carpe diem

I would love to blog about this one, but I basically embellished almost all the way up to the deadline, I have a screaming child who wants to take a nap on me, and I have to leave for work soon. So basically, here's a bunch of pictures of my quilt, in no particular order. It's pretty fitting, since the theme for this one was "Time Is Up" HAHAHAHAHA (maniacal laughter). 

As to process - I will quickly say that I was inspired by something I saw on Facebook - "The trouble is, you think you have time." It's been over a year since I first saw it, and it has just stuck with me. So, for this challenge, I printed it out on cardstock and basically made a quilt to go behind it. I then covered it with some cool netting that I used to use as a curtain in college, and added on a piece of upholstery sample fabric (my amazing Aunt Cordelia gave me lots of sample books of upholstery fabric that her interior designer friend was gonna throw away - I'm telling you, it's a veritable treasure trove of fun). And then I added some of another treasure trove I was given by my mother in law. She likes to go to auctions and picked up a bunch of jewelry that she was kind enough to let me rifle through. I have so many clip-on earrings now it's not even funny!!! I find some strange joy in taking them apart with pliers and gluing or sewing them onto my quilts. I'm weird.

But anyhoo, gotta go rock a little dude down for his nap.

Check ya later!

xoxo,

erin

Oh yeah - the quilt is about 12" X 12" (not counting the dangley stuff), and was made in Central PA.

david's lament

This week's Project Quilting theme was "a well-dressed man." So, obviously, I had to make a quilt with a naked man on it. I decided to throw on a few extra naked men just for good measure. 

I went to Italy once as a kid. We were really excited to see Michealangelo's David, but when we got there it was closed for repairs. No dice. That's why I'm calling it David's Lament. He's probably sad that he never got to see me....HA!

Here's my quilt:

 Here's a detail that I'm pretty proud of. I appliqued little strips of sequin fabric onto the binding before I put it on the quilt. Fun!

Polka-dot backing :)

This little art quilt measures about 13" X 18" and was made here in Central PA.

Thanks for reading!!!

black hole sun

Project Quilting's theme this week was "The Brighter the Better." As usual, I started off with big ideas! My initial thought was to find some paper pieced star patterns, and I happened across this link: https://wombatquilts.com/free-paper-piecing-patterns/. I am a new big fan of Wombat Quilts!!! From there, I got the idea to do a different star in each of the colors of the rainbow, because what could be brighter than a rainbow star quilt? 

Well, I got all the stars pieced by Thursday or so, and then spent Friday staring at them thinking how much I didn't like them together... here are some pics of them alone:

And here is what they looked like together, in rainbow-color order:

I honestly thought that they looked like they were competing with each other, instead of playing nicely together. My kids do this a lot, and the best thing I can think to do is separate them (other than drink, but if they're doing it at 8AM that is kind of inappropriate.) So that's what I did with the quilt! I focused on the brightest one (in keeping with the challenge) which is obviously the yellow sun-like one. And then I sent the rest off to their room. I'll finish them later and hang them separately so everyone can play nicely. 

So here's what I have for the challenge:

I'm calling it Black Hole Sun, because every time I try to think of a name, the Soundgarden song pops into my head. It's like I have no choice in the matter.

Black Hole Sun is 8" X 8" and was made here in ~sunny~ Central PA!

Thanks for reading!

xoxo,

erin

Golden Flowers Part 2

Here's my Project Quilting entry for this week: "Tune into Texture." I'm continuing my Golden Flowers theme from last week. I made this quilt in about an hour...right up against deadline. LOL!

I basically appliqued the flowers onto some black fabric, quilted the snot out of it with pink thread, and then couched some pink and gray variegated yarn all over it. It was super fun, super fast, and has tons of texture! For the last step, I put on a pretty pink necklace...because, why not?

If you don't have a tool to put rivets in things, get one. You need that in your life.

Here's the back:

And there you have it - Golden Flowers Part Two. The truth is STILL a moving target! With love, compassion and persistence, though, I think we will be okay.

xoxo,
erin

Golden Flowers - "the truth's a moving target"

Here's my quilt for the second challenge of Project Quilting Season 8.

We were asked to be inspired by the classic block "Carolina Lily," which has a few different interpretations, but in general looks like this:

I floated around the idea of just making the block as is, but then decided to get a little funky with it:

I basically improv-pieced the background, added a couple borders, and then raw-edge appliqued the flowers and flowerpot. Here are a few close-ups:

And I chose to use the bright orange/pink fabric for the background. It actually has some lilies on it!

I decided to name it "Golden Flowers" in reference to one of the more interesting stories surrounding our new president.

While I have some pretty strong opinions about it all, I won't go into those here. What I will say is that it amazes me how interesting our politics is right now. It's almost like a reality TV show. We are all arguing over what's true and what's not true, but who benefits from this division? Certainly not us.

Something that I heard recently that impacted me was this: "Agree to disagree, but not to disconnect." Continue talking to folks who's views differ from yours. Don't block them out. Don't disrespect them for believing a different version of the truth than you do. The moment we shut each other out is the moment we all lose. 

The last thing I'll add is something that stuck with me ever since I was in nursing school. One of my favorite professors once told our pharmacology class that "the truth's a moving target." You'd think that learning about pharmaceuticals would be somewhat concrete, but like anything, there is room for interpretation. It's difficult to know what's true when there's so much that goes on behind closed doors. I'll always remember that phrase, because things are never as simple as they seem.

Golden Flowers is 23" X 28" and was made here in Central PA.

Thanks for reading.

Charlotte's Web

I am so grateful for Project Quilting in my life! It gives me the reason I need to actually get a project done from time to time. If you are someone who is interested in quilting in any way, of any skill level, you should check it out!

This is the first challenge for season 8 of Project Quilting, so we were given the task to use the number eight for our inspiration this week. I had a few ideas, but turned to the inter-web to see if I could find anything concrete. That's when I stumbled upon this blog: Life in the Scrapatch. She had previously hosted a spider-web quilt-a-long, and even though it was several years ago I decided to give it a whirl! Big thanks to this nice lady for posting instructions on how to make an amazing spider-web quilt with EIGHT sides that can host a little EIGHT-legged spider!!!

Here are some pictures of my progress:

Instead of piecing this section like the writer of the blog did, I chose to use whole pieces of fabric with a good-size scale to it. It also has tiny spider-web designs in it so I thought it was perfect!

Then I pieced in the curves (which was not altogether easy!)

And put them all together! I forgot to take a picture of the last step in piecing, which is adding sashing to the sides of each web-section. But I did that too :)

After I got it sandwiched and quilted a web pattern on it, I decided to add a little hot-pink spider. Because, really, what is a spider-web quilt without a spider? And in my opinion, a hot-pink spider is the best kind of spider.

As I was quilting, I was listening to a radio program about a local mother who's daughter suffered from medication-resistant seizures. This mother - who happens to be someone I have met - has been fighting very hard to get medical marijuana legalized in our state so that she could help her child. The program mentioned a strain of marijuana known as "Charlotte's Web," which is named after a little girl who's seizures it helped with. I thought that would be a good name for my quilt as well. Right around that time, my six-year-old son came over to look at the spider. He told me it's name should be Charlotte, so that pretty much sealed the deal.

I love it when the name for my project just kind of works itself out :)

Here are pictures of the finished project: 

spiderweb!

Here's Charlotte

I used soft grey corduroy for the backing. You can kind of see the spiderweb-ish detail in the fabric here too!

I'm proud of this one!

My quilt this week measures about 33 inches from point to point, and was made here in snowy Central PA!!!

circle turkey

I am so happy to have been able to complete another Project Quilting Challenge! This one was to be inspired by a piece of children's artwork...what an awesome idea! I have always loved this little turkey that my son Rowan made in pre-school last Thanksgiving:

 So I decided to use it as inspiration, and here is what I came up with:

I am calling it "Circle Turkey." Here they are together:

And here are a few close-ups!

I used one of my favorite "quick-finish" methods for small-ish quilts which I absolutely LOVE! I just found a nice yarn out of my stash and couched it down around the perimeter using a zig-zag stitch. I went around this one three different times, because the yarn is variegated and I love the way it looks next to itself.

For the back, I picked out one of my favorite black/grey/white canvas prints: sea creatures! Thank you to my wonderful sister for donating this beauty to my stash.

The finished quilt is 11"X11" (ish), and was made here in Central PA! Thank you Kim and Diane for another great challenge!