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I have a certain number of babies looming on the horizon - gotta love that imagery - and it seemed important to learn how to make a quick, nice baby gift. I tried out a bib pattern from www.jcasa.etsy.com, and I am now officially a bibthusiast.

There’s something really satisfying about a project of this size. It’s a bigger canvas than I usually have for my eye masks, but still far from being cumbersome.

Okay, bibs. I think we can make this work.

I can’t help it. I just love hexagons!

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

In addition to the super rad vintage hex quilt I picked up while thrifting a while ago, I also found a bag of 106 canvassy white squares for $3. (This is a huge deal in my neck of the woods. Thrift stores around here aren’t always very thrifty.) So I’m using them to back my little hexy flowers.

I really had no intention of making a hexagon quilt. Ever. In my life. But I guess Goodwill decided it was meant to be?

Actually, it’s my lap. The impossible has happened.

After mentally accepting the notion that I might be able to talk myself into making some hexagons, and after going so far as turning to my husband at the county fair and asking, “Do you like these? Do you think you might want to learn to make them?” like the shamelessly lazy cow that I am, I found a vintage 36″ x 42″ hexagon quilt at Goodwill today.

Pardon me, I’m still in awe.

I’m clearly having a problem with the concept of the one a day quilt-along.

I stopped round one at 36 blocks. I need… quite a few more. Which means I had no business starting round two, and yet, here I am, having, at this point, finished the equivalent of a two a day quilt along.

Heh.

In a moment of weakness, I purchased a couple of charm packs and a fat quarter collection from Superbuzzy at the Renegade Craft Faire in SF, and, in many more moments of weakness, made a bunch of 9-patches. 56 in all.

This was an insanely easy project. Each charm square gets divided into fourths. A 2.5-inch strip cut from the longest side of a fat quarter will make centers for eight 9-patches. Cut 4 strips of the same size to make the four corners of each block. Mix up your color scheme and repeat six times. Lay out on your wrinkly bed sheets to make sure white is the right choice for sashing. Proceed accordingly.

I have a serious sashing backlog building up over here. I have four sets of blocks that need sashing, and no plan to deal with any of them. Somebody, please, convince me I have the strength of mind to deal with those long strips.

This isn’t specifically a Sweet Valley High craft project. But. If you ever subjected yourself to the historical-fiction weirdness that were the Sweet Valley Sagas, you may remember this book, which was ostensibly the history of the Wakefields, but was really a re-imagining of 100 years or so of American history in which Liz and Jess meddle and manipulate their way through the ages:

(Oh, that cover art. Francine Pascal, why must you always prey upon my love for pastels?)

And if you have the weird head fro details that I somehow have when it comes to bad young adult fiction, you may remember that when 1800’s Elizabeth (Elisabeth?) becomes a hobo because Jess has, naturally, run off to become the hottest bareback rider in any circus in the history of the world, Liz/Lis wraps all of her stuff up in an evening star quilt.

Leave it to the Sweet Valley franchise to make it a really sexy sounding quilt, and not something normal like Log Cabin, or Drunkard’s Path. But then, it would be very un-Elizabeth to sleep under a Drunkard’s Path quilt, unless she’s on her way to the Jungle Prom.

An image search for evening star quilt brings up a number of different things, but most look like this:

Now, this was made around 1929, so it post-dates Liz’s prairie adventures, but isn’t it uncanny that it matches her “sparkling, aquamarine eyes”?

I have too much going on, sewing-wise, to start a new quilt right now, but if one of these is on my bed in six months, we’ll have all learned just how obsessive I can get.

Glamorous, I know. Dig the zip-locking component on those plastic baggies. Aww, yeah!

During my last couple of weeks on my long journey to 256 log cabin squares (and what, I ask you, was I thinking?), I decided it was time to become an excessive counter. Once the blocks had grown into a number I could legitimately refer to as “a lot” I kept going on vacation (I know, poor Jennicakes) and forgetting how many I had made.

So I devised a simple system of counting out a stack of ten and ensconcing it safely in one of the many ziplocks I keep around for mailing orders and trades to damp climates. I know those posh fold-over bags with the glue strip are more to the fashion, but I always hope the unsightly but utilitarian zip lock will at least inspire re-use.

Anytothewho, a bunch of bags of groups of tens (who invited Dr. Suess?) would mean that, to see how many blocks I’d made, I could simply count the bags and multiply by ten, thereby saving myself many hours. Little did I know that once I had bagged all of the blocks, I’d notice that I’d made 143 blocks. Which is one shy of 144, or, as we quilters say, 12 by 12.

Hmm, I thought. Do I really need a 16 by 16 block quilt? Sure it would look really freaking impressive, but had I even conceptualized how large a quilt with 16 5″ blocks, plus sashing, would be? I did some quick math in my head and concluded that it would make one BIG ASS quilt. Like, bigger than necessary. Unwieldy for finishing, which I could deal with, and possibly for sleeping under which… no. Just no.

I re-counted the blocks in their bags to make sure no stack was short - I mean, imagine the horror of beginning to sash all of these, only to find I was a few short? Turns out, one stack was… long? As in, not short. As in, there were eleven in the bag. As in, if I decided to make a 12 by 12 grid, I was finished making log cabins.

I’d love to report on the happy dance that ensued, but, frankly, it didn’t. The whole thing was an anticlimax and I really stressed over whether or not I should make more. See, starting my job really cut into my log cabin time, so I wasn’t able to get it finished - let alone sashed - in time for my goal, which was to enter it into the county fair. So after a few weeks of abject self-loathing, followed by a deep resolve to finish it by my 30th birthday/the end of the year, to find that those final 112 blocks would just be superfluous actually made me feel kind of sad.

I strongly considered going ahead with them, but, as I mentioned before, that’s a hell of a lot of work to put into a quilt that’s so long you have to tunnel under it for five minutes just to sneak out of bed for a 2 a.m. pee.

So, that’s that. No carefully choreographed, sun-drenched photo-shoot to show them off; just a bunch of squares in a Danskos box. Honestly, I’m just so bewildered that I made it this far. Even though I want this finished quilt more than I have ever wanted any material possession, ever, I still can’t quite believe I made enough of these, without even realizing it.

My June and July have been more than insane, in a good way - all part of my plan to have the best summer ever.

So I can’t work up a lot of guilt over not posting here much.

On the other hand, falling behind on my virtual quilting bee output does have me hanging my head in shame. Especially when, after thinking I had sent Cris’ blocks weeks and weeks ago, I just found them while cleaning the guestroom. What???

So while we’re on the subject, I might as well show you them.

I think a lot of folks doing the bee thing choose one or two dominant fabrics and then a bunch of accents, so Cris’ fabrics were a fun challenge, since they were pretty similar in value. I chose a chevron pattern because I wanted to show off big chunks of fabric in roughly equal amounts, but with a sense of movement. And made from a bunch of 3 7/8″ half-square triangles, it was no trouble at all to get this one together. Please, please, please, even if you are a beginning quilter and hoping to remain so, learn to make half-square triangles. They’re as easy as squares to cut and piece once you’ve practiced a bit, and they’ll expand your piecing repertoire many times over.

And this is a concept I fell in love with a few years ago when I saw a quilted bag in a Japense craft book made up of similar patches. The randomness makes for incredible ease of piecing, but the side borders really clean things up, visually. Also, I think with all the squares we’re used to seeing in patchwork, a bunch of rectangles becomes incredibly pleasing to the eye.

There. Blogged. Now, to get these, and others in the mail….

I haven’t read a good book all the way through since… (I’m looking it up on Goodreads) May.

I don’t even feel bad! The swirling tornado of the Wakefield Twins, the Dollangangers, and all things Tori Spelling have gotten me through starting a job, sweltering heat, Maker Faire, AND Renegade SF. Not too shabby.

My only lament is that there aren’t many teen-trash inspired crafts. Unless you count Twilight, which I also read this year, but I just can’t get worked up about that series. Sorry, everybody.

All an etsy search yielded was this magnificent accessory, which is a pretty good way of paying homage to Jessica and Elizabeth’s improbable adventures in… was it Kansas?

Buy it here.

And, of course, there’s the much lauded SVH Bathroom Art.

Still, I think we can do better. Babysitters’ Club embroidery, anyone?

Where have I been lately?

Hanging out. Cleaning up. Thankfully, few things are as life-affirming as a stack of clean tea towels: