I finished the Pie Crust Pileup quilt. These photos are NOT good, it has been so grey out. I tried finding a place to hang it up in the house to photograph it but I couldn't find enough pushpins and the bulldog clamps (my original idea: clamp it over the top of a door) were too small.



So I had to go outside to take a picture. The colors look a lot less vibrant here than they do in real life. It could be though that we're just at the point of the year where all the life gets sucked out of everything. I don't normally react badly to winter - in fact, I tend to love winter - but something about this month has gotten to me.

As always with these photos, it's hung sidewise so it won't drag the ground. (And I was NOT going to put it on the ground to photograph it; there are wet half-decayed leaves everywhere and it's kind of squelchy in my back yard right now).

Here's a close up. Maybe the colors show a bit better here:



These were some fairly deep-in-the-stash fabrics. I really do need to try to put a moratorium on fabric buying and work the stash down. (I think I will allow myself one trip out, on my birthday, to McKinney...if I can find Quilt Asylum (they are moving and I am not that familiar with McKinney. I hope their new space is not a disimprovement; I pretty much liked the location where they were at, it was very open and friendly).

I have pulled out one of the bundles of 2 1/2" strips. They are from the line called "Hill Country Spring" or somesuch (Hill Country as in Texas). Some bandanna prints, lots of prints with bluebonnets in some form. (Lots of repeat fabrics...obviously this was a line with far fewer than 40 different fabrics). I'm going to do a framed four-patch with these, which has the nice benefit of minimal cutting before you can sew.

I miss working on quilt tops. It seems I've been so busy lately. I can't quite make the time during the week to even spend a little time cutting on pieces or something. (Part of it, I'm sure, is that my sewing room is on the east side of the house...so once the sun starts going down, it gets dim in there, even with two lamps going. And at night, it's a little creepy with the uncovered windows. I need to get some new, more private blinds in there. I keep hearing the shrubs tapping on the window and thinking it's the Peeping Tom that allegedly was running around in this neighborhood for a while.)

I also have several completed ones ahead. I have to find a weekday afternoon when I can get away at a decent time (and also find out if Mary's Quilt Shop is still quilting tops...or failing that, find a more local-to-me person who does them).

If I had time enough and space enough and money enough, I'd buy a longarm machine and learn to use it. Though I suspect - based on how expensive they are - that unless you're going to either do it as a business, or you have a huge family to make quilts for, it's probably not really worth it. (Then again, if I really had time enough, I'd just hand quilt all of them. But there is never enough time to do what you really want to do, I think that's one of the most tragic things you learn as an adult.)

I also pulled out the Thermal that I haven't been working on at all this weekend...I'm not as far on it as I thought, I was remembering I put it aside from being reading-knitting or invigilating-knitting because I was close to the dividing part for the arms, but I'm not.