I Think I'm Caught Up?

I just spent my lunch hour browsing through my blog list - which is again waaaaay too long. Not humanly possible for me to do them all justice. Fellow blogger Crispy has a policy of commenting every blog she visits, I wish I'd have time to do that or the discipline to only look at a few blogs, sigh.

Anyway, I have a headache now because I've seen so many beautiful projects and have about 5 patterns I want to make.

Which brings me back to my WIPs - I'm actually kind of tired of them. I wish they were all done so that I can start a new project with a clean slate.

Hah, like that's ever going to happen!

Here's a little update of the bird quilt I made for my friend.


She loved loved loved it :) First there was a scream of delight about the quilt, then a little shriek - she does great shrieks! - as she looked at each diamond and spotted the birds, haha - it was hillarious :)

It took 3 days of travel and camping before we had a dry, well-lit spot to get started. I showed her the running stitch and off she went. I couldn't believe her first seam (outlining the blue diamonds) - the stitches were straight, even and small. Incredible. She actually got a bit more lax later, probably tired :) But what a natural she is and she really seemed to like it!

On the last evening of our vacation, I finally had a chance to show her the binding stitch, Mal's hidden ladder binding stitch (See new HOW TO's tutorial list on the right).

I'd forgotten to take a picture of the backing before, didn't I? Here it is, a nice soft and happy flanelette:

Oh, and last but not least, a cute story: My friend slept a lot in the car and on the day after we had the first quilting lesson, I caught her like this:



Think she's attached to the quilt??? :)

Helping Out A Friend

A dear friend of mine is going through a difficult time - too much worrying, and extreme amount of worrying, so much, that it's affecting her life enjoyment and her daily functioning. She's going on vacation with me soon, but I also thought, what better form of therapy (besides counselors and pills :) than quilting. She's never quilted before, but I asked her if she's interested in handywork and sewing, and she gave me the thumbs up.
So first I thought I'd have her piece a little quilt, but the layout I had in mind would have been tricky, with bias lines and triangles:


So instead, I whipped it together in less than an hour and will sandwich it for her - she can handquilt it on her own time, and I'll give her basic lessons on handquilting and binding on our vacation.

She loves birds, so I went through my stash and found all the fabrics I could with bird themes. It turned out cute, I think :)


The diamonds are 6"x6" with light blue background and blue-purple-yellow batik as the framing triangles (cut from 6" squares, except the 4 smaller corner triangles which I cut off 6.5" squares).

I really hope this will work for my friend, it's worth a try anyway, maybe we'll have a novice quilter soon!!!