the final stitch

I finally finished hand quilting the quilt for my parents. It was started in 2006, with piecing by my sisters and myself. We were making it to honor the 100th birthday of our family's camp in Maine as well as their 60th birthdays. The top was fortunately done in time to present it in 2007 at the party, but the quilting has been going in fits and starts since then. When I found out I was going to have a baby, I knew I had to finish it now or never! Now all I have to do is make 31 feet of binding. . .

Quilt for turning 30

It was finally nice enough AND it occurred me to take some pictures of the husband's quilt outside.

Hand Puppets

I admit it, I'm pretty proud of these. I made them for my nephew, he's three.

I love this tutorial over on Sweetie Pie Bakery, especially the curtain - a simple idea but such a great addition to the puppets themselves. I decided to machine stitch rather than hand partly for strength and partly for time. I decided to do this a week before Christmas!

I followed her directions for the pig, elephant, and lion, and then added the penguin cause he likes them and the dog cause he has one (though he thought it was a bunny, a reasonable assumption due to the ears). The tails of the pig and dog were made with pipe cleaner. I used leftover material from the bridesmaids dresses from my wedding for the curtain and made ties so they could be velcroed (not sure if that's a word).

In action!

Christmas extravaganza

Finally got my camera back!! I had forgotten half the things that were on there (it snowed in December?) Anywho, I had been diligently photography my pre-holiday craftiness and then left my camera at a friends back east. As it turns out, I didn't even document everything I did but I'm excited to finally get to show some things off.

Using this laptop sleeve pattern, I made an Ipad cover for my mother-in-law. I made this for myself for my laptop a while back and I love it.

Sad to say but it's been so long that I'm not exactly sure who's crayon roll pattern I followed. There are plenty out there, but I definitely looked at this one. I found the colored pencils in London and bought them for my nephew who's an avid artiste. I used material from his bean bag chair that I made a couple years ago for the outside, cause it was from his chair and also cause of the tree motif.

I decided a button and some elastic would be easier to wield for his little fingers.

And the piece de resistance for this year - hand puppets and a curtain from Sweetie Pie Bakery. More on this in a minute.

Forward progress

That post title is much better than slowly but surely! The quilted stars are done. I'm not sure how I feel about them at this point but I had to finish them once I was committed to it. Hopefully I will like them again once the whole thing is done. At least quilting every day is paying off!

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Show and Tell

Show and tell is a standard part of all the guild meetings I've ever been to. I have been going for 3 years now and never shown my work. Mostly cause I never have anything done at the right time for the local guild - we only meet 4 times a year and when I finish what I'm working on, I tend to just send it to whoever I'm giving it to since it's always late anyway! Plus I generally prefer to avoid standing up in front of people. But I finally got back to a PMQG meeting this week and took the completed birthday quilt. Since I haven't taken my own picture of it to put on here, I will send you over to the post on the PMQG blog. Scroll down about a 3rd of the way. Of course, I had to go right after the Tokyo Subway Map quilt, done by a woman whose blog I follow, but oh well. Somebody had to do it. (And yes, if you're wondering, I'm inspired and working on it - we'll leave it there for now)

Revelation

Someone recently asked me how many quilts I completed in 2010. It was a slight exaggeration when I said 2 since I technically didn't finish the binding on my husband's til last week. It prompted me to look through this blog and discover that I have 2 entries titled "Slowly but surely." Um. That's embarrassing. I started this whole thing hoping it would increase my production. Apparently it hasn't yet! But maybe that's what January is for. I decided to work on my parents quilt every day. Even if it is just for 20 minutes. Everyday. I promise I won't post pictures of every 20 minutes worth of work but that's what you get today.


In other news, I was super crafty and productive right before Christmas but I can't prove it cause I left my camera at a friends back home. Grrrr. I also have some quilt inspiration in the works. A book from amazon is on it's way because this is storybook quilts afterall. And another one that will be an homage to my favorite city. More on that later.

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