Sweetheart

Bless dear ol' Chumkie who blogs at 'My Favourite Things' for holding a linky party.Thanks to her, I am finally moving my butt ass lazy self and getting around to documenting some of my older quilts. This weeks theme of the linky party is 'Baby Quilts' and this sweet li'l pink & white quilt called 'Sweetheart' (made in April 2011) finally gets to see the light of day this side of the blogosphere.



It was whipped up in an afternoon for a friend's newborn daughter. Nothing like a 9 patch alternated with plain blocks to quickly put together a baby quilt. Some more quick embellishment with some hearts and bows of two-tone satin ribbon..



Quilted in the ditch by machine and some hand-quilting around the hearts and bows..



Some cute photographs to someday  document the quilt..



And all bundled with love to be sent off to the li'l sweetheart..



Linking this up with Chumkie's linky party, who by the way is not old.

I am a Slasher !

Sometimes Life has this horrid habit of slipping a lemon or two in a lovely box of chocolates. Just when you are heady with the taste of something so sinfully yummy and are enjoying it in all its gooeyness and mush, you bite into this wedge of bitter sour lemon and all your senses are thrown out of gear with a mighty jolt ! You are angry, you are hurt and you want to kill someone. Don't. Kill, that is. Slash.

I got a lemon slipped to me yesterday. Or was it two? They say hold your words when you are hurt or angry, for words are like arrows and can't be retrieved to the quiver once shot. So I decided to put my arrows aside and get slashing instead !!

As part of the fun QALs on Desi Quilters, Vanita is doing a Faux Chenille QAL and I thought it was just the thing for my mood right then. There is nothing more meditative than sewing rows and rows (and rows and rows) of parallel lines. It soothes your nerves and helps sort out the things that matter from the garbage in your head. With every line, you sew down whats important in your life..

 ..and then you get out the blades !! Slash ! Slash ! Slash ! Slash away at all the hurt and the anger....

....and voila, you have back your calm mind and a lovely bit of Chenille to boot !

So, go ahead and slash people ! No, no, I mean, go ahead, and slash, people ! It has enormous therapeutic side benefits :-)

Flower Power

Sometimes things just fall in place. When the time's right, everything just sorta comes together by itself. I've been wanting to document my pre-blog quilts for a really long time but havent done so coz..well, I really have no good reason, actually. Does 'laziness' qualify? :-)

So my good friend Chumkie is holding a linky party over at her blog, My favourite things and this week's theme is 'Appliqued quilts' and I think, hey, finally the time's right to document this piece I made (in October 2011)  for a friend's fiesty 9 year old daughter...a quilt with flower power..

The 12 freehand flower motifs were first appliqued onto these huge circles (dunno what I was thinking!) which were then appliqued on to the pieced maroon background (again, dunno what I was thinking !!). To reduce bulk, the circle backs were cut out. Turns out I wasn't thinking very much as I decided to hand quilt the thing !!

Some laborious hand quilting along the stripes in the background fabric, some embellishment with two-tone ric-rac lace..

                            

..and all bundled with love and sent off to princess Anaga.

Linking this up Chumkie. Thanks for helping things fall in place :-)

Birds of a feather

How to get two birds with one stone?  Easy. Go where birds of a feather flock together. Like here. Like this. With ONE post, I shall document this quilt that I made for a Wholecloth Quilt Challenge on my very active and very inspiring group Desi Quilters ..AND ..I shall link this up with my DQ friend Chumkie's Two color linky party on her blog 'My favourite things'. Ha ha, one shot, two birds!

This is a one piece wholecloth quilt with an interesting bird print. I outlined the birds, about 300 of them, with Free Motion Quilting (FMQ), once along the top of each bird and echoed twice around the bottom.

 Though with the lime green backing and the multi-coloured binding, I'm not so sure if it qualifies for the Two-Color linky party ?!

Oh well, Chumkie, do let me know. Meanwhile I shall go talk about the weather.

The Bikini Project - Part 2

(Excerpt from my one and only journal entry dated 30.08.2011...cont. from here)

I guess I better start at the beginning.

Last evening, I got a severe case of Houseclearosis. Thats when you suddenly decide that you've had enough of living in a pigsty and launch into a clean-and-clear frenzy. The Husband joins in after getting a lecture on how everybody's lives would be much easier if things were just put back where they were supposed to be. Nah, not once in a while, but every day. Yes, like every single darn day. Its an entirely different matter that his idea of cleaning house is restricted to his own wardrobe. ONLY. The kids, of course, LIKE living in a pigsty.

So there I was, sorting though stuff, trying to decide what to keep and what to chuck. Houseclearosis requires a certain steeling of the heart. You gotta mercilessly discard stuff. Especially stuff thats not been used in the last two years. Or ten. There is no place for emotions, no sir. If you falter, you fail. No place for second thoughts either. Nope. Once in the out-bin, always in the out-bin. Ah, but then 9 year olds don't understand that. They tend to rescue Barbie dolls and colourful horses with long, silky manes, and other assorted weird looking stuff from the out-bin. It is one thing to steel your heart and discard stuff, but its quite another to grab a rescued toy from your 9 year old and dump it back in the out-bin. I'm afraid I'm not that steeled up. Yet.

Long story short, I packed the Barbie kitchen, bathroom, drawing-room, pet-parlour, salon, fast-food joint, Cinderalla carriage and plenty others into cartons meant to be passed on and delight other kids. We are strong believers in the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle funda, you see. Well, somewhat strong. Once done with the toys, I moved on to the books. Rearranging and re-stacking them. Everybody, yes everybody, knows that its a very very bad idea to open books that you are supposed to be rearranging. But then, everybody is also prone to occasional lapses of judgement once in a while. I had one of those just then, those li'l lapses of judgement and I opened a book. And then another. And yet another. Again, long story short, I spent a good part of the afternoon drooling over the glossy pictures in my recently-acquired books from my neighbourhood bookstore 'Odyssey'. Odyssey had recently had a 70% off sale and I had picked up these absolutely yummy books that I was leafing though right then - The Soup Bible, The Ice-Cream Book, Greek Cuisine, 70 First Courses, Thai Cooking for Indian Kitchens, Fabulous Cakes, One Pot Dishes... No, no, don't get me wrong, I do NOT enjoy cooking. Nor am I a major foodie. But honestly, who can resist exotic, lavish and droolicious looking pics of food? More importantly, who can resist the 70% off tags?!

And while I was in the middle of this food-glossies-induced-stupor, I noticed an unfamiliar li'l book buried deep in the clutter. I pulled it out and repeated the cardinal sin of opening it. 'twas a smallish book, glossy paper, attractive pics, uncomplicated sentences, and a great plan. A great 4-week plan to become what it called 'Bikini-Fit' ! But what caught my attention most was the cover picture. It was a picture of the back of a woman's torso in an itsy-bitsy bikini. A back like my own, I caught myself thinking. "Oh, I look like that too. From behind." Ahem ! I admit to some stretching-of-the-imagination, but that aside, I MAYBE would look like that cover pic lady from the back. But there was no freakin way I'd have worn a bikini or turned around, what with all that loose, jiggly, overflowing, overhanging bits of me in the front, and worse, stretchmarks. From the East to the West. All the way.

Oh boy! Whom was I kidding? I looked like the map of India even from behind.

And then I remember thinking, nay, wishing that I, me, moi, could be bikini-fit.

And then I thought, why not?

Why not??

And the minute I thought  that, a buzz ran through the soon-to-be-bikini-fit body of mine. Something had happened! Something had definitely happened in that moment ! I had found purpose ! I was so going to be bikini-fit and I was going to be bikini-fit by my 40th birthday. I was going to wear a bikini. (I have never worn one before) Hell, I was going to wear an itsy-bitsy bikini on my 40th birthday AND I WAS GOING TO LOOK FRIGGIN GOOD IN IT !

(Here ended my first and last journal entry of my life thus far)

Post script: Though I had planned on keeping a journal for the entire duration of the 'Bikini Project', I, sadly, aborted it after the first entry. However, I got myself a support group comprising of my very dear friends Uma and Sabine who were my guardian angels and my safety nets. In the following months, I watched my food, exercised a bit, pampered my skin, shopped for a bikini and bullied my husband into taking me to Goa for my 40th birthday. En route to an almost-bikini-fit body I learnt a lot about myself. I also learnt to love my body as it is, make friends with it and feel comfortable in it. I had a rollicking time on the beach and I think my husband enjoyed the show too. My heartfelt gratitude to my buddies Uma and Sabine for being there for me regardless of how many ever times I made an ass(!) of myself. I feel blessed. Hugs.

The Bikini Project - Part 1

(Excerpt from my one and only journal entry dated 30.08.2011)

Quick, quick, I need a notebook. And I need it quick.. before the idea, quicksilverlike, slips from my head. No, I think its the enthusiasm though thats more quicksilverlike, difficult to hold on to. So yeah, I need a notebook BEFORE I lose track of this latest brainwave of mine and along with it, my newly found enthusiasm. Quickly.

I manage to lay my hands on Jos' old, half-used (half-empty?) Math notebook from Class 7. This will have to do. I have decided to write a journal and this will be my precious journal..where my thoughts will manifest into words, where I shall find the strength and the hope to stick with my project, and where I shall bury my face on the days the going gets too hard, for I know it shall be hard and I am not entirely sure I can do it. For I (tapping spoon on glass), have embarked on the highly ambitious  (drum roll..) 'Bikini Project' ! 'Ambitious' seems like a good adjective. A worthy adjective for a worthy project, though a lot of other wannabe adjectives also come to mind. Like foolish, stupid, impossible, unnecessary, medically unsafe, violates-the-laws-of-physics, etc.

Of course I would've like a nice looking notebook for my journal instead of this tired looking excuse for one. In fact, when the whole idea of keeping a journal was still on the fringes of my thoughts, thats what the accompanying pic in my head looked like - a beautiful hard-bound notebook with smooth, creamy sheets smelling delightfully of fresh paper and faint perfume, with a whole page for the index, and the cover a lovely blue-green.. ..of the sky and the sea, and peacock feathers and butterflies, and memories. But then who keeps notebooks like these at home, lying around waiting patiently in a drawer for its day to come? Since my urgency in starting the journal was absolutely absolute, I settle for the Math notebook. Well, half a notebook, in any case. In fact, I think the purpose of this notebook was verily that. It was half-filled with struggles of my my li'l Jos and its blank pages were waiting for the struggles of her mom. Everything has a purpose, you know. And being witness to OUR struggles was this notebook's purpose of existence..a purpose I shall be glad to be of assistance to fulfill. Just as I hope it'll be able to help fulfill mine.

Well then, we have a notebook, a germ of an idea and a name for it. 'The Bikini Project'. Hmm..I like it. I think. The title, I definitely like. The project..well yes, that too. I think. Not sure if the idea is that great though. I mean, it seemed brilliant last night, when I'd hit upon the idea. 20 hours later it seems to have lost some of its brilliance. A lot, actually.

(To be cont..)

Milky Way

Here's another quilt for another aunt, quilted sometime ago but the documenting left for another day. Today. Calling it 'Milky Way'. Looks apt, no?

'twas my first try with curved seams.

 

For those of you who asked for a tute, see if this helps:

Step1 - Choose 2 coordinating/contrasting/absurd main fabrics. Prints/solids/whatevers. Add a couple more for borders if you like.

Step 2 - Lay the main fabrics (A & B) right side together and pin baste to avoid shifting. 

Step 3 - Mark 4 dots at irregular distances on the top edge and identical ones on the bottom edge. Draw smooth waves connecting the corresponding dots the across the length of the paired fabrics and gently cut along the lines. (I did 4 such cuts, giving me 5 sections of wavy strips. But you can do more if you want a smaller grid) Be careful to not disturb the placement of the strips. You can number the strips on both fabrics if it makes your life easier.

Step 4 - Remove the pins and gently separate out the 2 fabrics. Now replace every alternate strip of fabric A with its sister strip of fabric B. This will give you two similar but not identical Sets 1 & 2.

Step 5 - Now gently sew the strips to make 2 separate sets. No tugging, no pulling. Its easier to sew accurately if there are points to match at short intervals. I just drew 1" cross lines with tailors chalk. You can see them if you look closely inside the 'O's.

Step 6 - Now again draw gentle waves, this time across the width of fabric. On both Sets 1 and 2. Now this is where I got lazy and did a stupid thing. I cut it into 4 cross sections instead of 5. Remember you need an odd number of cross sections for this to work. 

Step 7 - Again, number strips, replace alternate strips on Set 1 from Set 2, sew. You dont need to mark points to match this time coz you have the previous seams doing the job. On sewing, you will end up with finished panels 1 & 2. Now all you gotta do is sew the two panels together and voila !

You see the part in the middle where the grid is kinda elongated? Thats coz of my blooper with cutting an even no. of cross sections instead of odd. Oh well, one lives and learns. Or is it learns and lives??

Step 8 - Well, the tute part is over. The rest is just to accommodate all the excessive photography that I seem to have done. Anyways, step 8, add borders as per your fancy, prepare sandwich and quilt. I quilted 1/4" along either side of every seam.

Step 9 - Attach binding. Or just roll over the backing to the front and top stitch it in place.

Step 10 - Photograph quilt. More than necessary. Most important part of the entire quilting thingamajiggy :-).

Step 11 -Bundle it with much love and send it off to whoever you made it for. Coz thats what quilts do. They take our love and all that is good with this world to their new owners.

Step12- Blog about it ! Be sure to include all cute puppy/kitty/budgie pics.

Happy quilting ! And all the associated joys.