And the shot cottons

Did I say they are really really thin? I did.

And the shift a lot. And pull. And are a pain to quilt.

Are they worthy? Sorry, not for me.

I bought about 5 colours. Yes, there's an awsome purple ( I like purple) and a great orange, but the rest... Let's just say I wouldn't buy them anymore. Not even the ones I liked.

I remember I once saw a quilt made by Rita at RPQ, with small squares, very colourful and with lots of purple shot cottons. This women in terrific! I had the most horrible time working with these fabrics and I'm sure my squares weren't as small as hers.

And don't get me started on the grey ones. Have you ever seen a homeless with incredibly dirty clothes? The ones that used to be black in anotherlife? That's my gray shot cotton.

Now, I'm sure that there are people that love these colors. And textures. Actually I read a lot of great things about them before purchasing. We are all different and it's perfectly fine. But for my few readers that have similar tastes... I won't do it again :) Ah, maybe for a really thin hot summer blouse, 10 years from now... :)

And what an amazing choice for the back! The stripes I said I won't use. Even the pictures are all wrong.

The fabrics reallt go very well toghether. And the quilt is really nice, I like it a lot.

But the amount of work? So not worthy :(

What exactly was I thinking?

I received a bunch of shot cottons. First thought was:

Wow, these are really thin.

I should never use these in a quilt. Maybe for backing with large pieces but small pieces? Never!

Than I thought about starting a quilt.

I should really go with a lot of white, spring is coming, I love white, it will surely go very well.

I found quite a few fabrics on sale and bought 1-2 yards of each, thinking about backing. When they arrived...

Oh my, these stripes don't go too easy on backing when you make straight line quilting. I must keep them for other projects.

Two days later I was starting a quilt.

Oh, look how many not so white fabrics I have in my stash. I should really use them.

So not! Of course, I hated it and started no.2.

Oh, these orange red, purple and yellow solids look so great, I should make a quilt. Of course the shot cottons are perfect too.

So not too! Small squares? I must have been drunk. I don't really drink though...

Oh, these stripes are a perfect mach for the back of this quilt.

Excuse me?

Ok, so here's the not so white quilt. With larger pieces than I usualy do, wanted to try something else and I think I like it.

Backed with an incredible Amy Butler flannel, I wish I had discovered it earlier. I so need another 2, maybe 3, ok make it 10 yards of this :D

6 months

[Post full of pictures of old quilts. Just so you know :)]

Checking my card the other days, I discovered that today me and my sewing machine celebrate half an year togheter :). I sewed a lot before, I even had a couple of shy attempts to quilt (on my mom's industrial machines that I hate), but I can say I feel I became a quilter only when I bought Alice. Yeah, I'm lame, I have a name for her.

Anyway, I started looking though my pics and realised that I made a looot of quilts and I still love each and every one.

I started with pastel quilts, only because I had virtualy no stash. Well, I have a room full of fabrics, but none for quilting. And the pastels felt the safest to start with.

I had quite a few very simple quilts with lots of white.

Than more white, but I discovered the heavyer quilting

As you can see, I loove white in quilts but I am glad I tried something else too.

Even if sometimes I just make the same thing in different colours

I really enjoyed making bright red, orange and blue quilts, even though I would never ever wear such colours. Than again, I don't have to wear them, right?

And also strong couloured quilts

Somehow I always come back to white :))

And I am glad I tried the pillows too. But even happier I didn't become addicted or something :)))

But the quilts I love most are the ones I made that doesn't resemble with anything else I've seen.

And you know what? Looking at all these pictures after quite some time beeing busy with the moving and related stuff, I realised not onlyI love quilting but I also miss it a lot. So yeah, I'll be back. Terminator style :)))

Tiny quick project

... to keep my mind sane.

After packing a couple douzens boxes and rearranging a tiny part of them I decided it was about time to do something for me. And fast.

We moved to a much smaller town, where I don't have to leave with a huge bag after me, so a wallet to fit my jeans was the perfect project.

I love it! Shrinked it two times, it is now perfect for money and one credit card. And it actually feets in my jeans pocket. And I love it. Oh, wait, I said it again :)).

And the day we arrived, a lot of backing stripes waited for me at the post office. On sale, all of them. Such a good start!

Now I have to finish unpacking, so in a couple of month I'll be ready for bigger projects :)))

In a big hurry

I am.

Moving out in 2 days. Of course, before starting packing, I needed to finish this quilt.

It was horible. I don't think that is something bad that could have happened but didn't.

First, my walking foot started making a strage noise and I had to piece it with a regular foot. Lots of pulling, lots of cutting small blocks.

Than I started quilting and my walking foot died. (let me repeat what I said in the previous post, just in case you missed. Do not attempt to fix your walking foot by yourself, in the middle of the night. It won't work! Trust me, I've been there) I had to leave for a week and when I got back I just couldn't quilt it anymore. There was a lot of pulling, the only chance of having it quilted was to go with paralel lines. This or free motion and ...well.. I'm just not the free motion kind of girl :))

Than, I got out of white thread. I figured that it wouldn't be to obvious if I used a pinkish kind of white. And it wasn't. Not until I got out of this one too. And used a green one :))

But you know what? I love it. It's a keeper. And I cannot belive how much I love it after it's washed. A beauty!

And yes, it is very very appealing to others too :)))

Finally, some real sewing

I cannot tell you how glad I am that I finally started sewing. You know, real stuff. No, not the Hello Kitty blue lego bag :)).

I did it. I cut, I sewn, I ironed. I, however, did not use a walking foot. And I regreted a lot.

Huge mistake. I have no ideea how I could possibly think that the silence of a regular foot could do more good than the noisy and annoying walking foot.

I will come back with more details, 'cause this quilt has such a long story, but tommorow we're leaving town and I really wanna quilt this tonight. Gotta go :)

Later edit: Do not, I repeat, do not attemp to fix your walking foot by yourself. Do not unscrew your walking foot. If you do, please let me know where the smallest L part belongs.

Kind of... sort of.. not really

I miss sewing. Very very much. A lot of things happened here lately and the only time I had left was after 1 a.m. Usually this is not a problem, but when it comes to thinking about something... whell... it's really not the best moment.

But I missed it too much and decided to do something. Something small... a lot of improvisional piecing... scraps only (so I don't kill my self if something very ugly happens). Camera bag! This sounded so easy, considering that I made about 3 dozens bags until now.

Well..one thing let to another... and that's pretty much it. It was not ok. That's the most flattering picture and, belive me, it is flattering.

But no, I couldn't stop... I saw these gorgeous kimono shoes at IThinkSew and for the first time I bought an online pattern. Not that good either.

I missed my size (as in two europeean numbers).

The good part is I only made one shoe and I also made quite a few adjustments and already cut shoe no.2 and 3 (the first one was test only) and now I'm ready to make my self something nice. Something that I was actually going to do this morning but somehow ended up writing a pattern. Don't ask how I got there, way too long story.

Ok, so the real reason for this post:

would any of you, ladies, would like to take a look and tell me if you can understand something from my pattern? :D Pretty please? [eyelash batting here]

And the quilt is this one: