Meh

Do you ever put something together and it was most definitely better in your mind than the actual product?  That's how I feel about my February blocks for do.Good Stitches.  It's mostly because I had really limited options for fabric in my stash.  She asked for Burnt Orange, Olive Green, Royal and Navy Blue with a tan or beige background.  It's meant for a boy, so it's not supposed to be super floral either.  This is the closest I could get without going out and buying more fabric.  I don't know - I may have to bite the bullet and go get different fabric.  I'm going to think on it for a bit, and see what I decide.

 

Blocks Unite

The one advantage of my husband's ridiculous working hours this weekend?  My sewing machine and I have gotten some quality time together.  I got caught up with the Building Basics 9 patches first.  Nothing fancy, but I like them.

Next came putting together all of the blocks from the January do.Good Stitches Wish Circle. It's kinda wild and crazy, but I think a little boy is going to really like it.

Next up - I need to make my February blocks for do.Good Stitches and get another baby girl quilt done quickly.  :)

Linkin' up to BOMs Away.

A Clumsy Coordination

I'm the person you most definitely don't want on your baseball team. When we did tennis and racket ball in gym class my partner made up new rules, so we could hit whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.  I'm pretty sure he did this to not make me feel bad about my ineptitude.  It's the whole eye-hand-foot-coordination thing.  I ran cross country in high school.  That was fine, but as soon as you put a basketball in my hands I suddenly forget how to move my legs appropriately.  I play the piano really well, but if you add the petals on an organ I play like a beginner.  I played soccer as a child, because if you did use your hands it was a penalty.  Now that I'm an adult it's easy to avoid the things I really can't do...most of the time.  Then comes along an issue that I would never have guessed would happen - I started to quilt.  Haha - Making quilts is not the actual problem.  The problem is that in order to Free Motion Quilt well you have to coordinate the movement of your hands on the quilt with the speed of the pedal controlled by your foot.  (A huge face palm feels appropriate at this particular place in the conversation).  My machine has a beautiful automatic feeder and I honestly rarely ever use the pedal, but as I've wanted to do more advanced quilting I've found that I need the ability to speed up and slow down for many of the designs to be done accurately.  The lack of coordination was coming back to haunt me, and then I saw Leah Day's Building Blocks Quilt Along.  I know how to do all the piecing already, but I thought I could use the experience to start back at the beginning of Free Motion Quilting and force myself to only use the pedal.  It's been a great experience already and it's only been a month.  I quilted one block a day this week and it feels good. 

Most of the issues I've had are unrelated to the pedal - I need to get a different marking pen, because it doesn't show up on the darker fabrics.  That made the wiggly U design done by freehand since I couldn't see the markings.  It still looks fine though, so at least it didn't hurt anything this round.  The Gridlines in Block 2 were fun for me, because I almost never free motion straight lines, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. 

The Spirals in Block 3 gave me the most trouble, but I was intentionally playing with speed, so I'm not all that upset by how it looks.  I'm making progress, so that's all that matters to me right now.

Of Great Worth

This little quilt is headed to a baby of a mom who's going through a rough time with her family and some pregnancy complications.  Her situation is a good reminder that although having a child is an exciting and wonderful thing, it also can be a difficult process and bring added stress.

It is so true that anything worthwhile takes great effort.  I would put pregnancy/child birth under that category.  I consider my husband and my children to be the things of greatest worth in my life, and I would definitely say it takes serious amounts of work to raise children well.  It also takes a lot of effort to have a happy and healthy marriage, and I don't think that's a bad thing.  It helps us realize how much they mean to us, but sometimes on the rougher days we need reminders of why it's worth the effort.  We need an encouraging word or a thoughtful gesture to get us smiling again.  I'm hoping this quilt cheers her up a bit even if it doesn't change her difficult situation.

The back is a cuddly flannel

Tuh-Duh!

Yay!  I'm so excited about this finish!  I even have 3 days to spare until the baby shower.  The pattern is Marmalade Squares (Two!).  This is a complete change of topic, but I was amazed at how much glare the snow produced in these pictures even after taking the pictures in the shade without a flash.

 I did rather wide lines (3.5" apart) for the basic quilting.  I like my quilting to be sparse on baby quilts - I prefer cuddly to decorated, but that's just my own personal thoughts on the matter.  Having said that, I couldn't resist one fun design in the squares.  I quilted Heart Ripples which is essentially just echoed hearts with stipling in between them.  I faded out the color in the picture so you could see the quilting a bit better:

I used the rest of my strips for the back of the quilt.  I like that the front and back coordinate. It's my matchy matchy nerdy tendency coming out.  :)

Quilt Top Joy

I'm so excited about this quilt top.  I probably say that about most of them, but I really do mean it.  :)

It's bigger than I normally like baby quilts, but that's quite alright.  She'll grow into the quilt.  Kiddos have a habit of doing that rather too quickly.  I've got a week to finish it, so I need to put together the back quickly and layer it. 

Fat Quarter Goodness

I won a gift certificate for Christa Quilts from my participation in TGIFF a couple of months ago and I was so excited to get these beauties in the mail:

Bohemian Blue and Purely Purple Fat Quarter Bundles!

I've been waiting for the perfect project to use them.  I found the Marmalade Squares (Two!) quilt pattern and knew it would work perfectly for a baby girl quilt.  I've got the 5" square section completed and now it's time to work on outside rows.

This week has actually been slightly on the productive side with a completion of another quilt top (see here for details):

Other projects

Building Blocks Quilt Along: I need to quilt 2 of my blocks

do.Good Stitches- up to date

Sisters BOM- waiting for some inspiration on how to quilt it

Christmas quilt - ya, it still hasn't been touched...

Upcoming projects

1 more Baby Girl Quilt & 1 Baby Boy Quilt
Madrid Temple Wholecloth Quilt

Stats for the Week:
New projects - 2
Completed projects - 0
WIP- 6

Linkin' up to WIP Wednesday.

Book Club

I was at Book club last week and it occurred to me that I hadn't written about the books we've been reading for some time now.  They've been all quite different from each other.  Here are the last 4 we've done:

These is my Words by Sarah Agnes:

Inspired by the author's original family memoirs, this absorbing story introduces us to the questing, indomitable Sarah Prine, one of the most memorable women ever to survive and prevail in the Arizona Territory of the late 1800s. 

It took me a little while to be completely invested in the book, but I ended up absolutely loving it.  Sarah Prine is such a loveable character and I loved Captain Jack Elliot even more.  It was a beautiful, heartbreaking story about the struggles in the Wild West.  PS- I bawled like a baby at the end of this book.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

The story of 17-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle" — and the heart of the reader — in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.  

I had heard such wonderful things about this book, but I was really disappointed.  It was painful reading about each of the characters making poor choices throughout the entire book.  I kept waiting for something to turn around, but there wasn't any real resolution and none of the characters ended up happy.  It was a really unsatisfying book.  Meh.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia by Loung Ung

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed. Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

It sounds wrong to say I enjoyed this book or liked it.  Do you know what I mean?  It is pretty vivid in its detail and horror.  It's even more heart wrenching that I know it's a true story.  I find it so sad that people can so quickly turn inhumane and commit such atrocities.  I thought it was particularly poignant being told from the eyes of a child.   I read the sequel and didn't like it anywhere near as much.  Another really good book that I read that also takes place in Cambodia is The Rent Collector by Camron Wright.  It's fiction, but based on real people.  I highly recommend it.

Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson

At eighteen, Kate Worthington knows she should be getting serious about marriage, but her restless heart won't let her settle down. To escape her mother's meddlesome influence, she dreams of traveling with her spinster aunt to exotic India. But when the opportunity arises, Kate finds herself making a bargain with her mother: she will be allowed to go only if she spends a season at the family's wealthy estate, Blackmoore, where she must secure and reject three marriage proposals. Enlisting the help of her dearest childhood friend, Henry Delafield, Kate sets out to collect her proposals so she can be on her way. But Henry's decision to help threatens to destroy both of their dreams in ways they could never imagine. Set in Northern England in 1820, Blackmoore is a regency romance that tells the story of a young woman struggling to learn how to listen to her heart.

I absolutely loved Donaldson's first book (Edenbrooke), so I was a bit nervous that I would have too high of expectations for her second book.  I don't know how it's possible, but I thought this book was even better than her first.  I loved it!  Donaldson has a beautiful ability to really make relationships come alive and let us see into the hearts of these characters with their natural insecurities without it feeling one dimensional or forced.  I should clarify that if you're looking for the deeper meanings of life, this may not be the book for you, but it's a great (clean) regency romance.

Ok, now I'm all caught up.  Have you read anything really good lately?