Christmas star quilt

A few pictures of my Christmas Star quilt as I slowly make progress.

Chain piecing.  I love that red star fabric so much.  You have no idea.

See the dark starry print poking out there in the middle?  I also love it.  Go figure.

I'm pressing the seams open to reduce bulk where the stars meet.  Don't worry, I trimmed the extra fabric after pressing.

Couldn't resist putting them together to see how the stars would look.  Next up, attaching the gold/yellow triangles.

Progress has been made.

Yes.  I actually uploaded pictures. 

But beyond that.  I've made progress on my scrappy nine-patch quilt!  As mentioned yesterday, it's layered and in the process of being quilted.  I'm straight line quilting it, in the ditch (as much as I can stay there). 

Here it is after I got the final border on it.  Notice my lovely assistant in the back corner.

For the record, a queen sized quilt is a lot of quilt to quilt. :)  Quilt. I don't know that I would attempt doing it on my little old sewing machine ever again, but now that I've started, I have to finish, right?  (Just nod.  It'll go better for all of us)

Unfortunately, because it's all a little big and I'm new to machine quilting, I've got puckers in the back.  They make me sad, but really, when all is said and done, that's not the worst mistake I've made on this quilt so I'm going to suck it up, chalk it up to a lesson learned and finish it.

Also, see that sunflower fabric?  That's fabric from my Grandma.  She made me a tablecloth out of it once a very long time ago.  The tablecloth is long gone, but Mom had that fabric in her stash so it's in this quilt and it always makes me smile.

Now for a gratuitous pet shot. 

"What do you mean this isn't my bed?"

Ok. I'll admit it. I'm jealous.

Of course, of all the things to confess on my blog, that seems to be the least of my worries.  Maybe I should admit to being a bit addicted to fabric.  Or I should admit that I'm turning thiry-:cough cough: next week.  But no.  Today, I'm jealous.

I follow a LOT of blogs.  A ridiculous number, actually.  Which is good when I need a quick break at work and it's easy to flip to my google reader and voila, instant quilt vacation.  It's bad when I have some time off (4 days) and come back and it takes 2 days to catch up on my blog reading (I'm still not caught up!).  It's even worse when reading all of those blogs makes me jealous for so many reasons.

1.  Pictures.  I have pictures of the quilts I've been working on.  As well as the pillow cases for all the nieces and nephews.  They're on my camera.  I seem to have a mental block between taking the pictures and doing the work necessary to upload them first to my computer then to the internet so I can post them appropriately in a blog.  It's pure laziness.  And it sucks because I really want to show you my recent progress.  For example, this quilt?

Yeah, it's got a third border, a pieced back, it's been layered and I've actually started quilting it. 

The pictures?  On my camera.

2.  Projects.  Oh so many projects.  And not only that, but people finish things on these blogs.  Yup.  FINISH.  See that picture up there?  The selvages on the beige border indicated the fabric is from 2001.  I started that nine years ago.  Luckily that's my earliest start.  Sadly, it's not the only one I haven't finished.  Care for a photo re-cap?  Of course, keep in mind that there are likely updated photos waiting on my camera.

This photo is the most recent.  This quilt is from a beginner quilting class I took in 2005.  You know, four years after I was a beginner.  I learned so many valuable things - like why my blocks were never the right size (huh, who knew a precise seam allowance would change that much!)

Another quilt I haven't worked on at all recently.  In my defense, that's a LOT of geese.

This fabric has been cut and pieced into a Hunter's star quilt top. No really.  I swear.  Started - Nov 2010.

This one is waiting for me to come to terms with the fact that the yellow square matches nothing else in the quilt.  And to accept that I really do need to applique flowers on it. And pick a border fabric.

3.  Stash.  Sweet baby james, there's a lot of fabric out there.  I lug my fabric and notions around in one plastic under-bed storage bin.  And a basket that holds scraps and the fat quarters for my next batik quilt.  I covet the fabric stashes so many out there in blogland have. 

4.  Sewing rooms/workshops/craft rooms - whatever you want to call them, I don't have one.  Again, I store my stuff in a basket and an under bed storage bin.  My sewing machine lives on a collapsible table from Costco in our bonus room because it's almost out of the way. Some day, the basement will be finished, our computers will live down there and that extra spare room will be mine, all mine!!!!!!! Muahhahahahaha.

Where was I?  Oh right.  Jealousy.

I think I'm done being jealous for now.  I have a meeting tonight so I don't think I'll get pictures uploaded tonight, but before this weekend, I really do hope to have some kind of update to share with you all about my quilting progress.

Happy Wednesday?

Pillowcases

This is my one Christmas gift project.  I decided to make pillowcases for all the kids (6 of em, 4 boys, 2 girls).  So far, I've completed pillowcases for two boys and one girl.

My nephew, the total farm kid gets this one with his name appliqued on it:

My husband's oldest nephew gets this one (he plays soccer): 

And, apparently, I didn't take a picture of the one I made for my husband's niece.  I will post that with the next bunch.

In addition, for each pillowcase that I'm giving to family members, I'm making a second one that will go to the Children's Hospital in my city through the Million Pillowcase Challenge.  So I feel pretty good about that too.

Because I needed to start another project

I've been cutting out fabric for a Christmas quilt.  There's really nothing like starting early and being proactive, is there?  Maybe some day I'll start.  But for now, here's the fabric:

I love the stars on the right.  There's a red that matches it, but it's buried under the rest of the reds.  Here's a better look at the stars

There are 256 dark green rectangles.  Yep.  Two hundred and fifty-six.  The red?  128.  I feel like I cut fabric out forever and I still haven't gotten to the golds yet.