The end of the quarter

I haven't been able to post here in a while because we are approaching the end of the academic quarter, which means papers, exams, and projects have all been coming due.  I've got most of it finished and hope to turn in the last assignment sometime tomorrow. I have been getting a little bit of sewing done, but life and school do keep getting in the way.  

Last weekend I got started on a wedding quilt for a friend of my husband who is getting married in July.  I'm using a pattern from Me? A Mom? and adapting it slightly.  The pattern is her Urban Lattice, and I have shrunk the blocks so they are 6" finished instead of 12", and adjusted the widths of each strip accordingly.  The pattern uses pretty simple paper piecing, really a slight extension of a string block, but I've been struggling with it.  Because my sewing budget is tight, I worry about wasting fabric, and so I always end up cutting my pieces too small for the paper piecing process.  I started cutting last Saturday and cut just a few pieces of each color so I could make a few test blocks, and sure enough, not only had I cut my pieces too small, I had mis-calculated the size I actually needed.  Oh well, at least I have decided to use all scraps (or as many as I can) in some kind of patchwork on the back of the quilt.  

One of the quilt shops near me offered a paper piecing class this past weekend, but I just couldn't manage to take it, instead I worked on my economics final.  You can probably guess which I would have rather been doing! I think I'm at the point where I have given paper piecing a good go on my own, and if I'm ever going to be successful at it I will need someone who knows what they are doing to help me.  Luckily the class will be offered again in April, so I'm hoping to take it then.  

I did take a short sewing break this weekend, between economics problems, to make a cute little drawstring bag.  We have a cat and a dog at our house, and they give off an ungodly amount of fur.  I have determined that if I want to keep anything fur-free, it has to be in isolated confinement, so I attempted a little bag using a modified pillowcase model.  I also figured that it would be somewhat silly to be protecting things from fur by putting them into a bag with raw seams, only to have them come out covered in fabric fuzz.  This motivated me to try out french seams for the first time.  If you're not familiar with them, they are entirely contained seams, no raw edges are exposed.  I think they look nice in my little bag! I had some trouble figuring out how to keep openings for the drawstrings and do the french seams on all exposed edges, but I managed it with a little bit of cheating.  The bag used just one fat quarter folded in half, and about 2' of ribbon I've had stashed away looking for a project.  I think it turned out quite well and I'll see if I can get a picture of it up here sometime this week. 

I don't really know how some of the ladies out there in the blog world manage to post several entries per week with lots of photos and new projects.  I feel like I barely have time to sit down to DO a little project, much less plan out taking pictures of each step, the final product, and loading it all into Blogger and composing an eloquent post about it! I suppose it might be easier for those stay-at-home-moms to find a few minutes here and there throughout the day to dedicate to their blog.  Maybe someday when I'm not in school and working I'll be able to produce more visually stimulating and inspiring posts.  Until then, text-heavy it will be!

Distractions and Temptations

This weekend is entirely devoted to finishing the first draft of my Master's thesis, which was supposed to be finished on Friday, but that didn't happen.  So here I am, for the second day in a row, at Starbucks because I can't stay focused at home.  There's always someone (namely Herbert) who wants to be in my lap, the TV staring at me, and persistent quiet that I feel the need to fill with said TV.  So when I really need to get things done I head out, usually to somewhere with a good level of ambient noise and free wi-fi.  I've been doing really good, staying off facebook and making significant progress, but I do allow myself some breaks every once in a while.

This most recent break, however, is testing my resolve.  I clicked over to my Google Reader page, and saw a post that almost made me jump up and run to the fabric store.  Dan from Piece and Press posted some pictures of his latest quilting project, and I think I'm in love.  He is testing out a new line of fabric from Thomas Knauer with a paper pieced New York Beauty block, and I think it is fabulous.  I love the birds in the yellow print, and the colors of the other prints are calling to me.  I also totally hear his frustrations with paper piecing, I tried Anina's (of TwiddleTails) Geese in the Forest quilt, and it was a total disaster.  I gave up after making two blocks that were way short in seam allowances, and with more fabric wasted in trimming than actually ended up in the block.  However, after seeing how wonderfully his NYB block turned out, I may have to find a pattern and give this one a shot.  The Flock line is set to ship out to fabric stores this month, I can't wait to track some down!

However! I've already got two projects in the works (Leila's Skill Builder Quilt Along and a yoyo quilt) and haven't had time to even make desired progress on those, so starting another project is probably ill advised... Maybe once I get this monster of a paper turned in I'll start planning something with Flock...Maybe something with 4-5 paper pieced blocks and the rest whole cloth? We shall see!

Now back to bike-sharing.

Whoops!

I recently discovered (or rather caved in and tried) Pinterest.  It's been a fun time-waster, and I've been gathering a random assortment of pins, including recipes, hair styles, and color palates for future quilts. However, it is the kind of site where you can find yourself saying "now how did I get here?" Today, for instance, I found myself looking through pins themed "kid", "baby", and "pregnancy."  It's no secret in our house that I can't wait to be a mom, but my husband and I know we aren't ready at the moment.  We have a set of criteria that must be met (minimum income, housing situation, stable jobs, etc), and a hopeful timeline surrounding TTC, but for now I just indulge in all things baby every once in a while. Anyway, so I'm on Pinterest, pinning random things like cute styles for nurseries and fun photo slideshows, when I pop over to facebook to find not only has everything I've pinned shown up as a post on my wall, but my Father-in-Law has commented on one of them asking if there's something I'm trying to tell them! Eeek! I told him no, and not to worry, and promptly disconnected my Pinterest account from facebook.  Serves me right for not working on my thesis!

Here we go...

Over the past several months I've started reading an assortment of blogs, mostly quilting, but some Mommy blogs as well, and I've found myself thinking about what I would put in a blog.  Maybe I would talk about my quilting projects, or maybe about my frustrations with graduate school, or maybe just about my thoughts about the future.

My plan is to at the very least talk about quilting, since I don't have any local quilting friends (yet).  I try to share my excitement with my husband, but although he is well trained to smile and say "very nice dear," it would be nice to share my excitement with those who understand.  There will also probably be some discussion of my constant battle to keep everything in balance, and my successes and failures in those efforts.

At least for now I don't plan on sharing this blog with people I know locally, which will allow me a little more freedom to write about what I want without worrying about how people I know will judge me. Maybe that will change eventually.