Back to School-Back to Quilts

Hello Friends!  It's back to school time!  Here are my Happy Campers ready on their first day.  Mr. Eighth Grade is slightly less happy than the girls, mostly because he now has to share his super-cool middle school with Little Sister.  But they all love their classes and teachers and that makes it much easier for me to be excited for them and shift my priorities from summery activities back to dyeing and quilting.

Yes.  I know.  They are growing up.  Ethan passed me up in height this spring which was extremely bittersweet.  Molly is closing in fast (grew 5 inches last year!) and she will probably pass me up by Christmas.  Anyway, before I start getting too wistful, let's move on to the quilts....

I have three quilts in what we'll call the "active phase".  So, this is not counting anything that has fallen to the back of the closet and been forgotten ("dormant phase"), or the piles of fabric which are waiting to be cut ("planning phase").

Here's the one you saw last spring, the tiny crosses out of the Liberty of London Lifestyle collection (Bloomsbury collection):

 

Draped over the table, you can get a better sense of how small the blocks are.  Even here, you can only see about half of the quilt. 

 

I have the backing ready and have just been avoiding the basting process.  When I got it out last week to photograph it for the blog I have to admit I was a little surprised that it looked so cheery to me.  I was a little afraid that I would always associate this quilt with a difficult winter but I think I've shaken off those feelings and am ready to tackle this with a renewed spirit. 

Okay.  Next!

I started this next quilt in May.  I actually started this quilt on my birthday (my birthday is in the second week of May which means it always falls on, or around, Mother's Day which is a total rip-off especially this year when my birthday was on Saturday and Mother's Day was on Sunday so by Sunday they were totally OVER me and I decided to go out and buy myself a present and not to mention it was a super busy weekend with end-of-school stuff and I could really have written an entire blog post on this and aren't you so glad I didn't!)

Did I mention, I made one block the morning of my birthday. 

 

And I continued to make more blocks throughout the summer, in moments here and there.

 

And little by little, it has become a finished quilt top.  I vacillate between being thrifty and using up fabric that I already have for the back, and wanting the back to be as beautiful as the front.  It is really hard to find the sweet spot of back as beautiful as the front using fabric I already have.  I really become in danger of taking this quilt off the wall and folding it up and putting it aside so I can start my next quilt top, and letting it sit in my studio untouched for months (see tiny crosses, quilt, above).  So I need to start pulling some fabric out of my closet and see what I have and make a decision. 

Project Number Two, check.  And now last, but most awesome, in my totally biased opinion. 

I preface this with complete shame that this project spent time in "dormant" phase. 

When Ethan was ten (see: teenager-who-is-now-taller-than-me, above), he went through a phase where he drew elaborate Star Wars battle scenes that I really loved.

 That summer, I gave him a project to make me 12 masterpieces.  I ironed white fabric to freezer paper and gave him a zillion sharpies.   I was thrilled with the results but due to Lord-knows-what they got set aside for awhile and then accidently misplaced to the depths of the closet.

 

Last spring I found them and ordered the fabric for the sashing and backing.  Then there was the hold up of the perfect grey (has to match the light saber) being mysteriously out of stock everywhere I looked.  Now I finally have the grey in hand, and my little artist has the promise of getting his quilt this fall.