Finish it Up! Friday - 24 February

I finally finished the binding and label for that custom t-shirt quilt, then promptly forgot to photograph it. I blame the influence of the sinus medication I was on - I had a sinus infection that kicked my butt last week and it turns out the most effective drugs for me are HCl based, which tend to make me drowsy.

But hey, if you remembered to take pictures of anything you've made in the last week (or two!), go ahead and post links below. The only rules are it has to be something you made, and if it's food maybe share the recipe, too!

Blog Love - Five favourites

I popped in to check my blog comments and discovered that Nadine has awarded me some Liebster Blog Love. According to her, I dispense practical advice with a great sense of humour. It's humbling to have someone tell you that your results are spot on to your goals!

If you haven't visited Nadine's shops, you're really missing out. In addition to glorious quilts with all the colours of springtime, modern paintings and 3-d paper art, she makes these charmingly ridiculous cuddlies:

Nadine got the award from Sami, who got it from Giles, who got it from - wait, I do need to get on to the day job at some point, but follow the links and you'll get there too!

The point of Liebster Love seems to be very simply to go out of your way to say thanks to a blogger you enjoy who has fewer than 200 fans, which I think is a worthy way to spend your time. There are so many bloggers whose efforts are worthwhile to me, but I may not tell them as often as I should, so here goes, in no particular order:

Gone Aussie Quilting: Quite frankly I am surprised she has fewer than 200 followers, all though just barely. I'm grateful she still qualifies, however briefly so I have the chance to point out a brilliant modern artist and great person. She has a brilliant sense of play and the way she makes a cacophony of colours and prints play well together is a pleasure to see.

Soul Soup Soap: Izumi is one of those moms who could inspire envy if she weren't so darn human inside her perfect house! Her blog and flickr stream are full of the most delightful lunches and dessert treats imaginable; and how freely she shares her recipes and adventures is inspiring. If you may not have a chance for a holiday of your own this year, pop over and take a browse - you may find your vicarious adventures to the seaside, farms and street festivals with the denizens of chez babykins as enjoyable as I have.

Namoo: I am regularly flabbergasted at the amount of completed objects put out by these two. Insung's quilts regularly show modern quilting in the best light, with a combination of textured fabrics and stitches that make a beautiful quilt a treasure. And the hand-printed design accessories are nothing to be sniffed at, either!

AnneCentral: Anne is one of those truly humbling people who builds up those around her and occasionally makes you wonder what you've done to deserve such a friend. She's riotously funny, warm, witty and takes no guff from anyone. Even if you haven't had joy of meeting her in person, I think a good bit of that comes over in her writing and if you need reassurance that humanity is not doomed, you should pop over and read some of her adventures.

The Broken Needle: Morganskye cracks me up on a regular basis. She's a costume-making, make-up wearing, cross-stitching bucket of fun by night and a closeted accountant by day. Her blog is full of randomness - whether she's turning out a cross-stitched hand grenade or giving Brent Spiner a clay carrot (it's not as bad as it sounds), she's always worth a visit.

Tool Talk - Pressing Matters

If you didn't start out life as a quilter, pressing may be one of the hardest skills to learn (next to hand-applique, of course!). It's not that pressing is particularly difficulty in itself - it is, after all, just pressing down with the iron. We perform a similar action dozens of times in a day without thinking about it - pressing the top slice of bread down on a sandwich, pressing the plunger on a french press coffee maker, pressing the gas or break pedal in a car.

So why is it, the first time I had an iron in my hand and had to press a seam I gave it a great sweeping push that distorted the bias? Because I was ironing, not pressing. After years of sweeping the creases out of blouses and trousers with my iron, I had to relearn how to 'press'.

My favourite iron to use for quilting is a small travel iron. For years I used a little yellow GE iron my mother got at the Ft. Devens PX in 1974. That little girl got hot and stayed hot, even after she developed an unfortunate leak in her water reservoir. That didn't stop me from using my favourite iron - the end came when I knocked her off the table and cracked her footing. My husband decided if the plastic was old enough to fracture then the wiring was in an unknown state and I should get a new one. So now I have a petite little Conair travel iron who works just as wonderfully.

The iron is not the real point of all this blather, though - the ironing surface is. For most of my piecework pressing I don't use a conventional ironing board with a punched metal frame and fabric cover, I use a pressing board. There are two fairly popular pressing boards out, one by Omnigrid, the other by June Tailor. I use the June Tailor model, which features a pressing side and a cutting side, both gridded:



There are a couple of great benefits to this tool - besides the obvious value of marked 30-, 45- and 60-degree angles for squaring up your cutting, there's the markings for squaring up your pressing:

A side benefit is that when the soft pressing surface is down and the cutting surface is up, you can swivel the board on your work surface. I prefer this one to the Omnigrid model, since I don't generally travel with it - the Omnigrid model is not two sided, but two panels hinged along their long edge so it opens like a book. That makes it a bit bulkier, but when closed it protects both your pressing and cutting surfaces from bumps or scratches.

*ahem* Friday

So, there's nothing that actually got finished this week. I finished the top for the t-shirt quilt, but the quilting isn't finished; I finished writing a new pattern, but the layout isn't finished, and that's about it for me!

So if you would like to see some luscious pictures of actual completions, I suggest you head on over to Amanda Jean's!

Monday's Mess

Do you ever have days when you're browsing Flickr or Pinterest and you look at all those well-organized, well-lit studios and feel a little bad about yourself. Maybe you don't have a private room with a custom Koala cabinet system or a walk-in closet for storing all your fabric.

Maybe you work from the dining table or a 2'x3' chipboard student desk that should have hit the scrap yard years ago or the floor, because it's the only flat space around.

I'm lucky enough to have a space to call my own, but it's not big enough for some of my projects which is when I have to take over the prime floor space in front of the fireplace (it's totally a coincidence that this always seems to happen when it snows). I just completed a queen-sized t-shirt quilt top, partially seen here:


And this is what the basement, where I drug out my collapsible cutting table looks like after the carnage is over:

I also learned a very important lesson about using sweatshirt material: Always clean the table between cutting the white sweathsirt fleece and the black ones. Honestly, it looked like Frosty moulted in there!

Finish it Up! Friday - 3 February

Pinkie Pie is completed! Her finished measurements are 42" square, with a pieced binding. All Hail, the trusty nine-patch!

What have you accomplished recently? Add links to your recent personal creations below:

Around the World and Falling Leaves

I received two new quilt tops to finish over the weekend:

The Falling Leaves measures 76" x 74", a generous throw quilt size.

The Around the World variation measures 76" x 85" and will be ideal for a twin-sized bed.

Sometimes I have the best job ever!