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I was hoping to upload a few more pics of this quilt for you, but for some reason, blogger would only like you to see this one. All the others keep getting uploaded sideways or upside down. Crazy.
Anyway, I know I seemed like a lazy poster here for a while and I just wanted to show you all what I was up to. Boss Hog, the kidlets and I are heading down to Vancouver tonight for my little brother's wedding. Yes it is true, my little baby brother is getting married (and I am getting out the Kleenex for the wedding already). Him and his lovely lady will be wed Feb. 20th. The patch on the back of the quilt says their names and the date and has little interlocking rings sewn onto it with my free-motion foot. If blogger would stop spinning my photos I would show you.
I got the idea from a book I took out of the library. It is full of great quilting ideas that run the gamut from super simple to complex, mind boggling (to me anyway) designs that I will never have the guts to attempt.
I had to photograph this one draped haphazardly over the futon in the guest room because the light hitting our bed was not great during the ten minutes I had to photograph it between clipping off the last errant threads and packaging it up to stick in the car. Meanwhile, Boss Hog was roaming around innocently suggesting that I had embroidered the date wrong on the patch.
Helpful? NOT SO MUCH @#%^&*\
I am no longer feeling all-cappsy but I have taken a few painkillers to keep my head from exploding en route.
Over the holidays we were visiting friends. Somehow diluting red wine with water was mentioned and out of the recesses of their cabinets came this bottle. They brought it back from Europe 25-30 years ago.
It seems these split bottles were common as many women liked to mix their wine with water. I had never seen anything like it so I made Boss Hog pose with it so I could show it to DCBS who has a bit of a thing for bottles.Never one to miss an opportunity, I made him take off his sweater too so you could all see the shirt I made him for our anniversary. It is another freezer paper stencil. I am no longer OBSESSED with stencilling everything, but I do still hold the freezer paper in high regard. 
But as you can see, I'm not a huge fan of ironing. Can't win them all. When PH and DC were here this winter--together! at the same time!--they gave me the rundown on how my whole life would improve with the addition of invisible zippers. Of course they were right. I haven't looked back. I've made five things with invisible zippers in a month!!
This dress is one of my favourites. I bought the green linen in Vancouver this summer and have just been waiting for time to sew it into a new dress. I know the dress is not flashy and linen wrinkles like a son of a gun, but I just love it. This is the second time I've made this pattern and I did a really good job following instructions. The first time there were a few things I couldn't puzzle through in the instructions that I thought I could figure out on the fly. Hmmm. Not so much.
This time I trusted the great sewing gods at Vogue, did their bidding, et voila! it is a testament to mankind. It is lined and fits perfectly (I did have to take in the back a bit and I left off the giant bow, blech) and it's linen, so why waste time ironing it anyway?
Boss Hog and I did a collaborative project this year. It went really well. It's not often we can work together and still end up happy with each other and pleased with the results. This project was perfect in its division of skills and labour. He took a stained glass course and knows how it all goes together. I have a fine arts degree and large paper. This was Boss Hog's second piece of stained glass ever, and it's about 2feet by 3 feet. Yup, 'go big or go home' is often our motto around here.
He said he wanted a tree in this window.
I obligingly sketched one out.
He took it away and thought about it.
He said it would work and took me to the glass supply shop to pick colours.
Then he, the sheets of glass and the sketch paper disappeared.
Boss Hog returned one night with a roll of copper foil and stacks of labeled rectangles of glass. I was allowed the menial chore of rolling the foil around the edges of the rectangles and squares while we watched a movie.
Then the squares and BH disappeared again.
When they finally reappeared, the window was finished and framed with a lovely and ingenious frame that hangs IN FRONT of the actual window (so we can take it with us if we move!).
So, by working alone on parts of a collaborative project where we never had to be working together AT ALL we managed to complete this window and stay married.
Here's the other reason I haven't been posting much lately. This quilt is for Boss Hog's dad. I started it last fall intending it to be a birthday gift and now it is three months too late or nine months too early. Either way, we are lucky because Grandpa N is VERY easy going and will no doubt be very gracious regardless of my lousy timing. The top photo is Arlo after about 10zillion attempts to get her to pretend sleep for a photo. "Ha," she says, there is not a camera fast enough to catch me with my eyes closed. 
Eden on the other hand, is always up for pretend sleeping. It's one of her favourite activities. Arlo hates this of course, as it usually means Eden appointing herself the 'mom' and repeatedly putting 'baby' Arlo to bed. The fights that result are delightful, I assure you.
The one good thing about the delay in getting this quilt quilted was that I came up with a much simpler method of quilting it than I originally envisioned. After shoving the wedding quilt through my little sewing machine a few hundred times to make circles of stitching around the stars, I decided only to sew in straight lines until I forgot the pain of sewing my own finger. Seriously. I am a crafting martyr.
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