Saturday, September 27, 2008

Chaotic Progess

This is the chaos that a day of quilting can cause in an otherwise wide open room. I think if I had a football stadium full of floor space, I would still find a way to use it all! I laid out my chaos blocks in one spot, and sewed them all together. I trimmed the dogears there, so I moved over to the foyer to lay out the backing. Then I basted in the middle of the room, leaving that sticky from the spray baste. I really should go outside to do that, but the weather has cooled and the house is wide open.
I decided to quilt some loop-de-loops in black thread to work off of the polka dot theme. It came together in a hurry and was fun to do.
Here's the finished quilt, I just need to sew down the binding, which is a red stripe that was leftover after the patriotic log cabin quilt. Kurt still doesn't think the elderly will "get" this quilt, but it's going to the nursing home right along with the rest. I think the variety of prints and colors will stimulate their minds. I still need to work on some sort of uniform label to go on all the lap quilts. Maybe something with a space for the girls to write in their names.
After that I grabbed the Sirenia quilt which has been basted and patiently waiting since the Olympics ended. I was puzzled over what thread color to use, and ended up using a combination of teal and lime green because I had part of a spool of each leftover from something else. I did mostly some random outlining and some little snails in the squares around the word.
Here's the finished quilt, it uses Lazy Gal Tonya's free form letters and has relevant Sirenia terms quilted into the border. If you haven't tried letters yet, they are so fun and a little bit addictive. This one will live at school with the Starfish quilt and the Shark quilt. I still need to do a hanging sleeve and a binding for this one, but that shouldn't take too long.
I've got the Hurricane Road laid out now, and am working through how to piece the backing. It will probably need to be presses again though, and I don't feel like ironing tonight. I might finish the organizing and putting away that I started last night. I've still got some scraps to sort through and that's a nice thing to do in front of the TV. I've got all the bins out with crumbs and strings and strips of various sizes and I'm tossing the scraps in as I go through them. Maybe I'll give up on all that is productive and just do some mindless crumb chaos blocks. They are also really fun and a little bit addictive.

3 comments:

Amy said...

HA! I love seeing another chaotic house! And I LOVE the chaos quilt----so bright and fun!
Your pics may ACTUALLY have inspired me to get downstairs tonight-----what motivation today!

Question about the spray basting....do you use that for all quilts or just for smaller ones? I'm assuming it works rather slick-----but have you ever had layers come apart? I pin-baste and haven't tried the sprays before.

Okay, I'm off to read the rest of your posts from the week----I need to catch up!

Julie said...

I love those crumb blocks too. I had to put them up for a while b/c I didn't want to do anything else and I have to get my Stitcher's Angel projects done.

Tonya Ricucci said...

I "get" your bright crumb quilt and I don't see any reason why the elderly wouldn't Whee, love your Sirenia.