Sometimes my blog REALLY earns its name...

I went to do the March blocks of the Sisters Ten BOM last night (you can catch up on January and February too, if you want!). Chaos ensued.

Seriously, it was a comedy of errors.

I cut out all my pieces. So far, so good.

Oh wait, I realized I had cut some of them for 9" blocks instead of 12" blocks. Dangit. Recut.

On to chain piecing HSTs. Nothing new here, I've done this a gazillion times.

But this time my 1/4" foot decided to eat some of my corners. The top layer of fabric was catching on part of the foot. Annoying, but I'll trim these guys up anyway, so no big deal.

Oh crap. I pieced all of the HSTs together WRONG sides together. Rookie mistake - this one actually pissed me off. I must really be on auto pilot!

Commence the ripping and re-piecing.

Oh wait, then I noticed I somehow pieced the selvedge of one print into a block. I have NO idea how I missed this one.

Laying out the block before final piecing - yeah, these colors are not quite right. Re-cutting AGAIN.

Much better. Now lets see if I can put these kids together without incident.

Apparently not. See that upper left corner? More ripping.

Sigh of relief. They're both done, and somehow I didn't tear my hair out or throw anything. Somehow.

Next time I promise I'll pay better attention. Maybe.

One year

Sunday marked one year since my Mom passed. It goes without saying that its been a rough year. It seems to have gone by so fast, but at the same time my entire world has changed so dramatically that it seems like forever ago that I knew any other way to live. Every day there is something I want to tell her - I even still have a reflex to pick up the phone and call her sometimes.

I'm still angry and broken and know that I'll never be truly whole again. I know that for the rest of my life there is going to be a giant gaping hole in every big event, every family get together, every picture. It hurts a little bit every time i hear people talk about how their moms were at their weddings, and helped them with their babies, and even when people talk about fighting with their moms.

But I also I know that everything happens for a reason - even though I don't have to like it or understand it. I know that Mom is happy and whole and watching us every day. I know that just because she isn't right here anymore, it doesn't change the reality of her presence. It's amazing how that works sometimes - when I've had a bad day and need her the most, or when I just miss her a little more acutely, a song she loved would come on the radio, or I'll flip a page in a magazine and see her favorite flowers. She's not here, but she'll never be gone.

Unfortunately, knowing that doesn't necessarily make it easier. Maybe it will one day, but for now, my family and I have to be content with taking the good days as they come and trying to see the bad days as reminders of how much we love her, and how lucky we were to have the time we had together.

Thundersnow day!

Is way better than a regular snow day, which I have very little patience for.

It would be a wonderful day for sewing, but instead of working on binding this -

I'll be doing this instead... aaaaalllllll day :-/

Design wall of the day

You know the saying "my cup runneth over"?

Quilters should have their own version - "my design wall is crowded". :-)

Stash-tastic Sunday: Kona Hexies

I ordered some of these new Kona pre-cut hexies when I was ordering some more fabric for my On a Whim, as well as a couple more prints from Les Amis. I've seen these around the blogosphere, and wanted to check them out. I ordered one pack in the 'brights' colorway.

Of course I started throwing them up onto the design wall before I had the insight to take a picture of the stack, so here are the warms that were still in my hand when I got smart.

You can kind of see the edges here, where they are burned a little bit during die cutting. It's a little distracting at first, but it helps to keep them from fraying. The burned bits are also well behind the 1/4 inch, so I really don't think they'll be a problem.

On the wall! So pretty :-) I have no earthly idea what I'm going to do with these kids, but it will probably end up being a wall hanging. Let me know if you have any ideas!

MAQS - Part II

Here are the rest of my Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show photos! Enjoy!

There were a couple Baltimore Album-type quilts that were very traditional in style, but were updated using really bright modern fabrics. So niiice :-)

This one used Kaffe prints fuzzy cut for the applique. And I love the non-white backgrounds!

This one had some incredible quilting.

The quilter used scale as a design element to create shadow and depth within the negative space.

This one looks a little trippy from far away - those little colored blocks were only about 3/4 of an inch tall I think!

The blurb on this one said that the artist used only thread scraps and strings intended for the trash to do this entire piece. I like that idea :-)

This one's quilting was really incredible - I had to do a double take...

The quilter used the negative space to create a scene out of the quilting - if you look closely, you can see a pond and reeds behind the bird. And a jumping fish! Such great details.

This is a small wall hanging, though that is hard to see with no size reference. Those background feathers were tiny!

This quilt won first place in the Innovative category. I was pretty much in awe of the quilting here. Yeah. That's all I can say.

The texture of the girl's hair is created just with quilting. Amazeballs.

The quilting in the sky is pretty much what I aspire to with free-form, improvisational free motion quilting. If I can do anything that is remotely marginally similar, I will die happy.

The tree here was done as a wholecloth - the artist painted the tree on, but then went over everything with thread painting. So intricate.

Another desert scene. I love the depth of this one, I feel like there is a story here waiting to be told...

These portraits were part of an exhibition about mental health. The whole exhibition was really amazing. I love when there are pieces that are beautiful and meaningful at the same time.

This one was about brain chemistry and mental health treatment. I love how the artist used three dimentional elements. The pictures really don't do it justice.

The "damaged brain cells" were made of broken glass, rusty nails, old coins, can tabs, and stuff that looks like it came out of the trash. As a nurse, this quilt really spoke to me because.... it's just true, and illustrates the reality of mental illness beautifully.

This one struck me with it's simplicity. It's about the journey towards healing. I like it a lot.

This one is pretty cool, too. The artist wrote in the caption about how her meds reminded her of candy.

Beautiful detail.

Well, that's it for this year! I'm looking forward to next year, of course. And hopefully in 2015 I will be able to go to Quiltcon, too!

Almost done!

I finished quilting my xplusalong, Sunshine Daydream! I'm so stoked to get this quilt on my bed!

I did some simple straight line quilting along the x's and the plus's, and I really like how the intersections of the quilting mimic the block pattern. I did two lines in the vertical and horizontal sections (the pluses) and just one center line of quilting on the diagonals (the x's). I wanted to do double lines on the diagonals at first, but found that that created at hot mess of chaos at the intersections in the middle of each block. I like how it's turned out!

On to binding!