I may have found my inner domestic goddess

Well, probably not, but I did discover pillowcases. After a search of the department stores found no acceptable pillowcases, I made my first pillowcase to go with my new spring-themed bedroom decor. Could it be? Yes, it was really quite simple. Granted, my pillowcase was so stuffed it looked like it might explode, but I could do it! I had made an item of home decor! Perhaps there was a domestic goddess lurking somewhere inside me.

Bursting with confidence and newfound domesticity, I began my second one. In my enthusiasm, I forgot to topstitch the hem of the opening on the back of the pillow, and then when stitching the pillowcase together, I discovered that I had not put the tension on my machine back to normal (I had loosened the top tension to try to zigzag stitch around the edge of the hem -- another story in itself!). Ugh. The resulting stitches were not going to hold that pillowcase together. No problem, I simply fixed the tension and stitched again on top of my first line of stitching. No one would be able to see it, right? Having done that, I realized that while my poorly stitched seam would have been easy to remove, I had now made it near impossible. No matter. I also somehow managed twist and turn the now completed pillowcase so that I could stitch down the fold that should have been a hem at the back of the pillow. Almost topstitch it anyway. The gaps wouldn't be too noticeable. I happily put my pillow into the finished product and it was about 3 inches too big! What did I do with the measurements? In the end, the large size was a good thing, because it allowed me to turn the pillowcase inside out again and simply cut off all the bad seams and start again without having to remake the top. Though the proportions of my original pillow design were lost, in the end, it turned into a pillowcase once more.

On the third pillow I was back to very carefully following the directions, and it turned out fairly well. By that time, though, I had run out of backing fabric for the pillow, so it does look a bit odd on the back...Despite all this, my husband has actually encouraged me to make more pillowcases, and to make them for the large bed pillows.

My updated spring decor is now:
The white cover on the headboard is temporary. It may someday be covered by a wholecloth quilt in either white or blue, and I may add some applique to my first pillow. Someday I may even make a set of pillows based on the ring of the single wedding ring in my Flurry of Feathers quilt. For now, my domestic goddess is tired and has gone into hiding.

First pillow. Imagine it with some flowers appliqued there like in my Butterfly Trails quilt

My second pillow

It's spring, maybe even summer

It is really warm here now, so in honor of Spring, or Summer, I took the brown store-bought quilt off the bed in our room and replaced it with A Flurry of Feathers, which turned out to be a rather large quilt. It doesn't cover the pillows on the king-size bed, and I had thought of making a pillow topper, but I think it is okay without one. I rather like the way it looks except for a few details...First, the pillows/headstand/headboard (what is that thing called?) behind the bed look really grungy next to that nice white quilt, and second, those small pillows need to be changed to a lighter color! Then there is the mess on my husband's side of the bed...although mine isn't too much better!

Finished!

My Single Wedding Ring is finished! You may all be fairly sick of seeing it as I have posted so many pictures as it was in process, but it now has binding. I tried out the piped binding method on the Ricky Tim DVD, and I am pretty pleased with the results. I like the touch of color the piping brings, and it gives me something to do with 1" strips leftover from various projects.

As with any method it will take some practice to really perfect it, but it is certainly an improvement on my previous attempts at machine binding! My previous quilts had stitching wandering in and out of the ditch on the front, and on the back they went from the quilt back to the binding, wandered back on the quilt top. This time, although I am not exactly in the ditch everywhere, you can't really tell unless you are looking pretty closely because the thread just blends in with the piping. On the back I have a nice even line of stitching running just parallel to the binding everywhere except at some of the corners where my miters did not come quite far enough over the line of stitching. The mitering of the corners was definitely the hardest part of this method. I find it fairly easy when just stitching the continuous binding and mitering as I go.

Now I need a name. I am thinking of something like "A flurry of feathers" or "feathered frenzy". All suggestions are welcome. Ah. Now that I write this, I realize I forgot about a label for this quilt. I will either quilt the name and date into the border or into a somewhere, or add a label by hand.

WIP Wednesday 3/7

I have been working away on my Single Wedding Ring quilt. Since I am now working at home, I have been rewarding myself for completing work related tasks by letting myself quilt a block. I now have about 3/4 of the central portion done. I am a little reluctant to keep posting pictures because there will be nothing left to show when the quilt is done, but it is WIP Wednesday.

Here is what I have been doing. I think my feathers have loosened up a bit in the few days of practice, so they are a little more curvy. I love feathers!

In the pieced blocks I have just been doing continuous curves, but I am not sure whether to continue that in the center of the block or to put in a motif of some sort. I like the way the continuous curves create a circular image around the center of the block, and it would be nice to continue that feeling. Any suggestions?

I am also wondering about what to do in the border. I could definitely continue the Victorian feathers throughout the border, or I could switch to something different, like a geometric motif. In Quilting Makes the Quilt, one version of this quilt has feathered wreaths in the plain blocks and is quilted with a very sharp geometric motif in the border-- you divide the border into triangles, and do parallel lines in the triangles. I can't explain it well, but it looks great. It would be pretty boring quilting, though. Again, suggestions are welcome.

Quilting Again!

My very busy month is over, and I am quilting again. Hurray! My meetings finished yesterday, but I was too exhausted to do anything. Today I had the house to myself for much of the day. I got my Single Wedding Ring basted and I started quilting the basic grid to stabilize it. I finished that, and even got to quilt a few feathers. They went pretty well, and I am happy to be back quilting again.

WIP Wednesday: Top Finished

So far this week has still been slow, and it will continue to be slow for quilting until next week when things quiet down a bit at work. I did manage to finish my Single Wedding Ring quilt top, though. I mitered the corners -- my first attempt at mitering borders. Sewing on the first borders and mitering the first corner took me about an hour, but the second went faster. Here is the result of my labor.

I actually finished this top a few days ago, and I was planning to post about how mitering was easier than I thought it would be -- three of my four miters have the points matching exactly where they should be. However, in the meantime, I have ironed the top and laid it out on the bed to take a picture, and lo and behold, it is not very flat at all! Of course, part of the problem is that I haven't straightened it too well, but even on the floor, it is not as flat as it should be. The problem isn't only in the borders, but my mitering probably did not help. The borders have some serious puffs. It is very disappointing. My second insight: this is one gigantic quilt! It covers the entire top of my king size bed! It is going to be quite the experience to quilt this on my home sewing machine.

The other thing I have worked on in the last week (unsuccessfully!) is extending my home computer network. I have a router with wireless, but the master bedroom signal is unreliable, so I want to add another access point. I bought a router/access point, but although I can get it set up as a router, it is not working as an access point! Since I am still in meetings, I don't have time to get it sorted out. Hopefully I will end up with reliable wireless access sometime soon.

WIP Wednesday 2/15

I got confused about the day of the week and almost forgot to post this! It is still Wednesday somewhere, so here is my update.

As I was traveling, I didn't get much quilting done this week, but I did manage to get the center portions of about 4 rattlesnake blocks done. That brings my Rattlesnake quilt to 4 complete blocks and an additional 15 centers. Unfortunately it will need 42 blocks so it will not be done any time soon.

I also got to try out my quick quarter tool for making half square triangles for my Single Wedding Ring quilt. It is wonderful! I can't believe how much faster the whole process went. Trimming the HSTs is still the slowest part of making the block, but now instead of a pile of yet-to-be-trimmed HSTs, I have some completed blocks. That brings me to 12 finished blocks. I only need 20 pieced blocks for the quilt, so it won't be long until this one is done.

It's Wednesday!

There has been mighty little quilting going on at my house over the last few days. The main work in progress has been my office. I have just begun working at home instead of at the office, so this week has been spent making the workspace more efficient and effective. This seemed to mainly consist of taking everything out of my work cabinet, putting it into different piles and moving the piles to other parts of the house, which in turn necessitated taking more things off of their shelves, putting them in piles, and moving them again. But I am now about 90% done and can take a break for some quilting and blogging.

The little quilting I have done has been piecing for my Single Wedding Ring quilt. I am still waiting for the Kona Snow to arrive, so my Blue Marquee is exactly as I posted it last Wednesday. My Single Wedding Ring now has 8 completed blocks! I usually like to use a variety of fabrics in my quilts, and but this quilt uses only two. I am using a McKenna Ryan fabric I found in Thailand a few months ago. I absolutely fell in love with the fabric, and the variation in the fabric gives the blocks the depth I usually get from using more fabrics.

The quilt is based on the Single Wedding Ring quilt featured in Quilting Makes the Quilt. I love that book, and this quilt especially appeals to me. I can already see how I will quilt it -- with wild Victorian feathers in all the plain blocks. I think this will be the quilt for me to learn to do freehand feathers, though I do have one feather stencil as a starting point if I want it.

Joyce asked earlier if I am in China. I am in Macau, a former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong and now part of China, but my work takes me to China frequently. Macau is a very, very small place and quite easy to live in. I will try to post some pictures in later posts so you can see what it is like.