Lest You Think I've Been Slacking

Naw. Just to lazy to upload pics is all. (Is there a bulk loader for blogspot that will do more than 3 pics at a time? Sheesh.) (And would it be too much to ask to be able to place the pics where I want them in the text instead of all at the top?)


What have I been up to? Hmmm.. doing the laundry. Nope. Vacccuumming? Pish. Dusting? Yeah right. Messing around in the crafty corner? Uh, yeah.

This was my "do something you've never tried before week." First up, I won a jelly roll of batiks at the retreat last year. I'm not much of a batik girl (yes, I hear several of you gasping) but there it is. And I also had no idea what to do with a jelly roll. I googled all over the place and decided to try a strippy quilt. But alas. After a way too long search, I realized there isn't enough material in a jelly roll for a decent size, use-as-a-quilt quilt. So I searched my stash and found some stuff left over from my Three Bears Quilt. So I cut strip after strip after strip...... I found a pattern for a strippy quilt as you go deal, and that was my original plan. Till I realized how big I really had made this thing. So here's the strips, on my design floor. I'm not quite done messing the the arrangement, but you get the idea. That's a cheapo sheet set that I'll use for backing.





The Enablers at Joanne's sent me a raft of coupons last week, so I used some on fat quarters in springy colors. I'm not much of a pink/purple girl, either, so this was pretty far outside my comfort zone. I already had a fat quarter of a really cute, sorta retro robins/lilacs material so I used that for center blocks. I wanted a lot of blocks, so instead of fussy cutting it, and making myself nuts in the process, I just whacked it up. The rest of the FQs went to strips too. (Ohhh, I can't wait to get my Vagabond cutter..... ) I realized that to make this pattern work, one of the border sections would have to be whacked too, but oh well. From a distance it looks okay. A real quilter would have whacked all the doo dads. Ha. (So I used the word so in each the first four sentences in this paragraph. So ya wanna make something of it?)

So here it is on the design wall. My question is: To sash or not to sash? Please advise. And if you're in the sash it camp, what color??? Oh, and I decided not to give it a pattern. I actually had to work pretty hard not to match too many of the border chunks. I haven't really looked at this, but I will probably futz with the blocks a little.
I also ended up with one extra block, and a good thing too. This will get made into a mug rug for a certain blogger who only manages to get pictures of bird butts. But said blogger needs to send me a snail mail address. You know who you are, Loopy.

As well as not being able to think in colors, I also don't think in numbers, and I had a ton of the border chunks left. Some of them went into this. Again, purely random. But drat, there are those 2 that line up. Too late. I was reeeealy tired by the time I got to this.

I did make a nicer table topper which is machine quilted in little echo stitched clover leaves, and backed with a pretty striped fabric, which I will also use for the bigger one. I also machine bound them. Woot! For some reason I didn't take a pic of the one that is pretty dang good. Later, gator.


Lessee, what else, oh yeah. Last week I decided to take down my big Santa flag and put up something springy. I found a panel of a bunny and figured I'd just back it the easy way--inside out style. I was going to use a white sheet--I buy them every time I see them at garage sales. Then I found an old damask tablecloth, complete with little holes and stuff. Perfect, I thought. Ever try to cut a straight edge on an old damask tablecloth? omg, what a pain. Anywho, I finally got it done, but that turned a 20 minute project into a 90 minute one. Sheesh.

But he's cute and has a spring in his step.