Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

We’re alive.  I swear.  I managed to post while at Disney, I had posts all scheduled to go so there wouldn’t be any interruption…but I didn’t realize what I really needed were posts for our return!  Not only did we have the usual laundry/unpacking/picking up the chaos we left behind, but I’ve been doing the corporation’s tax prep (note to self for next January–corporate taxes are not due April 15th–they’re due MARCH 15th).  Oh, and who could forget Vomitfest 2011.  Not me.  Or Ellie.  Or her uncle.  On Wednesday I actually did nothing but sleep and watch tv and feel wretched.  I didn’t unpack, I didn’t do laundry, I didn’t sew, I didn’t even read a magazine for the pleasure of being done with it so I could toss it.  Nothing.  Zilch.  Nadda.  It made me crazy.  A whole day LOST.  So yeah.  Reentry has been a little rough.

But after an incredible slow and disheartening start, I’m seeing progress again.  I have a finished quilt top and two others underway.  I have taken a chunk out of my accounting and should be 100% ready to hand it over to the accountant and make it HIS problem come Thursday.

Here’s my finished quilt top–nothin’ fancy, just 4 charm packs of It’s a Hoot sewn together.  This project jumped to the front of the line when I looked in my fabric bin and realized that I was steadily loosin’ that lovin’ feelin’ for the line.  It’s also going to be totally fantastic for photoshoots, but my main motivation for finishing it this week is that I feel fairly blah about it.

Two of my quilt guild buddies came over yesterday, and we had a couple of hours of sewing.  I used Beth’s accuquilt Go! cutter to punch out 200 tumbler blocks for an upcoming quilt (the rejected stroller blanket color combo).  It’s crazy to use the cutter, though–I used up a bunch of my favorites, and didn’t really realize that I was doing it!  If you are careful with your folds and placement you can create truly minimal waste, which was a bummer to me when I realized that I’d used up a bunch of these fabrics and didn’t even have decent sized scraps to remember them by!

Also on my desk this week, a redo of the stroller quilt that is to the correct scale and using the pattern from the Fresh Quilting book that I got the idea from!  I’m at a crossroads right now, though, deciding whether to make a smaller version of the quilt using just the Central Park fat quarters that I have, or adding some fabrics from the stash to make the 60×90 quilt as instructed in the book.

Here’s my thought:  add the stash fabrics.  I’m learning that I love quilts that are not all from the same fabric line more than quilts made from one line.  So even though they look so pretty together in the pile, and the perfect matchiness of the coordinating fabrics is adorable….in practice I love a scrappy look.  I’m going to cut them out and lay them out on the floor and see how I feel.

On my list for today…finishing and repairing Ellie’s stroller quilt.  Remember my plans to sew on the binding the night before we flew out?  Yeah.  Didn’t happen.  We always drive up to the airport and stay at a hotel, and Ellie decided that she didn’t need to sleep, nor did she need to let anyone else in our paper-thin-walls-hotel sleep.  It was not a fun evening.  Instead, I got to sew on the binding in the Grand Californian hotel bar while hanging out with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law while Nic and the babies napped during the onset of Vomitfest 2011.  I was about 18 inches from being done when we had to leave, so I actually ended up sewing a few more inches while we waited in line for rides the next day (Ellie barfed on her other blanket several times, so it was actually great that I had two quilts there to alternate.)  (Disneyland tip for Grand Californian guests–the laundry facilities there take ‘tokens’ to operate.  Each token costs $1, and you need 5 to do a load of laundry.  OR, instead of the token you can toss a quarter in there and do your laundry for $1.25 instead of $5.  If you end up doing as many loads as I did, you will save enough to buy yourself a whole week’s worth of churros.)

Wow.  Got off track.  Back to the quilt.  I still have about 5 inches left of the binding to finish, so I will knock that out today, as well as repairing the part that ripped when it got run over by the stroller.  Baby blankets have a hard life.  (Oooh–it was pretty cool, though–I think I ran into a modern quilter by Big Thunder Mountain Railroad!  She was headed in the opposite direction but shouted “great quilt!” as we passed like ships in the night.  Since I was just waiting for Will and Nic to finish the ride I was tempted to high tail it in the other direction, chasing after her, shouting code words like “METRO LIVING?”  “JOEL DEWBERRY?”  “PARISVILLE?” “FLICKR SWAPS?” and waiting to see if she turned, but decided that would be too weird, even for me.)