It's funny – I love the colors and the patterns of fabric and yarn, but once I get something that I've just fallen in love with in my hands, I'm almost paralyzed with indecision. What pattern would make the best use of it? I don't want to misuse a perfectly good bolt of fabric or skein of yarn; this is how I end up stashing things away for years and, in some cases, forgetting I've got them. Thank God for Ravelry and the pattern queue over there, because that has kept my knitting going at a fantastic pace. However, for quilting, I have no such luck. I end up browsing for patterns that are worthy of the fabric. It doesn't help that I'm extremely picky about patterns, either. 

However, when I run across things like this Bento Box quilt, suddenly I see possibility in my mind.  I haven't really liked any of the other Bento Box quilts that I've seen, but that one caught my eye. I mean, wow! Just pair a solid colored fabric with some of the insane fabrics that I've picked up over the years, and presto! Instantly cute quilt! And from there I browse that site and see other cute things, which link to other sites and other cute things…I could spend hours just browsing and looking at how other people create such intricate designs and patterns. I have a healthy amount of respect for anyone that can design their own pattern – I struggle enough when I've got the pattern right there in front of me. 

The quilt top from the last entry now has a backing sewn together and ready for quilting; I've got two tests to study for, though, so it might have to wait patiently until I get the opportunity to sit down and do some serious work on it. In the mean time, I'm already dreaming of what is coming next.

That's the completed quilt top – it actually went together much easier than it looked like it would, and it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. However, I learned these things about myself while sewing it:

• I love my rotary cutter. Seriously. I'm not sure that I'll ever use scissors on anything ever again – ANYTHING. I was considering cutting my chicken with it the other night at dinner.
• What I thought was a quarter-inch seam? Not a quarter inch seam. Each of my blocks was supposed to be 12 x 12, but they ended up 3/4 of an inch shorter on almost all sides. After squaring them, they ended up 11 x 11.
• Patterns that coordinate don't always look fabulous when placed together in a block – solids or a vaguely patterned fabric would have done much better than the weirdness in some of the blocks. 

Overall, though, I'm pleased with the result, and for a first cutting and peicing exercise, I think I did damn well. Tomorrow, I'm going to pick out the backing fabric and get the quilting pins put in so I can give maching quilting a shot.

I have been killing my back for the past few nights, but dammit, I got all of the peices cut out for that quilt.

I've had this grid board for a long time, and I apparently bought a rotary cutter at some point, because I found that little beauty just waiting for me in my sewing box when I opened it up last week. I guess I've been subconciously wanting to sew and make a full quilt for some time; it took a complete knitting burnout to turn me towards it. 

At heart, I'm a knitter. It's my go-to craft; socks, lace, scarves, whatever is handy and easy to cast on with. I love the varieties of yarn, the different textures and colors and the amazing independant dyer movement that is going on drives me crazy with variety (hence, I have a yarn stash of ridiculous proportions). But occasionally, I get bored with it. I need to put it down and try my hand at something new. And I'm pretty sure that it's the Knitting Olympics that did it to me this time; knitting an entire sweater in a span of two weeks can make you cross eyed. In walks quilting, with the gorgeous fabrics and it's promise of easy projects, and I'm hooked. But we'll see how I feel after I've sewn together thirty log cabin squares and then put those squares all together in some sort of a pattern. I've only got two of the squares together so far, but I think they'll go faster now that I have a clue as to what I am doing. 

ETA: All right. Pictures taken.

And the only cure is MORE COWBELL!

(So, my last entry? I went to edit something in it, and I don't know if it was my stupidity or a server hiccup, but BLAMMO. It was eated.)

Okay, maybe not. But the cure IS more quilting. Since I don't want to die of the fever, I was forced to take a stroll through eBay looking for ideas. This is what I came up with:

Those are fat quarter packs; the first one has 8 total, and the bottom has 7 (I bought two of those, so I'll have 14 fat quarters). The top one will be for keeps, but the bottom one is for a special project for someone that I need to cheer up. I'm not what you'd call an advanced quilter, though I do have a lot of enthusiasm. So I went on the hunt for a project that I could do a bit at a time and if it wasn't perfect, really, it wouldn't be a big deal. I do have the Turning Twenty book which seems to be the standard for quick, easy quilts, but this caught my eye at the grocery store:

It's just a bunch of strips! I can do that! I think. I want to have the quilt top cut over the next week or two, get it peiced, and then I'm going to do something so heinous, you're not even going to be able to control yourself: I'm sending it out TO BE QUILTED BY SOMEONE ELSE. I know, right? But my machine just can't handle all of that fabric; I don't have a long arm quilting machine, and I need to take classes to know how to use one, and I want this quilt to be awesomeness personified. I'm still going to bind it and blindstitch the hem all by myself, but as someone noted in a Rav forum (I belong to a quilting group on a knitting forum. Go figure THAT one out) if you don't quilt it yourself, you're not a quilter – you're a TOP MAKER.

Consider me a top maker…this time around, at least.

Remember that fabric I showed you a few weeks ago? Look at what it has become:

The second one is a bit blurry, but we've been overcast for the past few days. I'll get a better picture when I get a chance. But the big point here is that during the making of these quilts, no one died, or threw a hissy fit, and no sewing machines were damaged or pitched off the roof of our house. I think that the machine and I actually came to an agreement on how to work together. And! The walking foot! I ordered the right one, attached it properly, and used it. 

I am a genius.

The hardest part of the whole thing was getting the entire quilt through the machine on the longest passes; you think it is no big deal, but then you try wrestling with five feet of batting and fabric through a machine while you're trying to steer it down a rather narrow line, and then get back to me. We'll chat. I took breaks during the quilting and managed to knock out four squares for a baby blanket, knit in good ol' boring stockingette, but they are finished and blocking as I type this and will be mailed off next week. I'm on a freakin' roll, y'all.  Up next: I'm tackling the Forest Path Stole, which I'm currently up to the second tier on, and pushing through the cross stitch stocking that will end up being my daughter's for Christmas. And somewhere in there I'll manage to go to school, work, and take care of my family. When I can fit it in.

I've got a love/hate relationship with my sewing machine: I love to use it, and it loves to turn out projects that look like a fourth grader was set loose with crazy glue and a doobie. I rarely am successful, in other words, with my sewing projects. However, a while back, I was able to make curtains for my kitchen:

And ever since then, I've been itching to do something fun. While I'm supposed to be working on my Ravelympics project (and I am! I promise!), my attention has been snagged by something else.

I intend for those fabric combinations to become extremely simple quilts for my kids; the University of Texas for my son, and the blue/brown combination for my daughter. And by simple, I literally mean that I'm going to cut a 60" x 45" panel from each bolt, slap some quilting batting between them, and then quilt diagonal lines across them in a contrasting thread color. Then, I'll use the solid colors to attempt to bind the quilts. On the surface, this seems like it will be easy, but just like anything else – I know better. I'm sure I'll learn a lot, and the kids will end up with useable blankets at the end of it, and the sewing bug will be out of my system for a while. 

But first: finishing up the sweater. I'm 18 repeats down the body, and only two skeins of yarn down so far. I'm think that I will need somewhere around 25 repeats to make it as long as I want it to be, and I've also got the arms to do, so I could possibly break into the fourth skein to finish this thing. But it looks like I'm on target to finish on the deadline!