My Creative Space

I find it unfortunate that I'm just now getting around to blogging about my current project, as it has been in my mind for so long and I've been actively working on it for quite a few weeks now.

I am nearing the halfway point of piecing my Rainbow String quilt. I started refining the greens in the quilt today, purchasing a few more fat quarters to make sure that the transition from yellow to yellow-green and from yellow-green to green is smooth and to make sure that the colors blend nicely with each other as you move throughout each color. I hope tomorrow morning to make the final decision, because I should be finished piecing all of my yellow blocks and I'll be able to cut the fabric for the yellow-greens and start piecing them.



I'm beyond excited with how this is going and can't wait to complete it. Hopefully I'll post more often so I can see the progress I'm making, and I need to go back and catalog the work I've already done.

A few blocks of each color.

King-sized Checkerboard Quilt...Complete!

This quilt is so massive I feel like I should give it a name...

I finally finished the king-sized quilt on Monday after a long seven months. It didn't really take that long in total, but it was quite the monstrosity to complete. I don't think I want to undertake something quite this huge for awhile. (I say this now...)

The quilt's final measurements are roughly 104 x 112 inches. I forgot to take note of the five fabrics my mom chose for the top, but I know that one of them is a Civil War reproduction print. The backing is a simple cream flannel, and the binding is Kona cotton in Espresso.

I had a few snafus along the way. It had been awhile since I had quilted, so I forgot that you trim up the quilt sandwich AFTER you finish quilting. I ended up having to remove a few rows because the packing pulled up too much, and some parts wrinkled during the quilting. Overall the quilting turned out much better than I had expected, and the binding helped to conceal the mistakes.

It was definitely a learning experience. (And because quilts this size are so heavy, quite a workout!) I'm looking forward to starting my next one really soon.

Favorites in Embroidery

I have developed quite the love for embroidery. It never ceases to amaze me the things people can come up with using a needle, some thread, and fabric. My own personal embroidery skills are OK, but they are a work in progress. I can only hope that I can one day create things like some of the people below have.

I hope in the future to combine my love of quilting with my love of embroidery by making a crazy quilt. I've seen some pretty amazing ones before, and I love how they are like giant fabric collages.


1. Dragon, 2. earth-globe1, 3. Blue texture, 4. Color Wheel Project, 5. peacock embrodiery , 6. #32 hibiscus , 7. Detail of hand embroidery, 8. Kirby and Opal's garden 3 2009, 9. Embroideriey medallion on white linen, 10. Not available, 11. Jacobean Cuff Green, 12. Richelieu (2), 13. on her 35th day, 14. Itty Bitty Hello Kitty Coat of Many Colours Christmas Commission Committee..., 15. Shisha, 16. fox patch, 17. 4 Hens n Teeth... for HensTeeth!, 18. Allium Flora journal cover design, 19. daisy-on-crackle-detail1, 20. Party Dots ATC, 21. hanging-cd-indian-inspired, 22. Floral Fantasy Eco Tote, 23. orange bag design, 24. Portuguese heart - Coração de Viana, 25. Flower circles

For the Love of Mochi

Oh, how I do love this yarn: Mochi Plus in Intense Rainbow.


I've been working on a scarf with it the past few weeks. It's going slow, because I didn't realize just how much yarn comes per (very small) skein, so I keep having to reorder. I also forgot to compensate for differences in dye lots, which means lots of matching yarns and, unfortunately, wasted yarn.




An odd thing about this yarn is that its thickness varies in the skein, which means that certain parts of the scarf have ended up crocheted a bit more tightly than I would like. I think it will look great, imperfections and all, once finished.

Project 365 - Days 1-4

Day 1:


Day 2:
Day 3:


Day 4:

2010 - Crafty Goals, Resolutions, Aspirations

Even though we are already five (FIVE!) days into 2010, I want to outline my goals for myself for the next year. Some will get done, some likely will not, but I want to have something to look back at on December 31 to see how far I have come.

• Participate in Project 365
• Finish my mom's quilt
• Finally start (AND finish) my humongous rainbow collage
• A rainbow string quilt
• Learn to crochet granny squares
• Make artwork for around the house
• Learn to make clothes for Livers
• Work my way around my D-SLR well
• Make more jewelry for myself
• Sell things on Etsy
• Learn to digitally scrapbook well
  
• FINALLY start and finish Livers' baby scrapbook
• Learn to crochet and knit more things than scarves
• Crochet a blanket
• Knit a pair of socks
• Regularly organize the gazillion photos I take
• Teach Livers a new craft
• Make more things for my kid(s?)
• Be less craftily lazy
• Keep the blog more updated

I could probably add tons more here if I tried, but this is gracious plenty :)

My Creative Space....

....is looking pretty monotonous.

I am still chugging away on my mom's king-sized quilt, and I'm almost finished with the top. Hopefully (crossing fingers) I'll be able to finish it tomorrow. I'd love to get everything finished but the binding completed by Christmas so that I can have a mindless task to work on while traveling over the holidays, but we'll have to see.

I had better get this done soon, because I haven't even started on Livers' Christmas stocking, and Christmas is just around the corner! I'm really excited to see how it turns out. I'm worried that I've overextended myself with my vision of what I want it to be.

My Creative Space

Right now I have a one-track mind: sew, sew, sew.

I'm chugging along on the monstrous task that is the king size quilt, and I'm past the half-way point on the top. It's getting me motivated to go ahead and finish it. I've sewn the blocks of 16 out of 23 rows together, and I really think if I crack down I could (crossing fingers) be finished by Thanksgiving. Here's to hoping!!!

With the Christmas season rapidly approaching I really hope I DO get this top finished soon, because I have lots of projects on my plate to roll out. I want to sew my daughter a stocking for Christmas rather than buy one. I think it will add a personal touch. My stocking--I think--was handmade when I was a kid; either that or the mass-produced ones looked way better than they do now. I wanted to afford her the same luxury and get a little fun out of it for me.

I also want to make a scarf for my brother as a Christmas present. I'm torn between knitting and crocheting it. I really want to crochet it, because after practicing both I think I much prefer crocheting. However I want to get in some knitting practice beyond a simple knitted rows, and this would certainly be a way to do that. I suppose I have some time to do it.

I also have finally got all of the pictures in for this huge mixed media collage I want to make for my office. It is going to combine paint, photographs, beads, buttons, ribbon, and possibly some other things if I get ambitious, and my goal was to have it finished this year. With so many fun things I want to work on it's really hard to decide sometimes what to do.

Fabulous Lighting Idea

I saw this on CRAFT Magazine's blog, and I am so on this!!!

How-to: Pom Pom Light.


I've been wanting to do some new lighting in my office (aka, the Rainbow Room), and this is too neat to pass up. I absolutely love how whimsical yet modern it is. I could easily see this in IKEA, which is probably why I like it so much :)

A Hard Lesson Learned

I've been working on (what seems like forever) a huge, and I mean HUGE, quilt for my mom. It's an oversized king quilt measuring roughly nine-and-a-half by nine-and-a-half feet. Making it relatively easy is the fact that the pattern is very simple. She chose five fabrics and wanted the top to be squares alternating those five fabrics in the same pattern throughout. The overall effect is going to be that each fabric will be running diagonally throughout it.

Simple enough.

To make the quilt less heavy to thread into the machine, I sew five rows at a time and then connect them together. After regaining some motivation I finally finished the 6-10 rows and was ready to sew them to the first five. When I began to do this I noticed something didn't seem right. The squares were not going in the same direction. I decided to then sew four more rows and see if that helped.

Thursday I finally got the rows complete and again sat down to sew them all together and then had a nauseating realization. The rows didn't match up because I had sewn FIVE rows, each nine-and-a-half feet long, in the wrong orientation. In order to fix this I would have to spend the painstaking time ripping out the seams for these rows so that they could be sewn in the correct orientation.

Last night, after a total of more than two hours, I finally finished my repairs on the quilt. Which means that I'm at the exact same point that I was....a week ago. Fabulous.

Note to self: Take a better look at your quilt orientation before you spend hours of your precious time sewing in the wrong direction.