FINISHED: Cat Lady Quilt (Em will have to fight Quesnel for it, though…)

January 21, 2022March 14, 20255 Comments

This quilt has been a long time comin’…

I think Em asked for this Cotton + Steel Cat Lady fabric for their…twelfth birthday? They were into quilting at the time, but the interest waned soon after. So it sat on my fabric shelf for years upon years until I decided to make it up into a quilt for Em’s sixteenth birthday two years ago. I only got the top finished and presented that to the birthday kid with the promise to get it completely finished soon after. BUT…it was 2020, I had just started my Blank Quilting ambassadorship and…it was 2020.

So the Cat Lady quilt went into the hibernation pile and did not come back out until this month. Em will turn eighteen next month (!) and it just started bugging me that this quilt wasn’t done, so I made a goal to finish it before their birthday. Ta da!

Details:

Pattern: Layers of Charm, by Fat Quarter Shop. I’ve made this pattern before and really love it for those prints you just don’t want to cut up too much. C+S prints are generally super cute and I like to keep them as intact as possible, so this was a good pattern for that.

Modifications: I went with a 6×8 layout for a bigger throw quilt ~57 x 76″.

Fabric: “Cat Lady” collection, by Sarah Watts for Cotton + Steel, ca. 2015. I also added in various other Cotton + Steel scraps I had in my stash that I thought Em would like.

Backing: “Cuddly Kittens Flannel Sorbet Kitten Faces #18119” by Wendy Kendall for Robert Kaufman Fabrics, 4.75 yards, pieced vertically.

Quilting: Aurifil 40 wt. in top and bobbin, #2021. I asked Em what they wanted for the quilting and they said, “That wavy line quilting,” so I stipple-stitched it. It’s been a long time since I’ve done free-motion quilting of any kind, and I think this is the biggest project I’ve ever free-motion quilted.

Binding: Scraps of the C+S Bluebird print I had from my friend making a dress from it.

Dates: Pieced January 27-30, 2020; Quilted January 4-7, 2022

Cat Lady Quilt in-progress, January 2020

I was so excited to get this done, and asked Em to do a photoshoot with it, but when it came time to do it, they were taking a nap. Undaunted, I decided to just do a one-woman shoot with the couch to help me out because…want to be done. But, weirdly, our cat Quesnel became OBSESSED with getting in my face while I tried to take pictures of this quilt, and the resulting photos are…well:

Mercifully, Em stumbled into the room after hearing me asking Quesnel to please stop getting in my shots, and Quesnel was momentarily distracted.

I asked Em if they’d help me out with some more photos, and they were less than enthusiastic about the task.

So I made it work.

All while being supervised by the true overlord of this house:

I’m surrounded by crazy children and cats all the time, and I’m loving the photographic evidence that I acquire when they’re being especially difficult.

Popping In…

January 20, 2022Leave a comment

…to let you know that I am still here and I haven’t abandoned blogging. My back went out last week, and then there was another thing that I don’t want to talk about on the internet, and then I went to the doctor yesterday to talk about the thing I don’t want to talk about, and he was like, “Hey, you didn’t get your flu shot this year, would you like to do that now?”

And I was like, “Yeah, sure, that’s probably wise.”

And then he said, “Do you need a COVID booster, too?”

And I was all wide-eyed with disbelief and said, “You have those?! I haven’t been able to schedule one online.”

“Yeah, we’ve got them, you want one?”

“Um, YES.”

So now, on the day that I thought I’d finally get back to doing some sewing or knitting after way too many days of not sewing or knitting, I’m nursing a very sore left deltoid and feeling slightly sick and feverish as my body figures out how to deal with the injected germs. Which is the absolutely best way to spend today, but it infringes on my crafty goals and I feel a little panicked that I’m totally going to miss the mark on a few of them, but then I remind myself that they’re just benchmarks in the air that I thought would be nice to achieve and nothing bad will actually happen if I don’t finish them on time, and geez, calm down.

I might try knitting a little today, just to try to work some of the soreness out of my shoulder, but I might not because it’s boring knitting that I’m really bored of and geez, I need a new knitting project. So many people are making awesome sweaters right now and I want to be like them. But noooooo, I’ve decided to be responsible and stuff and finish UFOs and dumb stuff like that. (It is so hard to keep that commitment when you feel like crap and decide to do a little online window shopping because you’re too worn out to really do anything else.)

(I may or may not have fallen down a retail therapy rabbit hole at a certain online fabric store…the anticipation of receiving a package in the mail is pretty much the only thing that has brought joy into my life this past week. #selfcare)

Alright, head on off to your lives. I’ll just be here, doing that greasy sick sweating thing and stalking people’s crafting-in-progress photos on Instagram. Leave a comment if you’ve got some good in-progress photos for me to look at. Tell me how to find them. I beg you.

Second Monday in January

January 10, 2022January 10, 2022Leave a comment

Good morning, lovelies! Hopefully the new year is still treating you well and you’re making progress on the things that matter most to your heart. This week I’ll be (hopefully) finishing the Cat Lady quilt. The quilting is finished, and it’s trimmed; I just need to get going on the binding and label. I’m thinking I’m going to use the loads of C+S Bluebird scraps I have on-hand from when Denise made a dress for Em out of that fabric, which means I’ll be doing a scrappy binding construction because the scraps are very weird shapes–there’s very little yardage that will work for WOF cutting. BUT…it’s C+S fabric, and I have loads of it that I’ve been trying to sew through for years, so this will make a significant dent.

I had hoped to finish the Cat Lady quilt last week, but geez, what a week! Washington got a lot of snow and ice and rain and it just threw everything off kilter all week long. My kids had a two-hour late start for school four days out of five, the roads were flooding over…you don’t realize how stressed you’re feeling about stuff until you get past it and realize that you’ve been holding your shoulders up to your ears for days. And now we have to deal with rescheduling all the stuff that got cancelled, and adding it on top of all the regularly-scheduled stuff…I just wish that people would let things go when they get cancelled? Like, it’s too bad it didn’t happen, but let’s try again next year, rather than trying to fit it into the next couple of weeks that are already booked? Please? But alas…that’s a rare outcome.

Once the Cat Lady quilt is complete, I’m hoping to start work on Rachel’s birthday gift, and I can’t show you anything about it or she’ll figure out what it is. Which also means I have to clean it up everyday and not leave it lying around on the cutting table or the ironing board. Let’s see if I can actually remember to do that everyday…who else thinks that I’ll forget and Rachel will know what her gift is before it’s even finished? It also just occurred to me that I can’t work on this over the weekend days because she’s somewhat of a constant fixture in my craft room on the days that she’s home. So I guess it will take twice as long to stitch this up because I really will only have two days a week that I can work on this. Awesome.

I’m still working on the Nereid Fingerless Mitts for my bestie, and hopefully will have good news to report on them soon. This “tell people you were making them a gift if you didn’t finish it before Christmas” idea has been the perfect motivation to keep me working on those gifts. It might add extra incentive to get things done before Christmas in future years, too: I’m going to lose that special moment of surprise if it’s not done before Christmas because I’ll have to announce it on the blog. I don’t like doing that. But I do like finishing stuff, and so here we are.

Scrappy Thursday this week is for working on the Clementine Quilt. I don’t know if anyone remembers that I was one of the quilters in the original Clementine Quilters group, but I had to quit because we were moving. I hated quitting, but it was definitely the right call at the time because here we are, four years later, and it’s only now that I have the feasible time to work on it again. Fat Quarter Shop supplied me with the fabric to make the quilt, and I don’t feel right accepting fabric from people and then not using it, so it’s been on my mind ever since that I definitely need to get this completed so I can fulfill the obligation that I signed up for originally.

Update on Marshmallow: He’s doing better than he was. It looked like his hind legs were permanently paralyzed for many days, but in the last three or so days he’s started using them again, somewhat regularly. We changed up his meds the day before that development, so it looks like we’ve hit on a combo that works well for him. Pretty sure he’s gone blind though–he seems to only be responding to sounds, and he runs face first into things a lot. He got pushed down the stairs by Charlotte the other day because he walked near her, which is not a thing he used to do because she’ll bat any cat in the face that gets that close to her. (She’s such a GRUMP.) I feel like I need to set something up that will keep her away from him while I’m gone from the house because I’m afraid I’m going to come home to a murder scene or the like. Sigh.

So yeah, bad weather and geriatric cats…last week was intense. Hopefully things are a lot calmer this week!

Scrappy Thursday: Brickhouse Quilt: Blocks 1-4

January 6, 2022March 14, 20253 Comments

It’s always a good thing when you make a goal and you complete the first part of it! I’ve completed the first occurrence of my new “Scrappy Thursdays” goal to work on getting the scrap bins down to a more manageable level each Thursday. This week’s scrappy project in the rotation was the first four blocks of my Brickhouse quilt.

I am really liking this pattern. It uses slightly bigger than I normally use pieces, so it eats up fabric a little better, and the construction is super easy. I’ve decided to use aquas and turquoises for the roofs of my houses, and pinks and reds for the bricks. And then I’m pairing all that with scrappy low-volume prints for the background. It turns out that I was pretty low on skinny red scraps, so I’m actually having to dive into my next-larger bin of scraps for the reds.

I’m thinking I might make multiple Brickhouse quilts this year because I like this pattern so much. House quilts are adorable anyway, so having lots of them would be so cute.

Alright, one Scrappy Thursday down, fifty-one more to go! Anyone else have scrappy goals for this year?

Inspired by this scrappy pattern? Wanna make one of your own? You can download the free pattern here.

Progress: Nereid Fingerless Gloves

January 5, 2022January 5, 20221 Comment

In my last post I pondered the idea of publicly sharing any handmade Christmas gifts that weren’t done yet, in a last-ditch effort to follow through on their completion because publicly talking about said unfinished gifts will keep them at the forefront of my crafty brain. And then…ugh, I made a really, really silly mistake on these mitts and every fiber in my being wants to throw them atop the hibernation pile and ignore them for another year, and NO THAT WILL NOT BE HAPPENING.

So here we are: I was hoping to finish up a pair of fingerless gloves for my bestie for Christmas this year, but I got sick for most of December and didn’t make the deadline and darn it, these are getting finished NOW. There will be weekly progress posts on these things until they are done because I started making them in August of 2012, people! It’s been almost TEN YEARS! They are beautiful and they deserve to be out in the world making my friend happy.

One mitt is done, and the silly mistake was that I didn’t start the thumb increases during the third repeat on the second mitt, so I have to unpick half a repeat and do it all over again and I was so close to being done but now I’m not and it was a very low moment for me. BUT…public pressure to continue on and persevere…hopefully I can show you much progress next Wednesday!

And, then…there’s another project that didn’t get finished for Christmas, and I’ll tell you all about it when these gloves are done! The anticipation builds!

The First Monday in January

January 3, 2022January 2, 20221 Comment

CW: Injured cat

I am perpetually in love with new beginnings, and January is the month of new beginnings. Whether you do resolutions or not, there is something motivating and optimistic about the first week of the new year. There’s usually something motivating and optimistic about Mondays as well: What will this new week hold for me? What projects will I make progress on this week? Will I improve this week? Monday is the great big beginning. So the first Monday of the year…very pregnant with possibility.

Em & Nathaniel decided to dye their hair on NYE.

My kids head back to school today, and I head back to normal crafty hours. There’s so much that is great about December and all the Christmas festivities, BUT…they deviate from the normal schedule, and man, have I missed my normal, quiet schedule. I’m really looking forward to getting back into the craft room uninterrupted.

I shared my plans for January in my last post, and today sees me jump into that plan with all my first-Monday-of-the-year enthusiasm. I’ll be dragging out Em’s Cat Lady quilt that I pieced for their sixteenth birthday and then never got around to quilting. My plan is to finish this up before their birthday at the beginning of February, but not give it as a present because you can’t give something as a birthday present twice. My kid is going to be a legal adult in a month. How did we get here? I’ll wax poetic about that closer to their birthday. Hopefully I can get this quilt completely done this week? That’d be great.

This week marks the re-introduction of Scrappy Thursdays into my routine, and I’m excited to finally start working on my #brickhousequilt blocks. I’m aiming to make up the first four of sixteen blocks. I’m really optimistic about my Scrappy Thursdays plan and this pattern; hopefully I can do some epic scrapbusting this year–the situation is getting dire!

As far as handstitching projects go, I’m still slogging away on past due Christmas gifts I didn’t finish up and still can’t show you. (Side note: I’m thinking that if one misses the Christmas deadline for making a gift, that perhaps one should post about said items because secret crafting gets old after a while, and if one posts about the items, there’s a little more peer pressure to finish…but that may just be my thinking…)

I did, however, get a lot of work done on my “car knitting” project because one of my cats, Marshmallow, went to stand up last week and I’m guessing he pinched a nerve in his hips or something, because his back legs suddenly slumped out from beneath him and he started yelling. It was a long day at the curbside emergency veterinarian, and I alternated holding his head in my hand so he’d stay calm, and knitting while he slept or was inside the vet’s office. He was given a diagnosis of severe arthritis, which is very common for the Scottish Fold breed, but I think I’m going to get a second opinion because I don’t think partially-paralyzed hind legs are something you just treat with anti-inflammatories. (I had a partially paralyzed leg for about a week before my back surgery–it’s horrifically painful.) He’s really struggling, and I think he’s going blind, too. He’s a grandpa of a cat, probably about fifteen years old or so, so it’s getting to be that time where we might need to make some sad plans for him.

Nathaniel is pretty upset, and has taken on the role of permanent cat whisperer; he carries Marsh around and helps reset his legs into a standing position so he doesn’t have to drag them behind him. Sigh. Loving another creature sure is painful when it gets near the end of their life. One would almost be tempted to not engage in the practice, were it not for all the funny little memories and cute moments we’ve had over the years.

Not the most uplifting end to a “motivating & optimistic” Monday post, but it’s what’s going on around here and I try to document the whole story. I’ve got a lot of work to do this week, and also try to find a vet that can squeeze Marsh in for a consult. Wish me luck! And I wish you luck with your week and your goals, and I hope all your pets are in splendid health.

#craftygoals: January 2022

January 1, 2022December 30, 20211 Comment

Hello, and a happy new year to you! A new year also means a new month, and that means new crafty goals, which are:

Birthday Gift No. 1 (Because February is the start of Birthday Season here in Brooketopia…)⁠ And this isn’t a birthday “gift” per se, because I’ve already technically given it as a birthday gift to Em for a previous birthday, but it wasn’t totally finished then…and it’s still not finished now. There’s something about your kid turning eighteen and leaving for college in the next year that gets you wanting to clear out any languishing gifts that you were totally supposed to have finished up by now.
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Birthday Gift No. 2⁠: A legit new gift for Rachel. I think she’s going to be very pleased with it and I cannot wait to work on it! I won’t be able to show you anything about it until she opens it on her birthday because she’s an active fan of mine on Instagram and checks all my feeds. (Ha ha, Rachel! No sneak peeks here!)
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Finish the Mini Charm Chiffon quilt⁠ (I only completed the top for the reveal; it still needs quilting and binding.)
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Start the Far Far Away quilt (I am SO EXCITED for this!)⁠
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Sew up Blocks 1-4 for the Brick House Scrap quilt⁠ (Scrappy Thursday #1)
Clementine Quilt Month 3 blocks⁠ (Scrappy Thursday #2)
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Berry blocks⁠ (Scrappy Thursday #3)
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Iron & trim HST leaders & enders⁠ (Scrappy Thursday #4)

December’s #craftygoals: I only got one of the five December crafty goals completed, due to that stupid, stupid bout of illness I had for most of the month, and seeing how my December crafty projects were all tied to Christmassy things, they’re not being carried over into January. They’ll go into hibernation until I either need them for birthday gifts or want to give another go at making them into Christmas gifts. But still, at the end of the day, having only completed the Patchwork Forest quilt is still way better than not completing anything at all, obviously! Goals are awesome.

What goals are you setting for January? Anyone have any neat resolutions for 2022? Whatever they may be, I wish you the best of luck with them!

2021 Project Round-up

December 31, 2021December 29, 20211 Comment

Because it’s fun to see everything in ONE BIG POST!

January: Was busy with the kids returning to in-person hybrid school. Which meant I sewed up A LOT of face masks.

We had a power outage, and during that time I crocheted some little hearts to go on my Christmas tree, which I decided to keep up through February as a Valentine’s Tree because it is so freaking’ dark here in January and February that I’ve decided to keep up all the white Christmas lights for the extra light.

I also started knitting a sweater for myself at the end of the month.

February: I finished up a Kindness KAL shawl for Em, and I got through both sleeves of my sweater. I also sewed up a few more face masks.

March: I finally finished my Echo Flowers Shawl!

Denise and I decided to do a “Bestie Sewing Challenge,” where we both bought yardage of the same fabric and made stuff from it, just because we were bored out of our skulls with the dragging on of the pandemic and needed something to be excited about. I made myself a skirt from McCall’s 1369.

I picked the Peacock Feathers Stole back up and started working a few rows a day.

We also finally did some Pysanky, which was the real creative highlight of the month for my kids.

April: I made a pencil skirt for Em (McCall’s 5523) out of the leftover Bestie Challenge fabric, and I started working on my McCall’s 6696 (M6696) Birthday Dress for myself. Worked some more rows of the Peacock Feathers Stole.

May: I finished my Lavender Birthday Dress. There wasn’t a lot of crafting going on because I was super busy in the garden, and M6696 is a surprisingly hand-stitching heavy garment. Kept chugging away on the Peacock Feathers Stole.

June: I made a big, swirly skirt for Rachel because she was suddenly obsessed with big, swirly skirts. I also started working on my Violet Chambray M6696. Very busy in the garden, and we started doing a lot of cooking from scratch, which took up a lot of our time. I also kept putting in time on the Peacock Feathers Stole.

July: So much gardening. So much cooking zucchini. I embroidered the lavender wreath wall hanging and started on the “Un Alfabeto a Fiori” wreath. I started stitching an EPP couch cushion, which still isn’t complete because I don’t know how I want to do the borders. I also started working on the Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt for Fat Quarter Shop. FINISHED the Peacock Feathers Stole!

August: I got a parasite after forgetting to wash my hands after cleaning bird feeders, and spent most of August being excruciatingly ill. My foot was also a big, painful mess and it was decided we’d do surgery on it in September.

September: Finished up the Mini Charm Chiffon Baby Quilt top and my corded petticoat right before my surgery. Spent the rest of the month working on the Un Alfabeto a Fiori wreath embroidery.

October: Finished embroidering the wreath, started embroidering my historical pocket. Started work on my flounced petticoat. Also appliqued pumpkins to a purchased black circle skirt for Renaissance’s “1950s Witch” Halloween costume.

November: Cheered by the excellent healing progress in my foot, I kind of went nuts with the idea that I’d do some epic Christmas crafting prep. I finished Nathaniel’s Fresh Cut Pines quilt and Em’s Yuletide Botanica Orange Peel quilt. I also finished Rachel’s Ombre Heart Mitts. I started quilting the Hipster Christmas Trees quilt.

December: The Great December Sickness hit and took. me. out. I did, however, squeak through with finishing the Hipster Christmas Tree quilt. All other projects saw virtually no time put in on them, but I did do some really great thinking about crafty organization and the like, and came up with an excellent game plan for 2022, which I will share with you tomorrow!

Are you one of those people who just always thinks they aren’t doing enough? I am. That’s why I do these round-up posts and crafty goals things–they make me aware of how much I do actually do, which makes that Perfectionistic Taskmaster Voice in my head quiet down a bit and give me a little peace. It was a busy year; it had a lot of weirdness going on with the pandemic and trying for some semblance of normalcy, and I had a lot going on with injuries and illnesses, but still managed to get a decent amount of projects finished. I like that.

And yes, I have way too much planned for 2022. ‘Cuz that’s how I roll….

Thanks for cheering me on this year, I’ve appreciated it very much. Hopefully you’re all sitting back and thinking through your own 2021s and realizing that you did good, too. And hopefully you’ve got some exciting plans for 2022. Because we have all definitely earned some of that. Good job making it through 2021, y’all. Here’s to a better 2022…

3 Ideas for More Organized Quilting in the New Year

December 30, 2021December 29, 20211 Comment

I have a nifty little project rotation schedule in my mind that I try to use to work through old projects and not let the scrap bins get out of hand, and it’s just not working. I sat down to figure out what was going wrong, and just decided that I needed to make it work alongside what I want to do, instead of it being the main operating system of my craft room. As I’m sure you’re aware, every new year and month brings up new potential projects that you need to decide if you’re going to pursue or not. New babies, weddings, graduations, a crazy pattern that comes out that NEEDS to be made ASAP because it’s amazing, a new dress because of fifty thousand reasons…there’s just a lot that you can’t plan for, and it wreaks havoc on a system designed to corral the creative madness.

So…Idea #1: Each month will have its “must makes” that I will work on until they’re done, and then the remainder of the month will revert back to my UFO/Project Rotation schedule and I’ll make headway on the projects collecting cobwebs until the month ends. It’s simple, far too simple, but until I wrote it out I couldn’t see it as my solution.

I came up with this idea in October and finetuned and planned it out, but it felt like something was missing, and I finally realized what it was whilst lounging in my bed during the Great December Sickness of 2021–I’m not making enough scrap quilts. At all. The scrap bins no longer close, and I don’t have time for scrap quilts even though I won’t be able to use my craft room by the end of the year if they keep multiplying like they have been, completely unchecked. And then I randomly remembered that I came up with a weird little system for THIS EXACT PROBLEM back in 2019: Scrappy Thursdays.

Scrappy Thursdays were devoted to working on scrap projects and block of the months. It didn’t matter what I was working on outside of Scrappy Thursdays, I’d set it aside and work mostly from the scrap bins for that one day every week. I have four separate storage bins that held the fabric and patterns for four separate projects, and each week had its Project #1, #2, #3, or #4. It was still in experiment form when it dissolved out of my life, but it was a rather successful experiment while it was in progress! I just got really busy with the Blank Quilting ambassador thing and had no extra time for play, which was fine because I was having a lot of fun with all the yummy Blank fabric. Ah, memories…

Idea #2: I’m going to reinstate Scrappy Thursdays in 2021. I’m really looking forward to it. My chaos-loving brain really enjoys the break from my serious “get ‘er done” projects that I work on for the majority of the week, and my “obsessed with productivity” brain loves that I’m making progress on so many different things.

Beautiful Mammoth Flannels being cut for one of next year’s Christmas quilts!

I had another good idea during the Great December Sickness of 2021, which is my Idea #3: Use my leaders and enders for greater Christmas productivity. As in, cut the fabric for the Christmas quilts I want to make for Christmas next year NOW, and use them as my leaders and enders throughout the next year. When it comes time to work on said Christmas quilts at a later date, I’ll already have a ton of the piecing done. I’ve even set up an annual reminder that the week after Christmas is for cutting next year’s leaders and enders!

I’ve got the fabric for two of next year’s Christmas quilts prewashed and in the process of being cut. I have at least one more, if not two more, Christmas quilts I want to make this upcoming year, but no idea what pattern and/or fabric I’m going to use just yet, so obviously can’t precut anything for those quilts.

I’m excited for this extra bit of organization to help things run smoothly in the craft room! Do you have any good tips or tricks for quilty organization? I’d love to hear them! Happy New Year!

Rainbow Ombre Mitts knit by Cara Brooke of That Crafty Cara

Rainbow Ombre Heart Mitts

December 29, 2021December 29, 20212 Comments

I made these for Rachel for Christmas. They were the first gift she opened on Christmas morning and she wore them immediately and left them on until she received a gift from Renaissance that had velcro on it, at which point she took off her new mitts so the velcro wouldn’t catch on the yarn. She was incredibly pleased with the mitts.

I bought the yarn for these almost three years ago at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival. (Hmm, I’ll need to go look at scheduling time to go to it again this year–although it’s now operating under a different name: Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat.) Rachel and I went to the festival together and she was entranced by the smorgasbord of yarny goodness at the market, so of course, I had to buy some rainbow yarns that she fell in love with. One of the rainbow yarn purchases was this mini skein set from Canon Hand Dyes, and there’s enough leftover to one day make the matching hat.