Guest blogger: Becky the townie.

Well, I've been busy in the last week or so with traveling, eating, and of course Christmasing.  When the electricity went out at my parents' house due to a fierce ice storm, my plans for posting this guest column got postponed.  But now, I am visiting with the awesome columnist herself - my only girl cousin on this side of the family and my partner in Eurotravel.  She's done a great job of showing me around Carrboro and Chapel Hill - home to UNC basketball, Carrburritos, a rocking PTA thrift store, and Cousin Becky's Easter-egg purple house.

According to Becky, she felt inspired to guest post because she wanted to take the burden off me to be creative all the time.  Really, I think it's that she's so talented and awesome herself that she couldn't help but overflow her creativity into rhymeswithquilt.  She is a talented seamstress (she told me to write that) who learned to sew in high school.  

She's now completed a number of dresses, "pillow paintings" (as she calls them... see above), 4 or 5 quilts, and this tree skirt that she wanted to share with the rhymeswithquilt community.  So, here goes ...

Here's my story:

My family has been using the same Christmas tree skirt for as long as I can remember and, given my advanced age, it has definitely joined the ranks of scrunchies, acid wash, and other thoroughly eighties memorabilia.  The aforementioned Christmas tree skirt was made by our grandmother, Mimi, and is red with frilly lace around the edges and adorned with teddy bear elves, Santas, and angels.  To give some background, this is the same grandmother that gave Katherine and me (the only two girls in the family) matching nightgowns with a kitty kat on them that was wearing the same nightgown we were... it happened to be Katherine's 18th birthday that day. 

My mother would not dare throw away the Christmas tree skirt for fear that our 85 year-old grandmother would show up on our doorstep unannounced one day and not see her timeless skirt under the tree.  I did the dirty work for her and decided that I was going to make one this year.  When I told my mom that I was making it and I wasn't sure that she would like the fabric choices I had she replied, "Anything is better than teddy bear angels."  Truth.

So I set to work on constructing a Christmas tree skirt with no idea where to begin.  I started with a square (about a yard) of green polka dot fabric and added a 4-inch trim of a matching fabric.  I repeated the same pattern with red fabric on the other side so that it could be reversible (versatility for the coming decades!) and laid a piece of quilting batting in between the two sides.  To get the perfect size of our tree stand I laid out newspaper and traced the outline, cut it out and placed it on the skirt.  I then outlined the perimeter of the stand with tape and cut it out.  I decided to only quilt the outer border (and not the polka dots) because I didn't want it to be too busy.  The skirt came to a finish with a hand sewn border and poinsettia beads that my mom picked out.  The whole project, start to finish, probably took about 4 hours.

It made all the difference at the family Christmas this year and finally brought us into the new millenium.  Now that we've left the teddy elves and Santas behind along with big hair and shoulder pads, we're ready to welcome 2010 in style. 

Check the rhymeswithquilt blog again in twenty years for my granddaughter making fun of my super-outdated polka dots.

Happy sewing!

~becky

excuses

4 days without power + holiday travel = delayed blogposting.

Updates coming soon.

I promise.

a nod to blue

I got inspired to make this quilt when I found an awesome blue-and-white striped sheet at my favorite thrift store.  Twin size, great shape, already soft.  I couldn't help it - I KNEW that it was going to be the back of a quilt.  I started thinking of what I wanted the front to look like, and this is what happened:  

It became the back of this wonky log cabin quilt that I gave to some friends who are UNC-CH graduates.  I went with blues and whites (for obvious reasons) but I LOVE the simplicity of a quilt with lots of white.  White is so forgiving!  And I think it makes the log cabin blocks pop out.  The finished size of the quilt is somewhere around 75" x 90", depending on where you measure. (HA!  I have yet to get the exact-measurement thing down)  

I did a pieced binding with the leftovers of the sheet that were wide enough when I trimmed the quilt and some tarheel fabric that I think my mom passed along to me from one of her projects.  I love it.

Here's to finding more inspiration in the most unlikely places!

poss!i!bil!i!ties!

Four 79 cent fat quarters and a big blue button ... 

!

my vegetative state

Over the summer I had a fortuitous encounter with Freecycle.  I posted a request for fabric scraps, and was answered by a lady whose grandmother had collected BAGS of scraps from her lifetime of projects.  (BAGS = 5 large black trash bags full).  Some of the scraps were tiny, less than 1"x1", while there was yardage of others.  There was even a kimono in there.  Boo yah.  Let the games begin.

My first job was to sort everything (loosely) by "color" - I wish I had taken a picture to show you my billowing piles of blues, greens, pinks/oranges, yellows, denims, flannels, polyesters (yuk), stripes, and faux furs.  I sorted for hours.

Then came the fun part ... doing something with these scraps!

Our garden was bountiful at the time, so I had vegetables on the brain ...

So, here's what I did: I put a scrap on a white background.  I set up my machine as if I were going to free-motion quilt (lower the feed dogs, attach my darning foot, and change the stitch length to "0"), and then I literally drew my design over the scraps.  In the one above, I went for a set of green peas.  Below, some carrots and a radish (whose design my friend Laura helped me come up with):

So, well, maybe I got carried away.  I don't care, though.  They're just so much fun ... carrots are my particular favorite, probably because they're so distinctive.  (I confess: I tried to do a pear.  It ended up looking somewhat like a green egg.  DISCARD!)

So, a lot of them have gotten turned into pot holders.

Some became wall hangings.

Others are still waiting.

More ideas?

baby baby

For the first time ever, I sewed something for a baby doll.  Since I was one of those girls who was all about her dolls when I was growing up, I know how important it is for the little mommy to make sure that the dolls are properly clothed, fed, and warmed.  And, since I've got a plethora of friends with babies these days, I thought I could pass along a little love in the form of a doll quilt.  This little quilt (16"x24") is for a friend's daughter for Christmas.  My mom, who was visiting me this weekend, helped me come up with the idea and encouraged me to try something new with the quilting pattern.  I tried a little loop-de-loop deal -  it did go pretty quickly though it took me a few minutes to get the feel for it.  Don't look too closely ... I had a few snaffoos, but I kept them in there and just kept going.  Sorry for the dark photo quality.

In other baby news (no, not me silly), congrats to my dear friends Katie and Adam R. on the birth of their first daughter, Rylie Joy, last night!  Apparently, the text message announcement read "6 lb 14 oz beautiful" (I don't actually know first-hand what it said, because we may or may not have blocked text messaging from our phone ...).  However, I can't wait to hold 6 lb 14 oz beautiful in my arms!

flakes

I found some coarse red linen fabric on sale at Walmart for $1.50/yd and have used most of it for a Christmas project.  I had these little squares leftover and some down time at work.  That, paired with some white thread and an etsy.com search of "snowflakes" for inspiration led me to these:

Coasters, maybe?  Ornaments?  Still not sure.  I'm feeling the ornaments thing, but I like them as a set.  They measure about 4.5" x 4.5" ... too big for ornaments?  Hmmm.

Hand stitching is actually more fun than I thought it would be. 

Oh, joy!

Four corners, part dos

It's done!

I am in love with this quilt ... really, I've considered buying more of the same fabrics to make another one exactly like it. 

Check out the back - such an awesome green!

Some things I'm particularly excited about:
-the way the brown pops out
-the improv-ness (improvisationalism?) of each block
-the way the binding blends in with the back and shows up more on the front - a little edging effect
-the size - about 39"x39" - a little bigger than other baby quilts I've done, but perfect for a baby to lay/play/roll on

I ended up going with brown for the stitching.  Bold, I know.  It really contrasts with the white and pink, but (surprisingly) it works well with the backing fabric, and (unsurprisingly) it matches the brown on the front.  Check it out:

Here's one more picture, just a close-up of one of the blocks ...

Yay!

More to come ... I've been a busy bee ...

Four Corners

As I write today, I've got this spread out on the dining room table: 

I'm a little frenzied about finishing it, though no one is pressuring me except me ... for some reason, I feel as though I must finish today or I'm going to bust.  The tough thing, though, is that I don't know what color to quilt it in.  I tend towards white because it's standard, but I like the boldness of the chocolate brown so much that I'm afraid a white-on-brown deal would let me down.  So I've called my friend Rebecca (this is for her neice) and am waiting on her to tell me what she wants.  My guess is that she's going to "trust my judgment" and "leave it up to me" and all that stuff, because she's nice and trusting like that.  Haha!  

Maybe light pink?  Or light green?  Or light brown?

early bird gets the warm

Santa came just a wee bit early to our house ...

My husband was just so cold now that winter has decided to set in, and Mr. Claus must have known that my dear needed this to keep him comfy and cozy before Christmas.

The pattern is a "Wonky Log Cabin" inspired by the crazymomquilts and tallgrassprairiestudio blogs.  I'll put a link up to their tutorials when I get a chance but I encourage you to check them out in the meantime!

The back is a simple pieced deal, once again inspired by crazymomquilts (I've got a lot of props to give her because, despite the fact that she doesn't know this, she's my quilting guru.)

I don't know if you can tell or not, but the binding is made from the leftover strips that I had from the backing when I trimmed it, offset around the edge, plus this awesome candy-cane-striped deal that I think my grandmother gave me a long time ago.

Here's some detail of the stippling also.  I'm still not great at it and the quilting is still pretty wide apart, but I like the effect anyway.

First

I've decided to add something new to my plate.

A quilting and sewing blog.

I'm new at quilting so I can't really promise much, but I want to share what I am doing. And this is the time to do it ... I've got my Christmas projects underway, lots of plans for next year, and a few completed projects laying around the house. At least I'll have the first few posts taken care of ...