More fun than it should be

My friend Nancy has a nephew who hunts, and who proudly announced to the family at the last gathering that he had cooked and eaten the squirrel he bagged. Nancy decided to commemorate his skills in his Christmas present, a manly apron. Our twisted senses of humor + embroidery capabilities on my Bernina = probably sick, but really funny.

In progress:

Completed (the colors are a bit washed out here):


That's about the most fun I've had lately. I'm trying to wrap up grading for the term, which is slow going (mostly because I avoid it as much as possible). All my other sewing projects are presents for people who may read this blog, and hence can't be discussed. (Hi, y'all!)

A quilt, a shawl.

Here's the finalized Baby Harris quilt. I love how it went all crinkly and wrinkly when washed and dried. I tried to take better pictures, but the colors came out really strange.

The Eye Searing Pink shawl is sloooooowly working it's way off the needles. Here's 1/3 of the stitches in their bound-off state. I think Janine at Ferals was right - this sucker is going to be huge. I like how it appears to be oozing menacingly off the couch in this picture. It's coming for you, and your little dog, too.

I'm anxiously awaiting the next clue for the mystery quilt. Meanwhile, it has begun to dawn on me that perhaps I should do something about, oh, you know, Christmas - that big holiday coming up where one is expected to produce presents for one's friends and family. Huh. I guess I'd better get on that.

Mystery Quilt part 2

Mystery Quilt
I've finished step 2 of Bonnie's mystery. Here are my 103 little 9 patches (we need 100, so I have a few spares).

I found these stupidly fun to make, and stayed up WAY too late Saturday night finishing them. I'm afraid that this quilt is going to lead to yet another quilt in the same colors, because I've still got a pile of 1.5" strips that I cut, and more pieces of the fabric I cut them from. If only one of my friends would have a baby girl so I could make more pink things...

Other quiltiness
I'm making a blankie for Ryan's Baby Harris project. Originally, I was going to just sew right sides together, turn, and top stitch. But then, of course, I decided it was a delightful opportunity to practice my free motion quilting skillz (that's skillz with a z, y'all, 'cause I'm so hip). The quilting is now done, so I just have to bind it. The flowered part is a nice Anna Griffin cotton print, and the solid yellow is flannel. If you click to embigify the yellow picture, you can sort of see the quilting.

It's about 42" square (well, it's close enough to square that I don't think the baby will mind). I've got a cute coordinating stripe to bind it with. I thought about tackling that tonight, but the quilting was not so kind to my poor shoulder, and I should probably get to bed.

Knitting
I'm sloooooowly binding off the eye searing pink shawl. It's got a crocheted edging - you single crochet into a live stitch, chain 4, sc into next st, chain 8, repeat until your eyes cross from staring into the bright pink shawl. Someday I'll finish. Then I'll have to find somewhere to block it.

Carolina Crossroads mystery quilt

My life is so empty, boring, and full of free time that I decided to add another project. (That's sarcasm, y'all, in case that wasn't clear.) I'm a fan of Bonnie Hunter's fabulous website and blog. She started a quilt project and was persuaded to turn it into a mystery quilt sew-along, now called Carolina Crossroads (because she's in the middle of moving from SC to NC). The Yahoo group for the project ballooned up to 700+ members in 4 days - that's a lot of quilters. Holy cow.

Bonnie's all about using stash and scraps. The mystery quilt needs a light, a dark, and an accent. I'm using pink, black, and red, mostly from my stash, although I will admit that I bought a few more pinks to round out my collection.

Step 1 was to make 100 3.5" rail fence blocks, using dark/accent/dark. Here are mine, stacked into groups of 10 for ease of counting. As you can see, I'm using an extremely liberal definition of black and red.

Step 2 requires making 100 "accent in one corner" blocks, again 3.5". I'm up to 31 finished so far. They're a little fiddlier than the rail fences to get together.

I've been suffering from a lot of "help" in this process.

I really need to be working on some Christmas present projects, but I just can't seem to rip myself away from the mystery quilt.