I’m hoping that many of you are simply seeing this pop up in your Feed Reader and have no idea what went on in the background.  But, as it turns out, I have moved my quilting blog and even changed its name!  Welcome to Goddess in Progress… Quilts!

I made the move to get this blog a little more connected with my primary (parenting-focused) blog, Goddess in Progress, but it will remain a separate entity.

Anyways, welcome to the new site! Forgive me, the design is very much a work in progress, I’ll try to polish it up soon.  In the meantime, the old site will soon be set to automatically redirect here, but if you would update links, that would be delightful.

Also, if you got here via your Feed Reader, would you click through and leave me a comment so I know it worked?  Thanks!

In the meantime, I thought I’d share one of the main reasons I’ve had such a hard time finding the motivation to sew over the last handful of weeks.  I wrote about it on my other blog.

And yes, that will DEFINITELY mean more things added to my to-do list!

Still trying to find my sewing mojo.  Would you believe it’s been SIX WEEKS since I sat down at my sewing machine?  There’s a million small reasons why, but I’m sure a lot of it is simply the fact that I got out of the habit.

Anyways, my kids left for a weekend away with my in-laws (first time, eep!), and I decided it was time to just sit down and do it.  So what was the first thing I attempted?

A paper-pieced cyclone block that was overdue for one of my Bees.

Yes, I’m a glutton for punishment.

I messed up several VERY FRUSTRATING times in the beginning, which resulted in a lot of time spent picking out teeny tiny stitches and trying not to completely ruin the paper.  But ultimately, I got into a decent groove and I think it turned out pretty well.

Hopefully this is the beginning of something good and I’ll have more sewing progress to report, soon!

Thanks to Heather for featuring me, I’m so flattered!

To be fair, I was out of town for three of the past four weeks.  A little over two weeks doing the insane family-visit thing in the Midwest.  Home for four days, away for four more in New York for BlogHer (which was a blast).

But now that I’m back, I can’t quite seem to find my sewing mojo.  It’s not that I’ve lost interest in quilts. There are still more in my head than I may ever be able to make.  But maybe that’s part of the problem. I see my literal and virtual to-do lists, I look at my drawers of stash fabric and bins of scraps, and I feel overwhelmed.

In addition, I’m going through some absolutely bone-crushing exhaustion.  Some of it is residual tiredness from travel.  Plus the chaos of re-entry into my life, where I feel out of practice with the day-to-day requirements of activities with the kids and all of the miscellaneous things you need to do to keep the house running (laundry? ack!).  Add to that the old “dog days” of summer… while we blessedly just had central air conditioning installed, and I absolutely adore it and can’t believe it took us so long to do, I still think the heat takes its toll on me.

At any rate, I’ll certainly keep you posted when I find my sewing mojo again. If you’ve seen it, please send it back home where it belongs.

Anyone else dragging as summer starts to wind down?

I’m in the middle of my annual trip to the Midwest, visiting family and friends all over Illinois and Wisconsin.  Normally I’d be sure to have a quilt (or three) with bindings attached, so I can do the hand-sewing while I’m here.  Alas, that didn’t work out this time.

The crazy circle quilt is basted and waiting to be quilted. I had hoped to do it before I left, but my machine went on the fritz (more on that later, ARGH), so no dice.

Thankfully, I had not given away or sold my old machine, so I was at least able to (mostly) catch up on Bee blocks before I left.

And, as I was getting ready to mail them out, I realized August is MY month for our Scraptastic Bee.  Since I won’t be back home until the very last day of July, I decided to cut up some fabric and send it early.  So everyone got a piece of Alexander Henry owls and I asked for wonky/funky square-in-square blocks.

The two Nicey Jane lake quilts were, obviously, a total pipe dream. Neither top is anywhere near complete.  Ah well, they can be my mom’s Christmas present!

A combination of heat/humidity and other life-gets-in-the-way things kept me from sewing as much as I had hoped before I left.  But my sewing space has been relocated away from my kids’ bedrooms and central air has been installed in my house, so hopefully August will be a pleasantly productive month.

What about you? Are you getting as much done this summer as you had hoped?

This quilt is for a little girl named Willa, a girl not much younger than my own nearly-three-year-olds.  I don’t actually know her. She lives in Pennsylvania, and her mother is a friend of a friend.  This friend of mine pointed me to Willa’s mom’s blog.  I read it and I cried and cried and cried. Willa is dying.

In addition to being born with a rare and serious medical condition, they then discovered a tumor. Cancer. Inoperable. I’m not sure she was even two years old at the time.

My heart broke into a million tiny pieces. I wanted so badly to do something to help, but what can I do? Aside from not being a doctor or a creator of miracles, I don’t even live anywhere close to them.  I can’t make a batch of cookies or bring over a few nights’ worth of dinner.

But I can sew.  I could make Willa a quilt. Is it a particularly practical gift?  No, I suppose not. But I have a little girl. She likes to get surprises in the mail, she likes pretty things.  All I can hope to do is to send a little smile via Express Mail.

Oh, and the latest blog entry says that the tumor is growing. They’ve stopped treatment and met with hospice. Willa is at home. That’s why I rushed to finish it as fast as I could. I thought there might be more time, but I was so very sadly wrong.  So I finished it and sent it Express.  Tracking says it arrived last week. I haven’t heard from Willa’s mom, yet. I have no idea if it made it there in time.

As for the practical details of the quilt:

It is my second time doing the Stacked Coins tutorial, which I cannot recommend highly enough. If you have a couple of charm packs lying around and want to make something beautiful and super fast, this is the ticket. It’s the perfect size for a baby/toddler quilt, about 40×50. The charm packs in this case were Moda Daydreams, which is a few years old but I found them last fall in Colorado and was waiting for just the right use.

Backing is Amy Butler Full Moon Dots in Camel and a blue tone-on-tone butterfly print from my stash, which the selvedge said was by Anna Griffin.  Binding is Full Moon Dots in Lime.  I quilted it in my favorite (and fast, though my machine was acting up and breaking thread a lot) loopy stipple, and the white pretty much disappears into the quilt.

Like I said, I have no idea if it made it there in time for Willa to see it or snuggle with it. I can only hope that it gave her, and her mom, a smile.

UPDATE, JULY 8

I got a beautiful thank you card in the mail from Willa’s mom.  Not only did Willa get it and like it, “she hugs it and won’t let anyone take it away.”

You’ll excuse me, I’m going to try not to cry.

Thought I would check back on the goals I set for myself at the very beginning of this year and see how I’m doing!

1. Quilts for both kids. Done and done!
2. Duvet cover for us.  Not yet, but I’ve got it written down on the white board of insanity as something to design and have an idea of what fabric to use. So I haven’t forgotten!
3. Matching Pillows. Not so much. Realistically, not sure I’ll make those for the kids. But maybe for my bed…
4. 2 Project Linus donations. Not yet, should definitely work on that.
5. A bag. Also not yet. Hrm. Gotta pick a beginner-friendly pattern…
6. Clothing. Two sets of pajamas, hooray! Have been tempted to make a skirt or something more complex, and may make more pajamas in the fall, but they’ve fallen off the priority list.  But still, goal accomplished!
7. Name quilts. While they haven’t necessarily been the most interesting names in the whole world, I am glad to now insist on calling my quilts something other than “that one with the pink squares.”
8. Say “no” more often. Though it obviously has gone undocumented here, I have actually said no to a number of requests from friends, and decided against joining in two swaps that were calling my name. I’d love to do it all, of course, and I never want to say no to a friend.  But being realistic about my time and my to-do list has allowed me to hang on to a few extra threads of my sanity.
9. Use scraps/stash more. I’m doing a bit better on the pull-from-the-stash front. Charlie and In Full Bloom were, by and large, stash quilts, and the circle quilt in progress is all stash.  Trichromatic was the only one so far that I’d call a “scrap” quilt, but I’ve got at least one big scrap project planned for late-summer/early-fall (which I might work as a quilt-along if anyone is interested).
10. Use fabrics from all one line less.  Hrm. I still have five finishes on the year that are all-one-line-of-fabric quilts (Big D and the Bean, Cobblestones, My Favorite In-Laws, and Lucy Elizabeth), plus one more that I’ll show in the next day or two.  Plus two in progress and one in my head. Hrm.  I’m not going to beat myself up about it, though. The fabrics are meant to look good together, why fight it?  And with at least three on that list of five, I think I’ve done a good job bringing in a lot of solids to make it more interesting. Still something to be conscious of, since I don’t want to get creatively lazy by only using the fabrics that were designed to work together.
11. Bigger quilts. Not super on this one. In fact, with the exception of the doll-sized quilt, nearly all of the quilts I’ve finished this year have been in the baby/lap-size range.  That said, I’ve got a twin and a full in progress, and the duvet for my bed would be a queen. And two of the quilts, though not huge, are actively in use in two small beds. So I’ll take it.  That goal wasn’t 100% about size, it was also about being used on a bed. So I’m partway there.

I’m not going to add any new goals at this point, nor am I going to take any away. I think there’s still plenty to work with on this list for the next six months.

What about you? Did you set any goals for yourself for this year? If so, how are they going?  If not, why not set some now?

Great to have all of you stop by and comment, and fun to get some solid fabric love.  Without further ado, my virtual computer friend at Random.org says that the winner is:

#105: Helen! Who said:

I really like Sage, and think they should add pomegranate. Neat giveaway.

I couldn’t agree more, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Sage (and will be ordering several yards from Peg & Becca in the very near future…).

Helen, I have sent you email, so please get back to me with your mailing address!  As for everyone else, come back soon and I hope to have a little destash giveaway of my own.

Happy Sewing!

I have four quilt tops actively in progress at the moment, which feels like quite a lot.  Usually I get in a groove and finish one before I really get going on the other.  But this week I am literally bouncing back and forth on all four.  Sewing a bit here, a bit there. It feels a little crazy, but also kind of fun. Let’s check in with the White Board of Insanity:

So yeah, as I mentioned before, the status is color-coded. Because I’m a huge geek. And the white board came with four markers. Black status means the project is anywhere from “in theory” to cutting fabric.  Green status means fabric is cut and I’m at some stage of piecing the quilt top.  Red status means the top is done, so just finish the damn thing already.

As you can see, my poor pinwheel sampler is still hanging out in red, waiting for me to piece the back.  It’s going to wait a while longer.

The quilt for Willa is a stacked coin quilt, and since taking the picture of the strips this afternoon, I have now finished the top and am coming up with a plan for the back. I’m hoping to finish this one ASAP, it just got bumped to the top of my mental priority list.

The quilt for Gus is going to be a raw-edged quarter-circle quilt, and may end up being the brightest and loudest baby boy quilt ever created.  My friend Kathy is his mom, and when she asked me to make this, she specifically said that bold colors were welcome, and I took her at her word. I will sadly not finish it before they move away to Miami in a matter of days. But I’m sure they have more than enough things to pack at the moment, so I’ll mail it down when it’s done.

I’m sewing along with Amanda Jean and her latest quilt-along, which will be a rather lovely twin-sized quilt.  I’ve got the strips all made and chopped up, and the center block together.  Awaiting further instructions (though I suppose I could guess what they are, I’m not going to get too far ahead… plenty of other stuff to keep me busy).

But I originally bought that fat quarter bundle of Nicey Jane with a particular location in mind: a bedroom in my mom’s lake house. That bedroom has both a twin- and a full-sized bed in it, and it would seem a shame to get one bed a new quilt without the other.  So, a coordinating full-sized quilt is the fourth one on my list.  It’s going to be a disappearing-nine-patch with nice big blocks.

In an ideal world, I would finish those two Nicey Jane quilts before I leave for Chicago/Wisconsin and the lake house in question on July 15, but if that really happens, it’ll be a miracle.

So, what about you? Do you frequently have a bunch of projects actively going at the same time, or do you keep the actual in-progress list a little shorter?