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Look! I actually finished something. And look! I did some piecing.

Backtack
You are already laughing, right? You're thinking 'Carolyn signed up for backtack? The girl never sews, has no patience, and this should be a hoot!' You would be right. It was quite the torturous adventure with my sewing machine eating the points on the attempt at a pointy kitty, my idiocy causing a mini moopy to come out so wrinkled up and tortured that it could not be used (b/c i stuffed the arms and legs before sewing it all together...making it nigh impossible to turn right side out and when said turning was actually accomplished, mini moopy was in a sad sad state)...

Eventually I wound up drawing a free form cat using my Rosa Pomar doll as a guideline for arms/legs/proportions... And here is Franken Kitty in all her asymmetrical skirted glory.

Given her somewhat tribal looking necklace, Mariko was calling her Polynesian Franken Kitty.

And if you would like to see her in all her naked glory (sans jupe and avec her fifth bum-button), you can click here and here.

Fortunately her recipient does not feel quite as jaded about her as I do, and has redubbed her Francine.

Ribovili
Yes, the ubiquitous Tivoli/Picovili pattern, but w/ 3 rows of ribbing at neck and arms (all the way around arms not just the live stitches) and 5 at the hem... Finished one of the two I have in progress.

Would love to show it to you but as a) it was a gift and b) I forgot to take a photo before it was given, this is all I've got left:

You'll just have to take my word for it -- it turned out better than expected, and given that the recipient tried it on a week before I finished, I know it fit her to a tee. How exciting. Mine is going to be a little big as I had to increase more than called for to fit over the newly expanded fatness, and I'm too lazy to account for that by some random extra decreases in the body. Plus I'm planning to wear it as a vest anyway... Mine is the same crazy diarfurna diakieto (whatever) yarn but in the all purple colorway...

Strippers of the Orient
As you can see from this horrific crap ass job of a photo, I am only two strips away from finishing the piecing one on of the tops (and three strips away on the other):

Exciting isn't it. Soon they will be ready to be pin-basted which will likely take many hours each and cause much cursing and finger poked pain. Fuckin quiltin. Who got me into this?

The problem with working on a quilt made of long strips like this is that you are IMMEDIATELY having to deal with the full length of the quilt. Normally with smaller blocks, you work on them in little units and not until the very end when you are slapping everything together do you suddenly have a whole quilt to cart around. In this case, even when you are sewing only one strip, you have both the entire width and length of what the full quilt will be to finagle around the sewing machine.

It's not complete torture, but it's not quite "fun". I'll be very excited (um, maybe that's the wrong word) to go back to piecing the Friendship Stars once these are pin-basted. Then I will get to start using this machine for its real power - I'll be quilting within the confines of each strip. The "non lettering' strips will get stippling/meandering and the other strips will get more geometric patterns. I'll probably quilt mine first for the practice and then Mariko's. And then hopefully if I arrange my time correctly, by the time I'm done quilting the two of them, I'll be done piecing the two Friendship Stars and be able to move those into the quilting stage. And then finally be able to pick up something new! For me!!!

Gift crafting is torture. I know it's supposed to be all awesome when the person gets the gift and everything, but then I look around my apartment and I've got nothing to show for the torture... I need something to show for it to make it worth it!

Yup, that's me, selfish bitch. Never said I wasn't!

Hope y'all are having a good weekend. After this afternoon, I will have been to three concerts in three days so that's pretty much as good a weekend as a crazed music lover like myself could possibly want. Plus MaryKay and I nearly ate ourselves sick at Ravinia last night...and not on their overpriced food but on a feast I whipped up myself in a scant hour before heading up there. Music & food = bonus!

I'll write up comments on all the tunes over at Snip sometime during the week. Well, if I can get to it before Wednesday morning, that is, when I head up to Minnesota to go to the quilting show w/ my Mom. Three days, two classes... Good lord. I ask again, WHO DESIGNED THIS SUMMER SCHEDULE? Because they need to be fired.

Ciao! Or as the French apparently prefer to spell it -- Tchao!

Posted by Duff at June 11, 2006 08:58 AM

Posted by: Cookie at June 11, 2006 01:13 PM

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Posted by: Penny at June 11, 2006 09:57 PM

Posted by: melissa at June 12, 2006 11:28 AM

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Posted by: Melanie at June 12, 2006 02:12 PM