the last 10 days

Happy Hannukah!



Oh! Wait that ended yesterday...
So I'm a little behind. What else is new? :) We lit the candles and ate the latkes. No dreidel spinning here but we sang the South Park Version of the song...we are soooooo not PC in this house, I tell ya!

Other than the eight days of chanukah...there has been the 10 days of QUILTERS. This is the latest musical for our Musical Conservatory program. I admit, I haven't watched a single rehearsal this weel. Poor Yvette has had to watch it every night this week...Max is such a great excuse. That and I have been sick too - i have caught the plague :)

So what does a musical about Quilters involve? Quilts! Lots of friggin' quilts! I have never quilted. I mean that I have NEVER done the type of quilts that require tiny triangles and squares and circles and all sorts of piecing.
Kristin sent me a link to this amazing webpage! Crazy helpful it was. That and the Singer sewing book on quilts and some other book the set designer brought in were the best thing in the world!

Our quilt blocks are (approx.) 22" square. Some patterns were enlarged and some were shrunk. The final product is 16 seperate squares mounted onto an 8'x8' canvas backdrop:

In order of left to right, top to bottom, we have -
1. Butterfly (a crazy quilt with applique) 2. Logcabin 3. Spools or Secret Drawer 4. "rebel patch" (a crazy quilt used for a fictitious block for the show)

5. School Houses 6. Rocky Road to Kansas (have also seen it called Rock Star) 7. Country Crossroads 8. Baby Blocks (aka Tumbling Blocks)

9. Lonestar 10. Four Doves in a Window 11. tree of Life 12. Kansas Dugout

13. Double Wedding Rings 14. Double Windmill 15. Crosses and Losses 16. Robbing Peter to Pay Paul


By the way, we cheated. Alot!!! - there was heat-n-bond and non piecing....but could you tell? Okay maybe you professional quilters could...irk!

Here are a few close-ups:


We ended up appliqueing this one with heat-n-bond after we had made it WAY to big. There wasn't enough time to piece it properly.



Made by one of our apprentices.


Katherine throwing down the scraps in order to make the Crazy quilt block. She ironed them all down and then zig-zaged by machine.


Our final block - The background blocks were pieced and then the rest was laid on top, then appliqued.

Each block gets snapped on as the play goes on and the song is sung to explain the story behind each pioneer woman's quilt. So we need to readjust the snaps a bit and maybe adjust a block or two....then it is all done!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once that is done, we can get on with the more important things at hand. The making of the holiday gifts and secret santa-ing in the work place. I am sure my person knows who I am...but that is okay...she is loving it!

Wow! One whole year!!

Can you believe it? This piddly little blog has been up for a year! And not yet 100 posts...been busy :)
And even more amazing, I finished a sewing project that i started with fabric that I bought last year this weekend.



this is my very first pieced quilt! The finished measurement is about 45" x 36". The few others quilts that I have made were done with those "tops" you can buy at the fabric store and have some sort of character (animaniacs, harry potter...) and then a few blocks of matching colours around them to make them bigger.

So last year, I started with this:


I sliced the rows on the bias, then re-stitched the bias strips into the center rectangle.

The majority of the fabrics are Denise Schmidt - and a few others filling in the blanks. I finished the center portion last summer and then it just sat and sat in one of my many baskets of many unfinished projects. So last week, while finally unpacking a few things, I found the beginnings of this quilt and felt it was time to finish. The top only took another 2 hours to put together (baby napping - yeah) and pinned like crazy to the back fabric. The not so perfect hand quilting was done by the light of the tv inbetween the 4 am and 6 am feedings. No reason to try to sleep for 1 hour :)
The pictures are all a bit blurry since I used my cell phone camera to take pictures (Fritz left the digital camera at the theatre)

I loved the end result so much, that I started another one!



the fabrics were given to me by Vivi, last year during our fabric swap. The colours are very fall-like: browns and rusts with some olive green and a bit of gold. The stripe is something from my stash. There was another fabric, but it is living a happy life as a purse lining. Expect to see a post one year from now with the finished project.....