Selvage

I love all of the little selvage crafts out there. I keep throwing away my little bits of selvage, and then find wonderful little crafts done with them - and then vow that I'll not throw away my little bits of selvage. However, I have yet to make anything with them.

While reading some blogs, I came across this little lovely (the pincushions on her blog header - what an extremely talented lady she is!). Well, it inspired me to do my first selvage craft. This is what I came up with.

I'm not really sure how user friendly as a pin cushion mine is. I'm thinking of putting something heavy inthe bottom and just using it as a container.

I'm really enjoying just having it sitting there, though. I thought I might try to do a square one next.

Back Again

Remember this quilt? It was made from a jelly roll, and is not a large quilt (only 50 x 58), so there were lots of scraps left. I got it in my head that I needed to use every. single. scrap. to make the backing. It sounded like a great idea, and I thought that it would be pretty easy. Wrong.

I think that maybe I'm just not good at free piecing. I admire those bloggers that can do it - they make spectacular quilts. Crazy Mom Quilts and Tallgrass Prairie Studio both come to mind - I'm sure there are others out there that I haven't mentioned. My attempts at it, however, just seem to take forever and make my brain hurt a little with all of the math. And I really needed to use math for this back, because I wanted it to be a few inches bigger than the top.

Okay, here's what I came up with.

It actually looks okay. It is a few inches bigger than the top. The problem? It's a few inches too much bigger. See the the top and bottom? When I get it all sewn up, I will have to cut off some of the top and bottom of the back, and I think it will make the back look weird. *sigh* Obviously my math skills were severely lacking. So, I think I have two options. 1) I can hack off some of the backing; or 2) I can make the top bigger. I think I might go for option 2. It is a rather small quilt.

Here are some of the blocks up close.

The block on the left was left over fabric from the rows that wasn't used. That narrow strip of Fresh Squeezed fabric on the right started out as tiny 1 x 6 inch strips that I cut off of bigger blocks. I had so many that I thought it would be fun(!) to use them. Yeah. Fun.

One thing I am rather pleased about is that I decided that I would NOT start a new project until I finished this hideous monster wonderful back. And I didn't! Hooray!

Depending on what I decide to do on this quilt, I will probably have to get cozy with my seam ripper. And if I have to, I found something on television a couple of nights ago that I could watch. It was called Whatever, Martha! It's Martha's daughter and another lady that dish on Martha episodes. I was in hysterics. I watched an episode where they were capping on Martha and her guest clown, Peanut Butter. I laughed the first time through, and then replayed it for my husband, because he didn't quite understand what I was laughing about, and I laughed even harder the second time through.

I'll leave you with a picture of us rafting this summer. We rafted on the American River in Northern California. It was two days of rafting, and two nights of tent camp sleeping (Eeek!). But my kids absolutely loved it.

From left to right - Hubby, Me, (another child on the trip), Middle Child, Youngest, and My Son. We had an absolutely FABULOUS time, and I highly recommend rafting to everyone. We only lost one passenger, once. It was the other child's mother (she's behind my Middle Child). Thank goodness it wasn't me. We definitely plan on going again next year.

Getting Things Done

I went on vacation on August 6 and finally finished vacationing on August 24, but I have had a tough time getting back into the swing of things. Monica used the term "de-vacationing" - and I think that's what I've been doing for the past few weeks. Well, plus the kids went back to school, so there was that whirlwind of activity going on. I now have one 11th grade, 9th grade, and 7th grade. We're odd this year. LOL I always get a kick out of saying that! But I think I appreciate more than anyone else. *sigh*

I have been a busy bee, however. I finally finished - absolutely finished, binding and everything - this quilt. I quilted it on my MegaQuilter (man, I forgot how dang heavy that thing is!).

Here's an action shot. That puppy was on my dining room table for 4 days! I wanted to use Kim's quilting pattern. It took me awhile to get it going so that it looked okay.

This is what it looked like when I first started quilting it. Pretty crappy.

By the time I finished, it started looking much better. I then did some swirly things in the borders. Those came out okay, however, it's very obvious that I need a lot of practice!

The blue that I quilted with was a Sulky 30 wt. thread. The yellow that I used was a Sulky 12 wt. thread. I didn't even realize it when I bought it. That 12 wt. was much heavier, and my machine fussed much more with the heavier (12 wt.) thread. It was also noticeably thicker on the quilt.

Here's a picture of the finished quilt:

It's not bad. I'm still not sure that I'm thrilled with it. And really? The quilting is pretty bad, but I figured it was better to practice on a quilt top that I didn't absolutely LOVE.
Here's the back. Remember the borders that I was going to use? Well, I had a bunch of that fabric left and decided to use it on the back. It's actually not a bad fabric on the back! However, in retrospect, I would not have used the blue quilting thread in the bobbin. I'm not sure what I was thinking. (That's MaryJane - my son's cat - she wanted to be in the picture, too.) The yellow thread that I used on the front blends in much better.



And last, the binding. I used two different fabrics for the binding. They are so close in color, however, that it doesn't really show up.

But I still like the red binding.