Monkeys Again

I realize my latest Monkey Whack quilt has been sitting around waiting for some binding since May, but I have finally made progress on it!

In the last 12 hours it went from looking like this:

(which should look familiar if you've been watching my Progress updates for very long now)

to this:

Nice change, right?

The most obvious difference is that pop of red binding, but I also decided at the last moment that I really needed to do something more with the quilting. So, with no guides or measurements, I added in some diagonal lines (one of my favorite things to do) and wound up with some imperfect wonky diamonds crossing the quilt. I think it's a big improvement over the minimal boxes I had done before.

I think the binding looks pretty good against the top. Not a perfect match to the other reds, but close - and I think the little dots work well against the dots in the navy. So while it isn't perfect, I think it does a good job of tying the whole thing together.

It's not quite as perfect against the back material - which is a bit more pastel than the front - but again, it's not bad.

Which means I'm one wash and one dry away from this quilt being considered one at last! I'm thrilled about that; this one spent way too much time sitting around waiting for inspiration to hit. Can't wait to see how it looks after a wash and dry!

Progress

Whoops! This was supposed to get shared on Friday while I was out of town. Apparently it didn't happen... So, let's pretend it did. Especially since I have nothing new to report... 

Monkey Blocks

Yet to Do: quilt, buy/find fabric for binding, make binding, bind, wash

Happy Go Lucky Quilt

Yet to Do: square up, buy fabric and make binding, bind, wash

Chocolate Covered Cherry / Disappearing 9 patch on point

Yet to do: Add border/complete top, make back, baste, quilt, bind, wash

Semi-Sampler (small) Quilt-to-be?

Progress: I'm up to 14 blocks - and I'm out of all the fabrics I've used thus far (except scraps). 

Pansy Patch Project

No recent progress.
Yet to Do: finish piecing tops together, make back, baste, quilt, bind

Waiting to Start:

• This thing... 

More Scenes from My Weekend...

Yet another weekend spent away from home, traveling, seeing family, and then working. Friday after work we drove out to a family reunion - one of four my family has every year. 

Although there's a bit of a generation gap with everyone either at least 15 years older than us, or at least 20 years younger than us, it was still fun to get a chance to see people. Fun, for the most part, but certainly not helping me get anything else done.

And I learned last night that my next two weekends are also booked with projects and events that will keep me busy outside the house.

So, I'm not getting much sewing done around here, or much cooking, or (to be perfectly honest) not much of anything else either. But, all this time on the road or waiting at distant locations is really adding several more books than average to my read (past tense) list, and a couple audio books to the listened list.

Speaking of keeping busy outside the house, I'd better start getting ready to leave again. Looks like today is going to be a busy one too.

Not Much Yet...

It doesn't look like much yet, but this is one of the reasons it's been so quiet around here. This is take two of four (plus) nights of limited free time spent trying to figure out the math for a block I want to make - and yes, I imagine there does have to be a faster and easier way to do it. When I started the process, I thought this would be straight forward and something I could easily sketch out longhand. Not so. It was much more complicated than I thought. I've moved away from paper and on to Excel spreadsheets or formulas.

I'm on attempt number three of the math looking right enough to try making a test block:

And this time it turns out I'm finally right!

There's more to it eventually, but it looks like the math for the problematic part has finally come together to work in my favor - which means it's almost time to start looking at cutting up the fabric I'm actually going to use (instead of using the scraps of fabrics I've been tempted to rehome).

I'm not ready to start on this in earnest yet. Not only do I need to finish this square to make sure there are no more surprises, I also want to get a few more of the in progress items crossed off before I really start on this one. That said, as frustrating as it has been to be doing this kind of math, at least it was something I could work on when my only down time in the day was far away from my sewing machine and supplies.

I'm afraid I'm letting this one out of the bag a little earlier than I should, but it's really the only thing I have lined up to share yet. So, more on this one later, but not for a few weeks.

Quick Scenes from My Weekend

We ran off this weekend to attend a birthday party...

Is that the best cake ever or what? My sister in law made it - and not only was it adorable, it was delicious. I probably had too much of it... 

Unfortunately, we could only stay there for about 48 hours. So after eating too much cake, and indulging in a lot of Mountain Dew, we left last night and drove through the night to get back in time for work. Turns out, we are too old for staying up that many hours at a time! Next time I will be smart enough to take off work and do a three day weekend so I'm not up for 23 hours at a time. 

So... you know the drill - it's going to be a little quiet around here while I try to get my head straightened out. I'll be taking lots of naps instead of sewing. But hopefully in the next week or so I'll have some new things to get on here. 

Hope all of you are getting some sleep! I'm headed back to bed in the hopes that tomorrow I'll be a more functioning person.

Pinterest Challenge: Fails

Keeping it real around here. I am not always successful at making Pinterest Challenges. Not even when I follow the directions. Rather than take up a whole post on each of these failures, I thought I'd lump some of them together.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownie Pie.

The original photo looks so good. My version? Not so much.

This is the before I tried to cut it but after I let it cool for 1 hour photo. I'll spare you the after being cut photo. Pudding, and not in a good way.

What went wrong? It didn't bake enough. I knew the brownie part wasn't done, but I thought it would continue to bake even after I put the cheesecake layer on top. And okay, it probably did, but it wasn't enough. I'm not certain if this is another illustration of my oven not baking evenly, or if I should simply have added some cook time for each layer.

Would I try it again? Kind of. I figured that much time in the oven probably meant I wouldn't get sick from eating it, so I tried a slice couple spoon fulls. The flavors were good - but quite rich. I think a slice would have been overwhelming. So, if I try it again, I will swap out the pie plate for a square cake pan and hope that I can cut it into small bars instead of slices. And that I can cut it at all.

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This would have been a Pinterest Challenge, if the delicious looking potatoes I pinned had led anywhere. Instead of a recipe, I got tips on how to lose weight. Searching for the image led me to my own pin. Searching for the source of the watermark led me to error messages.

So, instead I found a different recipe HERE at Epicurious.com for roasted potatoes with garlic, lemon, oregano, and chicken stock. It wasn't quite what I was looking for, but I had all the ingredients and figured I'd give it a go.

And the potatoes have now been in the oven thirty minutes more than called for - and still aren't done. They smell amazing... but I'm beginning to question if potatoes cook differently at different altitudes? It's not my oven, since the chicken is done (and eaten).

Later: Two hours of bake time and I gave up. And no, the potatoes never got done, never got fluffy, never even approached soft.

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I'm not going to link anything for this one, but I assure you I only tried it because Pinterest was making it look so good. 

One grapefruit, about to be broiled, half with brown sugar, half without. 

Yeah, that was more of a mess than it was worth. I will continue eating them my way (like an orange) and leave the fancy bits to other people... 

Happily Quilted

It took me three short nights of quilting, but I think I've finally got Happy Go Lucky quilted the way I imagined.

Inspired by the beautiful quilting on this Herringbone Linen Quilt by Latifah Saafir, I stitched across my straight lines, changing the angle at each straight line. I ran these stitches in sets of two or three across the length of the quilt - with absolutely no pattern or guide for how far apart they should be or how many I should do.

My biggest concern had been how such a straight line approach to the quilting would look against the very floral backing material, but I think it worked out well.

The straight lines alone didn't work - but somehow adding those angled lines changed it up enough that (to me) the quilting no longer clashes with the fabric pattern. I'm very relieved - I spent the first session of quilting fearing that I would flip it over only to face the news that I would have to rip it out and come up with another plan!

I rushed outside with the camera the minute I finished - just in time to grab a few photos before the sun went down. Oh, I'm so thankful for these longer, summer days!

I'm quite smitten with it - even though yes, the quilting took longer than I'd hoped (about 5 hours for a baby-size quilt) and yes, it was a bit more intensive than what I usually go for. For the first time, I missed my old Singer, which could stop needle down or up depending on when I released the pedal. Working with my Janome, which always stops needle up, meant that I had to stop before I reached the line, then approach by hand (either cranking or using one of the buttons) until I hit the line, stop needle down, adjust the quilt, then I was free to use the pedal for almost two inches before beginning the slow approach again. There's got to be a better way to do that - but I don't know how with my current machine. I love the resulting look, but unless I find a faster way to do it, it simply isn't practical for anything larger than this little one.

I had hoped to have enough of the backing material leftover to make the binding from it, but I wasn't quite so lucky in that aspect. So, after a trim down, I expect Happy Go Lucky will be joining the Monkeys in the 'wait until I buy more material' stack. And this one could be even trickier - unlike the Monkeys (which just needs the right shade of red), I have absolutely no idea what kind of final touch I should be looking for to complete this one. Looking at things might change my opinion, but I think neither solid nor stripe... but I'm also thinking floral would be over doing it. What's left?! Guess I've got some shopping ahead of me next time I have a few minutes...