Finish Report!!! Amaretto Cottage finally spotlighted :D

Amaretto Cottage

112" x 112"

pieced in Niceville, FL

quilted by Margaret Gunn of Mainely Quilts of Love

Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting

I am so excited about this quilt. I've been chomping at the bit to get it photo-op'ed - it's been finished for weeks - but it's far too large at 112" square to capture the whole quilt indoors, and it's been too dirty outside between melted snows and muddiness to get its photo. We had a heavy snowfall a few days ago, so my family helped me take it out in the clean blanketing so I could finally post this beauty.

This is a Marianne Elizabeth design in the RJR fabrics intended for a 2012 BOM program, in the honey colorway.

I have never sewn anything so gigantic, but we needed something for a king size bed after this move. 

No way on earth could I quilt this baby at my desk-top machine, so I sent it out for custom longarming even though it's intended for bed use. 

Margaret Gunn did not let me down. She's so talented at creating dynamic, stunning, breath-taking quilting designs with incredible cohesiveness.

Even the challenge of differing grids in sampler-style blocks doesn't keep her from creating amazing unity.

And I absolutely *adore* the organic play she brought into this previously-very-angular quilt. There is so much movement in the curved hatching and the feather trails.

It sits so nicely on the bed, too, with the on-point medallion section of the design sitting perfectly on a king bed. 

The quilting shows up so lovely on the lavender back - I'm sure I'll sometimes use that gorgeousness backside up! 

I am in love. 

Apparently this quilt makes Koko happy, too.  :D

~*~*~*~

Linking up at

Quilt Story's Fab Tuesday

TGIFF

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

WIPs - Sooooo Close to Two Finishes in My Sewing Areas, and Baby Start-up

Making bits and pieces of progress around my conference presentation prep - enough for me to smile about, even though it takes all week to do what many of you can whip out in a half day.  :D

I got this super cool pin cushion from Elizabeth's giveaway at Pieceful Life. 

My husband is happy, I'm sure, that pins are no longer getting plopped onto the side table to occasionally fall on the carpet (and sofa. . . )!  In Florida, my hand-stitching was done on an old cloth sofa that I shamelessly used the arm for poking pins into. These sofas are also quite old and worn (came with the house - we upsized and have no funds for a while to replace them), but they're leather, so I had to act normal with the pins.  ;D

And that's where I sit each evening, stitching, as we watch our dinner-time TV show. Love that lamp. My great-uncle Rudy made that himself, and it looks great in this Colorado home with wood trim.

This station right now is processing my Amaretto Cottage! (Isn't Margaret's quilting LUSCIOUS??) Hmm, and I guess nobody could get this monster handstitched in just a half day and do a proper job. So I feel a bit better. 

My Hawaiian Etude is also SOOO CLOSE! It gets secondary priority at this station - being bumped every time there's a binding/label/hanging sleeve to work on. But the king quilt is just a little large for taking to appointments and wait-times when picking up Marissa at school, so the Hawaiian piece is still making progress. This is the first time I've attached a binding 100% by hand, and I'm almost finished putting it on the front.

My other stations in the "basement" got a good workout this past week to get Amaretto Cottage to the hand-stitching station.

The house is on a slope, so really there's only one small room around on the back side that's a true basement area. I love this sewing nook!!  I fight SADD, so that window bank is awesome when I'm sitting at my FMQ machine in the white desk (it's a Viking Sapphire). You see 1/3 of the window bank.

Having both desks there is extremely helpful when I'm quilting - especially if the back is corduroy or minky. The golden one is an old computer desk that had a hutch. Well, we haven't had a non-laptop for years, and the hutch was just overbearing. So when we moved here and I verified that the desk matched my sewing table's height, I placed them together. I'd intended to buy a white folding table to put behind my sewing table, but Scott came to the rescue by cutting down the supports of the hutch to make it match up. Perfect!

This side is my piecing station, which actually had nothing at all at it last week (a rare occurance, but I really wanted Amaretto Cottage to get full attention).

While we're here - a view of the rest of my sewing area. The ironing board is purposefully several steps from the machines. Sitting for long periods is really bad for anybody, and especially bad for us folks with Lupus and poor circulation. So I make myself have to get up and walk a bit each time pressing is needed. That door next to the iron? The storage room! And it's all mine! It's got fabulous shelves built in aisles, and not much of it is non-fabric related. Heavenly. 

Behind me is the pool table and some more of the basement. Yeah - We're not finished unpacking. I'd wanted to keep all boxes and mess in the garage, but Florida Girl soon found that the space is critical for vehicle storage in Colorado winters! One day this will all look pretty.

Back to sewing concerns. For Amaretto Cottage's 112" squareness, I had to dismantle my piecing station.

See why?! And that's all bunched up and tripled-over on itself!

There's no way I could have worked with all that getting piled behind the machine without the added space of the hutch extension. 

 

Meet Lionel Stitchy.  Love this guy. He's a little squished there, but the college girls gave him to me for my birthday, specifically to keep me company while I sewed. (Thus his name. Am I dating myself?  heh!)

So - now that Amaretto Cottage is upstairs for handwork, my machines are both back where they belong, and I'm getting ready for the next FMQ. Practicing a motif Wendy Sheppard shared at Ivory Spring. That's plexiglass with duct tape around it. Perfect for dry-erase practice and quilt design fussing. You just have to make sure not to get that ink on the quilts. Thus the tape. And when I applied the tape, I made sure the front is wider than the back so that I always put the same side against the fabric. Just to doubly ensure that no faint smudges get on the quilts.

The piecing station will soon get some attention after its break. These 10" squares are my first foray with the the 8-in-1 method for HSTs. Need a baby quilt for my youngest sister's first-born, due next month. Going to make the barn raising layout and practice some FMQ in the white diamond bands.

Found this fun "Owl and the Pussycat" fabric in my stash, along with some other blues to play with it. And man, that bolt of Kona Snow I got 18 months ago is still saving me with this stash-only restriction! I've got a nice hardcover copy of the book on order - it even matches the coloring/theme of this fabric - very cool! I hope to also make a book tote featuring this fabric to go with the quilt and book.

Thanks for letting me sneak in some journaling. I really love this new home. 

~*~*~*~*~

Linking up at

Kate's "Share Your Space"

Lee's WIP

Applique Thursday

Esther's WOW

WIP - Finally!

I have been going NUTS because all kinds of things exploded at me this week that required attention before I could trim up this baby and attach its binding. Finally, it's happening today.  :D

One of those things is getting ready for a history paper presentation at a professional conference in Omaha. I'm big-time freaked out about this, but my subject is a lot of fun to work with, even though its setting is rather somber: Japanese-American Endurance: Recreational Choices in the Unites States World War II Internment Camps. 

How adorable is this shot?!

Photograph by Tom Parker, November 17, 1942, original notation: " Rohwer Relocation Center, McGehee, Arkansas. If he's a boy in America he plays marbles, as these lads of Japanese parentage are doing at the Rohwer Relocation Center."  Accessed March 5, 2008 from "Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority, 1942-1947," The National Archives ARC Gallery http://www.archives.gov/research/arc/ (ARC number 538906).

~*~*~*~*~

Linking up at

Pat's Show and Tell

Lee's WIP

Quiltsy WIP

Esther's WOW

WIPs - 23 Jan - Total Changeover :D

Those scallops are all stitched! Which means a photo-op ASAP and new rotations at my sewing stations.  :D

Hand Stitching:  This party's winding to a close as the binding is about 1/3 down.

And OH MY GOSH!!!  I cannot WAIT for the UPS to bring me the next hand-stitching, which is the binding for this monster king-size quilt that Margaret just finished quilting for me (This will hyper-jump to her post about it):

Didn't she do a STUNNING job? I love so much how she took a very linear quilt and made it so incredibly organic. Can't wait for it's Finish Report!


FMQ:  Need something here to fill in the gap between gifts. (And something other than blue and white to look at!) Going to pin this Christmas lovely now so it doesn't get abducted by aliens. I think I'll go with some of the Tuscany Wool in my stash and see how it works with the corduroy pinwale backing. . . 

Piecing:  Run Kitty, Run! is finally ready for piecing. Y'all know how much longer it takes to cut out a quilt when you use scraps???  I don't cut my scraps all up Bonnie Hunter style because I don't know yet what each one will be used for. Don't get me wrong - I find her very inspirational and will make several of her designs when I get the UFOs under better control. But I have several projects I want to do in the future that need pieces that will not be assembly-line style needing uniformly sized strips. 

I think this new gift project is going to be super fun, with whimsical quilting plans, and I'm glad I had enough scraps for each color zone to get all the pieces. She needs this quilt ASAP for some heart-lifting, and I don't want to wait months and months until I'm allowed to buy more fabric.

~*~*~*~*~

Linking up at

Lee's WIP

Quiltsy WIP

Esther's WOW

TGIFF 9 Mar 2012 - It's Finished! Off the BOM list! :D

Wahooo!!!  Look! 


<~~  Over there on the sidebar!  "Amaretto Cottage" is off the BOM list!!


This sucker is the biggest thing I have ever made. Can't even lay it out fully in the house, and as it's raining right now, this is what we get. 

Amaretto flimsy - 112" square!!!

It's absolutely stunning in real life - rich colors, pretty design on-point within a gorgeous floral mitered border. Big hit at guild yesterday. Drat the rain.


Now I need to put together the biggest back sewn in the southeast U.S.  Well - first I have to obtain the fabric. Something like 11 yards of it. Egads!  Then this baby will go to my local longarmer, because there is no way I'm going to shove it through my domestic machine. I contemplated using a quilt-as-you-go method, but as I'm not yet a pro at it, I shied away from those diagonal joins. Last thing I want on this beauty is for its drape to be all nasty.


But, hey - my binding is ready to go! 

(all 475 inches of it)

Linking up (finally!) to TGIFF at Quilt Matters this week and Richard's LAFF. And I can't forget to Whoop it up!  ;D

WIP Wed - 7 Mar - Alllllmoost therrrre. . .

Happy Wednesday. Some good progress for a very busy week. Here's what's getting attention right now.

"Amaretto Cottage"
will be finished before this day is through!

Oh, so carefully cutting outer borders . . .

. . . And putting them on!!

"Coral Encounter" creepin' along
(there are 96 arcs to make!!)

Time to stitch down the binding
for Devon's "Three Sisters"

Making sure there are hand-work samples
ready in various stages so I can explain
the back-basting method at Guild tomorrow

~~~

Thank you very much to Lee for hosting the inspirational WIP Wednesdays and to Esther for WOW. These link-ups have helped me stay focused on always progressing forward, and have led me to discover many fine fellow quilters! 

BOM's Away Monday - 4 Mar 2012 & FNQG Quilt Show

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 

(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)

Well, this is all that got done this week, rather than getting Amaretto Cottage all finished and taken off the BOM list. (This week's linky is at the bottom of this post. Oops - I fixed the link-up so it's live now.)  :D

Third corner is mostly constructed, but can't work on sewing until tomorrow.

The reason for little progress is that I had 2 demos to do at our guild's quilt retreat, as well as working in the Flying Needles 2012 quilt show. Ate up all my non-masters time. 

This was my very first show to have quilts in, so that was exciting! 

Me with my "Sailing with the Flying Needles"
designed and pieced by Lynette Caulkins, quilted by Patty Butcher

"Around the World with Mr. Hernandez"
pieced and quilted by Lynette Caulkins

"2010 FNQG BOM Quilt of Seasons"
pieced by Lynette Caulkins, quilted by Patty Butcher

It was a ton of fun to see people stop and enjoy my quilts. The big surprise to me was that the owl quilt was  particularly enticing to the men. Almost every one would stop and call out "look at this, honey!" 

"What a Hoot, Heather!"
pieced by Lynette Caulkins, quilted by Patty Butcher

Who would've thought??

Here are some of my favorites:

Melanie Nettles' incredible butterfly wallhanging. (This is about a fourth of it) 

Ruth Johnson's "Day at the Beach"

Anita Stephens's Garden 3-D applique

Isn't that incredible?

Sue Donavin's "Oriental Sunrise" 

Jan Bailey's "Phoenix"

"Secret Garden" by Susan Williams
I was entranced by her cathedral work. Everything hand-done.

"Serengeti Sunset" by Joyce Cobb

She had a lot of fun with her quilting. :)

Sew Many Spools by Kim Colpitt  (spun by Blogger)

"Sewing Friends Quilt" by Janet Kinner

Fun shirring in that embroidered inner border

"Sunny Summer Day" by Jenny Davidson

"Window Gazing" by Barbara Fyffe

a wonderful bargello by Jan Bailie, quilted by Patty Butcher
(and another Blogger spin-out)

"My House or Yours" by Betty Davey

"Rainbow Chains" by Donna Rhodes

"Shadows in the Swamp" by Karen Hansen -
she had marvelous free-motion quilting with a hawk and other hidden 
goodies that you discovered the longer you stood there.

And a super-cool hubby who waited by Betty Davey's "Greenpiece"
before we helped with the take-down.

~*~*~*~*~

What have you guys done on BOMs or interval projects lately? Weeklies are welcome along with regular projects that you’ve broken into monthly units, and –of course- true BOMs.   Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there. :D