At Last - Progress

I hope everyone in the US had a good Thanksgiving weekend and the rest of you lovely ladies had a great regular weekend. ;0) We certainly did, I do believe I may have cooked the best turkey dinner of my life, everything was great... yay, me! It's such a crap shoot every year as to whether I'll get through the holiday without a stumble or two that it feels good to get it all together finally. Of course, it was just Glenn and I and our nephew Mark, but still... even the leftovers have been good! Of course, having nearly broken my arm to pat myself on the back, I'll surely screw something up in the next day or two... LOL!

Anyway, we have had some progress in the sewing room. All the bits and pieces of Crazy Quilting fabric were sorted. The 12 bins went from this:

to this:

to this:

last weekend. Then, this weekend, I managed to sneak a cup of coffee in without dire consequences and got all motivated and did some organizing and cleaning. In fact, several flat services have been discovered lurking amongst the piles of fabric. It's actually quite a wondrous thing to behold:

a sewing machine!

the books are on the bookshelves... sort of!

and the design wall...

for designing! Now, I just have to get inspiration to make an appearance! ;0)

In the meantime, here's our puppy dogs, Rocky & Java enjoying the sunshine today:

and here's Gus:


Have a good week, ladies!!

Blocks 11 and 12

So, to get back to the business at hand... I have finished Block 12 AND Block 11 which would be... DA MOON!
Here we have Block 12:

As with the rest of these blocks, the seam treatments are very simple and monochromatic. Threads used were #8 and #5 perle cotton and silk floss. Here's a closeup of 3 of the seam treatments:

Here we have laced cretan stitch, feather stitch with lazy daisy tags, and another cretan stitch (on the bottom) with lazy daisy stitches. You can see the rest of the block in close-up by clicking on it, then going to "all sizes" in flickr.

THEN... we have da moon, block 11:

This is VERY simple... each of the spokes radiating from the moon is a different combination of short and long back stitches in a #8 perle cotton. The four corners are identical, with herringbone stitch, straight stitches and lazy daisy stitches. I used the herringbone so I could blend the edges a bit. The lazy daisy stitch on the inner portion covers a bit more of the darker grey corners and the straight stitches allow more of it to show through. Hopefully it does what I wanted it to!

Here's a closeup:

or two:

I may put something around the moon to make it round... maybe a very fine lace edging, but I'm not sure. I'm going to wait till I start putting it all together so I can see how "feels."

So, now all the outer blocks of the quilt are DONE!!! WOOHOO! It only took me 18 months... gah! As I have said before, this quilt is the personification of
Slow Cloth! But that's Ok with me... I am in hopes that the quilt will be better for it.

Now comes the joining together of the blocks so I can begin to get a feel for how I want the embellishments to be laid out. In order to do that though, I need to somehow find my way back into my sewing room. It is a disaster of epic proportions, believe me! So, that's what I'll be doing this weekend. I bought a copy of "Studios" magazine yesterday and it has me all fired up to organize everything a bit better in there. Once I get it all together, I'll be able to lay out the quilt and join the blocks in four sections. Then, I get to piece the center portion. That will be an epic experience for me, since I have 2 or 3 different design ideas floating around in my mind. As soon as I can get a few gray cells to bump into each other, I should be able to distill my vision into a suitable design. Hopefully, this distillation process will occur sooner rather than later!

In the meantime, I have some Christmas sewing to do. I have an order for a king-size duvet cover as a Christmas present, and, in this day and age, something that will cost me only my time is a very good thing! I'll also be doing some stockings to replace those that were lost in a move, and maybe a few felt ornaments will sneak in there, too. Then, of course, there is the bench I want to upholster, the drapes for the livingroom and our bedroom, and pillows for the couch. Just a few minor projects. ;0)

I'll be documenting all the gripping action here, but I think it will be moving a little quicker than it has in the past few months! We can only hope, yes?!?!?

How Sweet It Is!

Yes we can... AND WE DID.