Pom Certainly is Wonderful

Started a batch of Pomegranate Liqueur yesterday afternoon.  How am I going to wait two whole months for it to infuse?!?

New Quilts in the Works...

I was trying to get excited about making some quilts this year, but to be honest, I was having a hard time.  I sometimes have what I call "Quilter's Block".  My favorite quilts, and the ones that make the greatest impact with people, are those that I'm really inspired to make for them.  But so many people seem to expect to get a quilt from me for a special event, that the list goes on and on.  The more I'm tied to the list, the less interesting and exciting my quilts are.  It's something I have learned I can't force.  It just has to happen.  

Fortunately I had one of those moments of inspiration today!  My friend Carol and her boyfriend are having their first baby and between the two of them, they are sure to produce a tiny nerdlet.  

#1. for 2012: Alien Nerdlet Quilt for Carol's son.  It started when I found the cutest/dorkiest fabric full of aliens and space ships to base it around.  Then after doing a "find this color" search on Equilter.com, I was able to pick out really cute coordinates that included circuit boards, stars, and gears.  Here are the fabrics:

Galaxy Visa by Michael Miller. 

Simple Circuitry in Emerald

Nuts & Bolts in Sunflower

Freedom Studded Sky in Red

I was so excited by the idea, I even rendered it in Photoshop!

#2. Surprise quilted project for Pinkleo, as a belated 12 Days of Christmas project.  - 50% Completed!  (Can't reveal the project till I ship it to her.)

#3. Split Decision wall quilt with leftover Sandy Gervais Grande Finale fabrics

#4. Mason Jar blocks for my own quilt

October Wedding Quilt

I've gotten way behind in posting here.  Between my Etsy, my regular job, and teaching a class this past semester, I never seemed to have any time to quilt.  I had hoped to get my sister-in-law Jennifer's wedding quilt done in time for her actual wedding in October, but it just didn't happen.  Instead she and her new husband Jeremy got it for Christmas.

Here it is finished.  I began working on it just after the start of Winter Break, and my goal was to have it quilted, but not bound, before leaving for Illinois.  But the pattern didn't seem to want to cooperate...  The pattern was Scrappy Trails by Carlene Westberg on Etsy.  It's clearly a simple Log Cabin block that I certainly could have figured out on my own, but I was wanting to try to save time by using pre-cut fabrics, and the pattern was labeled as being for charm packs and jelly rolls.  It listed the requirements as 1 charm pack & 1 jelly roll, but didn't give a number of squares or strips.
I found the Grand Finale line by Sandy Gervais, available reasonably priced from another Etsy seller, Quilted Thimble Cottage.  Was VERY pleased with her service.
As for the pattern, it was kind of a nightmare.  It started off by having you cut down all the charm squares into 4.5" blocks, instead of the 5" they already were.  Then I realized that I needed exactly 40 strips from the jelly roll, but both the roll and the charm back came with a color set of fabrics that just did NOT match the rest of the fabrics.  (Most were yellow, orange, brown & avacado, but a few were purple and teal.)  Long story short, I needed to resize the blocks in order to get a whole set out of each of the 30 matching strips.  This made the quilt several inches smaller all the way around, and led to two days of fabric cutting.  By the end of day two I had the blocks together, and nothing else.  Ended up piecing the front, quilting, and binding at my mother-in-law's dining room table.