Another (Manic?) Monday

I'm so ambivalent about Mondays.

The optimist in me gets a little bit excited about all the possibility the week ahead holds. So many days ahead to get stuff done! A blank slate to start the week afresh! Time to try re-establishing some new routines to make life "easier" at home and work!

Then there's the other side of me that's counting down the days until I get to sleep in again.

I'm doing my best this week to lean towards optimism. We'll see how it goes.

Last night, I finally started piecing my blocks together for this month's jelly roll quilt.

I've come to rely on my Angler 2 ruler for piecing, especially if the project involves marking diagonal lines on the wrong side of 23,487,243 pieces of fabric. See Nicole's blog post for more detailed information on how the actual ruler works.

I usually think twice before purchasing gadgets, notions, whatever you want to call them. Most of the time, I just hit the notions section of the fabric shop for the basics - thread, needles, and the occasional rotary blade replacements. But between my first and second half-square triangle quilts last summer and my current jelly roll project with all the cut-away pieces, this ruler has already paid for itself in spades with the time I've saved. Added to that, I think my piecing's quite a bit more accurate when I use this ruler, since it has that long 1/4" seam line. Humble opinion: these little gizmos are definitely worth $7-$10!

If you happen to hang around here for the food, here's what we're eating this week:

• Upscale Macaroni and Cheese, (plus some Roasted Salmon for me)
• Spinach and Chevre Soup, Homemade Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread
• Pasta + Sauce,  Roasted Broccoli
• Chinese Takeout - Happy Valentine's Day!
• Bean + Rice Burritos, Avocado
• Roasted Red Pepper and Corn Risotto (like this, but with 2 roasted red peppers and 1 c of corn, instead of spinach; I also omit the parmesan, and I don't use nearly so much rice. Shoot, maybe I should just write up my recipe sometime, since no one else out there on the interwebz seems to make it just like I do.)
• Pizza

Be sure to check out other weekly menus over at OrgJunkie's Menu Plan Monday. 

Half-Square Triangle Bliss

This is one of those quilts that definitely percolated on the backburner last year, but I think it might be my favorite project that I started during 2011.

Don't get me wrong. This quilt was not devoid of angst or stress.

Piecing the quilt wasn't an ordeal at all. It was a bit tedious making all those half-square triangle quilts, but I needed a nice mindless piecing project at that point in the year. I decided to amp up the simple construction with some high-powered quilting.

All that pebble quilting makes for a striking effect, but it's definitely not the kind of quilting that's associated with immediate gratification and quick closure to a project.

In the end, though, I'm so glad I decided to take my time on it and just enjoy the process. Well, except for the laundering part. I enjoyed the rest of it, though.

Vital Stats:

• Started: May 2011
• Finished: January 2012
• Machine-pieced, machine-quilted
• Fabric: Kona Snow (background), Chrysalis by Sanae, Freebird by Momo

January Winners and February Prep

I'm so excited that folks have decided to play along with my crazy monthly jelly roll project. This month, we had two participants, and I hate to give one person a prize and leave the other one left hanging. Soooo...

#2 - Meg at The Mad Quilting Librarian wins the official prize - 3 yards total of a few Denyse Schmidt fabrics.

#1 - Sharon over at Vrooman's Quilts wins the runner's-up prize - a Sandy Gervais layer cake from forever ago that I cut to pieces and then promptly abandoned.

 

Ladies, I just sent you an email. Send me your mailing addresses, and you'll get your prizes soon!

In other news, I updated my post from last week with some finished pictures of and commentary for my January jelly roll quilt. You should go check it out if you're interested in how I survived my January project.

 

I've also pulled together my fabric for February's pattern. 

 

The jelly roll is Botany by Lauren and Jessi Jung, with some Kona Khaki for the background. I'll use the Floral Bouquet pattern from Jelly Roll Quilts. After last month's fiasco, I'm a bit relieved to have actual written directions to follow that have been tested and proofed by someone other than my flawed self.

I have a few finished quilts that are ready for their Interweb debuts, so I'll probably run a quilt parade this week. I hope everyone's month of LUV is off to a great start!

Let Me See Your Jelly Roll! in January

Um, so this is embarrassing

But I'm still not done with my jelly roll quilt for January. I still have about 4 hours' worth of work on it. I suppose I could have stayed up late the past couple of nights to finish, but I guess I'm just not hungry enough for that kind of glory.

So here's the quilt in its current state...

Maybe it's kind of like showing up to your own dinner party with your hair in rollers and the back of your dress tucked into your pantyhose, but I'm going to go ahead and post the link party now, even though I'm not done. I'll keep the party going until Saturday evening, to give everyone (myself included) to wrap up their January projects.

UPDATE (2/4/2012): I finally finished the quilt last night - holla!

The weather outside this morning is a bit gross, so I went ahead and took some pictures of the quilt on its final resting place - the guest bed.

Related question: Do you iron your guest pillowcases? I don't. Obviously.

I had a hard time picking a favorite block, since I mixed up all the prints. But my favorite color combination was the dark pink and the light blue like this one

And this one.

For the backing, I used up a few pastel prints from my stash that aren't part of any of my Big Plans for the Crafty Future. It felt good to use up the stash.

Here are my final stats for the project:

Started: January 2012

Finished: February 2012

Machine-pieced, machine-quilted, machine-bound

Fabric: Oasis by 3 Sisters for Moda

Remember:

1) Quilt tops count, too!

2) It doesn't have to be a project made from an officially jelly roll - it can be any strippy quilt (top) or project

3) I'm asking that it is a project you've finished or worked on sometime in the past month. Please don't link up a jelly roll project you finished 3 years ago, k? 

On Saturday night, I'll use the trusty random number generator to pick a winner from the link party to win 3 yards of Denyse Schmidt prints.

Aspirations

I started a new pinboard on Pinterest today, dedicated to machine quilting. My jelly roll quilt top just needs borders, so machine quilting's weighing heavy on my mind right now, since I'm still undecided on how I'll quilt it.

Most of the pins are definitely aspirational at this point. If I want to stick to my self-imposed deadline on the first jelly roll quilt at least, I'll need to tame my Big Quilting Ideas. I would like to incorporate a couple of new to me quilting design elements in this quilt though.

Here are some ideas I've been doodling.


Um, I know. It kind of looks like a preschooler did this, but I was using a laptop mousepad in Microsoft Paint on a Friday night, so cut me some slack, mmkay? You get the idea anyways, right?

How do you decide what designs best fit a quilt? Does it depend on your mood? Your timeline? Your comfort level with a design?

Happy Things

Upon reflection, I realize that I've been a bit of a Debbie Downer in my last few posts. This isn't at all how I wanted to start off the year. Obviously, my life isn't as bad as I've made it out to be. Let's look at a couple of things that make me happy.

In the hubbub of the holidays, I forgot to mention that I finally worked up the gumption to make a slipcover for my ottoman one Saturday morning. I had been procrastinating on this project for 6+ months. It took me less than an hour to finish. Typical.

Let's get a little before/after action up in here...

Before:

 

After:

Note to self: Next time you work with dropcloths, zig zag stitch all the raw edges before you hem to avoid all the endless fraying. 'm forever trimming threads off the bottom of this slipcover. I definitely followed the crowd on this project and made my slipcover out of a painter's dropcloth. I still have miles of the dropcloth left, it seems like - plenty to tackle one or two of the four wingback chairs we inherited along with the ottoman. Someday. 

First I have to finish my jelly roll quilt for January.

Speaking of, here's a quick peek at the prize for the winner of this month's jelly roll quilt participant...

One yard each of three different prints from Denyse Schmidt's latest line with Joann's. INCIDENTALLY, 3 yards is just about the same amount of fabric found in a jelly roll.

So, if this selection of fabric appeals to you, there's still plenty of time to finish your jelly roll quilt (top) for January - 12 whole days!

Re-Entering the Land of the Living

Slowly but surely, I'm crawling out from under my rock for what seems like the umpteenth time this year. After finally emerging from my post-Christmas funk a few weeks ago, I came down with a nasty cold this past weekend, and it ripped apart at the (crooked) seams all my well-laid plans for crafty productivity on the long weekend. No worries. I'm feeling much better now. I guess it was just my body's way of telling me to slow the heck down already and get some rest before I got too carried away with my Big Plans.

On the upside, I got a ton of sleep and drank water by the gallon, so even if I'm still a little congested, my skin is looking better than it has in MONTHS. I'll take what I can get.

On the crafty front, I made some forward-backward-forward progress with my jelly roll quilt for this month. Um, y'all. Please tell me you're not following my oh-so-prideful cutting instructions from a few weeks back and hoping to easily crank out a quilt that looks like this.

Source: camilleroskelley.typepad.com via Megan on Pinterest

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you follow my cutting instructions and piece the blocks the same way I did, your strips will not cleanly line up on the diagonal without much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 

You'll spend some serious quality time squaring up subunit after subunit and block after block with your trusty ruler and rotary cutter.

Even after hours of squaring up, the blocks will look more like this.

 

You will not be able to line up those diagonal rows so neatly, and then you will punch your sewing machine in the face.

 

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markkelley/253278143/

I wish I could say that this piecing travesty was the result of me "chasing the Ny/DayQuil dragon" (husbatron's coined phrase), but alas, I started all the cutting and piecing well before the Great Plague struck my house this past weekend and caused me to seek over the counter relief. Sometimes, I wish I wasn't such a cheapskate and that I had just hauled @$$ to Joann's with my trusty coupons to buy the friggin' book. Moral of the story: If you want to make the quilt pictured above, buy the book! Don't follow my lame attempt at directions! I'm sure there's some great nugget of wisdom in the book about what to do exactly if you're not using the fancy schmancy ruler she recommends.

Alas, we live with the decisions we make. For a brief nanosecond, I considered un-piecing everything, buying the book, and trying to make everything "right." I'm pretty sure I was chasing the DayQuil dragon pretty hard at that point. Then I came to my senses and remembered that I like spending time with my seam ripper about as much as I like having my annual exam with the Lady Bits Doctor. So, in my DayQuil-induced state, I headed to the local Hancock Fabrics down the road, picked up a couple of yards of Kona White (the last of the bolt, no less!), and sashed the heck out of all my wonked out blocks.

And just like that, things are looking up.

Never doubt the power of some good old-fashioned sashing, y'all.

I'm linking up to W.I.P. Wednesday over at Lee's place. Be sure to check in and see what everyone else has been up to lately!