"The rumors of my blog's death have been greatly exaggerated".
Laziness. That's all it's been. Sheer laziness. I've been lurking and commenting on other blogs, but have just not done a posting myself. So if I haven't been posting, what the heck have I been doing?
For one, I've been working through some Schnibble kits that I put together at the beginning of the summer. I spent most of one weekend picking patterns, matching them up with the appropriate set of charm packs (or so it seemed at the time), cutting the various components, packing them in little baggies, then putting each set together in a larger baggie along with the pattern.
This one is State Fair, using Moda's Breath of Avignon.
The whole megillah went into one of my ArtBin organizers and became my Schibbles Schtash -- ready to raid any time I needed just a little project. It went with me on a retreat, and came out again at a church Quilt Day. I've played with the stuff in that bin all summer.
There a couple of things I found during this process:
1. The charm packs that I thought would be great for a certain pattern in April ain't necessarily the charm packs that look best when I get around to working on that Schnibble in August. Here's an example. It's Roundabout, done in Moda's Happy Daisy. Is it terrible? No, but it's just not what I thought it was going to look like, and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it.
For some patterns, I might have been better off mixing charm packs or supplementing from my stash rather than just using the squares form one one fabic line alone.
2. I AM addicted to charm packs, even though some of the squares contained therein are dogs and really don't play well when Schnibble-ized. My over-all stash now contains a sub-stash (stashette?) of charms. I tend to buy 3 at a time to allow for the dogs and for my personal design latitude (la-de-dah!). Some of those charm packs would also lend themselves nicely to co-mingling with other charm packs, although that sounds vaguely smarmy.
3. White or beige can get very very boring as backgrounds, although they seem to work best with these little quilts. I need to create a stash of interestingly textured neutrals, or even force myself to try something more adventurous.
4. The concept of having ready-made kits is an awesome one. There is nothing like being able to pull out a project and having everything pre-cut. Nothing.
And you don't need to limit yourself to Schnibbles. Any smaller project will do. I even took a Civil War repro kit that I bought at my LQS on sale and put together this kit. What the heck, you could even do this for bigger projects. Once the cutting is done, the rest is a piece o' cake. Or at least a slice of eclaire.
Stay tuned for the next few posts which will contain pictures of the big girl quilts I finished this summer, as well as a happy announcement.
I've admired Judi Madsen (the Green Fairy) for quite some time. She is a young wife and mother who has been blessed with a tremendous gift for quilting. I drool over the pictures she posts of quilts she's long-armed for customers (and herself), I smile at the pictures of her youngsters, and I am in awe of her endless enthusiasm. Today I cried.
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