Clan MacPurple Quilt

These blocks have been in a bag for years.  I finally sashed them with bits of purple or white as the mood suited me and squared them all to the same size.  Meh.  It's a nice enough top.  Nothing to write home about.  I wanted to find some nice white fabric with purple flowers on it for the back.  No can do.  Apparently they don't make fabrics like that anymore.  Anywhere.  Really.

So I decided I'd go with a plaid.  A hand made plaid.  This was the most fun I've had piecing in months.  Wait!  It's the ONLY piecing I've done in months!  Strangely enough, Beth was thinking plaids lately too.  I wonder what she's cooking up?

Longarmed and Dangerous

I'll be posting a note on the studio door this weekend warning all who dare approach that a Quiltathon is in progress. I'm taking it seriously this time since I had to spend the entire quiltathon last time doing hand sewing on bindings.
Step One: shovel, blast, scrape a clean spot on the sewing table.
Step Two: prepare The List

Here's a picture of the things I will be working on, but I failed to number them in the order in which they'll be worked.

1. The dread three block quilt that I've fiddled with, fixed, frog stitched, and adjusted for years. This weekend I'll be sizing the border blocks and hopefully getting them attached to the top.
2. Depression blocks. This is currently a 4 x 4 block quilt and it looks too small to me. So I'll be adding another round of blocks to make it a 5 x 5 block quilt (each block consists of 16 HSTs) and then I'll add borders. In order to add this round, I'll need a total of 320 HSTs. Right now I have 115. If I manage to get the remaining 205 HSTs seamed (not even pressed or squared up) I'll probably move on to the next project.
3. A refreshing glass of water. Drier, windier weather has done unpleasant things to my already failing complexion. I'll be drinking lots of this during the quiltathon. Don't even THINK I'll be giving up the coffee though.
4. Cranston fruit blocks. I hauled this out and looked at it and can't really even tell what I was doing with it. So the time I spend on this during the weekend will probably be a bull session wherein I decide what the existing blocks can do and how many more blocks can be squeezed out of the remaining fabrics. This time, however, I shall WRITE IT DOWN.
5. Blue batiks. You may recall the recent quilt ("Judy's Fishes") I finished for a friend's new baby. The parents are going to get a coordinating quilt. I'll not describe it here, but when I work on it over the weekend I'll post sketches. When I finish Kathrine's pillows I will start on the cutting for this top. Very little piecing will be required since the overall effect will be the same as for a wholecloth quilt.
6. Leftovers. This is leftover backing fabric from a quilt that lives on my bed most of the year. There's plenty here to make a couple of nice pillowcases to coordinate, so that'll happen this weekend as a fast start-to-finish project should my enthusiasm flag.
7. Scrappy nine-patch blocks. These have been sitting around too long. Really. The idea is to create a checkerboard effect with the existing 21 nine patch blocks and 21 shaded neutral blocks. It should go together pretty darned quick. I'll do the neutral fabrics selection and cutting for this quilt after I finish with #5 above.
8. Throw pillows for Kathrine. I promised her these two months ago when I sent her some curtains for her room. My bad. They'll be another quick project and they are probably where I'll start bright and early tomorrow morning.
9. (Not pictured) Scrappy Quilter's Jacobs Ladder Quilt. It's on the machine right now. I ((sigh)) messed up on a customer quilt. Two motifs into the plan I realized it just didn't look good. The two motifs will be picked out, the areas lightly brushed to remove lint and needle marks, and the (already rethought) new motif will be quilted into all twenty odd places it needs to go. Thank goodness I caught the goof only two iterations into the process. I only plan to get the frog stitching done during the quiltathon. I'll get the thread picking done on this as early in the weekend as I can so it doesn't loom at me malevolently the whole time.
10. (Pictured at right) Black strippy quilt. This one is worked up in EQ6 and when I get to it I'll post a picture of the sketch. All I'll be doing this weekend is selecting the blacks I'll be using for the quilt unless by some miracle just about everything else gets done on this list. This is like a super duper strictly for my own pleasure kind of quilt. I haven't had a chance to work in black for quite some time and I always feel recharged when I get to.

DD#1 will be here tomorrow to learn how I make sticky buns. This will slow me down a bit but in such a fun and fulfilling way that I just can't fault it. She's become quite a seamstress herself in recent years, so she may bring over a little something to work on with me while we wait for dough to rise.

Alrighty then. That's my plan for the upcoming quiltathon. What'll you be doing?

Current Project Updates

I've updated the pictures (haven't done any actual work mind you!) on the First Focus (quilt as you go) sampler and the WOW Row Robin. You can now see all the wow rows and all the blocks for the focus swap are spread out so you can see them too. I'll keep all the older photos in the album as I work on each project, but I think I'll update the sidebar links to always show whatever is the most current.

Wild Coffee has been updated as well but this is because I appliqued another block for it Saturday while my quilting friends were over. Three down, six to go! When I finish appliqueing the basic shapes on these blocks I get to do all the fancy work to them. I can hardly wait.

Current Project List

I made a list of all the projects I am currently "working" on. These are all projects where SOME assembly has actually occured - so I don't have to list all the stacks of fabric set aside for something that I haven't even put scissors to yet! Each item links to a picture of the project so far. Be warned, however, that these are not great pictures. They're really just so I can remember what the heck the thing is. Most of them are pictures of baggies full of blocks. You can see them all on the sidebar just above my label cloud.

Go ahead - you now have my permission to laugh and point at how many unfinished tops I have sitting around in baggies.

My goal is to steadily work through these between now and the end of 2009. May not seem like much of a goal to some but I also have to crowd lots of eating, sleeping, and hanging around in the back yard with my dog into the schedule.