I actually finished something. And then we had to put it away.

I won't bore you with a mosaic of my finished projects of 2011, mainly because I finished next to nothing. It would be a two-frame mosaic of Henry and that enormous quilt. Maybe some knitting - I can't remember. I'm lucky I know what day it is. (Monday. Right?)

But I did manage to finish something for the holidays. The last stitches were put in on Christmas Eve morning, ready for Santa to fill them:

New stockings! (The dog sleeping in the sun is not new, nor is her stocking. Don't give me any grief about not making her a stocking, because her stocking is 10x more awesome than ours, and it was passed down to her from my childhood golden, Maggie, who was the greatest dog on Earth, godresthersoul.)

Henry and I picked up this fabric at Jo-Ann's back in October. I had a general idea of what I wanted to do. I went completely off grid with these bad boys, and I'm proud of say that with the exception of initially putting the lining together backwards, everything went pretty smoothly. Justin did have to help me draw the stocking shape because I kept ending up with a letter J. (Side note: file folders make very nice pattern pieces.)

Construction is very basic. I cut two stocking shapes out of leftover batting, then sewed my pieces directly on one at a time. Trimmed to make it pretty, did some decorative machine stitching, then sewed the two outside pieces together. Then I did the embroidery (chain stitch for some dimension and oomph), followed by the lining. And of course I lined them - what do you think we are, hobos?

I love them. And for the first time in history, I'm sad Christmas is over because we had to put them away. I will always remember this Christmas for being the one where we finally had awesome homemade stockings, even though Santa only put chapstick in mine. Neither Henry nor Gracie had anything in theirs, but Justin made out like a bandit. We'll be revisiting our priorities next Christmas.

I made a baby faster than this quilt.

I've been waiting for 15 months to talk about this quilt. In that span of time, I went to four weddings, got pregnant, gestated the baby for 37 weeks, gave birth, and spent 3.6 months raising the resulting baby. Stay with me - all of these things are tied together.

We went to seven weddings in 2010. The last wedding was probably the most romantic wedding I've ever attended, including my own. It was outside of Austin on a family farm. The bride and groom (one of our dearest friends) were married under an enormous oak tree, and we played lawn games, ate delicious food, and danced the night away under the stars. I can't remember a better night. The wedding was so romantic, in fact, that we came home and immediately got pregnant.

I don't make quilts for everyone, but Paul is, well, Paul -- a wonderfully smart, kind, hilarious, and stylish guy. Justin, Paul and I all met on the first day in our dorm freshman year, and Paul and I were close friends before Justin would even hold my hand. The boys were inseperable throughout college. I've never seen Paul as happy as he is with Allison, and I wanted to give them a really special wedding gift.

So I bought 16 colors of Kona Cotton and got down to business in August 2010. Their wedding was going to be in November - no sweat! I'd mail it off before we left town! But then life got in the way, and it takes a really long time to cut 560 rectangles and then sew them together (not to mention all the pressing - oh, the pressing!). So August turned into December and all of a sudden I was pregnant. Then I lost my mind.

Pregnancy brain is a strange thing. I was fine with math, but hell if I could remember where I put things, or how big I had originally intended this quilt to be. I just kept counting my pieces and recalculating every time I sat down to work on it (which wasn't often, thanks to the little Bean growing inside of me). Sizes ranged from a small throw (those were dark days) to almost King. In February, I had almost all of my pieces together when I discovered five missing colors. I cut more rectangles, recalculated, and promptly lost my notes. We were working on the house all spring, and my studio moved to the basement in June. I had the baby three weeks early in July. At that point, I hadn't even pieced all the strips together yet.

This quilt was finally finished on October 12, 2011. I took it to Guild the next night for show and tell, and then spent three weeks trying to a) find a box big enough for it and b) figure out how to get this enormous box and a baby and his stroller to the UPS store. Last Monday, I managed to get there five minutes before they closed and waved a relieved goodbye.

So without further adieu, I present to you: The Babymaker.

(For the record: It turned out just shy of Queen-sized, 20 blocks x 14 blocks. The pattern is "Plain Spoken" from Modern Quilt Workshop.)

I love this quilt. It was a pain to put together (I love Kona Cotton, but man, does it ever fray), and I wish it hadn't taken me so long. But it's a lot like a marriage. You have all of these pieces that don't seem to go together, and the only thing that gets you through the dark times (small throw? Really?) is blind faith that everything will turn out right in the end. And boy howdy, did it ever.

Maybe you want to see some pretty things.

And maybe I'm getting really good at wasting time when I should be working. Work! I love you! I hate you! When I don't have work, I'm sad and mopey. When I do have work, I'm very happy, yet restless. Also, it is noon and I'm still wearing pajamas. My life = glamorous.

Anyway, it's been a month since I finished Everything's Turning Up Triangles, and thought maybe I'd waited long enough to show you pictures.

It's a big one, this quilt. And it is so well-loved already. It was on our bed for awhile - it covers a queen nicely - and then moved down to the family room, where it keeps me company while I stitch hexagon after hexagon. (Still hexagoning. Will be hexagoning for life.)

It's warm without being heavy, which I really love since I can't stand to have heavy blankets on me anymore.

My favorite part of the quilt is the label. The next photo is awful, and I just can't get a good picture of it. So just trust me on this one.

My new sewing machine (I haven't even TOLD you about my new machine, which I am so smitten with that it's ridiculous) makes letters! All on its own! All that gobbledy-gook on the binding actually says "KAM March 2011 KCMQG Challenge." I love this way of labeling a quilt, especially because my quilt labels always look...homely. This may be my new go-to.

In other news, my parents are dropping off Penny on their way to Napa tomorrow, so we will be wrangling dogs for the next week. I'm in the stage of pregnancy where we must remodel half the house NOW, so our bedroom is an utter wreck while Justin paints. I'm trying not to get too antsy about it, but I miss my bed. And not walking on Wall Street Journals as I try to get to the closet. (Sidenote: We get the Wall Street Journal for free on the weekend. It's a long story as to how that happens, but I'm afraid we're going to get it for life. We're not the kind of people who read the Wall Street Journal, as we are young with not much money, but I do enjoy the Review and weekend-ish sections. Anyway, every time I walk through the room, I see all the hoity-toity ads and reviews and I think, "If I didn't know me, I think I would hate the person who lives in this house." The end.)

Things that are making me happy*

1. New pens. This might seems like a little thing, but it's actually a huge thing. I love one brand of pen and only one. A few years ago, I bought two big packs of some pens that looked the same, but trust me, they aren't. I hate those pens. They skip, they take awhile to warm up, and the clip on the cap always breaks off. So I broke down and bought four (4!) boxes of my favorite pens. Two black, one blue, one purple. SUCK IT, AWFUL PENS. (For those interested, these are my pens of choice.)

2. KC Modern Quilt Guild. Last week's meeting was amazing. We all showed off our challenge quilts. Here's mine:

Everything's Coming Up Triangles. Photo by Carla.Carla was so nice and let me snag this picture from her blog. You should go check out the rest of the pictures she took at the meeting. It was a riot of color in that room, and every quilt was better than the last. I have a lot more to say about my quilt, but I'll save that for later in the week when I actually get my act together and take some pictures. I will say that after working on it pretty much non-stop for a week (it came out of the dryer 15 minutes before I left for Guild), I still wanted to come home and sew some more.

*ala the good folks at Pop Culture Happy Hour

A human quilting machine

I spent all weekend working on my Robert Kaufman challenge quilt. I am completely smitten with it. My hand is sore from pushing this beast through my machine, but everything else is going well. We're unveiling our quilts at Guild on Thursday, so I don't want to spoil the surprise yet, but here's a little teaser.

This is the most quilting I've ever done on a quilt, and while it's tough going sometimes, I really love the way it's turning out. I've already gone through all of my thread, though, so it's back to JoAnn's for a refill. Also, this is the very first quilt I've ever designed myself, and I'm awfully proud of it. I can't wait to show you how it turns out.