thrifty jackpot!

 

a while back i found this AMAZING vintage fabric at the flea market. SIX whole yards and in great shape!!

 i was thinking i'd use it to back a quilt, but it's so nice i might put it together with these two other vintage fabrics that i haven't had the heart to cut into and make a whole cloth quilt. gears are churning!

in the meantime it's plenty of rest and hot tea to knock out this cold that i've finally gotten. yuck!

happy monday to you all!

 

CAT AND QUILTS

hi! i am excited to show you my new set of postcards called "cat and quilts" starring my furry friend, violet!  she loves snuggling up on all of the quilts and crocheted blankets around here, and i got some nice photos of her in the act!

i'll have these for sale at the craft fair, individually and in sets of five. the sets are bundled in wraps made with sweet vintage fabrics and  ric-rac trim.

i have also dusted the cobwebs off of  my long neglected etsy shop, and you can find them there now! if you live outside the united states, please leave me a message here or on etsy and i will be happy to find the shipping cost for your location.

thanks to everyone who reads my blog and leaves such nice comments! i love knowing you're out there!

happy monday!

**note** the colors are best represented in the very first photo. thanks!

birthday/anniversary quilt is FINISHED!!!!!

my brother's 50th birthday is today(happy birthday, andy!!!), and i wanted to make something special for this occasion and also for he and my sister-in-law's wedding anniversary, which is right around the corner. so, time for a quilt! i wanted to make them something a little more modern looking, so i thought i'd stick to solid colors and a very graphic design. i'd seen this pattern  
on several blogs and on flickr and thought it would be perfect.

i hand quilted it with a 3-inch grid which looks pretty good!  my stitches could be a bit smaller, but i wanted to get this darn thing done in time!

one thing that i really like about making a quilt is that you take all of these little separate pieces and sew them all together, and after everything is quilted and washed and dried it becomes one whole quilt, no longer the little pieces, but its own thing. it's very satisfying!

oh, and violet gave it a test drive and the cat seal of approval ;)

that's my secret project and i'm glad it's done and delivered!!  now i can work on my x and + quilt. hurray!!!

ten

i love making these blocks!

x and + update

 blocks 3,4 and 5! i have made great strides on my SECRET PROJECT, so now i can make more of  these x and + squares. i am getting over the "clown quilt" worry and am enjoying the arbitrariness of this project. just no rhyme or reason to these squares. so fun! 

there is a very cool breeze coming in the window. i need a little sweater!! yay!! my favorite weather!!

happy hump day!

 

dumb in dummerston

on sunday we took a road trip to dummerston, vermont where there was a vintage camper rally going on. we went to it last year and there were so many cool old campers. i was excited to get some great pictures!  so we drive into the campground, which is looking suspiciously empty, only to find out that everybody had left around noon time and we were there at 2:00!!!!! so disappointing, but we did see this cute little coleman camper that looks like it could fit in your back pocket.

so we did some exploring and stopped at this covered bridge in dummerston where lots of folks were cooling off in the river. we also got some cheese  at the grafton village cheese shop-seriously delicious !

i have, however, smartened up a bit in the quilting department. i originally found a great tutorial for the x and + quilt here. it's a great tutorial, but the blocks are only 7 1/2" square. at that rate i would never finish the quilt! so in the middle of the night the other night i started figuring in my head how to make it bigger and got up and wrote all of the measurements down, rather proud of myself and my mad math skills! the next day i made a paper mock-up, thankfully, because my figuring was complete bull$*&#! was i dreaming or what?!

so i have since found this 
which yields a 13" square. that's more like it! hopefully after i make a few more blocks i'll have this out of my system for a while so i can return to my secret project, which i should be working on!!

happy hump day!

uh oh, new obsession...

inspired by this.

andddd...tonight is a FULL MOON!! july's full moon is called the "buck moon" because young buck deers' antlers start to poke through this month. also called a "thunder" moon .

happy monday!

...and i get my life back

i can say i pretty much got lost in this quilt. i was DRIVEN to finish it! sunday night i finished the hand quilting, and tuesday i found the perfect color to bind it with. you know how you have a certain color in mind, and then you can never find it? well, i went to the fabric store and there it was. a kind of orange-y salmon-y red. thank you kaffe fasset!

so tuesday night i set to work binding the quilt, and , ta-da! it's done!

itch!

the quilt is made up of 4" squares, 20 squares x 22, about 80" x 84". i washed and dried it last night, and i love how it came out all crinkly, especially on the back. due to my "pinning together rush job", there were a few puckery places on the back. but now the whole thing looks wrinkly, so that's great!

i think violet's cooperation today was born of heat prostration (it was almost 90 degrees today!!!) rather than any desire to pose. poor girl!

excuse my color differences. i like that "retro" setting on my camera because it makes everything so soft looking, but the real color is more like the last photo.

now i can do things like mow the lawn and work in the garden...*yay*  (and maybe cook and clean...)

and, so exciting, one more day of work, then v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n!!!!!!!

thursday

she's got legs.

she knows how to use them.

whew!

yesterday i finished the quilt top!!! it is made up of 4" squares, 400 of them, 20 squares x 20 squares, measuring 80" x 80". i started the quilting today, and that is going to take TIME!!

boy, that closeup sure shows my wobbly seams, and there are plenty of places where my points don't line up. fortunately for me these things don't bother me in the least! basically, "sewed together" is what i shoot for!

i really hope i finish this before the summer is over. better go get quilting!

sewing marathon

the other day i came across this, and have been more than slightly obsessed with this quilt (and this blog!) ever since. i've been lying awake at night thinking about making a "low volume" quilt. that's special quilt language for a quilt made up of all pale and neutral colors. so wednesday i came up with this:

and started doing this:

we went to see steve earle last night, and i knew we would be getting home late, so i took today off and had a sewing marathon! my goal was to finish sewing up half of the top, and i did it!

great music on the turntable as i sewed!

great music last night!

deal of the century!

i found this quilt at the flea market on sunday! it is more of a coverlet, i guess you would say, than a quilt, as it is not quilted or tied, just sewed across a few times with a sewing machine. nevertheless, it is quite pretty and in nearly perfect shape!

the fabric is kind of curious. as you can see in the third photo, strips of, i guess, trim have been sewed onto solid fabric. OR, is there fabric like this?? i can't really imagine doing all of that work sewing on trim when you could just use a patterned fabric. anyway!

SO! it was priced at $17. yes, that's right. $17. as i was looking at it, the guy said "how about $15"? i couldn't not get it! wow!

deal of the century!!!