makings of our whoville quilt

this beautiful fabric is currently sitting on top of my printer waiting for me. yes, that's about how organized i am right now with piles of fabric laid aside for certain projects all over my workroom.

i apologize for all the early holiday posts! usually i don't decorate for christmas or anything until after thanksgiving but i've got to get the shop ready prior to that so i've got it on the brain now!

my last machine quilt gave me a lot of confidence and ever since i thought a fun and relatively quick project would be a christmas lap quilt to go in our living room during the holidays. i agonized over picking out the perfect fabric that we would want to curl up in year after year and finally fell in love with michael miller's "christmas spice" collection for it's bright cheery look and it's mix of retro and modern lines. the colors remind me of the old cartoon version of whoville in "how the grinch stole christmas."

my only problem now is that i can't for the life of me decide what kind of quilt design to use with it since some of the prints are huge and others so small in comparison. i just can't find a quilt pattern that will show them all off equally. and some are so different from each other that i might just give up on being able to combine them all into one quilt. what do you think, any ideas on what kind of design would work best?