Monday, April 8, 2013

Some Finishes!

Done! Finished! Fini! I have at last finished Twisted! The quilt that I thought would kill me! Here she is in all her twisted glory:

 

Here are a few critical lessons I've learned during this process:
1. Don't assume that all twin sized quilt sizes are the same, so don't go with the first (HUGE) dimensions you find on the internet. This one is 78x98 and easily covers my queen bed. Apparently I could have made this as small as 65x88. Oy!
2. Just give up the fantasy that I'm Marion and can machine quilt mammoth-sized quilts on a small-throated sewing machine! I straight-line quilted this entire quilt, all the while checking my work, yet somehow only discovered at the end that my basting was @#$$% and had to have my dear, sweet better half pick out ALL of my stitches! Double quilting drat!
3. Be extremely grateful for the generosity of great friends like Ella who rescued me with her amazing quilting skills (and amazing Gammill longarm machine). 
4. Using up stash is sooooo satisfying! This quilt is made up 100% from stash. It is actually from the very first fabric I have ever bought--almost 15 years ago (which many of you can probably tell since it is so so different from the fabric I'm currently using in my quilts!). 


This fabric is what I call "weirdsucker;" it looks kind of like a seersucker, but it's not, but it's not quite a quilting cotton either. It's a fabric I inherited from my aunt who had an album business that made custom wedding and baby albums with lots of different fabrics. When she closed up shop, she gave me a ton of her leftover fabric for my stash. Little by little, I'm making my way through it!

In addition to Twisted, I'm almost finished with the baby quilt I'm making for my friend Jill's brother's baby quilt. I was hoping to finish it time for their baby shower a few weekends ago, but you know how those things go!! While I was at Ella's she showed me her cool pantograph feature on her Gammill and she quilted dog bones on the quilt. So awesome! Thank you Ella! 

I used my usual favorite rainbow pattern from hooked on needles:



Sorry the color isn't better, but it's a rainy day and the lightbulbs are a bit yellow . . . I'm calling this one my Color Munki.

This quilt uses some of my favorite Heather Ross Munki Munki (you can see in this picture the bicycles, the chickens, and seahorses), as well as Sarah Jane, Laurie Wisbrun and others. I think of it as an elevated "I Spy." I want to have interesting fabrics for the babies to look at, but I also want it to be pretty for the grown-ups too (rather than having SpongeBob on it!). 

Here's one of my favorite, really hard-to-find Munki Munki fabrics from Heather Ross: The Chickens:


 It's poplin, so it's wicked soft. I would love to have jammies made out of this material!