Manly Quilt

Part of the reason that my posting has been so lackluster through November and December is that I spent a large chunk of my time trying frantically to finish a quilt. And finally, after what seemed like forever, I did finish it in time for the holidays. More specifically, I finished it with enough time to mail it across the country in time for the holidays.
And here it is.

I started this quilt an embarrassingly long time ago. May, to be specific. I am very, very good about doing chunks of quilting at a time. I'll do a bunch of work one weekend, and then not touch it again for a month and a half. End result: a quilt that takes seven months to finish.

I'll admit that I love this quilt - to the point that we contemplated "forgetting" to mail it to the intended recipient and keeping it for ourselves. It looked really nice with our new chair, you see. In the end, we mailed it, because we're (mostly) good people.

The back of the quilt is grey and happy and shows the quilting patterns in fun ways. Please ignore the bag of mulch on the porch behind the quilt. Just pretend it's not there. Please. Thank you.

AND! AND! One of the fabrics has a deer head in it!

So why is this a manly quilt? It was a gift for my brother, who probably wouldn't be too excited to get a girly quilt. I was very pleased by how it turned out, and it was well-received, which is really all you can ask.

Project; Squares, Revisited

This is what I've been doing lately on the quilting front:

Cutting out 720 little squares and 130 larger squares.

It took longer than I thought it would, though I can't imagine why I thought it would be a quick project to cut out sixty three bazillion squares. Let that be a lesson to me!

Also, I'm not liking this quilt much. I keep reminding myself that I rarely like them until they're all put together, but I have to force myself to work on it because it doesn't inspire me.

But I did cut out a million billion squares, so I'm going to call it good and be happy about that. Deal?

Deal.

Quilt Top Done!

As with so many things, this started with shopping, had a misguided detour through planning, and finally ends up done. Ish. 

The quilt that I've been working on since (apparently) March (gulp) is finally mostly, almost, kind of done. The top is done, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. 

The remaining bits, of course, are to find a suitable backing fabric and binding fabric. I saw a fantastically hilarious pirate fabric at the store the other day, but a woman snatched it all up. Since she was muttering to herself about "the pirates, the pirates, the pirates come out to play!" I figured it was better to just let her have it.

Progression of squares

Ages and ages and ages ago, I posted pictures of fabric. I didn't do anything with it until recently because my dining room table was covered in laundry or camping gear or any number of things I didn't want to be bothered with.

We don't often eat at the dining room table. We're more "sit on the floor by the coffee table" type people.

Then the laundry went away, and the camping gear went away and the table was clear. And bits of fabric became blocks for a quilt.

Bit by bit, I'm cutting them down and sewing them together again.

Because I'm a rebel, I'm not using a pattern (read: I can't be bothered to find a pattern I like). It might come back to haunt me, but for the time being, I'm happy with my progress.

There's been more since these, and there will be scads more before I'm done, but for the time being, I'm happy with the progress, and it's good to have a project going again instead of sitting there, mocking me for not clearing off the dining table.