Fold Up Quilt Bindings

For BeeBee, a link to where I learned about this fold-up quilt binding:

How to Bind a Quilt. . . the easy way. at Pleasant View Schoolhouse






I remembered that I had a bunch of squares left over from the 2007 christmas quilts for the kids, and a bit of batting, so I made up another quilt for my sister's car and practiced some more free motion quilting on it. I tried use the multi colored machine quilting thread from Coats and Clark, but it kept snapping. Then I tried Coats 100% Cotton, which is the thread I generally use, and it also kept snapping! I was kind of frustrated and confused, because I didn't have a single broken thread doing Tom's quilt. I remembered I'd use Gutermann 100% cotton thread, so I pulled that out, and used it. It worked beautifully, but I'm a bit annoyed because there are only three places where I can buy it and they're all in the garment district! I'm used to being able to run to JoAnn's for more thread when I need some, so I'll have to make a point to stock up on this.

While I was poking through my quilt squares, I figured I'd see how far I've come on my Mendicino Quilt. Not too bad... just over half way there. My backing is a robin egg's blue King sized sheet, so I just need enough squares to cover it. My king sized cotton batting is quite a bit bigger than the sheet, so I'll be doing a lot of trimming I guess.

happy new year

Bonne Année !


I started a post on "things I've made that got the most wear this year" but it will have to wait until I have light to finish photographs. I should have started it this morning when the sun was out. I did take a picture of some christmas wrap up... I had to run elastic through some of the pajamas that I made as presents, now that I can try them on folks. Here's three pairs of flannel pajamas- my sister's, ana's, and kate's.

I also did a bit more work on my quilt which is still coming slowly along. While I was cutting strips I actually almost sliced my headphone cable! Ooops. I keep my ipod in my pocket while I'm sewing, and usually the headphones cable is clipped out of the way, but it came undone and I didn't notice until the rotary cutter blade was about a half inch from the cord. Disaster averted! I have etymotic noise blocking headphones for my train ride, so I would have been a very unhappy camper on Monday if I'd sliced that cable! I kind of gather that not that many people listen to an ipod while sewing, but I almost always have mine on. Part of it is just to not disturb people around me. I like to listen to a lot of loud hardcore punk while I'm sewing (come on, Black Flag goes so nicely with sewing up lacy little kids dresses! (; ) and it's easier to just put on headphones than entertain requests to turn the volume down on the speakers.

And finally, my two new years resolutions. The first is very simple; since I have a digital SLR, I want to take more pictures with it. Photography is my first love but I find I don't put a huge amount of time into it anymore, and don't go out on photo walks enough. Really I don't often carry my SLR into the city with me, so I want to make it a regular practice to bring it into NYC and take pictures. My Seattle friends have been claiming that they don't believe this "I work in NYC" thing since my flickr stream shows scant evidence of the city.

My second is to work out more. Last December I sprained my right ankle really badly, and haven't done much exercise beyond walking to my office from the train station or a bit of yoga here in the last 12 months. It's finally about as good as it's going to get for a while, so I have some new red sneakers! These are adidas "Boston" shoes. I admit the name sucked me in, as my dorm at Wellesley was on the halfway point of the Boston marathon and I spent each year cheering myself hoarse for it. I've pulled out my nike+ ipod widget thingie, and I'll sew up a little bag to hold the shoe piece on these new sneakers tomorrow.

Quilt

This is Declan, settling in to take a nap on some quilt squares that I'm working on. They were the floor so that I could see how much of a queen size quilt I had so far. The answer is.. maybe 1/4th. I've been working on it in bits and pieces, but the pile of squares looks so big when they're stacked! Well, there's no timeline on this project, so I'll just keep working on it.

It's made from a jelly roll of Mendocino by Heather Ross, worked into my own scraps. I'm using my favorite quilt square construction method, Mile a Minute blocks.