Attention Deficit Disorder?

I'm beginning to wonder if I have quilting ADD. I can't seem to work on just one project at a time and always seem to have at least 3 or 4 going on at once. I guess that doesn't bother me too much because sometimes you're in the mood to piece, sometimes to cut, and other times to quilt. So it is nice to have projects at all different stages of the game. Right now, I seem to be growing a small stack of projects that need to be quilted, but I don't know how soon I will get to that, given my schedule in the coming weeks (I'm also doing a bit of binding, so I'll share some finished projects soon too!).

Remember the Pull Your Palette quilt I showed you at the beginning of the year? I blogged about it twice on January 1: here and here. That was supposed to be one of the quilts that I really wanted to make progress on? Well, I finally finished piecing it last week and here it is (above)! Now I have to decide what for quilting pattern to use on it. Any thoughts?

I also finished two small tops from the Paula Stoddard booklet Hooked on Charms. I showed you a block for the one in a post about six weeks ago. I enjoy these projects because I can quickly chain piece them through will also working on larger projects. It almost feels, then, like you get a bonus project out of your sewing time. Both projects are made from the Folklorique line, by Fig Tree Quilts. The first project is called Swirly-Gig, the second is Fancy Four-Patch.

Also sitting around and nagging me is this Geraniums quilt designed by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts. This one certainly has me thinking of warmer weather - which can come ANYTIME soon, says the woman who shoveled yet again this morning. I love her projects and also have a poinsettia one that I had thought I would have gotten done for Christmas last year, but that was a laugh. I do think I now have all of the fabric, so perhaps if I start it soon, I might have it done in time for Christmas! We'll see whether that happens...

This is just a sampling of the items I have in my "to-be-quilted" pile. I'm hoping I can make a dent in them and that I can be disciplined about finishing them before starting into something else. But then... I need to have projects at all stages right, so I have a feeling I'll still be cutting and piecing soon.

Fabric Diet - NOT!

Well, I've tried to work toward cutting down my new purchases at the quilt shop until I finish some of the projects that I already have and also so that I can save up towards making some purchases at the April International Quilt Festival in Chicago, where I always see tons of stuff that I would just love to have come home with me.

I haven't been doing too terribly. I have made good progress on some projects (and will share photos soon!) and resisted making purchases when I was in Patched Works for Moda U. last month. However, this month, I did make a few purchases beyond the necessary. Here's what I came home with:

1. Three charm packs of the new Sentimental Studios line Kashmir II (one swatch shown above). This was actually the fabric featured at Moda U. last month, which I managed to resist the urge to purchase then. (Random aside: I really disliked this month's fabric, which was Swell, by Urban Chicks and makes me think of 1950s kitchens. Um... no thanks!)

2.The Schnibbles (by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.) pattern called Four Corners, which I may use the aforementioned Kashmir charms to make. (Yes, I probably could have figured out this pattern on my own, but I was feeling lazy.)

3. A new quilting book by Laura Lee Fritz called Mindful Meandering: 132 Original Continuous-Line Quilting Designs. Seeing as I am building up quite a stack of small tops that need to be quilted, I am looking for some meandering patterns like this that I can perhaps execute a bit more quickly than some other recent quilting I have completed on my own. This book will give me lots of things to practice and I think I really will benefit from having this in my library. And, as I was Googling around on the author's name to try to give you a link in this post, I discovered that C&T Publishing has created an instructor's lesson plan for teaching from this book. Now I have a way to make myself work through this on my own. Yay!

4. Three and a half yards of one of the brown fabrics from the Chocolat line. This actually has a use in helping me to finish a project. I'm going to use this as the backing for the Sonnet collection charm quilt I showed you a few weeks ago. I've decided that I am going to put on a brown border; it would have been close to do that and back it with the brown from the Sonnet line that I had on hand. And the shop was out of significant amounts of brown in the Sonnet line. I figured this would work.

5. This is where I really got into trouble. Or maybe not too much trouble, depending on how you define it. See, we were finally able to turn in our receipts from shopping at Patched Works for over a year to earn our points on those purchases. I ended up with a nice sum of "Monopoly money," based on those purchases, to spend at the shop before the end of March. Understandably, I wanted to spend it on something special, and the Four Patch Shuffle pattern here, done up in Chez Moi's Fresh Air line really called my name (unfortunately the United Notions website is having issues, so I've given you the link to kit made with the line on a commercial site). I already know that Ben hates this line (it's too busy for him... I'll tell you how I know he dislikes it soon, when I show you a small quilt I already made out of this line), but I simply love it. I know it is busy and retro, but the colors are so rich and speak to me. Seeing as this was essentially "free" (in a relative sense), I didn't feel so guilty about buying something that I knew he would dislike.

Not a bad shopping haul! Hopefully I can avoid temptation in the coming weeks better than I did on Saturday.

Quick 'n Easy Charm Quilt

I found an online tutorial on Wendy's Snippets of a Quilter blog to make a quick top from 9-patches made from charm squares. Sew the 9-patches, cut into quarters and sew them back together. The result looks like you did much more cutting and sewing than you did. (My apologies, this isn't the best photo.)

I just so happens that I have a goodly stack of charms and I'd really been itching to use the April Cornell Sonnet collection (I think this was particularly strong of late because the colors make me think of spring). Turns out it was the same collection featured in the tutorial! I used nearly three packs to put this one together, limiting the use of the brown fabric to the center square in the 9-patch (which was the one that ended up being cut into quarters with a quarter in each of the resulting blocks) and the setting triangles. I love this quilt and it was so simple. It'd be great to use this idea to whip up a few baby quilts quick-like.

Only problem: I can't decide whether I want to put a border on this or not. I like the size that it is, but maybe a border would be nice too. Either way, I think I could still manage to quilt it myself. What do you think? I'd probably go with a brown border, but would consider another color as well.