Perfection is made in a factory. Detail is made by hand.

Hard at work!

No, I haven't abandoned you all. I've just been working on a couple projects and wanted to make some progress before posting. :) 

Daioh ironing her binding flat.

I was getting a little frustrated with issues with the Just Takes 2 quilt, so I decided to switch tacks and try a different quilt, or rather, table topper.

My camera takes awesome pictures.

I bought a whole scatter of cloth for this at the pre-quilt show shopping frenzy (get it? Bolt of cloth, a scatter of cloth?), and I think I did a pretty good job guesstimating the values and such for the bargello pattern. I knew Glenn would prefer it to be blue, so I went with a lovely range to suit the both of us.

It's been an interesting process, both mindless and time-consuming. There's a lot of straight stitching involved, nothing terrifically fancy, but once the rows and columns start to come together you get something really quite neat.

Half finished!

It's also quite satisfying to work on. If you've ever played with Lego, you know how nice it is when everything clicks into place? That's the feeling I got when I was working on this, locking my seams together to create a seamless wave throughout the place mat.

All sewn together.

I did the one above as a practice run, and I'm in the middle of stitching the other three together. Once those are done I'll tackle the table runner, and then get them all quilted probably by the end of next week, depending on how crazy things get. I'm going to be away this Sunday, so there will be a delay of post until I can get to a machine and make some progress. :)

And in case you were curious, I bit the bullet and bought 20gb of storage space on Blogger. It was only $5, and since I also adjusted my export size on my pictures it should take me some time to get through that 20gb of space. That was part of my reasoning for not updating; the process I would have had to use was such a pain, especially with the number of pictures I upload per post!

It's funny--I've been using Faith-Ann for all of my piecing lately, but I had to bring out the Janome because Faith-Ann's motor seems to be struggling. I found a lovely gentleman a few towns over who repairs and restores old Singers for a living, and he's going to give her motor an overhaul, or replace it if that's what she needs. I might also walk out of his shop with a new friend, but you'll have to wait and see. ;-)

To tide you over, here is a super, super comfortable kitteh.

Took him 30 seconds tops to realize this position was an option.

Oh, and the quote is from Glenn from last night, when I was beating myself up over a minor error in the first finished place mat. Of course I had to date someone cleverer with words than I am. Ah well, at least he lets me steal from him!