The worst

Crushed. Gutted. Sick. I know that there are worse things in the world than what I'm about to type but for a quilter, this is fairly catastrophic.

See that lovely quilt two posts down? The one that took so many hours of cutting and piecing and soul searching about sending it off to a quilter? It's gone. I gave it to Kelly when we were at the beach last week because I wanted to hand it to her and not just send it through the mail. But my intention all along was to ship it back to California because it was crazy for her to try to juggle luggage, her dog and a massive quilt through the airport. We returned home on Sunday and I shipped it on Monday. It was set to arrive on Thursday and I'd even set up an email notification with FedEx so that I'd know when it was delivered. On Thursday, I got my email so I thought all was well. When Kelly got home from work, nothing. Gone. No quilt on her doorstep.

FedEx claims that they're investigating. The driver says he came back out to her house yesterday to make sure he'd left it at the right house. If he left it at the wrong house, Kelly's name, address and phone number are all on the box. Surely by now the recipient would have noticed that the package was in the wrong place and contacted her. If the driver did leave it at the right place, the only possibility is that someone saw a package on her doorstep and took it. What upsets me the most is that a package thief isn't going to care about a quilt. You can't sell it or pawn it. It's not really worth anything to anyone monetarily. Which means that she's probably going to end up in the trash somewhere.

It almost makes me not want to sew today. I feel helpless. And the worst part is that I want to make another quilt for Kelly but I just don't have it in me to cut 1500+ pieces of scrap again. That took weeks of cutting.

Bleh.

WIP Wednesday

On my sewing plate this week is this little dandy. I made good progress on it before we went to the Outer Banks and should be able to finish the top by the weekend. Then it's on to the quilts for our South African pals.

I waited too long to join the quilt along for this pattern. I always seem to jump on the bandwagon of these things after they're over and done (usually because I already have too much on my crafty plate while they're happening) but it's a nice, fun, easy quilt that I'm making for my hairdresser who is expecting her first baby in June. Still SUPER loving that Backyard Baby fabric. It's awesome. And of course I've paired it up again with Essex linen in natural.  Still loving that too.

Linking up -

xoxoxox

A quilt long overdue

Here it is - finally. Kelly's Christmas/birthday present done. Pieced. Quilted. Bound. I love the finished product but it is a beast. I added on to the original quilt pattern (found here) to make it large enough to fit a queen size bed. Unfortunately, to get the right number of repeats and balance the pattern, it's almost large enough to fit my king size bed. It's 100"x101". I wanted to do it all myself but Tamie and Sue convinced me to send it off to be quilted and Alice held my hand when I dropped it off. It's good to have quilting pals who care about your sanity.

Obviously I could never list all the fabrics used because I pulled a piece out of my stash, cut one each of the three sizes I needed and grabbed another fabric. There are 1034 pieces of printed scraps in the quilt and 543 pieces of Robert Kaufman Essex Linen in Sand. Because of the linen, this thing weighs a ton.

Isn't that quilting fab? The pattern was called Fairy Wings. I thought I wanted something geometric but Alice steered me in the direction of curves to soften all those angles. She was right again.

I had chosen a completely different back for the quilt but it was home dec weight and with the linen already weighing so much, I didn't want to crush my poor sister-in-law under this thing. Target had a great sheet set by Thomas O'Brien. It felt visually heavy when I got it home, so I sliced it up and patched it back together. (Plus now I have a whole other sheet to use for something else. Rock on.)

A truer statement was never spoken. ("Forever" labels found here.)

On a sad final note, a small part of my teen years moved on to the next realm yesterday. Adam Yauch, you'll be missed.  I have to thank my brother for playing Licensed to Ill incessantly over the summer of 1987. It took me a while to fall but when I did, I fell hard and I've loved you ever since. My heart is breaking for MCA and his family, both musical and otherwise.  Love you Beasties. . .

linking up - xoxoxoxox