And here's the Venn Diagram...

First, I wish to remind all readers that I did not design this. The Owner is a fellow by the name of Crispian Jago and the image is from his blog, http://www.crispian-jago.blogspot.com.

So the pieces started out as squares or rectangles with the shape the words had to fit into drawn in disappearing marker. Then I used the text function on my sewing machine to sew the words onto each piece, and finally trimmed to within 1/8 of an inch of the outline. I used temporary spray adhesive to stick the pieces down to the background and outlined each piece in a plain stitch, after which I went over them with two rows of satin stitching.

On the front, in the bottom right-hand corner, you can make out Crispian Jago's name and blog site. I didn't do it in a bright color, but it's visible.

I have only to make a label for the back and a sleeve, and then it's ready to be given to the lady at work who said she wished she had a copy of it.

Perhaps a bit over the top - I could have just printed it out for her! But I bought that particular sewing machine because it could do letters, and it's been ages since I've done any raw-edge appliqué.

My daughter was quick to ask me why some of the words showed on the back and some didn't. Of course, that's because I didn't have my wits about me after I'd appliquéd the diagram onto the dark blue background. I was in such a hurry to sandwich it and do the satin stitching I forgot to do the words on the blue background until after I had sandwiched it!

It'll never win any awards, but I hope it helps my friend remember me as she starts a new phase of her life.

So many quilts, so little time!

Here I am at my home-made quilting frame from my previous post.It worked, for basting purposes. For quilting though, it was a bit low - I prefer the quilt close to me. I found, even for basting, that I was bending down a lot. That increases my "hump" and my tendency to migraines. So if I were to do this, I'd need to raise the height somehow. In it's current higglety-pigglety configuration, that would be a tad unstable - balancing tv dinner tables on large books, etc. So for now it's back to the hand frame. Any day now, I hope to start the actual quilting...but read on...

I've been trying out a very modern project for an acquaintance who is leaving my workplace soon. She had seen a printout I had stuck on my wall called " The Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense." She looked it over and said "I wish I had that!"

So I started to make it. My machine has alphanumeric stitches, and I usually use it to make quilt labels. This calls for a lot of words on fabric, but I've been longing to start doing the types of quilting I did when I first started - thread painting, words on fabric, raw-edge quilting... I saw this as a "back to my roots" project after so many years in my guild learning the (necessary, but boring!) basics.

See the link above to get to the site.

Well, it's a LOT of words! And the machine does do two sizes of letters, but it's an extra button to push to get the smaller ones, so I'm doing my best to make it all fit in the normal text size. I'm 3/4 of the way through my first attempt. I have one month before she leaves the university, so I'm hopeful of getting it done it time.

Then there's a belated birthday present for my one-day-to-be-son-in-law. I've got as far as buying the fabric, washing and ironing it, and printing the pattern. But he's going to be around longer than my friend from work, so I kinda bounced his gift a little lower in the line. No picture for this one - it's a secret! Shh!

And yesterday I received the news that a very, very dear friend of mine will be undergoing chemotherapy and radiation this month. I had been working on a design for a quilt for him, and I fear I may need to really put on a burst of speed to get it done in time for him to have the use of it.

So who knows when I'll be able to do my dear Cousin's quilt? There seem to be an awful lot of projects, with shorter and shorter deadlines!