To voile or not to voile

...that's the question.

Nest Voile by Valori Wells
(image from Fat Quarter Shop)

Ohio Star Quilt
(Incredible Shrinking Quilters Bee)

The quilt still needs borders -- I'm considering an inner narrow striped border followed by a wider border in solid green -- but it's not too soon to be thinking of backing fabric.  While browsing over at http://www.fatquartershop.com/, I cam across this gorgeous voile by Valoris Wells.  It's on sale for $9 a yard marked down from $15, and since it's 54" wide, I would only need 2 yards.

So, what do you think?  From what I understand, quilting with voile can be tricky because it's slinky.  Would it be a terrible mistake to use as backing fabric?

Weekend Sewing

It's coming together nicely.  Four more blocks to go!  Each block contains 20 small HST's x 20 blocks = 400 HST's.  I find it less tedious to piece about 3-4 blocks as I go instead of making all of the HST's at once.

1. trimming, 2. chain stitching, 3. pile of Thangles, 4. pressing, 5. press, 6. stack, 7. paper removal, 8. HST's, 9. assembly, 10. WIP: Lady on the Lake block, 11. New Project: Lady of the Lake blocks, 12. Lady of the Lake

It was sunny and in the 70's in San Francisco this weekend.  [yes, I know this may seem like a form of torture for those of you suffering through sub-zero temps right now]  My daughter's gymnastics gym is located at Oyster Pt. in South San Francisco.  Even with a terrible head cold, I couldn't resist going for walk Saturday morning while my daughter was in her class.

Lady of the Lake - some progress

I've been making slow but steady progress on the Lady of the Lake quilt.  My iron bit the dust on Sunday. forcing me to run out to buy a new one before I could do any sewing.  I bought a Shark at Target and it seems adequate (not great), but it is lighter than my old iron.  I have been dealing with chronic shoulder pain, so that's a good thing.

Blocks are oriented "on-point" and soon I'll need to decide how I want to treat the outside edges.  I'm leaning toward filing in with HST's in batiks.  We'll see. This has been been a "fly by the seat of my pants" sort of project.  If you have a good idea, let me know!

Besides working on the LOTL blocks, I've been trying to sort out the chaos of my working space.  Here's Axel assisting with organizing my scraps. I think these strips are ideal for a scrappy log cabin.  Actually, I may end up giving these away to lighten the load.

What to do with a charm pack?

Make a table runner.

While ordering yardage of Maison de Garance (French General) to make a table runner for my SIL from http://www.fatquartership.com/, I couldn't resist adding a charm pack to my shopping cart.  I realized I could make a table runner with just charms, but it was a bit on the small side for my SIL's table.  I showed a friend the unquilted top with the charms and she said she would love to have it (browns aren't really my thing), so I finished the runner for her.

One yard of fabric wasn't quite enough to cover the back, so I pieced in the Flying Geese with some of the leftover charms.  Backing fabric is a dark brown Kona and binding is Maison de Garance.

This was an easy and relatively inexpensive project that I could see myself making again but with different fabrics.

A New Year, A New Project

Happy 2011, everyone!!!


Lady in the Lake quilt block

My BIL (my secret Santa gift exchange partner) gave me a Bali Pop roll in "Mango" for Christmas.  After recovering from the madness of the holidays, it seemed the time was ripe to start on a new throw quilt for the living room.   You may recall the 80 years' worth of wallpaper removal and painting project we finished recently?  The living room is now painted a nice light shade of gray with a deep teal blue accent wall.  I've paired a light grey Kona solid with the Bali batiks.  The purple color is called "red raspberry" batik by Hoffman.  I've also picked out a teal blue Batik to alternate with the purple blocks.  I think these colors will coordinate well with the room's new color scheme.  I'm happy to be working with batiks again.  The vivid colors are cheerful and are helping to chase away the winter blues.

Blocks will finish to a 12" square.  HST's are 2 1/2".  Inner HST (large) is 9".

I still have a stack of unfinished projects from 2010 ... oh well, I'll get to them eventually.  I'm resisting the urge to set any goals (quotas, yikes!) for 2011...but, I'd love to hear about  your quilting/sewing plans and challenges for the new year.



Winter in Golden Gate Park