Catching up on a few completed projects

Time for an update! (Actually, it was time for an update a few months ago, but today is when I finally got around to writing up the post.)

I went through a finishing binge back in May when I took a mini-vacation from work and here are photos of the pieces I worked on:



This is a mini log cabin quilt that had been waiting for me to put a binding on it for YEARS, which I finally managed to do a couple of months ago.



And I finally framed this cross stitch of Hever Castle that I stitched ages ago. (And to preempt any questions about the chart - I bought this as a kit at the castle gift shop when I visited in 1998 and I no longer have the chart from the kit. I'm not sure if they still sell it, but you might contact them if you really, really want to stitch this design.)



This is one I finished stitching, but haven't framed or made into an ornament yet. The picture is Castle Coch in Wales, stitched from The Cross Stitcher's Guide to Britain - Wales. This castle is one on my list of "places I must actually visit" - i.e. places that I've driven by or walked past but didn't actually go in to for one reason or another. (Other places on this list include the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Lord Leicester Hospital, and the Liberty Bell. One place that used to be on the list that I DID make it back to visit properly was Tintern Abbey.)



And now for something completely different... This is a bookmark I did of the Arecibo Message.



Only one Christmas ornament in this round-up. I finished stitching this back in 2011 and just now got around to making it into an ornament.

And all of the rest of the projects that I finished were fall and Halloween designs (I think all of these came from various Halloween issues of Just Cross Stitch magazine.) I realized long after I took the photos and cropped them down for posting that I should have also taken photos of the backs so you can see the coordinating fabrics I used, but I'm too lazy to do it now. But I'll try to more in the future, especially since I now have a bunch of cute Halloween fabrics to use on the many remaining Halloween designs I still have to finish.

















That's it for this round-up! I have another beaded Christmas ornament that I'm getting close to finishing, so maybe there will be another update sooner rather than later. :)

Quilting in SSSSSPPAAAAAAAACE!

When astronauts stay on the International Space Station, they usually have a little down time for personal projects. Probably the most famous use of that personal time was Commander Chris Hadfield's cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity". But Astronaut Karen Nyberg's use of some of her personal time is something I can identify with a bit more - she's sewing in space!

In the video below she describes some of the challenges of sewing in space:



And as she mentioned in the video, she's working with the International Quilt Festival (headquartered, like the NASA Astronauts, in Houston) and is calling on quilters to contribute a quilt block for a project for next year's festival. You can find out more here (PDF)! I'm planning to contribute a block myself... I have lots of astronomical fabrics to choose from too.

Besides quilting and love of space, one other thing that I have in common with Karen Nyberg is that we're Texas Longhorns! I got my Bachelor's in Astronomy in 1994 from (and still work at) the University of Texas at Austin and she got her Master's and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UT in 1996 and 1998 respectively.

Karen and two other crew members will be coming home from the ISS today. Safe travels!

Dabbling in old projects

I have been going through my storage bins of old quilt projects to try to finish them up and make some space in my too-small-for-all-these-hobbies apartment. I had a few small blocks from a sampler quilt I started ages ago while I was first learning and then stalled on so instead of finishing the original project, I decided to just do things with the pieces I already had. The first thing I did was sew the log cabin blocks that I did by paper piecing into a miniature quilt, which you can see in its almost finished state here. A few weeks ago I did the machine sewing for the binding, but it is still waiting for the hand stitching to finish it up.

Of the remaining pieces, I had five blocks of an Ohio star design that I was trying to figure out what to do with when I thought that ornaments might be a good idea - especially since I have way too much fiber-fill around too. So I tossed the block that had some wonky alignment and made two ornaments out of the other four, a photo of which you see above. The colors are dark red and green, so they are good for Christmas, but I have them hanging on a peg board in my living room right now anyway.



The other thing I did was to finally frame this old lighthouse cross stitch that I finished stitching ages ago (see previous mention here) but has been sitting in my "to be framed" pile ever since. One down... a gazillion more to go. For now it's on one of my bookshelves, but it may end up on the wall eventually.

That's it for this weekend. I might be able to get a little more done over the long weekend coming up for the 4th of July, but as always, we'll see!

My quilting story

I was looking back through my old posts for some reason and I realized that I have never posted any quilting things here other than a small kit that came on a UK stitching magazine.

There isn't really much of a "story" here, but I figured I should post a little about how I got in to quilting since I've written so much about how I got in to cross stitch and embroidery. I think I've always liked quilts, but I actually got interested in making them in 1994-95 while I was working at Hobby Lobby. I was working in fabrics and needlework, so of course I occasionally got quilters at the counter. They were easy to spot, they would come up with 10 bolts of fabric and only want a quarter or a half a yard from each (finding pre-cut fat quarters at craft stores wasn't as common back then). And we had to stock notions, books, etc. and during that process I saw a book from the "American School of Needlework" collection called Decorator Quilts in a Hurry that had a really cool celestial-themed fabric and design on the cover quilt. So I bought that book to make the quilt on the cover (which, to this dates, I still haven't done).

Right about this time, the first of my friends from college to have kids found out they were pregnant with twin girls (who graduated from high school yesterday - I cannot accept that!) so I figured that making them some baby quilts would be a good way to get into quilting. I picked up another book called Stitch it, Snip it & Flip it that had a neat quick trick for making, among other patterns, star shapes. So, the first two quilts I ended up making were the two for them. I don't have the scans handy, but I'll eventually post some pictures.

I also bought yet another ASN book Quilting for People Who Don't Have Time to Quilt (I ended up with a bunch of those books because of the sales and employee discounts!), which was - and still is - a good description for me! The blue rail fence you see up top, as well as the brown shades one on my Flickr set, come from that book.

Of course I got in to reading and posting on quilting newsgroups, lists, etc. around this time too, since I can't have any hobby or interest after c. 1991 that didn't involve looking it up on the internet (and eventually the WWW). I eventually joined the Austin Area Quilt Guild, although after a few years it got harder and harder for me to make it to the meetings so I eventually decided not to renew my membership. I did get a chance to work at one of their shows while I was a member, which was a blast. I have some photos from that show, but since it was back in the old film days, I'll have to scan them. You can see photos from the 2006 show here though.

I've done a variety of small projects that you can see a few photos of on my quilting Flickr set (link below). I'll eventually go through and write a bit more about some of the project individually. There really isn't a whole lot to them, but as usual, I like this blog to be my personal journal of my projects, so the write-ups might not be all that interesting to other people. :)

You can see all of the pictures of my projects that I've posted so far up on my Quilting Flickr set. And you can see photos from the 2006 AAQG show here.

A little catching up

I don't have an update photo on Catherine, although I have made some progress on her. I also sewed the border on an old quilt top that has been in the making for over a decade, but I didn't take a photo of that either. But, I do have a couple of photos of some of the long weekend's work!

The first photo is probably the last of the old magazine cover kits. I did the quilting on it ages ago, but just now finished the bag up.



And the second is a little ornament from the 2007 Just Cross Stitch Magazine ornament issue. I didn't have a charm for the star, so I stitched it with the DMC gold floss and I stitched it on a scrap of 32 ct evenweave from a grab bag.