Making Progress

Wow. Everywhichwaybutright. Blogger was certainly flip-happy this evening. Hopefully you will get the general idea of what I've been up to.

First, the penguin baby quilt is bound and finished. yay. It just needs to be assigned to a baby.

Once that was out of the way, I thought I ought to look at another UFO. This one is definitely a UFO, although I truly wish it were a WIP. I started it in the late 90's, and left it for a long time. Eventually I decided to machine quilt it (it's hand appliqued) as well as add trapunto. That's where the biggest hang-up occurred.

Let me say up front, I LOVE this quilt. Here is a picture of the back, so you can have an idea of what's going on with the quilting. This quilt is destined to go to my daughter and her husband, should I be able to figure out how to fix what is currently wrong with it.


Here's a sideways picture of one of the blocks. They are heavily quilted, and lie very flat. The center is flat as a board, I tell you, despite the trapunto.


Here's a sideways picture of some of that trapunto. The trapunto in the gold fabric looks mahvelous, dahling, and I love it. So does the shadow trapunto (done in red and green) in the white. This isn't the problem.

The problem comes in the outer border. I haven't stuffed much of the feather yet - I'm doing this the old-fashioned way, by hand - but I think I've overstuffed it. a lot. See how wavy the border is? It was beautifully flat before I began stuffing the feathers.


Then again, maybe it's not the trapunto's fault. Maybe it's the green setting triangles. I've been going in circles, trying to decide what to put in them. The quilt says "more trapunto!" but my mind and hands say, "No way! Don't you know how much trapunto you still have to finish? You don't want to add more! It's already taking you forever. And a day." And so, the poor beautiful quilt lies there, looking forlorn and abandoned.


I'm going to have to suck it up and deal with it. As I said, it's a beautiful quilt, and I love it. It doesn't deserve to be set aside for so long, especially as it has such a precious destination. I do intend for this quilt to be one that actually gets finished in 2009. Goals are good.

Finally, we had reindeer on the roof all afternoon. It's true, I heard them. Noisy things, tromp, tromp, tromp. I think they even had a leaf-blower up there. Okay, so maybe it was Dad and #1 son...but it sure sounded like reindeer to me!!

And the noise was enough to set me to work. I finished another Christmas present, here it is, all folded and ready to ship. Hey, don't peek! It might be for you! ;) No, I'm pretty sure that the recipient does not follow this blog...

And there you go. That's what I've been up to today. I'm trying to do something tangible each day between now and Christmas. The stitched stocking hasn't been turned into an ornament yet, but there's always tomorrow. It shouldn't take all THAT long, and I won't have much time tomorrow. ttfn...