Farmer Friday - Sewing is the only thing right today

It was an absolute blessing today that sewing went so smoothly when it seems like the rest of the house is falling apart around me. 

In between cutting and sewing these blocks, I decided to take a lunch break and found a flooded kitchen. 

My break ended up being a little longer than I had planned. 

I was pretty determined to not miss another week of Farmer's Wife blocks so I went back to piece as soon as I could.

Farmer's Wife #77 & 78:

I'm surprised at how easily 78 went together. I expected problems but found none. 

It really is too bad that I need to go wash another load of towels and can't just barricade myself in the studio until everything is fixed. 

A little pillow crazy

I haven't ever been much of a pillow person. They never called to me in stores, begging to come home. 

Imagine my surprise that most of my finishes lately have been pillows. 

It started with The Pillow Talk Swap: 

Sending that one away was tough. 

Lucky for me, I had my class pieces from Sewing Summit to finish. 

It's a complete accident that they both have orange in them. I think they make quite the cute pair. 

Those pillows are a bit lumpy. Maybe I should start buying different forms. 

Including my lovely gift from Laura, I now have three pillows on my couch.

Which simply won't do. I should at least make three more to balance it out. 

Or perhaps five.

Exactly when does one reach the point of "too many"? 

Farmer Friday - I won't miss the little triangles edition

Remember how I was a little sad about the idea of not having any more Farmer's Wife blocks to piece soon?
And how I'd miss it?

Not the little triangles, I've decided.

Specifically template number 13.

Both of my blocks required that template today.

And of course, both came out a little wonky.

Blocks 75& 76:

I really like the color contrasts in these blocks. I can deal with it being a little wonky. 

Now I'm just wondering how many more blocks have template 13 in it...

Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop!

It's the final week of Beth's lovely blog hop. 

There's a master list here of all the bloggers that have participated in the event. It's been really great to learn more about the bloggers on the tour.

I'm really excited to be part of the wrap-up of this event. Beth is an absolute sweetheart and I consider myself really lucky to be able to have her as one of my blogging friends. 

If this is your first time here, hello there!

If this isn't your first time, well hello to you too. So very nice to see you again. 

I'm Allegory (or Al as most people end up calling me) and I think I might be best known for my epic-scale WiP lists. I tend to do my best work when I have at least five projects at once. I know...it doesn't make sense. I've tried the "only work on one project from start to finish" technique and it ended up driving me a bit crazy. 

My chaos works for me and I've learned to accept it rather than to force change. 

Proof - This is the current (taken 15 minutes ago) state of my studio desk: 

The piles up front are today's priority (4x5 bee blocks). Let's see what else there is: A Halloween bee block, the ribbon wrapped bundle is going to be a Pumpkin pillow, ZZQAL in the brown basket, Halloween scraps and my farmer's wife bucket, the green bucket under the scraps is my Police Box QAL that will hopefully start soon after a snag. 

That stack in the top left is finished Farmer's wife blocks (yes, they are made of Halloween fabric). 

The stuff under the batting and scissors is a secret. I had to flip it over quick before taking a picture. 

I've learned to tape my lists and notes to the wall so they don't get shuffled around on the desk. It's probably the best thing I've figured out all year. 

Told you it was chaotic. I'll give you a second to process (or run). 

How about a couple of get-to-know-me questions? 

How long have you been quilting? 

In college, more years ago then I want to mention, I made a hexagon baby quilt for a friend. On my machine. I had sewn clothing for years so I figured quilts wouldn't be a problem. It was a bit of a disaster and I swore off quilting. 

That didn't last long. I started documenting everything here a year and a half ago. That moment was when I shifted almost completely from clothes/costumes to quilts.

Favorite tip?

I always think it silly when I go to type this tip up but it's the best thing I've ever done. Whenever I buy scissors I get a red handled and green handled pair. 

Red means stop. Green means go. 

I always seemed to have my husband/friends borrowing scissors from my studio. I do find myself lucky that there are other art/diy projects happening in the house but my fabric scissors would be found cutting through paper/wax/wire/numerous other things I don't want to think about. Hence the color coded scissors. 

The great thing is that I've only had to mention the rule once and it has lived on for over two years now. 

Those red scissors have touched nothing but fabric since. 

What I wish I'd known about blogging before starting?

Never be afraid to be yourself. I used to edit my voice out of my posts. A lot. 

That was silly.

I'm geeky. I say really silly things. I have outrageous ideas.

And every single bit of that is okay.

Hiding that would be pointless. And I've gotten negative comments/tweets. But that's okay too. 

If it's really nasty, the delete button is a great thing. And I've found the ignore/block function to be a wonderful thing if you come across someone who's negative without being constructive. 

No one should have to be afraid to be themselves. 

On the same note, no one should ever be afraid of making mistakes. That's why I started the Sewing Fail group which has just made its new home on Threadbias. 

"If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something." -Neil Gaiman

I've got that quote as the background on my laptop. Eventually I'm going to stitch it up and hang it on my studio wall. Because I always need that reminder. 

So, that's a bit about me. 

I could babble on all day but I think I need to go conquer some of that pile in the picture above. 

Before I end up stacking more projects on top of it all. 

Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop!

Welcome to my stop on the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop! 

This hop was organized by Katy from The Littlest Thistle and Laura from Quokka Quilts. 

One of the first things I do before visiting any city is to find out if they have an aquarium. It's usually one of my first stops in town. Aquariums might just be my favorite places in the whole world.

Lucky for me, Atlanta is home to the world's largest aquarium. So even if I'm not exploring somewhere new I can still visit one of my favorite places.  

I take at least two trips a year downtown to visit all the fish. More often than not, this includes me making fishy faces at them.

On my last trip, my husband had to pull me away from a tank 'cause I found a fish that seemed to like my faces.

Or just thought I was a weirdo.

I snapped a picture of him before leaving and decided to use that picture for my palette. 

I used DeGraeve.com to create my palette and for some reason it didn't want to include that burst of orange from my new friend. 

I used the palette as an inspiration basis rather than trying to match colors exactly. 

Adding in that burst of orange, these were the fabrics I picked: 

I had the benefit of being able to pull from some of my favorite scraps since I was going to be using Kite shapes for piecing. 

Pieced hexagons have been on my to-do list for almost a year now so I took this opportunity to turn my kite shapes into hexagons. 

I'm not sure what these will turn into but it'll be nice EPP project to have around when it finally gets colder here in Georgia.

This post is part of the Travellin' Pic Stitch Blog Hop.  From 1st October - 30th November we are hopping all over the world EPP-ing in some fantastic locations.  Check out the full list here and be sure to check out the other participants. On 30th November it's over to you to link up for a chance to win these fabulous prizes! Sponsored by Paperpieces.com, FabricwormPink Castle Fabrics ,  Marmalade Fabrics, the Fat Quarter Shop, WantItNeedItQuilt, and Aurifil.

Full details for competition entry can be found here.

Tomorrow's stop on the tour is over at Life's Rich Pattern so be sure to stop by there for more inspiration! 

First Things First - November Prep Party

It's been an incredibly light prep day for me this month.

In fact I've spent the past thirty minutes or so looking around and trying to figure out what it is that I could possibly be missing.

It isn't that there isn't a boatload of projects to work on. It's just that they're already prepped and hanging out in baskets in the studio.

I've got a lot of catch-up and carry-over for November it seems.

What have I prepped?

Neutral bobbins because I can never have enough:

Cutting triangles:

Somehow I ended up short on white triangles when I picked my ZZQAL back up. So I cut a stack of 56 in order to finish that top up....hopefully.

And that's it for me. 

I told you. Barely anything. 

I feel a little lost. 

Farmer Friday - Green Edition

I'm in a bit of a green fabric mood this week.

Not sure why, but I really couldn't think of doing these blocks in any other fabrics.

Farmer's Wife 73 + 74:

Simple blocks this week, which I'm thankful for. 

I peeked ahead and next week is the Sawtooth block.

Tiny...tiny triangles...