A Quickie Quilt

So I've been having some issues with depression lately and getting bogged down both creatively, and in the use of my free time. So this past weekend I thought one way that might help me to break out of my funk would be to run out a quick and dirty project, both to recharge my batteries and drain-o the creative constipation I've been having (lovely visual yes?)

Seeing as it was St. Patrick's day, I thought - why not make an Irish Chain quilt?

Why not indeed.

It's a simple pattern that I'd done a variant of once before, so I scooped up my pile of coupons and snagged some quilting cotton at Joanns for a weekend of 'personal time' with my sewing machine (wow, 2 slightly disturbing visuals in one post - I'm on a roll!).

An Irish chain is a basic criss-cross design, and for this one I spiced it up by using 2 different colors in the background instead of one. I started with the idea that I wanted the color orange in this quilt. It's one of my favorite colors and I hadn't used it (in quantity) in any quilt to date. After falling for the perfect orange, I thought it would be cool to use fabric with circular patterns in it for each color. I like my fabrics in quilts to follow a 'theme'. All floral, all stripes, etc because I feel like it makes for a more cohesive design. After finding a teal-y blue and a white with copper metallic circles on it (how much more perfect could THAT find get???). I was set to go. You can see my selections on the right.

So in approximately 24 hours I made this:

I apologize for the bad pictures. I really need a good camera - these (like everything else) were taken on my phone. Also, obligatory 'kitty helped me' photo on the right!

The borders stumped me for a bit, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, especially since I didn't have miles of extra fabric. This top in the end used nearly every scrap of the 8.5 yards I had. I want to see if I can find the blue somewhere else so I can bind it in that color.

Before binding it will have to be quilted, but that will come later. I haven't settled on a pattern for the quilting yet and it's time to get back to other projects.

That said, it sure was nice to clear my head on this project!

UGgghh! Bad timing!

Do you ever have an idea for a project or something you want to do, but it's just about THE WORST possible time? This just happened to me. I have a fabulous idea for a new quilt. And I still haven't finished my other sewing project. Or my final. Or a bunch of house stuff (I'm looking at you boxes of vinyl fencing in the garage!). Also being broke from car repairs throws a wrench in as well.

I hope when I finally get to this ambiguous mystery quilt I'm as excited about it as I am right now.

Woo! HP in the House!

Ok, so I mentioned at the beginning that I would also be including some posts on 'projects' that I'm working on. This one is for the house though, kind of. Last night I got a call I have been anxiously waiting over 2 months for: my Harry Potter quilt was done!

I enjoy sewing, and quilting is one aspect of that. I spent 2 years piecing together a quilt of characters, props, and locations with patterns mostly created by the lovely Jennifer over at www.sewhooked.org. I designed the borders, and painstakingly selected fabric for each square. I usually quilt my blankets myself on my Viking, but this one deserves some extra love, so I took it to a pro. With her equipment she was able to be a lot more detailed and precise then I. Here's a sneak peak of the front:

 

She matched the colors with what was on the front, and mostly did fill in the backgrounds.and I backed it in black, so that means....

 

Super awesome pictures stitched on the back!!! And of course, obligitory 'cat claiming the new quilt' picture: