Basketballs & Peacocks

Hello, there friends.  Long time no type at.  Man, I tell you, back to school really got the best of me.  They didn't want to go back and I didn't want the drama/ trauma to start up again.  It sunk me into a little bit of an artistic dry spell.  Okay, fine, I was depressed and stressed.  Not to mention people were quitting at work left and right.  Which, for me, means losing friends and gaining work.  Not a stressfree combo, just as the fall wedding season is underway.  Ok, boo hoo, I've had my moment.  Time to get on with the good stuff.

My co-worker Michelle asked me to make a quilt out of her daughters old basketball jerseys.  Now, this is my least favorite thing to do.  Mostly, because it's hard and I'm lazy.  I turn people down fairly regularly when they ask me to do t-shirt quilts but I like Michelle and we see a lot of each other at work.  She asked me back in the spring, if I remember right.  Maybe early summer.  I just got to it this last month.  Like I said, lazy.

Not to mention, it's sports.  I can't really get into it.  And, it's hard.  The stabilizer didn't want to stick to the jersey fabric very well.  I was worried about melting the rubberized numbers and logos.  That was also a problem when it came to quilting.  Then, the fact that Jessica is tiny.  I mean, tiny.  How this girl was good at basketball is beyond me.  Now she's doing volleyball.  She must be fierce.  Tiny and fierce.  The quilt started out to be super basic because that's all they asked for.  I couldn't leave it at basic.



I appliqued her name on the top.  Still pretty basic but at least it was something.  At first, I was going to use black metallic thread around the letters but I couldn't find black.  They had bronze which was the same color as the basketball fabric.  I thought it was going to be brilliant.  No.  It was NOT brilliant.  It was, in fact, super tacky.  So, I ended up with 10 billion tiny metallic threads all over my life.  Plain old black ended up being a better option.  I also cut out a little star in the A to match the Hoopstar logo.

Yes, this is laying on top of my car.  I happened to be waiting for Ethan at swimming class when I finished the binding.  Sometimes you just have to work with what you got.

I gave it to them yesterday and she seemed really happy.  I hope so.

Another thing that I've been putting off is my Taking Flight challenge quilt.  Our Guild President challenged us to make something with that theme.  I've been obsessed with peacocks lately.  I found a gorgeous stained glass peacock that I decided to make into a quilt.  Honestly, I'm going to be so pissed when this ends up being a mess.

I've just got a few basic layers started.  I'm very sceptical at this point.  I keep telling myself it'll get there but I'm not totally convinced.  There's going to be more feather detail, magnolia blossoms and at the very end, I'm going to bead and embellish the crap out of it.

There you have it.  Hopefully the beginning of a creative fall and winter.