New Year's Revolutions Cont'd...

My son said he was going to be making some New Year's Revolutions this year. Never too early to start making revolutions if you ask me.
On the bright side, I sewed the binding on the borders of my Australian Animals Quilt (using the fold a 3 inch strip in half and sew it along the front outside border so when you put on the backing, you just fold it over and handstitch in place). Then I pieced the backing for it. I got inspired by some quilts I saw on other people's blogs and got all in a tizzy over the backing.


On the less bright side, I got inspired by some quilts on other people's blogs and went to Jo-Ann's and bought some bird fabric!!!! That was totally not the plan! I was supposed to be finishing, not starting, quilts!

On the bright side, I laid out the Smoking Guns Cowgirl Quilt and found a layout that inspires me. We're talking nap quilts for all these projects! I just wish I had a dark brown fabric with a thin pink stripe to put between the center and the outside border. I just want to stick to pink, brown and white. You'd think in that massive fabric stash I have, I'd have one of everything.

I also got the idea to layout the Perfect Neighborhood with little roads connecting the houses using a background of white. We'll see.

And I got fed up with my mermaid art quilt and just machine sewed the snot out of it. Enough with the handsewing!

New Year's Resolution

I only have one this year. It might be too ambitious, but what the heck, that's what New Year's resolutions are supposed to be. I am going to finish my UFO's--all those unfinished quilting projects that I started but ran out of time or inclination to finish. I love to start new projects, but I hate to finish them. Well, I've decided to pay the piper and finish them off. They are listed below along with what needs to be done to finish them. I'm not going to start anything new until these are done with--at least up to the stage where they need to be quilted. (That's a whole 'nuther issue.)However, the only way I can sustain my interest is to be working on three or four things at once

#1. Australian Animal Quilt. Almost there. Just needs an outer border that can fold over as the binding. And maybe a little more embroidery and detail on some of the animals.


#2. African Mermaid Art Quilt. Just goes to show you size is no motivator when it comes to finishing something. I need to finish the binding and it's done. Don't ask me why I haven't just done it.

#3. Cactus Quilt. I have 8 embroidered blocks with little frames sewn around them. Now I just have to figure out how to put them together and with what fabric.

#4. Perfect Neighborhood. I'm not quite sure what else this needs. I have to finish the houses I have and then decide what else to add. More houses? Trees? Fences? A road? It will take a while longer.


#5. Wonky houses. I think I have enough blocks (fourteen at last count--with a few needing the backing fabric) to piece together into a nap quilt. Add an outside border and call it a day.

#6. Vegetable Love. Very labor intensive process involved in making these blocks--tracing templates on freezer paper and ironing them on to fabric then matching up arrows to sew. It was very challenging, but I like the outcome. Not something I find relaxing to do though so I wouldn't do it much.

#7. Crazy Blue Quilt. Maybe it is a wallhanging already, as is. Just binding, backing and maybe hand quilting of circles like raindrops make on water?

#8. Sun Print Quilt. This I started 10 years ago. It just needs backing, binding and quilting.




#9. Glass Paperweights. I didn't love them as much as when I started. I need a background fabric that makes it pop and could never find one. I might have screwed up when I sewed the sections together so I've got to go back and find out if I did. I need to root around and find the background fabric I bought for it, too.

#10. Hexagons. I don't know what I was thinking when I cut this quilt out. I'm not even sure what the inspiration was. Possibly drunk? However, since it is already cut out and started, what the heck? If I sew a few hexagons and triangles together each night, it shouldn't be too unbearable.

#11. Pink Cowgirls. I know exactly what I was thinking when I cut this one out! "Oh, won't this be tooooo cute for my daughter. Won't she just love this!" She saw it and gagged reflexively at the amount of pink involved. Even though I knew she didn't like pink, I must have somehow managed to block that out (no pun intended) when I saw the fabric. Any-hoo, I'm going to finish it in the hope that one day, she will be less averse to pink. To make life easy, I think I am going to use light colored blocks of an equal size and then put a border on and have done with it.

#12. Halloween Quilt. I almost finished and then I totally lost interest because I couldn't find a background/border fabric that interested me. That often happens to kill my interest--when I can't get it to be the way I envision it. Nothing I put next to it got me excited. I'm wondering if the same treatment I used on the Australian Animal Quilt might motivate me.

13. Retro Flowers. I bought these off E-bay a year or so ago and must have about fifty of them. I'm thinking of them on a field of indigo. Maybe with red dots for the center? Or lime green? That's probably too much. Brown?

Australian Animal Quilt Continues...

I've finally gotten around to the borders. Six 2 inch fabric strips sewn together and then cut into 2 inch segments, then re-sewn together to make strips.





I still need to do the outside borders the same way. None of the other fabrics I tried got me very excited, but it just came to me that this was the way to go. It's often like that. I hem and haw over a decision and nothing feels right, then I go away and forget about it and some time later the decision just seems to make itself.

Halloween House and Quilt

Haunted House from a kit.


Using last year's embroidered patches, we're sewing them into 9 x 10 inch blocks to piece together for our halloween decoration.

Three Border Fabric Options And Critters

So these are three potential fabric borders. The first one looks kind of Aboriginal--with stripes and dots between the lines.


This one has dark brown doodle type circles with colored dots at the center. And this one is little, slightly smudgy squares with touches of other colors.

I'm trying to put little elements around each critter that suggests its environment. So this is seaweed and air bubbles for the platypus. I learned an important lesson about glue sticks today. If you use too much on your fabric, when you sew it, it frays the thread as it comes through the needle and will break it after awhile. I have to go easier on the gluestick. I knew it was too good to be true! Actually, this only seems to be a problem with my new re-positionable glue stick I got for 50 cents from Staples the other day. My old half dried up ones didn't cause a problem.


Okay, I admit the sewing sucks on these water ripples, so I may have to rip it out, but it is the idea I was looking for.

Possible Layouts

So here are possible layouts. I had thought I might do borders around each block.
But now, I kind of like the no border look better. I'd change places with the emu and some other critter because there is one piece of fabric on that emu that is driving me crazy--the rust and white chunk right above the legs. It's too much of a focal point. I'm going to have to tone it down one way or another. I do like the no border look with circles strewn across the top. I'm thinking I need to vary the size of the circles some. I was going to put some other little grasses (with the bandicoot and wombat) and seaweed (Platypus) in at various spots, but we'll see.

Koala and Buddies

Pinned Kangaroo (So he doesn't hop away; you know how sneaky those kangaroos can be!).

Bandicoot! Pinned and with his pattern.

Black Swan pattern on top of pieced dark fabric.

Pinned and ready to be sewed.

Swan with pattern.

So I ended up making 9 Australian animal blocks: 2 Koalas, kangaroo, bandicoot, spiny anteater, wombat, emu, black swan, and a platypus. I'm still dickering with myself over the way to put it together. All the blocks have to be embroidered with the features and details of each critter. I'm toying with the idea of embroidering their name on the block, too. I have a bunch of freezer paper, pieced circles in the same colors that I'm thinking of incorporating. I'm wondering if I should have borders around the blocks in dark brown or black or some other color. This is my favorite part.