2016 Finish Along -- Quarter 1

So I kept going. #wonkystars

A photo posted by Cassandra McKee (@pilarandolivia) on Jan 9, 2016 at 5:22pm PST

My sister surprised me with a Go! Fabric Cutter by Accuquilt for Christmas. This thing is incredible! My boys love to crank it and together we have cut hundreds of squares. The Go! came with a die for two different sized squares and one half-square triangle, but I ordered the 3.5" square die with my Christmas sparkle punch quilt in mind. Truthfully, it's a little inefficient (I cut my strips an extra 1/4" to make sure I fully cover the die), but I can see how it will save me a lot of time -- especially cutting scraps. Plus, it's so fun.

I started sewing the wonky stars for the Christmas quilt last week, but that quilt was put on hold today while I started a new project: a wonky star mini for Jean (shown above). A colleague of mine loves the color teal, which happens to be one of my favorite colors, too. She's planning a job change, so I'm going to surprise her with a little wall hanging. It's looking great so far, and I'm excited to gift it to her. Oh, I love the lazy days of winter. It was so good to spend the day sewing.

Once again I'm participating in the Finish Along to help keep me on track with my goal to finish all of my projects.

Here's my list of finishes for the First Quarter of the 2016 Finish Along. I am keeping it real and not including the stacks of fabric I have for imaginary projects.

1. Wonky star mini for Jean. This mini is inspired by our mutual love of the color teal. I'm loving how it is coming along. I pulled fabric from my AMH stash, hit my pile of 3.5" scrap squares, and added a few 5" charms. I cut into some yardage, but not a lot. It will be so nice to have a finish this week! Yes, this week. I can do it.

2. Baby boy quilt for Jen. No idea what it'll look like, but I love the fabric pull so that's a good start.

3. Christmas sparkle punch quilt (pattern by Elizabeth Hartman/Oh Fransson!). Most of the squares are cut! Realistically, this won't get done until the second quarter at the earliest. I'm thinking I'll take it to the Mid-Atlantic Mod retreat in April.

May not look like much, but that's over 600 squares!

4. scrap vortex quilt, (following the tutorial by Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts). I've got hundreds of quads sewn. That's something, right? As with the Christmas quilt, this one is unlikely to be finished this month. But never say never...

Linking up with Debbie at A Quilter's Table for the 2016 Finish Along!

2016 Sewing Goals

Doll quilt for P. Sleeping lizard!

What will 2016 have in store? I'm expecting to do a little less sewing this year, to make room for travel and other adventures. With the time I do sew, I'd like to be intentional about these things:

1. Continue finishing. I have been very good about finishing what I start, and I hope to keep up that trend.

2. Embrace improv and sew less from other people's patterns. I whipped up the doll sleeping bag/quilt in a morning. No pattern, just free sewing. It was glorious.

 3. Try triangles. I've been admiring equilateral triangle quilts for years and think I'm finally ready to give one a try!

4. Sew my stash. I'm not going to commit to buying no new fabric, but I'd like to limit my fabric buying as much as possible. I've got more than enough novelty prints to last me a lifetime, and my scrap bins are overflowing. But I'll probably need a solid or low volume print here and there to finish up projects. Birthday gifts don't count, right? April is around the corner...

5. Be brave. I'm borrowing this from Melanie Tuazon who has a great post about her rules for 2016 and includes "dare to be awesome". I'm going to focus my bravery on swaps which routinely give me anxiety (is my work good enough, will the recipient like it, etc.). I signed up to participate in the swaps when I attend the Mid Atlantic Mod Retreat this spring, as a way to challenge myself.

That's it! What are you planning for 2016?

Doll quilt -- flip side

2015 Wrap Up -- Determination

WHEW! Happy New Year, friends! What a difference a year makes. Last January I was reeling from my breast cancer diagnosis ("Cruella") in December, learned that I carry the BRCA2 mutation, and was preparing for the first of four (!) surgeries. That time feels both far away and not so long ago.

I've been writing and re-writing my thoughts about 2015, and I haven't quite found the words to express what I'm feeling. I thought I'd be rushing to the new year, but as happy as I am to be closing the cancer chapter of my life, my feelings about the year are overall pretty positive. Seems strange, but it's true. I'm grateful to have learned so much about myself, and to have experienced the support and friendship of so many. SO many. I feel grateful and lucky.

Last year I chose "determination" as my word and I was certainly determined. I planned to make six quilts and finished 14. All while working a full-time job, parenting two small kids, and undergoing cancer treatment. (I made 12 in 2014 and didn't expect to beat that, but turns out sewing is excellent therapy.)

I planned to recap my 2015 goals and sewing to do list, but that seems boring so instead I'll tell you about some of my favorite finishes.

1. Greatest Hits: an improv scrap quilt of Anna Maria Horner prints, with a few Tula Pink prints thrown in. I struggled with this quilt -- couldn't figure out how to make it work. Usually I would force it to get to the finish, but this time I let it sit until I could see how it was meant to be. Finished in December 2015 and gifted to Caroline. One of three projects for the Q4 Finish Along.

2. Husband of the Year: a quilt for the Husband. My best work to date. Blogged. Also one of my goals for Q4 of the Finish Along.

3. Plus Quilt 4: a baby quilt for Maude. I loved the ease of pulling fabrics in the same color. This was no-pressure sewing at its best! See also my Cotton + Steel plus quilt and a quilt for T.

4. Unicorn Quilt for Jane: This was my first finish of the year, and it's one of my favorites. I'm so proud of how it came together. Blogged.

How about you? What was your word for 2015? Did it ring true? Here's to your health and happiness in a new year!


Linking up with the 2015 Finish Along hosted by Adrienne at On the Windy Side.

Finished: a quilt for the Husband of the Year!

Oh, yeah: I finished this back in October. My first finish in Q4 of the 2015 Finish Along!

No big news here, this was a rough year. Through it all I had a true champion and partner at my side.

He's the love of my life. He makes me laugh and sing. He makes coffee in the morning, and dinner at night. He loves our boys and is the center of their world. He encourages me in all things. He takes "in sickness and in health" seriously.

This quilt is my interpretation of the Framed Coins pattern in the book Skip the Borders by Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts. I love how it turned out. In fact, I think this is the best quilt I've ever made, so it's fitting that it now belongs to the person representing the best decision of my life. 

It came to life at the summer retreat I attended with my guild, DC Modern Quilt Guild. The Doe fabric line by Carolyn Friedlander confounded me for some time, but once I paired it with a few solids I saw its potential. I edited out a few prints, including the orange print which I added back at the last minute. It really pops against the marine solid, doesn't it? 

I managed to cut the entire quilt and piece all of the sections during the retreat. When I returned home I finished the top and matched it with Tula Pink's Free Fall in gray. I LOVE this line of wide quilt backs; it is a super soft sateen. 



It felt risky at the time, but I started on very dense quilting and am so glad I did. The texture is incredible. That said, the dense quilting is no joke: hours and hours and hours. It took a lot of perseverance to finish this baby.

Here's to the Husband of the Year!

Quilt! Landscaping! 

Gettin' Quilty: Works in Progress

It's been a while since I posted about my quilty progress. I still get hung up on my poor photography and I haven't been able to get outside to take decent photographs. You'll just have to bear with me, because there's a lot to document!

Right now I have five different projects in the works. That's a lot for me. I'm a finisher: I don't have a closet full of unquilted tops and I have only one orphaned block. I sew a lot--most weekends and some during the week--and have averaged one quilt per month for the last two years. I like to get things done, and having too many ongoing projects can get me down.

Two things I've learned about my sewing personality are that I do like to have a few projects going (ideally in different stages) to keep me motivated and inspired, and I like to work in stages (i.e. get all of the piecing done before starting the quilting on any one thing).

When I started my marathon sewing session last weekend, I had one top ready for basting, two tops in the piecing stage, four placemats in the quilting/binding stage, and one stack of scraps needing to be pressed. I made progress on everything except the scrap project--a scrap vortex quilt that will likely take me months to finish. I finished ALL of the piecing (scrap project not included) before attaching my walking foot and starting on the quilting. 

1. Greatest Hits Quilt -- I re-pieced the backing and basted it.

 

I had a little help with the basting.

 

 

2. A quilt for Elise -- A dear friend is a family photographer and generously agreed to a trade. I pieced the whole top and pieced the backing (minus a border requiring more fabric)! Pattern is Welded by Art Gallery Fabrics. I mixed Kona white and steel with prints by Anna Maria Horner, Carolyn Friedlander and Tula Pink. 

 

 

 

3. A quilt for a baby girl -- I pieced the strips together and pieced a backing. Now it waits for basting!

 

 

4. Placemats --  I finished the quilting on two, and starting binding this set of four. 

 

Whew. I'm hoping to make a little more progress this weekend, and to get all four of these projects done before Christmas (although technically only one is a holiday gift). I think I can do it if I resist the temptation to start new projects!

Happy weekend, all!

On love and loss. For mom.

Mom and me, circa 1975

My mom would have been 70 years old this month.

She has been gone 32 years and yet, sometimes the feeling of loss is so strong it surprises me. 

When I think of my mom I give thanks for my life and my family. I remember that she called me "muffin." I remember when she cut her hair short and then shorter. I remember my eighth birthday party, her resting on the couch while I opened my presents and me not knowing I had only ten more days to share with her. I remember that I always felt loved. 

I realize how little I know about her or am likely to ever know. I wonder what kind of birthday cake she liked, and what her favorite flavor of ice cream was. I wonder if any of her relatives had blue eyes like my boys. I wonder what our last words were to each other, and if I was brave enough to say goodbye or to tell her that I love her. I think about myself -- how I am strong, sensitive, and self-aware. I wish she could tell me that I am smart, I am beautiful, I am a good mom. I wish I had inherited her straight nose. I wish she could sew with me. I wish she was here.

In July I attended a training and the ice breaker exercise was to “tell your story” about why you do the work you do. We had no prep time, so out popped the raw, unfiltered truth: I was drawn to social justice work because the world has never been the way it was supposed to be. Losing my mom upended my life. Doing this work is an act of self-preservation: the best way to avoid being fully consumed by grief is to work to make this world a little better. My voice cracked, tears sprung in my eyes, and I was absolutely mortified and shocked by this deep truth and to have shared it with virtual strangers.

When my mom was dying of breast cancer, she arranged for her best friend to adopt me and my brother. I was eight and my brother was five. We were raised in a loving household with two siblings. We are a family born out of loss and love. 

My boys are now six and four. I am filled with conflicting emotions, wanting to both slow down time because we are here, together, and wanting to speed it up so I can guarantee that I will be with them longer. That we will survive together. Since my diagnosis it feels like the clock is always ticking, ticking, ticking: at any moment the cancer could come back. I can quiet the noise, but it never fully goes away. 

Over these last few years I have found myself marking my lifetime against her lifetime. First it was turning 37, her age at death, then outliving her at 38, my diagnosis at 39. For many years I had so little connection to her and then BAM! She is here with me, all the time. Some days it feels like I am living her life, making her hobbies my own, being her do-over.   

On reflection, my family rarely talked about my mom when I was growing up. We didn’t hang photos of her. Most of our energy went into creating our “new” family. I wish we had found a way to create space for her in our family – the family created by her love. I wish my boys could know her, know how much her love for me is in my love for them. 

I sat on this post for a few weeks because I couldn't find the right photo of her to share. The photos I wish I had don't exist. (We can blame the 70s. Also, cancer.) But tonight, over dinner, I am going to share the photos I do have with my boys. And I will tell them everything I can remember about my mom, but mostly that she loved me, and I loved her, and I love them. 

In memory of my mom, Christine Elaine (October 16, 1945-April 12, 1983). 

Mom and me, Christmas 1975

100 Quilts for Kids

Do you know about 100 Quilts for Kids?

Each year the DC Modern Quilt Guild hosts this charity sewing event, and donates quilts to kids in need. This year our quilts were donated to DC General. 119 quilts were linked up this year (some donated to the charity of the maker's choosing)!

Last year was my first year contributing. I made a baby quilt on my own and contributed blocks to a group quilt. This year I've done the same.

Photo by DCMQG President Melinda, Quirky Granola Girl.

I found these orphaned, scrappy log cabin blocks while cleaning up my supply bins. I made them at least a year ago. They didn't speak to me then, but when I found them I thought they'd be perfect for a baby quilt--and I had just enough!

This taupe-ish-gray border is the same solid I originally used to sash my scrappy Anna Maria Horner coin quilt strips. I still don't love it, but I wanted to use what I have. Besides, white sashing really isn't practical for a baby quilt... right?

A few people asked me about the quilting: it is the squiggle stitch programmed on my machine. It's nice to switch it up sometimes. :)

You can see some of the fabulous quilts on Instagram, #100quilts4kids.