February 2008

First there was Galaga. Then there was Zelda. Now there is Mario.

In the decades since his first Sisyphian pursuit of a huge barrel-chucking gorilla, Mario’s legacy has built into mythic status. It was inevitable that some glorious day his epic battles with the infamous goombas and formidable (for turtles, at least) koopa troopas would be immortalized in that most ancient of media, the Quilt.

So grab a power-up and relax underneath this heroic iconography to relive this most horizontal of sagas, or perhaps use it to decorate your own castle. Whether you are a princess or a plumber, or even an unfortunate mushroom named Toad, this life-size homage cannot help but inspire you on your own quest for a plumber or princess (or, well, whatever mushrooms quest for which we shan’t go into here).

- Approximately 64 inches (162.5 cm) square.
- Light blue backing and black binding.
- Made from 100% cotton fabric and batting.
- Machine wash cold, tumble dry low.
- Pieced and quilted by machine in smoke-free, pet-free, and geek-friendly home.

Want a video game quilt?

Also for sale on Etsy…

Zelda - The Quilt of Power.

And Galaga.

And as of March 21, we now have Pole Position.

Liam went to his first Etsy meetup today.  His shirt says, “My mom is so crafty she made ME!” from Etsy seller MuthaCrafter.

I promise he had fun there!  No pics from the actual meetup since Sean had the small camera.

Oh Hrumph.  I know views (and hearts) really mean nothing when it comes to sales but it was really nice to see the counters go up and up and just be in awe of how many people had looked at my quilts.

—–

	RevolvingDork says:
	Today at roughly 2:15pm EST, there was a failure on one of our load balancing machines that rendered the site inaccessible. We recognized the failure immediately, but were unable to restore full connectivity until 3:30pm EST. Unfortunately, tracking down the issue required all of our servers to be reset, which in turn erased all view tally data from listings. It is unlikely that we will be able to retrieve this data to bring them back, but we will try. We’re now investigating the causes of the issue, and tightening everything back up. Those that had a showcase scheduled for today will be refunded. We apologize for any inconvenience this outage has caused, and we’re doing our best to ensure that it won’t happen again.
	Posted at 3:40 pm, February 23 2008 EST

That’s a lot of money! Does anyone happen to know what this amounts to in USD?

I got an email from my local quilt shop saying that Moda’s Simplicity had shipped and it will be here in a couple days! I’ve been waiting impatiently for this line since Maeve’s room is getting a makeover with it.

Her quilt is going to be a Kaffe Fassett pattern. It’s amazing. I can’t wait. I get warm fuzzies just thinking about it.

I’m trying some new ways of photographing quilts.  It really is amazing how hard it is to get a *good* photo of a quilt.  I think it’s something that would sell much better in real life and not online.  It’s such a tactile item.  Maybe I should just open up a quilt shop downtown.  :-P  Ha!

We had quite the photo shoot this afternoon.

Hopefully all the changes will be in the shop by the end of the week.

Did you know if you sew together 2080 triangles (half white, half patterned) that you’ll end up with 260 pinwheel blocks? And if you sew all those pinwheel blocks together with the 4 extra at the corners you’ll end up with this pretty pinwheel quilt?

Ok, so I didn’t really sew together that many triangles. I started with squares, marked the diagonal, sewed 1/4″ on either side and then cut them apart ending up with two triangles sewn together. So after gobs of thread and hours and hours (don’t ask how many) of sewing I finished it. And I think it looks pretty cool. I quilted it densely and it puckered up beautifully in the wash.

And, of course, it’s now listed on Etsy.

Maeve has fallen in love with this quilt and has claimed it as hers. She woke up last night a little sick and asked for the new quilt to come into her room to keep her warm. So if you like it and want to buy it, I suggest you do so soon otherwise you might have to wrestle her for it.

What’s next? Mario. Pattern is done. Fabric is washed. Woohoo!

Just listed.

Started this one on Sunday. It’s a pretty complex pattern to piece… not hard, just a lot of steps. Mark, sew, flip, sew, cut, sew, cut, sew. Repeat 255 more times. And then sew those 256 blocks together.

A pile of about 130 unironed blocks.

And the pieces waiting to be sewn.

We celebrated Valentine’s Day this evening with a dinner at The Melting Pot… with both kids. Yes, apparently we’ve gone crazy. They (thankfully) behaved very well. Maeve went a little berserk after the chocolate (can you say sugar high?).

Liam slid over and just continued munching on his toys like nothing happened.

Maeve slid over and said, “I love you Daddy.”

I’m sure Liam would say the same if he could talk. Instead he just drooled on me and blew raspberries.

Wow. It’s actually done. I’m still pondering a couple details but overall, it’s done! I like this room. Maybe I’ll move into it and make the guests stay at a hotel.

The before:

Painted - Mesclun Green and Optimistic Yellow.

The after. I’m still pondering if there needs to be something above the bed. I want the bed to be the centerpiece of that wall and I want it to have a clean look but I also don’t want it to look unfinished. I *think* I like it without anything up there.

An up close look at the quilt.

All five pillows were quilted as well.

The nightstands. Lights and clock are from Target. The vase, candlesticks and tables are from Ikea. I’m somewhat tempted to make tablecloths to drape over the tables as well. I’d love to cover them up more but I don’t really like tablecloths. They’ve always looked so cluttery to me.

This wall turned out well. It wasn’t originally going to have floor lamps but then when I was putting stuff together yesterday I realized I had bought floor lamps instead of table lamps. Oops. So I ran out to Target and got the table lamps in the pics above and used these on this wall. They aren’t really necessary but oh well. Two of the frames don’t have glass because it broke. Must head to the store to get replacements. The frames, lights, table, vases, candlestick, and watering can are from Ikea. The bucket of tulips is from Target. The picture frames on the top of the table still needs some pictures. There is still a mess of cords over on the right. I wonder if the CordMaster can clean those up a bit.

These are the three fabrics that make up the curtains. The top white paisley is my favorite of all the fabrics in the room (about 30+ different fabrics make up the room). And you can see that we now have blinds! Yes, that is right. We made our poor guests sleep in a fishbowl where the whole world could see them.

No, we really aren’t that mean. This is the view out the window. See all the trees? The only things snooping on people back there are the deer and squirrels. But now they can close the blinds anyways.

And a picture of the boys just because. 10mm lenses make everyone look funny.

It’s hard to get good pictures of quilts.  There are angles, lighting and the fact that sometimes they are just huge.

Today’s project was to get pictures of 3 small quilts and Maeve wanted to help.  See?

Sean is my trusty quilt stand with legs.

Just like Daddy.

She insisted on holding the small Dick and Jane quilt so I could take pictures of it.  She was so proud of herself.

And then like most every other 3 year old, she got bored and wanted to go play.

Both Dick and Jane quilts should be up on Etsy next week.

New quilt up on Etsy. Great size for the wee babes and beautiful fabrics by April Cornell.

I’m not sure how much traffic goes from here to my Etsy page but just in case…

I have a new SALE section and am filling it up with with items that I will no longer be making.  I’ve decided to slim things down a bit and just focus on quilts and not the random baby stuff I kept making.  I have a couple more sets of burp cloths to go up and then that’s it.  There are also doll quilts, baby shoes and a bag that have been marked down.

So check it out and buy something! lol

(I feel like such a sales(wo)man in this post!)

So it all started about a week and a half ago. My mouth hurt and I knew it was my wisdom teeth but I was in denial. When the pain didn’t go away I finally made an appointment with a dentist. After going to the appointment I realized she was a DMD and not a DDS and couldn’t take out the teeth herself. We called the DDS that she referred us to and learned that our lovely insurance company didn’t have any in-network oral surgeons within 45 miles of Raleigh. Lovely. So I go to that appointment and the DDS says that all 4 need to come out. Three were impacted and there was an infection around the fourth. The only good news is that it was bad enough that I would get to go to sleep for the surgery. I go to make the appointment for the surgery only to find out that the lovely insurance company, let’s call them Fetna, refused to pay for the $1700+ procedure because we hadn’t had the policy long enough. Keep in mind that on the medical side of our policy they had already paid for 2 surgeries, a baby in the NICU, and 3.5 hospital admissions. I couldn’t chew on one side of my mouth, had an infection and was in constant pain but couldn’t get the insurance that we pay for to pay for the teeth to come out. We decided to just pay for it so I could be pain-free. Stupid Fetna. I also learned that I need about $1200+ of work done at the DMD (that’s after insurance pays their part). Stupid Fetna. So by the end of the month I’ll have racked up almost $3000 in dental bills. Anyone want to buy a quilt?

So the teeth came out this past Friday. I am feeling better than expected but seemed to have come down with a nasty cough. Not good with heeling gums. At least the husband has dealt with the kids so I could rest… and sew. Sewing is resting right? I didn’t get to go to yoga this morning which I am not happy about. Hopefully I can get back to the gym soon. I’d actually be happy if I could just eat more than just mush.

I finished the quilt for the living room as well as the pillows and tiny table runners for the guest room.

So now the sewing is all done for the room!

And of course we had to watch the commercials tonight. Who is playing by the way?

And I’m still not used to seeing this.  And the little guy isn’t so little anymore. He weighed in at 20lbs10oz this past week.

And BTW, stupid Fetna. Stupid Fetna. Stupid Fetna.

I originally bought the Fresh Air by Chez Moi fabric for a quilt for our living room. I thought the colors worked perfectly. I came home from the fabric store all excited and the husband let me know he didn’t want a quilt in the living room (!!!). So I went ahead and made the quilt to sell on Etsy. Well, now that the quilt is done, he likes it and wants it to stay in the living room. See? Husbands should listen to their wives. Now to pick out drapery fabrics.

I do have fabric left over so I think I’ll make a table runner for the shop.