Design "Wall" and stash report

It's not really the design wall, but I've mounted Jack's Chain onto the Megaquilter and hope to start the quilting process soon.  I was so encouraged by finishing up the Feathered Star quilting, that I want to see if I can get this one to Tertia for Christmas.  It will be a simpler quilting pattern, maybe with a few spinning feather fans in the hexagons but everything else will be point-to-point arcs.  I apparently do not have any true white thread, only off-white, so will have to pick some up first.

Hope to share pictures of the finished Feathered Star soon.  It's one of my favorites ever!

Here are the candied chestnuts I made that I couldn't get access to the main computer to load Saturday.  As I pointed out, they don't really look that great.

Here are the girls having a gun battle after discovering an old, no-longer functional Nerf gun somewhere.  Tertia was looking fierce; Quarta tried to fend off nonexistent Nerf pellets with a pillow.

Quarta really wanted her turn to pose with the big gun when she saw I had the camera.  Tertia was having none of that.

She gave Quarta the old, non-functional squirt gun and kept the big one for herself. 

Stash report:

Fabric used this week: 6 yards (a vintage queen-size sheet) for backing Jack
Fabric used year to date: 82 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 28 yards
Net used for 2012: 54 yards

Yarn used this week: 0 yards
Yarn used year to date: 7064 yards
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 3503 yards (all handspun, not purchased)
Net used for 2012: 3561 yards

Feathered Star: Evaluation

August UFO dating from 1999 - Feathered Star.  I was pregnant with Tertia when my quilt group in Denver, Hearts and Hands, began this project.  In theory, we would piece the central medallion and then challenge ourselves to add multiple borders to make it a showstopping quilt.  I spent a fair amount of money, for me and at that time, on beautiful fabrics in "my" colors for what I thought would be a wall quilt that could be the centerpiece of my living room.  "These fabrics would be stunning with lots of elaborate applique!" was one of the comments I received. And it's true, they would.  But they probably aren't going to be.

But before I could get to the applique, I had to do the piecing.  And whether it was the morning sickness, or the disruption from moving -- twice -- or just my own lack of piecing skills, I've never been happy with the medallion.  The points don't really match, it's not precisely 24" square, and I put it away, thinking maybe I'd piece another feathered star sometime, or maybe 3 more for a bed-sized quilt.  Now, I'm no longer in my applique phase.  I still love the fabrics, but I'm not willing to spend that much time with them, especially when the central medallion is less than perfect.  So, it is what it is.  I'll come up with 3 or 4 borders to add to it and aim for a table topper or wall quilt that I can enjoy now rather than in 13 more years.  I think it would be great for Christmas, but those are my favorite colors any time of year.  And it would still look good in my living room!

That was supposed to be my Design Wall Monday post... but I ended up having a horrible migraine/ sick headache yesterday and didn't get anything done.  Well, I made blueberry jam and went clothes shopping with Daniel.  But no blogging, and no knitting.  I'm trying to recuperate today.  I'm finished with the back and right front of my orange Ravelympics sweater and hope to do a lot of knitting this afternoon and evening and maybe finish the left front.  I'm still running into crunch time to finish it up before closing ceremony August 12.  With a lot of couch potato knitting time, I still could make it.

Stash Report:

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 53.5 yards
Added this week: 0 yards
Added year to date: 28 yards
Net used for 2012: 25.5 yards

Yarn used this week: 904 yards so far on Rhinebeck (up through skein 225)
Yarn used year to date: 5310 yards
Yarn added this week: 0 yards
Yarn added year to date: 3503 yards (all handspun, not purchased)
Net used for 2012: 1807 yards

Quilts of the Past: Once Upon a Time

Okay, there's this Bloggers' Quilt Festival going on over at Amy's Creative Side, and I have a quilt to share.  It's an older quilt, like the one I shared last fall during the festival then.  And like that one, it was a group project from when I was a member of the informal "Hearts and Hands" quilting group that met at Peggy P.'s house back in Denver in the late 1990's.  I estimate I finished it in 1999, maybe right before we moved out here, although my memory's a little hazy.  And it must have been the pregnancy stress at the time, because I committed the cardinal sin of not making a label for it.  Shocking!  ... and shame on me.  In my defense, we moved twice during that pregnancy, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and my daughter was born with Down syndrome, so I had other things on my mind.

Once Upon a Time

The story:  This is a round robin quilt.  We all chose a theme and a color scheme, and we all made a theme block as a focal point.  We had a foundation grid of cheap lining fabric marked off into 4" squares.  Each month the box would travel to a new person, who was responsible for making the equivalent of 6 4" blocks that elaborate the theme. It could be one big block or several smaller "filler blocks, or a combination.  Blocks would get moved around the grid a little every month but I had the final say on how they would get arranged.  It was a lot of fun because every member of the group had a different theme: gardens, a Colorado mountain town, camping in the mountains, the seasons of the year, school... those are the ones I can remember.

My theme block.  I was in my applique phase at the time.

A knight errant...

a fearsome dragon...

Jack and the beanstalk, the goose with the golden egg...

the cat and the fiddle, the little dog, and the cow over the moon (the dish and spoon are real little trinkets sewn on there)...

a treasure hoard...

the princess and the pea.

This quilt hung in my oldest son's room from about the time we moved here in 1999 until we remodeled his room to get rid of the ugly old paneling the quilt was helping to cover up.  It might have hung in Secundus' room for awhile too, I'm not sure.  After the remodel at some point it got shelved because some of the treasure needed to be stitched back on, and I remembered it a few weeks ago when I was doing the intervention on Primigenitus' room while he was deciding which college to go to.  So I stitched the treasure back on (I had saved it in a special little bottle in my sewing room!) and hung it up in the upstairs hallway by the staircase.  It had been put away so long, the girls didn't remember it.  And they love fairy tales!  So it's enjoying a new round of popularity.

I couldn't possibly have made all these lovely blocks on my own, and I am honored and humbled that so many wonderful and amazingly creative ladies spent so much talent making them for me.