Flip Flops

Quilting Possibilities

Quilting Possibilities
Our latest wool bundle - Sunflowers

Friday, January 10, 2014

A Little of This, A Little of That . . .

As I get ready for the big move in the sewing room, most of it is trashed enough to make working in there impossible even for me.  While I admit, I am totally comfortable in a good amount of clutter and chaos, my sewing space has surpassed even my comfort zone.  And now with two grand babies sniffling and sick, the arrival of said strapping sons and son-in-law to move the furniture around is in jeopardy.  I'm not sure how much longer I can deal with the mess, so I've been staying out of the sewing room except to pack for my retreat.

Which all leads to me doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  

Austin Lights
We cut kits this past summer for this project and they, and the fully quilted sample, languished while waiting for me to update the pattern.  I orginially wrote the pattern in 2008.  It needed to be updated to my new format, so I did that.  Then we found a mistake in the test print for the sample.  So it came back to me to correct and went on the to do pile. For months. Whats really silly is the changes took me less than 15 minutes when I finally sat down & did them. 

What finally made me do it?  When I took down the Christmas samples in the shop, I ended up with a HUGE blank wall behind the cutting table.  While looking around for something to hang in that space, I saw the finished Austin Lights quilt folded on top of the kits.  I hung it, knowing it would force me to go home and actually finish the pattern.  It worked.



Big plans!

I'm lucky enough to be going to Kaye England's College for Shop Owners next week (in warm & sunny Florida baby!) and I've been busily cutting out projects to do while I'm there.  Kaye is coming to do an event for us in September and I want to have kits available.  So I've lined up six samples that need to be made.  I've pawned one off on Fern, err, Fern volunteered  to make one of them.  Three are projects I started at previous Kaye retreats and never finished - there's that procrastination again!  And I pre-cut  two so I could take them with me to work on, along with the three UFOs.  

I'm crazy enough to think I will finish at least three of the planned projects . . . .hmmm, might be time for a reality check here!  But the planning is so much fun!


Aubrey's Quilt Pattern
When I buy fabric for the shop, it could be 6-8 months before it actually arrives.  I write notes to myself on my order sheets of what plans I have for the fabric so I don't look at it blankly when it arrives & the staff asks me where to put it in the shop and does it need anything cut off it?  A pretty line arrived this week and Barb said to me, it says make a girly baby quilt with this.  What pattern are we using?  I think I need to write better notes because I looked that fabric and thought - huh?

So when one can't quilt in her messy sewing space, she moves to the computer and designs something.  This is one of my favorite blocks and what I used to design granddaughter Aubrey's quilt.  But of course that would have been too easy to just use that pattern as it was . . . . oh no, I wanted scrappy which means more blocks and less open space so the blocks needed to be bigger - back to the computer drawing board.



This is a computerized version of the latest version of my Aubrey's Quilt pattern.  Scrappy, more blocks, larger blocks and a new color palette.  I really like it.

Now to find someone to make it . . . 


Sewing room is still messy and if grand babies are still under the weather, it's going to be that way for a while longer.  Until then, it'll be me doing a little of this, and a little of that.  


Until next time.