![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Adventures In Quilting
Sep. 12th, 2019 09:56 amI am having a good time quilting.
Went to the monthly guild meeting, and we had a cool guest speaker, Tonya Ricucci. She showed up in a purple Cheshire Cat tshirt and pulled out a ton of fun and goofy Halloween quilts, and I really enjoyed her presentation. Didn't sign up for the class, though - I'm running low on scraps and don't have anything Halloweeny in the first place (I am HORRIBLY out of orange, I barely have a strip of it left!), and also I already know how to paper piece so there's really not much that workshop could teach me.
In fact, I just offered to run a paper piecing workshop for the guild - I'm pretty good at it, and a patient teacher, and since it has been years since the workshop where I learned how to paper piece by making my guild nametag, most new members of the guild don't have a nametag. I'm arranging a private lesson for one of my guildmates, and we shall see when the guild schedule opens up for a proper workshop.
Smaug is going well - I managed three (!!!) borders, and they don't ripple at all, thanks to the lecture a guildmate gave at last month's meeting! I had really hoped to have him quilted up by this month's meeting, but I was slowed down by piecing the backing out of my hideous leftover scraps, and I didn't want to rush the quilting just to have it done. So he's just drifting around, sandwiched and ready to go. No pictures just yet - he's in the awkward teenage phase. I'm glad I took a lot of chances on this project - working with strongly patterned Ghanaian fabrics, improv piecing yellow and orange strips when I ran out of fabric, throwing in some ugly colors, having multiple borders, staying flexible about the plan when things didn't work out like I hoped. This has been a learning experience.
Unfortunately, Otto the sewing machine just blew his lightbulb! He still works without it, but it's way less convenient to have a clamp lamp directly in front of my face while working, and the local store is apparently out of bulbs, so I'm gonna have to wait a couple days for a delivery and I'm frustrated.
At least I managed to finish Snail's quilt repairs (at long last) and ship that off. I also put in some work on the strawberry lemonade quilt I've avoided quilting for years now. I really want to have it done, but also it's a tendon-fucker of a quilting job, so I'm wary of it, especially when I have transcribing I also want to do. I think I will have to nibble away at it over time.
Another old project just resurrected itself - a friend is gonna be in my state, and I'd better hustle up with that paper pieced wolf pillow I promised! I'm going to lightbox the design again, see if I can perfect it, and then see what kind of wolves I can make!
Overall, I've been busy and it feels good to be creative. It's a bit lonely, though. I need local crafty friends within thirty years of my age. I do like the guild, and I'm glad I'm in it, but the eternal problem remains of feeling like an odd duck.
Went to the monthly guild meeting, and we had a cool guest speaker, Tonya Ricucci. She showed up in a purple Cheshire Cat tshirt and pulled out a ton of fun and goofy Halloween quilts, and I really enjoyed her presentation. Didn't sign up for the class, though - I'm running low on scraps and don't have anything Halloweeny in the first place (I am HORRIBLY out of orange, I barely have a strip of it left!), and also I already know how to paper piece so there's really not much that workshop could teach me.
In fact, I just offered to run a paper piecing workshop for the guild - I'm pretty good at it, and a patient teacher, and since it has been years since the workshop where I learned how to paper piece by making my guild nametag, most new members of the guild don't have a nametag. I'm arranging a private lesson for one of my guildmates, and we shall see when the guild schedule opens up for a proper workshop.
Smaug is going well - I managed three (!!!) borders, and they don't ripple at all, thanks to the lecture a guildmate gave at last month's meeting! I had really hoped to have him quilted up by this month's meeting, but I was slowed down by piecing the backing out of my hideous leftover scraps, and I didn't want to rush the quilting just to have it done. So he's just drifting around, sandwiched and ready to go. No pictures just yet - he's in the awkward teenage phase. I'm glad I took a lot of chances on this project - working with strongly patterned Ghanaian fabrics, improv piecing yellow and orange strips when I ran out of fabric, throwing in some ugly colors, having multiple borders, staying flexible about the plan when things didn't work out like I hoped. This has been a learning experience.
Unfortunately, Otto the sewing machine just blew his lightbulb! He still works without it, but it's way less convenient to have a clamp lamp directly in front of my face while working, and the local store is apparently out of bulbs, so I'm gonna have to wait a couple days for a delivery and I'm frustrated.
At least I managed to finish Snail's quilt repairs (at long last) and ship that off. I also put in some work on the strawberry lemonade quilt I've avoided quilting for years now. I really want to have it done, but also it's a tendon-fucker of a quilting job, so I'm wary of it, especially when I have transcribing I also want to do. I think I will have to nibble away at it over time.
Another old project just resurrected itself - a friend is gonna be in my state, and I'd better hustle up with that paper pieced wolf pillow I promised! I'm going to lightbox the design again, see if I can perfect it, and then see what kind of wolves I can make!
Overall, I've been busy and it feels good to be creative. It's a bit lonely, though. I need local crafty friends within thirty years of my age. I do like the guild, and I'm glad I'm in it, but the eternal problem remains of feeling like an odd duck.
