Making progress

The quilt show this weekend was lovely. I sat in on a lecture about thread and learned more in one hour than the sum total of everything else I knew. As with last show, I spent most of my show budget on new threads, only now I'm feeling confident enough to actually use them. A few weeks ago I won a door prize at Sew Inspired, so I got to pick up an excellent workbook about quilting motifs; it's got dry erase pages so you can repeatedly practice doodling the basic designs - nifty. My next big expansion here at "the studio" (read: back of the TV room) is to find/construct/rig a better sewing table so I can have a large flat surface flush with the bed of my machine. I'm getting better at free-motion work, so I think it's time to make the space fit the job.

I have been making significant progress on my to-do list. Yesterday before we went to the show, I helped C make a small dreamcatcher/mandala quilt. He picked a pattern from a coloring book that I bought at the Borders clearance extravaganza. I traced it onto some white fabric, then - inspired by my plans to shade the embroidered witch quilt with crayons - he colored his design in and I helped him iron it. He picked some "Indian-colors" thread and we did a little stitching along the original lines to quilt it up; I added a binding, and he added a few embellishments (his own vision, but not visible in the photo here) and voila!

This morning I finished one of the bags that I promised my mother. A few years ago I made her a patchwork jacket with various Steelers/football fabrics, so I used the scraps from that to make this first purse. I cobbled together a few patterns that I have here and added a few extra details like an afterthought zipper at the top. I hope it's what she had in mind!

My list is looking more manageable now: finish sweater, finish tracing & color witch embroidery, finish Monster Bag (started with Allison), make one more purse, use up one more screen (which I think I'm going to use for pencil cases instead of totes). I'm putting the Beatles on the backburner; it can wait until October.