Taking Stock Of The Works In Progress: Schnookie Edition

It’s been almost a year since we both started quilting, and it seems like now is a great time to step back and take stock of what’s in our active pipelines right now. We’ve both just finished up some quilts and are revving up on exciting new projects — so what’s on tap?

Over the last month or so, I’ve been bearing down and powering through on finishing up a bunch of Christmas projects. First, there were the two Sheri Berry Christmas star quilts that Pookie had picked out, and then she and I worked on my “Christmas Meow” quilt. Just when I thought we’d reached the conclusion of “Christmas Meow”, it would grow another step, another edge, another border. It just went on and on and on and on, and while I love it, I was just so ready to be starting something else.

But, at long last, it gave up the ghost and accepted the last border as the final border. It was done! WOOO HOOOO!!!! It won’t be quilted for Christmas, but that’s cool. It can serve as a cozy bed for my Christmas presents when their big opening day comes. I’ll probably take the time to get some better pictures of this to post more about it later, but right now I’m so happy to be working on my other new projects that I want to focus on those.

Ages ago, I first got wind of American Jane’s Happy Campers line. It had debuted at one of the big Markets, and I got crazy excited for it, and then had to wait literally months for it to become available. This was a clever move on Moda’s part, because by the time I could get my mitts on it, I had decided I didn’t need one quilt out of it — I needed two. I was going to make one 16-patch lap quilt and then one queen-sized fancy-pantsy star quilt. So when the fabric was finally for sale, I had to order mountains of it. The bundled heaps of fabric in the box from Fat Quarter Shop were so delightful that I’ve kept them all bagged up, in a neat stack, next to my seat on the couch until the time comes that we can get cutting it. (That time is going to be during Christmas vacation — that’s a lot of parallelograms we’re going to have to figure out.)

Meanwhile, I also got a layer cake of Happy Campers to get a look at the all the prints and colors in person before committing to anything in Bananatanagram City (the star one). As it turns out, the layer cake is enough fabric to make the top of my 16-patch lap quilt, so with the extra fabrics from the rest of my order (especially the four-in-one fabrics), I’m planning to have 16-patches on the front and back. This seems very exotic and adventurous to me, which probably says a lot about me.

I had big plans to jump right into my Happy Campers projects as soon as I finished Christmas Meow but I got sidetracked by two things. The first is that Ugly City is back from the quilter, and needs the binding done.

Not surprisingly, I’m dragging my feet on it. It’s been sitting, ready, for weeks, and I just haven’t been able to tear myself away from all the stretch runs of all the projects we’ve finished in the last couple of months. I’m giving myself one week of puttering before I get this going.

Meanwhile, the other distraction from Happy Campers is the housetop quilt from Kaffe Fassett’s latest book, “Quilt Romance”. I am absolutely nuts right now about the idea of this pattern, just concentric rectangles working all the way out to a queen-sized quilt. I originally thought I’d make this pattern with Sandi Henderson’s Meadowsweet, but then, one fateful afternoon, I stumbled across Rouenneries at PQW.

So now I’m going to make two housetop quilts!

With my Christmas quilt commitments out of the way, and my pizza boxes cleared of their no-longer-applicable seasonal quilts (Squee City and Cinnamon City, both autumn projects, are on the shelf on seasonal hiatus), I’m ready to enjoy the thrill of all-new projects. Maybe I’ll even get some of these done before I get the bug to move on to something new again.