WIP Wednesday

look at me, writing posts! you've obviously noticed by now that when i get really stressed out, anxious or depressed, i stop blogging. keeping up is just one more thing to overwhelm me, but i really miss it, and it's always a relief when things calm down enough for me to get back into it.


(i've been blogging for more than 5 years now. wow, huh? i totally missed my five year anniversary a few months ago - maybe i'll get myself organized before i hit my 500th post!)


one of the things that i've missed about blogging was the weekly WIP post. i don't like listing all of my WIPs, cause hello, overwhelming, but i do like to keep myself on track, and show pictures of my in progress projects and see what everyone else is up to.


this week's big WIP is, of course, my Kona Modern Quilts challenge projects. i have a large quilt partially quilted, a finished baby top to be sandwiched and quilted, a English Paper pieced pillow top that i'm not sure will ever be finished, a planned pillow that i purchased the fabric for but now can't find, and an art piece that i was stalled on until i picked up a supply item on monday. i'm hoping to at least get the two quilts and the art piece finished by the FVMQG december meeting, you can tell i had more ideas than time!


this is the large quilt when i first started quilting it, with my freezer paper templates all in place.


and here's a snippet of the baby quilt - i'll save the full reveal until after i've sandwiched and quilted it. plus, i promised my mom that if she held it up while i took a picture of it, i wouldn't show anyone her pjs, so it had to be cropped!



in addition to the challenge pieces, the BIG project of the moment is finishing up the tutorials for Got Craft items, and then making tons of the actual items to sell! i've a large pile of pincushions and needlebooks waiting for buttons, thanks to lovely guild members, and i'm planning on a bundle of the Gift Card Holders. oh, and keychains.... and maybe a few more pincushions... and lanyards....



and once the Got Craft goodies are finished, i NEED to get caught up on bee blocks, as i'm getting ridiculously behind, and then there are holiday swap items and christmas gifts, and an example for FVMQG's first block lotto. crap, i think i just overwhelmed myself again!



i'm linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and at The Needle And Thread Network, and now i'm off to check out everyone else's WIPs!

Grey Grey Grey.

i've been obsessed with grey lately, which is killing me, really, because i can't use the term "shades of grey" without thinking of craptastic mommy porn.


it's funny because i've never been a big fan of grey, i actually refused to use kona medium grey for ages because i felt like it was sooo overdone within modern quilting.


but then i worked with grey fabric for Lysa's scrappy circle bee blocks, and then again for Cynthia's heart bee blocks, and i fell in love.


in the late spring i picked up a bunch of grey prints to use for my map quilt. i ended up not using them, but it was a great start to my grey stash. meanwhile, i went out and got a bunch of grey solids, which i did use for my map, and also used for the Age Not Attitude tote, for a pouch, for my Barb Mortell class, and for at least two other projects that i haven't gotten around to blogging yet. it's gotten to the point that everytime i go to the fabric store, i get made fun of for my constant grey search.


i've been dreaming about grey linen, which i haven't been able to find in the shade that i'm picturing... and i've been obsessing over the sad fact that i'd used every single scrap of Sherbet Pips in my strip quilts, and hadn't left myself any of the grey with white square/dots for my stash. i was seriously considering ripping some out of the baby strip quilt that i haven't quilted yet, i wanted some so bad! luckily, i found some on etsy, so now i'm just waiting impatiently for it to arrive.


random note - i think different spellings of grey signify different colours. is that weird? when i see the spelling "gray", i picture a warm gray, with a bit of a brown undertone, and when i see the spelling "grey", i picture a cool grey, sometimes with a bit of a silverish or blue undertone. can you guess which shade i prefer? i've never been a big brown fan!


so, given my new-found love of grey, i was super excited when i opened up my package for Cheryl's Unscripted Bee Block and found grey! Cheryl sent out bundles of fabric and a large paper hexagon and asked us to piece together the scraps to make a block the size of the template. she left it up to us how we wanted to sew the block, and i got it in my head to try something i'd been thinking of for ages, a hexagon made up of triangular log cabins. i folded her template up and made myself a pattern for the triangles, and they actually went together much easier than i'd expected.



as usual, i ran out of fabric. it's happened pretty much every month! apparently i use up more fabric with my propensity for complicated blocks. i messaged Cheryl and got her go-ahead to add my own fabric, since i had some grey in my stash already. of course, i still needed to go shopping for more....



within the package Cheryl sent, there were a few different shades of grey (and gray!). i really loved the stripes, but i was having a hard time pulling the warm shades in with all the other cooler greys. luckily i found this herringbone fabric when i went shopping, along with a few others, and that really fit them together. this block made me appreciate the warmer grays more, though i'm still loyal to the grey-grey that i love!



for my signature block, i wanted to echo the hexagons that will make up the front of the quilt, so i started with a hexie and added strips around it. i embroidered my name, again using the FriXion pen to write my name first. the white marks will wash out, but they're still annoying.


in addition to all of the bee blocks that i've been working on, i really wanted to sew up a few blocks for the VMQG july challenge, because i was too busy to do some of the challenges in may and june. and since the challenge was to make improv blocks with grey and black solids, it wasn't particularly a hardship!



i just used scraps for these, because as usual, i couldn't find my yardage of black kona (there's a black pit in my house that eats it, i think), so they ended up with more grey than black, but i think that's cool. the inspiration quilt has a good variety of darker and lighter blocks, so it works.




i have yet more bee blocks to post, but i'll do those another day. i told you i had a backlog of things to post!



in other news, cross your fingers for me that i'll get into the classes i want for QuiltCon!

due to a giant clusterf*ck (aka some sort of system error), their website refused my registration at least 4 or 5 times, but told me that it was my credit card's fault, and by the time i finally got off the phone with my bank and realized that the problem was the site, not my credit card, i was practically hysterical. (i was also super sleep deprived because i got up HELLA EARLY to register, and i'd been up late stressing about registering, so i was a bit over-emotional!) through my tears i discovered that two of the three workshops i wanted were waitlisted - though they'd still been available when i tried to register at 7:03am.

i e-mailed quiltcon, there were some tweets back and forth, and then i got an e-mail that they're looking into it, but of course, we just had the long weekend, so i won't hear anything more until tomorrow at the latest. i saw other folks tweeting about problems as well, so i'm not sure what they're gonna do!

it would really suck to have registered for a class, and then be told that they're removing you because of a system glitch, but it also really sucks to not get the classes you wanted, even though they were available when you tried to register! i'm hoping that they'll put the people who got the system errors at the top of the waitlists or something, that seems like the fairest option.

are you going to Quiltcon? did you get the workshops you were hoping for?

i heart anatomical hearts and i heart me!

one of these days i'll start working on larger scale projects again, but not today. i've been having so much fun with mini quilts the past few months!


i just finished this one today - which was good, cause today is the (extended) deadline!



a while back, Jenna from SewHappyGeek posted about a challenge that she was hosting. the idea was that participants make a mini-quilt based literally or figuratively on a single playing card. i immediately thought that was an awesome idea, and tucked it away in the back of my mind to stew over.


(i know a lot of you reading my blog now are sewing and quilty friends, but i used to do quite a bit of mixed media art work, and i always loved the imagery of playing cards, and the awesome backs of vintage ones. i was way too lazy to dig out my own stash, so i spent some time one night searching flickr. i found so many gorgeous cards!)


in the meantime, i was sewing up the hearts for Cynthia's bee blocks. remember those? i wanted to do a sample of the anatomical heart applique before i cut into Cynthia's fabric, so i cut it out in these red prints first. i ironed on the freezer paper and turned the edges down, then basted it into place on the background. and then it sat there.



i didn't start on it until long after i finished Cynthia's, and i've been working on the hand applique whenever i had a few minutes in waiting rooms, etc, but omg, hand applique takes forever! and honestly, my stitches weren't even as teensy on my own heart, since i knew it was going on a wallhanging, not a quilt that would be used and laundered. i also switched my technique, as you can see quite obviously from the back! part way through the applique, i decided that the teensy stitches were putting too much strain on the fold of the applique, and i really think making longer stitches helped. after i'd finished the hand work, i pieced together a 1/2" border using the same prints as those in the heart.



i was so indecisive about this mini quilt, about how i wanted to do the letters, how i wanted to do the little hearts. i definitely wasn't going to do raw edge applique, after all the time i spent on the freezer paper applique! but i couldn't decide. i was going to piece the letters, and then i decided to paperpiece them, so i spent a whole bunch of time drafting up a paperpiecing pattern for the letters and the small hearts. and then i changed my mind AGAIN, and made little improv hearts and machine stitched the letters. in between there, i also considered hand embroidering the letters and the hearts, but i knew i wouldn't have time. machine stitching it is!



i went through the fonts on my computer and chose my two favourites that seemed to match the hearts as well. i printed them out in a few different sizes, then traced them onto tear away stabilizer. i sewed along the outlines of the letters and removed the stabilizer. then i put more stabilizer underneath the pieces, and filled in the centres of the letters. i did manage to get most of the stabilizer out of the stitches, but i didn't want to take the chance of leaving visible stabilizer on the front.



i spray basted the quilt front to cotton batting, but because i only had unbleached batting, i put a layer of white cotton in between so that it wouldn't show through. i echo quilted around the heart - i assume i'll eventually get bored with echo quilting, but it won't be any time soon! i love how it looks so much.



i also quilted around the outer border, but then i changed my mind and ripped it all out. so indecisive! i'm so glad that i did rip it out though, i like it much better like this. you can still see the stitch lines, despite my excessive steaming, but i'm going to wash the quilt so that it will shrink up a bit, and the stitch lines will come out then.



i added triangles in the corners for hanging, and bound it in the same fabric that i backed it in, a darker red cotton. i won't show you the back, my binding is terrible! i was rushing, and i was totally struggling with it. i don't know what i did wrong, it's totally uneven. it's fine from the front, but it definitely won't hold up to scrutiny! the quilt ended up being 10.5" x 12", barely squeaking past the 10" x 10" minimum.


so why Ace of Hearts?

hearts was pretty obvious to me, because i love heart imagery, whether it's anatomical hearts, flying hearts, sacred hearts, whatever. i thought about the Ace of Spades, because they're so often the most gorgeous card in the deck, but i wanted to stick with hearts.

i thought about the Two of Hearts, which is used fairly often in a romantic context, but i'm more interested in talking about less-traditional forms of love. in addition to that, i'd already drafted the pattern for this heart for the bee block, and using two of them would have made this quilt much bigger than i wanted it to be.

the Ace of Hearts appealed to me because i truly that think that focusing and working on self-love* is the most radical thing that a person can do. your relationship with yourself is the longest relationship you will ever have, and we live in a culture that continually tells us that we are not good enough. we're not worthy, we're flawed, we don't deserve to have a good life, to be happy, to be loved. we're not smart enough or too smart, not pretty enough or too pretty, too sensitive, or insensitive, we don't have the right kind of body, love, style, job. particularly for people who have been socialized as female, we have been under a barrage of messages from advertising and society since we were so young, and as much as we KNOW that the messages aren't true, they're sneaky, and they stick in our subconscious.

loving yourself can be a lifelong struggle, but it's so important. if you don't love yourself, it's way too easy to let yourself be treated badly. it sounds cheezy, i know, but if you don't feel like you're worth good things, good things don't happen to you. or if they do, you're too busy focusing on the bad things to appreciate them!

so that's why i chose the Ace of Hearts. i'll get off my soapbox now.


plus, the Ace of Hearts card has the letter A on it, and A is for Amy!




if you like my quilt, i'd be ever so happy if you wanted to vote for me! voting for the Most Popular quilt has started, and will be open until Friday 1 June at 10am GMT.

however, the other 13 entries are super freaking awesome, so i totally understand if you vote for one of them instead! ;) i can't even decide on my favourite, they're too amazing!




(can you believe that out of 14 entries, 3 were made by people named amy?)


(*did you snicker when you read that? perv. that's not what i was talking about, but the former sex educator in me feels the need to point out that taking care of your own needs is important too! if you don't know what gets you hot, how can you expect your partner to know?)


also, i'm linking this up to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story

this black and white dresden pops!

i've missed the past few Iron Craft challenges. i was busy with something else (damned if i know what) the week that the theme was Creative Activities (ie, things you'd enter in a state fair), and though last week's Shrink to Fit mini challenge would have been a great excuse to make a mini quilt, or something even littler like that patchwork ATC that i made years ago, i completely forgot about it.

but this week's challenge was different!

the theme was Black and White, and it fit perfectly into a few things i'd been meaning to get around to anyway.


you might not remember/know this, because i'm terrible at posting about it, but i do make clothes on occasion. i used to make clothes a lot, along with costumes for both theatre and burlesque, but since i've been obsessed with quilting for the past year, my garment sewing has pretty much fallen by the wayside. which means that i really really need some new clothes!

so one of the things that i've been meaning to get around to is making some new skirts. i have quite a few pieces that i've bought in thrift stores to reconstruct, and not nearly enough variety in the skirt section of my closet!

and i've been thinking about using quilting imagery/symbolism on skirts. i honestly don't remember where the idea came from, though i know i've seen a few different variations around since i've started thinking about it, so apparently it's a common idea!


new skirt + quilting imagery + a stack of black and white prints =





a dresden plate on a skirt!



the dresden plate is topstitched onto the skirt, and then the centre of the dresden was made using that applique method that everyone's been raving about for circles - you know, when you sew a super lightweight fabric to your regular fabric, like an interfacing or something, and then cut a slit in that and turn it right side out? i've seen it called double applique. anyway, i'm not super impressed.... you can see the lightweight fabric along the edge of the circle. it would be great if i was doing a zigzag around the edge of the circle, but if i was going to zigzag it, why don't i just do a raw edge applique?

but anyway, i still love it. the skirt itself is my favourite skirt material - doubleknit weight polyester, which i've always called fortrel. fortrel is technically a specific brandname, but everyone i know has always called all polyester of that weight fortrel. it's nasty to wear against your skin, i know, but it makes the BEST skirts! it hangs awesomely, and lasts freaking forever.



i bought a long black fortrel skirt at a thrift and cut off the bottom half for this skirt, which means i'll have enough left for another skirt from the top. i made a waistband using a comfier black knit, and a wide elastic. simple, effective. next i want to make one with hexies.....

is it too early for Halloween? never!!

lately i feel like i've been all about the blocks. there's the unscripted bee, the across the sea quilt-a-long, various little projects.... everything's block based. i enjoy making blocks, but i'm starting to crave strip piecing!



however, i am SUPER happy with these blocks. how can i not be? they're halloween themed! y'all know how much i love me my halloween goodness!

you might remember that last year i organized a Halloween challenge for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild. it was pretty damn fabulous, and we had so many awesome blocks. i wanted to do it again this year, but of course, i wanted to switch it up a little bit, just for variety.

so this year's challenge was along the same lines - make as many Halloween blocks as you'd like, bring them to the meeting, and recieve a ticket for each block that you make. we draw the tickets, and folks with the winning tickets each get to choose 10 (10!!!) blocks to take home and make into something fabulous. last year we had 5 or 6 winners, i think? so we got around 50 or 60 blocks - pretty awesome!

last year we had a requirement that all the blocks had to have Kona black in them, but not all of them did, and that was fine (in fact, i screwed up and one of my examples didn't even have black!). so this year we scrapped that requirement, and opened up the sizes instead.

all blocks made for the challenge must have a finished size that is a variation on 6". so people can make 6.5"x6.5" squares, or 12.5"x12.5" squares, or 6.5"x12.5" rectangles, whatever they'd like.


i was really excited about the variety of sizes, and had a blast making samples.

first, i made a 6.5"x6.5" block. simple cute square in a square, log cabin style block.



it was originally going to be two rows around the centre, but i suck at scant 1/4" seams! that's okay, i just trimmed the 3rd row a bit, and added a 4th.

then i made two 6.5"x12.5" blocks, one stacked blocks, and one flying geese.



the stacked blocks/coins/books/bolts/whatever block was a great excuse to use a halloween charm pack that i picked up last year. because the block is a rectangle, the 5" squares were a great size, wide enough to fill the 6.5", but without too much waste. i've obviously been into this block lately, after the one i made for the unscripted bee, and the sample i made before that. there's a tutorial here, as well as instructions in the book Block Party, as seen here on alissa haight carlton's blog.

and the flying geese were just fun. i love this striped green print, with the little spiders peeking out!

and then the flying geese created some extra HSTs, so i figured i might as well sew them up too!



they needed a few borders as well, to bring them up to size.

most of the fabrics i used were Seen On Halloween, by Maywood Studio, except for the centre of the log cabin block, which was Batty Halloween by Kylie Kreations for SSI, and the charm pack i used in the stacked whatever block, that was Spook Tacular by Sanae for Moda.


and i also made a 12.5"x12.5" block!(it is square, i promise... apparently i just can't take straight photos!)



this one is using kona black and Witchy Stitchy, an older alexander henry print - it's yummy, but the colour tones aren't my usual thing. i love halloween, but i hate oranges and pumpkins! i like how the block turned out, but i don't have anything else that would go with it, you know?



i'm so excited to see what the rest of the guild comes up with by next month!



and i'm linking up to {Sew} Modern Monday and Fabric Tuesday. click on the badges to see lots and lots of other fabulous projects!

Breaking the Rules Lap Quilt

i did it! i finally finished one of my Kona Challenge quilts!

i had it partially finished for our June Anniversary meeting, but i had a lot more quilting to do, and i finished up the binding just in time to take it to my august guild meeting.



i really really love how it turned out. i love the Kona darks palette, i love the teal linen that i used, and i love the print and the softness of the backing fabric.



i found this tutorial by Candace of Southern Girl Quilts for 3D pinwheels and decided that it would be perfect for this challenge. aren't they fun?



confession time - i didn't use all of the fabrics in the charm pack for this quilt, the way the challenge required. i know, it's bad! i was going to, honest! but they didn't fit. i would've had to add another row of 3 pinwheels and i really liked the idea of the square quilt. i would have needed 12 more colours, and i only actually needed to use up 4 more colours (cause i used a few others on the back in the label, etc) plus, they didn't really match the linen.... and i loved my vision of the quilt. i rationalized by the fact that i used all the colours in my other Kona quilt (i made two, cause i won another charm pack as a door prize), so this one was really more of a bonus quilt anyway.... right?!



this quilt breaks all the quilt-police rules. i used linen on the front, i used RAYON on the back (the horror! but it matched perfectly!), and i quilted it with polyester thread, because the colour matched so well. i LOVE the giant roses on the back, and the rayon is so so soft and cuddly.



the embroidered label. i was going to use one of the Kona squares for my label, but i apparently can't do math, and i screwed it up.... so i cut out what little unembroidered bit that there was left, and included it in the strip down the back, and just embroidered on a piece of the linen.



and i totally quilted the crap out of it.... i think i used at least 700 metres of thread - and of course, it was a colour that only came in 100m spools!



i'm so so happy with the binding on this quilt! the fabulous Felicity linked to this tutorial for using fusible thread, and it's AMAZING! my binding is so perfect and crisp, i love it! thanks Felicity!


i'm linking up to {Sew} Modern Monday, Fabric Tuesday and Finished It Friday. click on the badges to see lots and lots of other fabulous projects!

Blocks or Strips?

which do you prefer? are most of your quilts block based, or are they an overall design?

i'm all about the strip piecing, so i don't generally make a lot of blocks. i made the wonky stars baby quilt last year (i've heard them called maverick stars, but honestly sarah palin has ruined that word for me!) and i've plotted out a few block based designs that i'll get around to eventually, and i've made quilts where the design is made up of basic blocks, like the Fat Quarterly quiltalong, my green Kona baby quilt, or my in-progress bow tie quilt, but none that make the blocks the focus, like a log cabin, or a churn dash, or something like that.

i'm completely swooning over Swoon, and i'm determined to make a log cabin quilt at some point, but my attention span works against me in regards to a full quilt made up of obvious blocks.


that's why guild challenges and bees are so awesome! i can make blocks, which are fun, but i only have to make one or two of each design, so i don't get bored. and i get to see if i enjoy that particular block, before committing to an entire quilt with it. it's perfect!


i've been working on blocks off and on for the past few weeks, catching up on a guild challenge, and working on bee blocks.

the June challenge for VMQG was a modification of a Bottled Rainbows block. i was super excited, because i'd really wanted to do that quilt-a-long, but i was too busy at the time. we changed it up slightly, so that the fabric requirements were a bit more practical, but otherwise, it's exactly the same.



the quilt-a-long instructions gave several options for how the ticker tape pieces were sewn down, but since we'll be making guild quilts out of the challenge blocks, we (or rather, Paul, our challenge coordinator extraordinaire!) decided to keep it consistent and have everyone zigzag their blocks.



have i ever mentioned how much i dislike zigzag? ha! i've seen it making a bit of a comeback in the last year or so, but i still haven't changed my mind. to me it feels cheap. i think it looks homemade, but not in a lovely handmade kind of way, more in a "i can't sew straight, but it's less obvious if it's not a straight stitch" kind of way! i don't mind satin stitch, it can look really polished when it's well done, but i'm definitely not a fan of zigzag!



i do like how my blocks turned out, but i'm contemplating making more of them for myself, and i definitely won't be zigzagging them.



despite how excited i was, i still didn't finish them until just before the august meeting. they require prep work before you can start the fun part, and i've realized that i'm not good with that sort of thing!



in addition to the guild challenge blocks, i mentioned in my WIP Wednesday post that Sarah of {So Sarah Sews} is organizing a casual charity bee, specifically for two teenage sisters who are in the foster system. the blocks are all pink, purple and white, and she's chosen two blocks to do, one for each sister. folks are posting their blocks in the flickr group as they finish them, and they're really looking fantastic!



i made two of each block, though i could quite easily have continued making them, especially the garden fence block by Hyacinth Quilt Designs. so simple and pretty!



luckily, i'd just picked up some purple and pink for my bowtie blocks, after realizing how little selection my stash had, especially in purple.



we're staying away from childish prints, because the girls are young teenagers. it's one thing when you're an adult, then you can love childish things unabashedly (or at lest, you should be able to!), but when you're 13 and trying to feel grown up, it's a whole different story!



the instructions for the star block came from a Moda Bakeshop pattern, the Charming Stars Quilt, designed by Stefanie from Little Lady Patchwork.


now that those are done, i can focus entirely on my improv block for Unscripted Bee! i've been working away on it, and i'm hoping to get it finished Monday or Tuesday of this week.


and in addition to the bee blocks, i also came across Block Lotto the other day, which sounds super fun. what do you think? have you ever participated? this month's african violet block could be really funky, if done right!

Summery Teeny Blocks!

i'm currently in the midst of a massive clean up effort - my sewing area has been completely out of control for months, and i can't handle it. i live in a 1bedroom apartment, and my studio is my living/dining room, so when it's messy, i can't just shut the door like some people can! i went out and bought some rubbermaid containers and started sorting, and it's sooooo much better. ideally, i'll be destashing as well, and i'll just use the extra rubbermaids for storage at my parent's house, but for now, it's showing me how much i have of specific things, and i'm finding things i didn't even know that i had.

like this fabric! i found it in a bag of scraps that i'd thrifted, and i wanted to sew with it immediately. i loved how vibrant the colours were, and the green stripe is exactly the same shade as my favourite green kona solid.

last week's iron craft challenge was the Summer Challenge, and the pinks with the orange stripe in this fabric practically screamed summer to me, so it was the perfect excuse to use it.

in addition, i came across this tutorial from Sew Lux Fabric & Gifts for a mini whirligig block the other day, and immediately fell in love. even though i have a million projects in progress, i wanted to make something little, just for the hell of it, and actually FINISH something!

i made three mini blocks, and joined them together with 1/2" sashing made from the same green kona. the blocks are supposed to be 3.5", but my blocks ended up being about 3 7/8". not sure how that worked, i think the fabric stretched a bit, because they were 3.5" when i added the sashing! i added a row of 1.25" sashing in the stripe, and ended up with a cute little wallhanging.





the entire wallhanging ended up 13.25" tall and 6.5" wide. i quilted in the ditch around the whirligigs, and then visibly on the outer border. the back is the same green, and i added a hanging sleeve made of the stripe.

i couldn't make up my mind how to quilt it at first, so i tried a few things. at first i wanted to hand quilt it - what was i thinking? ha! first, hand quilting is hard. i don't know WHY, considering that i have no problem with much fancier embroidery, but trying to keep the stitches even while hand quilting is entirely different. and it took forever. plus, hand quilting on the patterned fabric made it look too busy, in my mind.



after i ripped out the hand piecing, i machine quilted the same way i had hand quilted - on top of the whirligigs. i used a larger stitch length, which i was glad of when i decided to rip that out too!



i'm really happy with the stitching in the ditch quilting, and that just goes to show that it's not always bad/boring/plain/traditional to stick with the basics.



the deadline for entering the Iron Craft Summer Challenge was 8pm EST. thanks to the time i wasted on the quilting, i posted the picture in the flickr group at about 4:59 PST! i machine sewed the binding on, but there are a few spots that need to be hand stitched down, and i have to hand stitch the bottom edge of the hanging sleeve. just a teensy bit of work left, and nothing that masking tape couldn't hold for the photos!

did you check out the prize for the Summer Challenge? yummy gnome fabric!