Friday, August 29, 2008

Quilt Brownies

Yesterday I finished my Amish L-O-V-E block quilt top. I'm going to have to come up with a better name for that quilt. Anyway, I also did the boring work too of piecing the backing, piecing the batting and basting. I only finished basting half the quilt. Ran out of safety pins. Again. No sure if I'm going to go out and buy more or thread baste the rest of it even though it's so much slower. sigh.

Where are my quilt brownies? No, not the chocolate kind of brownies - believe me I could make a batch of those in a heartbeat. I mean the little fairy creatures who come do all your chores in exchange for a bowl of milk. I'd love to be able to set a project out and overnight have the boring bits magically done for me. Instead I have quilt kitties who do their best to slooow my work by sitting in the middle of it. I'm not the only one with that particular problem.

Continuing the quiltiness, I have links for you. In no particular order:

Over in the Summer Class there have been some fun flimsy finishes and great works in progress. Check that out here.

Quilt Pixie, who's already gotten herself an electronic copy of Gwen's book, is offering to host a scrap exchange. See her August 27th post.

Lynda has been playing with Fungly blocks as well as making people.

I'm enamored with Gypsy Quilter's one patch quilt that is in progress. She's mixing hand-dyes in with solid fabrics and I love the results.

New blogger Wendy at Swirls of Fabric just finished hand quilting freehand fans on a charming quilt. Holy cow, I was going to say the name of the block and it completely escapes me. What is that, Shoo Fly?

Check out new-to-me blog Septemberbird. I love her little chair quilts, plus she's got great pics from thrifting expeditions.

Okay, I think that's everyone on my list. Not that I can be sure, my brain is obviously not awake yet.

I just finished watching Mad Men Season One. I thoroughly enjoyed it. To get a quick review of what it's about, read this review of the very first episode. The show really is elegant and stylish and a great look at life at a mid-tier advertising agency in the early 60's. Look at all that cigarette smoke. I wouldn't have thought it, but my favorite bits of the show are when the guys are kicking around the advertising campaigns - I love seeing the creativity in action.

I wish wish men were still wore fedoras. They all look so classy. But you wouldn't catch me wearing those high heels and pasted on dresses the women were stuck in. Eek. One of the guys asks Peggy "What, are you Amish?" because her sweater isn't tight and her skirt is mid-shin. That would be me...

5 comments:

Joyce said...

Basting is the worst part of quilting. It's hard on the knees if you do it on the floor like I did. That's one of the reasons I like my frame so much. No more basting!

Anonymous said...

Hi Tonya ! How super that you mentioned my blog and chair quilts here ! Thank you so much :0)
I've been playing with your alphabets and having so much fun. Thank you for all of your tutorials ~

Donna said...

thanks for the mention -- the more the merrier for the swap I figure :-)

Thread basting might be slow, but the resulting quilt is sooo much lighter than one done with pins I often find it worth the effort... I've found if I pin the centre area well, I can then generally lift the quilt sandwich and place it on my kitchen table (draping all sides) and baste there, just sliding it around as necessary. Much easier then the floor crawl.

Brenda said...

thanks for the fun links. those chair quilts are amazing. good luck with the basting. seems for every fun part of quiltmaking, there's another not so fun. I put cleaning up my sewing area as the not fun part, but when I do, I always find something I had lost, and I have room to play with the projects I really like. do you get a long weekend in France? we're celebrating at a great provincial park this weekend --it has a beach, cycling trails, and a desert!

Cher said...

great links as always Tonya-I have detoured from sewing to purging/cleaning...I have a few new ideas waiting in the wings once I get over this cleaning fit :-)