SEW and Tell

Well THAT'S better. Not perfect, it could probably stand to have a couple more brown pieces near the bottom, but you know what? I'm ok with this. I am! I AM! Sorry, that wasn't directed at you, it was directed at the voice in my head that's telling me exactly where the next brown piece should go. I'm done. That's the problem with random, it's never really all that random, is it? We say we'll leave it to chance, but if we pull out two of the same thing, we put one back, don't we? That's the fun of quilting, I think.

So there's that. Isn't it pretty fabric?

When I first showed it to the Sweet Baboo, he really liked the colors, and wanted it to be our summer quilt.

Not that we'd need one today, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen gazillion degrees. Celsius. How hot is the sun? I just Googled it and got ten different answers, so I'm going to say that the surface of the sun is whatever the temperature is today in Boulder Creek. Which Google also tells me is 91, so clearly Google is broken. Someone should look into that.

Back to Neptune! No, not the planet. That sounds like a bad movie starring Tim Allen. Back to Neptune! (cue action music)

I meant Neptune the quilt. More of a Poseidon kind of thing, although did you know that the planet Neptune was named that because of it's blue color? And some giant storm spots. And the old man with a long beard and a huge Trident that they could see with their telescope.

True story.

Ish.

It's not very big yet. I think it's going to need some more rows. And columns. They're 10" blocks, so it's roughly 40" X 60", give or take a seam allowance. I don't think you can really see the circles that the pattern makes quite yet, but I didn't want the blocks to be too small, because, and you might not know this, because I love Neptune fabric so much. I didn't want to chop it up too small.

Because I love it so.

And while we're playing Show and Tell, here's the signature quilt that I'm making for my ex-boss.

If you've been following along at home, you might notice that it's much, MUCH smaller than 192 blocks. It's not that he doesn't have 192 friends, I'm sure he does. It's just that I have the attention span of a fruit fly. A fruit fly with ADD. Although I'm going to try to fight it and add on a couple more rounds. His party is, oh, let's see... SATURDAY!

So I really should get a move on. Nothing like a deadline to get the juices flowing! Or, you know, to push you into paralysis, so that all you can do is stuff Xanax into your tube of cookie dough as you lie on the couch watching Law and Order marathons. It could go either way.

Here's my Sweet Baboo, he's so helpful. Not only is he my official hanger, he also went to Kmart early this morning to get me a new memory card for my camera. a 4GB memory card! And a Mountain Dew.

I'm so spoiled.

Neptune Love

I love Neptune!

I just wanted to get that out. It's so pretty, and I love how Tula Pink hides cute little sea motifs in the prints.

So clever.

I've been so busy lately; weddings, funerals, parties, work stuff.

It was nice to finally get in there and cut up my Neptune stash.

It's so hard to cut into that stuff that you love, isn't it?

I may have mentioned... I LOVE Neptune. I've been obsessed with it for quite a while, but I'm also obsessed with fining things on sale. So when Fabric Depot had 14 prints 40% off, I jumped!

Then I waited, and petted it, and arranged it in different configurations...

I went through a bazillion pattern choices before deciding on the "Kaleidoscope" block.

Mmm... nice pile of cut pieces.

Sew them into pairs,

sew the pairs into halves, sew the halves into a block.

Oww! Check out those points!

I can brag now, because the points when I sewed the blocks together aren't that hot.

C'est la vie.

So many bigger things to be upset over. I can't waste my energy crying over wonky points.

That doesn't mean I'll be showing you them any time soon though.

A girl knows how to hide her flaws!

Yes! No? Meh... maybe...

Ok then! I'm done. Done, finished, completed.

Or am I?

Does anyone else see it? Is it giving anyone else a twitch in their eye? Is it just me? Because it might just be me. I am sometimes annoyed by things that annoy no one else.

Do you see it?

I think I got sick of the dark brown strips before I got to the end.

It's looking a little unbalanced to me.

And it doesn't help that it's the dark brown, which A) stands out and B) carries more visual weight, so I feel like if it's going to be unbalanced, there should be more of the brown towards the bottom. If at all. But ideally, it should have a nice mix of everything all over, and my eye shouldn't be drawn to the big, bare patch at the bottom.

Dang.

I wonder how much it's going to bother me?

Am I going to have to rip something out and stick in some brown?

Maybe applique some brown over another piece?

Maybe keep it folded so I never have to see the whole thing at once?

Sigh.

And I was so proud of my borders.

Still am.

See, I KNEW going in that the borders had the potential to give me serious eye twitches. Because it's such a big print, with a lot of negative space, it was going to be unbalanced if I just slapped on some borders. So (with the Sweet Baboo's help) I picked some strips that were similar, then pieced them together so that either side would have a big bunch of flowers in the middle.

See?

I like that.

That looks good.

Now about that brown...

I'm giving you a Sultry look...

September already? How did that happen?

No one asked me about this.

But hey, September is National Sewing Month, so it can't be all bad! Here's MY contribution. You know I love to celebrate things.

So remember the Sultry quilt?

I decided to hack the edges off and sew the braids together after all, because I wanted to finish this before I turned NINETY!

So hack, hack, hack... sew, sew, sew... Ok!

It's done.

Lovely.

Gorgeous.

Hmm.

How did it end up so short? You can't really tell from this picture, but somehow it ended up wider than it is long.

What?

Ok, so it said to trim the braids to something like 7 1/2 inches wide, and I trimmed them to 8 inches.

So yeah, that's really... half an inch over seven braids... carry the two... I before E... three and a half inches wider than it called for.

But come on!! Three and a half inches!

That should not have equaled the difference that I got here.

Good thing I had ordered that extra jelly roll, so I ripped the bottoms apart, ripped out the parts that were already trimmed, and started sewing some more strips.

And sewed.

AND SEWED.

And ended up with a nice rectangle. Like God intended. Going the right way. Just one more border and we'll cross this one off and send it winging to the long arm quilter.

It's the obstacles that make the journey interesting, no?