Andy's Wedding Quilt

My mom and I made this really awesome quilt for my cousin Andy and his wife Tara who got married last Saturday. We each made half the blocks and we both love it.

some smaller quilts

First, a baby quilt I made out of leftovers from another quilt that looks pretty much exactly like this. I think it's so cute!

Next, the final result of one I posted a while ago; it ended up about 52" square, a perfect lap size. Tiff bought it for her mom for Mother's Day.

Finally, the last of the pink square-in-a-square bits I had left, made into a sweet baby girl quilt. I'll be posting this on Etsy soon. I can't believe I almost made a queen size of all 4" square-in-a-square blocks!!! I was insane.

suzy homemaker weekend!

Hi guys!
I have been hanging out at home this weekend, being super productive (in between wasting time on facebook and napping on the couch with kitty) so here are a few snaps of what I'm doing:

Some blocks from a pinwheel quilt I've been working on for some time - mostly very pale blues with a few very pale greens (upper right) and that one mostly white print with big pink flowers on it (bottom center). I've got 64 - 8" blocks finished, I was considering making it a queen size but lost steam when I realized that not only would I have to sew 36 more blocks, but also that a 64" square quilt is really quite a lovely size. I'll lay out the blocks once I get this one off the quilt wall:

this is an incredibly crappy snapshot, but you get the idea. The strips are 6" wide - they are the leftovers from the squares I cut for Mikey's Christmas quilt (below). I had a giant stack of strips left and decided to sew them together. The horizontal asphalt grey strips are 1" and the vertical ones are 1.5". It's 41"x44" right now, if I remember correctly, and I think I'll just sew 4" grey borders on and piece a multicoloured sashing from more of the Asian prints - though I may give in and put a double border on it (grey, print strips, grey) to make it more of a lap size. Your input is welcome!

Here is a sweet little vignette of my sewing table - I did some improvisational piecing from bits I had left over from a homespun quilt I made - that one did turn out to be queen sized - and I'm quite pleased with the results. It's 22"x25", a large doll quilt size. I made one about that size for my cat since I just had a few squares left from a quilt I made for Monica a few years ago, and I loved them together, so I just made a mini quilt. The cat thinks it is the best thing ever. She hides toys under it and then dives under to attack them, or just fights with it. It's cute.

This is the quilt we made Mikey for Christmas - I started it YEARS ago (we won't attempt to count) and Mom basically finished it for me (last bit of the sashing, borders, sandwiching, quilting, machine stitching the binding) so I could take it up to Whistler to give to Mike. It turned out HUGE - Anna is standing on a chair, on tiptoes, holding it up as tall as possible, on the left side of the photo there, and it's still puddling on the floor a tiny bit. HUGE.

Also I am knitting a hat, and made a pie (check it out at the hot buns bakery) and got a lot of sleep. Excellent weekend.

Love,
Abby

game on.

So Monica and Kate and I signed up for a holiday craft fair up in the islands. Having two months to make enough quilts to justify a booth really makes life interesting - we're aiming for a dozen actual quilts (all lap size) + various and sundry holiday craft items, mostly potholders & table runner style stuff. I have three baby quilts ready to go but they're a bit summery, I'll bring them along anyway and see what happens. I've had lots of ideas recently about stuff I'd like to make but the deadline helps get my ass in gear. Also the fact that we're making lap size quilts makes it way less daunting than making bed sized ones.

I am trying to do a lot of this out of my stash, which is obscene, but have found myself at the fabric store a couple of times on accident. WHOOPS! This beige one was all stash, I can't really remember why I bought a bunch of beige solids but I am LOVING it. I have wanted to make a bento box for a long time, and there was an article in a Martha mag with a yellow and white bento box folded up on the back of a chair and it was so comfortable that I just wanted it right away. This one is going to be awesome.

Monica's boyfriend's mom let me borrow her quilting frame but I don't have a suitable machine - here's hoping the birthday bunny comes through with a Juki mid-arm. I am secretly hoping (and not-so-secretly hinting) that my friends might make donations to the birthday juki fund? It's a little expensive, especially since I am trying to go to Australia in the spring, but think of how quickly I could whip out quilts! I have a dozen tops ready to go, it's just such a hassle wrestling them through my wee (and thoroughly beloved) Pfaff.

other current (new) projects/ideas:

-a floral irish chain I bought way too much fabric for when I worked at the quilt shop and now have no idea why I loved it so much, I guess my style has changed!

-an amish roman stripe on charcoal, bordered in silver and then plum, SO EXCITED

-something like the Happy Hour pattern in non-christmasy reds and greens

-trying to find a pattern to use all the horrid pinks I collected during my pink phase and now make me sort of sick to my stomach, without making it so... pink. I think maybe bordering it with A LOT of white, but then it's not much of a stashbuster, is it?

-playing around with text on a quilt, making one with my name on it or maybe just a giant monogram to test it out

-a blue and white snowball/churn dash that goes over the edges of the quilt - will bind it in bright green or bright red

-seeing what happens when I take a traditional pattern and make it "float" by chopping off the edges in a non-traditional place

-an irish chain or nine-patch in 30s prints with an apple green background

whew! some of these I've started, some I haven't, and I'm sure I'll get lots more ideas in the next couple of months. Look for more posts soon I hope!

Love, Abby

two baby quilts up on etsy

more quilts.

A wedding quilt (them're lady cowboys - scantily clad I might add) for an undisclosed recipient... please excuse my trashy see through wifebeater. It was hot! Note my prized roll of quilt batting in the background (and assorted quilt tops too!). I'm such a quilt nerd.

A baby quilt to be sold on Etsy - I collected dozens of pink and white prints back in my pink phase in my early twenties, cut out an entire queen sized quilt's worth of 4" finished square-in-a-square blocks, and promptly put them away in a bin and ignored them. that's a heckuva lot of triangles. I sewed some of them together and alternated the blocks with a solid pale pink. I'm going to quilt it on the diagonal, I think it is going to be really cute. My mom offered to sew the rest of the blocks together if I wanted to make it bigger, but I am so over the idea of having an all pink quilt on MY bed, and did I mention that's a crapload of triangles? I'll save the blocks for future baby quilts instead.

This is the quilt I made based on Thomas' pictures from Cinque Terre, which I blogged about ages ago. It's finally all together, and I went to my parents' house last night to sandwich it and my dad FLIPPED OUT and immediately started calling it his and bought it on the spot - he even made me do the binding HIS way "to preserve the artistic integrity". Whatever, Dad. It's pretty awesome though. I really love the way it turned out. Plus it's pretty cool because even though my dad always likes to see the quilts I make, he seems kind of bored by them because they have been pretty traditional and he's such an expansive artist he wants to see more art quilts. So here ya go, Dad.

This is a wholecloth quilt that I was going to make for my mom for Mother's Day because I have this red quilt on my couch that she keeps hinting about and I'm afraid she's going to steal it one day. I saw these fabrics in the spring and really liked them together - I had a couple of other fabrics picked out but kept coming back to these, even though they're really weird colors. The inner border (and the future binding too) is a really cool purple stripe, and the outer border is butterscotch flowers on a tan background with purple leaves. I picked up a butterscotch solid for the backing when I didn't have this with me and it turned out to be perfect when I brought it home. I was going to keep it a secret from my mom but she got all excited about it when I laid it out so I had to tell her. Also I am bad at keeping minor secrets. Anyway, I meant to have it done for her for Mother's day but there was the Roses & Rosemary auction and a bunch of other stuff, so I didn't get it done. She knows I love her anyway.

sewing blitz

So this weekend I cancelled all my engagements and holed up and sewed my little heart out. Here's some of what I did.

hey y'all

July! What? How did that happen?

We had a sweet-ass barbecue at my parents' house again for the 4th. This year was the best yet I think - lots of people I like and pretty much no people I don't like. Plus pie. Only bummer was, all the fellas I invited brought girlfriends. Pfft.

Here's a quilt I'm working on:

I llooooooovvvve it. It's a color study for a quilt I'm making that was inspired by Orla Kiely's stem print (and Joanie), and it's a perfect cheery summery baby quilt. I'm hand quilting it in Xs across the white (well, slightly creamy) squares. It's awesome. It's 40" square and I think I'll list it for $175. Reasonable, yes? The only bummer - which I didn't notice until I had started quilting it and you can't even really tell in this photo - is that all six of the tangerine colored squares are squished over on the right side. So much for random placement.

ANYway. Hope you all are well. Enjoy the summer, it's finally nice!

Love, mcnabbs.

the red quilt finished

Ta-daaa! It raised $120 for the orphans!

(back detail)

"how are you so prolific?"

So I decided to put borders on the red quilt, and I'm glad I did. I was hanging out with my mom on Mother's Day, pinning quilts on her hardwood floor (yep, still have the shitty carpet - but I'm pretty sure I convinced my dad to let me lay marmoleum tile! SCORE), and she paused and said "how are you so PROLIFIC with your quilts? I mean, how do you make so MANY?"

...uh. total blank stare. See, I always think to myself "man, I wish I had time to start THIS one or THAT one, I like THAT, wouldn't THAT one be fun?" and here is my mom, the woman who made 15 quilts one year (yeah she had 9 months off, but she spent a whole heck of a lot of time in the garden too), kind of in awe at the fact that I'm at her house for the second time in 2008 pinning three quilts at once.

awesome.

feeling quilty

so today's biggest project is a charity quilt for the roses and rosemary spring cocktail event auction! i am taking a wee break to consider whether to put borders on it or just leave it at a nice cuddly 50"x60" throw size (totally big enough and less sewing - but it just seems kind of unfinished right now). i think i need some borders to hold the whole thing together. lord knows i have enough extra fabric. what posessed me to get eight plus yards of assorted prints for a throw size? sheesh. at least i have plenty for the back :)

pinwheels!

I finished the pinwheel quilt! FINALLY! It only took me like six, seven years. And before I even put the last stitch in it, it was sold. Thanks Tiff, enjoy!

sigh

confession: i am bad at the internet.

ok, i'm good at finding things on the internet. i'm good at ordering things from the internet. i'm great at wasting time on the internet. but i am really, really bad at updating things on the internet. i know the last thing this world needs is one more blogger/crafter/baker/joker posting their wares, and not like anyone reads this anyway, but i am still doing a lot of projects, and when people ask me what i'm up to i have to say 'here's my blog but there isn't much new stuff on it'. what's up with that? i have a digital camera, i have a flickr page, i have an etsy site, facebook, everything, but i can't update it to save my life. i am currently internally whining about the prospect of revamping my flickr page. 4000 pictures on there and i think i'm going to have to just delete them all and start over again. le sigh.

in other news: i made a key lime cheesecake with mango topping for my friend's birthday. it's glorious.

so i'll allow myself a mini-rant about quilting: i'm so annoyed with how deified denyse schmidt is. yeah, she's great, she does cool things, but why does every beginning quilter have to make their first quilt out of either denyse schmidt quilts or the modern quilt workshop? also, why does so much ADORABLE and/or GORGEOUS stuff come out of Japan? it seems everything is perfectly pieced, perfectly coordinated, perfectly sized, and freakin' awesome. plus it's all hand-pieced and hand-quilted! where do all these ladies get the TIME? anyway, kudos to japanese crafters, because you guys make me jealous in a good way.

ok, i am off to the quilt shop for a solid red (only) to use as the background for a charity quilt for the roses and rosemary auction. i got a bunch of different red prints and actually have been dreaming (literally) about a red-prints-on-red-background quilt for a few months now so i'm excited to have an excuse to make it :)

holy crap i finished something!

only took me five years! here it is on my bed, before I washed it...

and here it is with the lucky recipients!

love, mcnabbs

coasters.

so I was up until 1 am last night baking a red velvet cake for my project architect. umm. just realized I got zero pictures. good job, abby. at least it was delicious and I have the precious memories.

ANYWAY. I got up at 6.30 to frost it and get to work at a quasi-reasonable hour (still didn't make it until 915), and was sleepy all afternoon so I didn't get much done, but Monica and Kate and I did work out a quilt block exchange which I'm SUPER excited about. and we talked about sewing and stuff, but I ended up not calling Monica because I worked late to make up for all the work I didn't do at what should have been naptime, and then by the time I finished dinner it was 9 pm and of course that's too late. but I was amped up about sewing so I couldn't go to bed until I made something, so I whipped out some wee quilted coasters in teal mini Hawaiian prints. it's a pretty cute set of 4, I think it would be a good Christmas gift for someone lucky, so I think I'll put it up on etsy for kicks. sets of 4 run about $10 which sounds good to me. it's funny how you can look stuff up on there, and some things are all almost exactly the same price, except a few grandmas who are totally underselling themselves and some egotistical thirtysomethings who have way overpriced their "art". hello, a quilted coaster is a craft, like a third grader might do, or a grandma, only classier. don't try to sell it as an art piece, Dali. yeah, you have amy butler fabrics. so does everyone else. notice how SHE is the one making the big bucks because SHE is the one with actual creative vision.


...ahem. I digress.


the point of this story is to tell you that I'm such an idiot that I'm up past midnight again, just because I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad to make something. I have serious sleep issues. ugh.


anyway, here's a crappy phone-camera picture of the coasters because they're kinda cute but I can't be bothered to go dig out the camera and the cable and blah blah blah. Here. I'm going to bed.

good night.

love, mcnabbs

p.s. mine are better than everyone else's because I at least made a little effort to make the corners square. most everyone else left their corners all lumpy. losers.

crafty.

So my friend Folpmer's birthday is on Monday, and I didn't have any cards around, so I thought I'd make one. I originally thought I would stitch a little fabric birthday cake on the front of a piece of paper, write a jolly message inside, and be on my merry way. While looking for appropriate birthday cake style fabrics, however, I happened upon a piece with cowgirls on it (the border for my bedroom curtains. So festive) and thought that maybe a cowgirl could wish him a pleasant day. I thought Ginny was the most fetching, and then there were some other cute fabrics that went with her coloring, and then I got carried away - so he gets a birthday quilt-card. I'm thinking about making some of these for etsy - it only took me a little over an hour to complete and it's so freakin' cute!

Enjoy.
Love,
A

hey hey hey!

i'm hand quilting a pillow! yay. look for it on etsy soon.

pinwheels

i mentioned this quilt back in january but here's a little visual:

i realized i've been doing so much quilting lately i might as well show you all my projects (i know katie loves them!) - and maybe that will help me stay motivated to actually finish all this crap!

love,

mcnabbs

yet another old project

...another one i finally got around to finishing! now this one isn't quite done yet (they're in 4x4 blocks, not all sewn together here) but there are only 30 blocks so i'm very nearly done. this one i started in early 2003. yeah. long time ago. the cool thing is, i like it just as much now as i did then, which does NOT happen very often in projects i've put off (or lost) for a while. this one is a present for friends who got married in march '03. whoops, i'm a little late. they love me anyway though, so no harm done. but yeah, it's pretty great.

goodness.

OK, I'm officially insane, as my girlfriends love to tell me.
This week I overextended myself. Yesterday, after getting off the hook for two tiramisus I had promised for friends' birthdays, I decided to relax for a bit after work - which only resulted in pushing back my schedule a couple of hours, and I finally went to bed around 2.30 this morning. good times.
I got Emily's quilt very almost finished - I sandwiched it at my mom's house (hardwood floors, I would kill for you) and took it home to quilt while I did laundry and watched Jesus Camp - absolutely terrifying film. Very good though. For some reason, my camera does not like to represent the actual colors of this quilt so you'll have to deal with this snap, I guess. This is pre-quilting; by the time I got the binding on I couldn't even think of where the camera might have run off to, so I just went to bed. I'll take one more when I finish sewing the binding tonight (in LA at Michela's house!!)

I also thought I'd take a picture of the "designated picnic blanket" I finished last week. I know it seems like I've been sewing a lot lately - and I have - but lots of the stuff I've been working on has been in the works for ages. For instance, I got all the fabric for this one when I was working at the quilt shop in 2001 or so. I got less and less excited about it as the years went on, but somehow I kept plugging away at it and put the last stitch in last Friday at poker night. The back is obnoxious green, which will hide any grass stains, and the plaid front is sure to hide any food spills, plus I was so excited to just get it DONE that I didn't care about the quilting, resulting in many puckers on the back. But nobody cares. I quilted it in straight lines across in several different colors of thread, matching the different colors in the quilt. The bottom threads are all shades of green. It's pretty cool.

That's about it. I'm heading down to LA in about four hours to kick it with Michelie, and Brian, and Mosco, and Scotty (yay!), and drive to San Diego for my cousin's wedding. Good times.

Love,

mcnabbs