Wednesday, October 17, 2012

WIP Wednesday

I've been busy lately!  I started taking fiddle lessons (I've never played an instrument in my life) and I've been practicing every day - that's taken up quite a bit of my usual sewing time.  But I am still chugging along on some projects!

I finished up two quilts in the past week - Birds of a Feather and my Hometown quilt.

One of the purple chevrons in Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather - binding on and fresh out of the dryer!

Hometown - it's too heavy for my make-shift clothesline

Pittsburgh!! <3

This quilt is for someone who just happened to live in Meeker for a while.
This block was just a happy accident!

The back of my Hometown quilt

Look at alllllllllllllllll that pebble quilting!  Too bad I didn't keep track of the hours...

Jessica Kelly at SewCraftyJess posted about her patchwork Weekender bag.  I started a weekender bag two years ago!  I managed to get the front and back panels together, complete with pockets.  I put it away before I put the piping on the front/back.  And I still haven't found a zipper.  I want to do a two-way zipper.  Does anyone know if the following will work?  1. Buy a jacket zipper.  2. "Close" the zipper (put one pull at each end).  3. Remove one pull.  4. Reverse the removed pull's direction and put it next to the pull that's still on the zipper.  Will that make it so that a jacket zipper opens like a suitcase zipper?  As you can tell, I'm very inexperienced with zippers!  The goal is to finish this bag up in the next month or so.  We'll see how many more years it takes :) 

The Weekender after 2 years in a closet (plus some piping added yesterday!)

The Christmas Ribbons quilt is coming along - still doing the first round of piecing.  Hopefully I'll have some completed blocks soon!  It's too late now, but I'm kind of wishing I'd used a cream-colored solid instead of Kona Ash... oh well.

Christmas Ribbons...in piles

Parking Lights and the batik Garden Trellis (I don't think I ever posted about that one - it's a top I made that I got sick of and stuffed in a drawer) need to be basted and quilted!

Groove is still coming along - it's time for hand-sewing the binding!  I totally crapped out on the quilting - it's just stitch in the ditch.  At that point, I was just in a hurry to get something checked off my list.  Now that I've got the other two done, I kind of wish I'd done something more with this one!

Groove with those awesome clips on one side

Pieced back

Halloween is coming up!  I'm putting together a Medusa costume.  I bought a box of four dozen small snakes from Oriental Trading Co, got some snake jewelry at Macy's on clearance, got a Greek-looking black dress on clearance at Macy's, and I'm putting a sash together with some iridescent fabric from Joann.  Photos to come... 

Oh and now that the Hometown quilt is finished, I will have to finish the tutorial for it!

Back to fiddling around!  Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to check out all the great WIPs over at Freshly Pieced!

-Melissa

11 comments:

  1. fiddle lessons - how interesting! I've played piano and alto saxophone, and would like to learn guitar. fiddle sounds fun, and banjo...

    Birds of a Feather and Hometown are both great quilts - I like that you alternated rectangles and squares in hometown.

    The fabric in your weekender bag is gorgeous!

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  2. I love your Birds of a Feather quilt. Did you design that yourself? Beautiful!!

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  3. I love that your Hometown quilt looks beautiful from a distance, but for the lucky person who curls up under it there is all that interesting text fabric to enjoy!

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  4. Great projects. I love the birds of a feather quilt.

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  5. Love the Birds of a Feather quilt. Colors are beautiful.

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  6. Wow, that's a lot of projects!! The birds of a feather is wonderful! I wish I knew the answer to your zipper question. You could maybe get one and try it out before sewing it in? And then let us know. :D

    I took violin lessons a while ago, and learned fiddle style along with classical style. Fiddle style IS SO MUCH FUN. I loved it! My brother was learning banjo at the same time and we had a blast "jamming". Enjoy your lessons!

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  7. Wow you're busy! I like all your quilts, but in particular I like how you used the range of colors in the Good Fortune collection. It looks great.

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  8. Love the birds of a feather quilt. Love to see Totally Groovy quilts everywhere as well!

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  9. Wow. All that pebble quilting must have taken you forever! Good thing the finished product always looks awesome, so your work was definitely worth it!

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  10. You have been busy! I really love your Hometown quilt! It must have taken forever to do all that quilting! Speaking of quilting - I've been known to go back and add a little more quilting to a quilt after it has been finished and bound. ;)

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  11. The Birds of a Feather I like best, looks great.

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