Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey guys, LBC here for Mom once again! Elvis and I just wanted to stop by and wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving! Mom doesn't have to work this year (YAY!), so we plan on having tons of fun today! Mom's also hoping that there are some good Black Friday sales online for fabric, she wants to get some new projects planned for the upcoming year. If you know of some fun deals, let her know in the comments so she can spend more time playing and less time searching! :)

Have a safe and happy holiday everybody!
Little Black Cat and Elvis

A Finish is a Finish, No Matter How Small

Howdy y'all and happy Friday! I hope you're doing well! I've got a little finish to share this week. You may remember my mini Supernova that I made while playing around a while back. Well today it was finished!

I couldn't help but show how tall it is compared to the First Born machine. :)

I had plans for some dense quilting with this little guy, but absolutely hated it once I got started. After ripping it out, I did two lines of quilting, outlining the main shape. One line was in blue and one was in yellow, which is hard to see in my pics (still no replacement camera *sad face*). This binding kicks some serious butt and is my best to date I believe! As you can see, Baby 'Nova is a little less than 3.5 inches tall and wide! I've been in a bit of a rut this week, so I'm glad to break out and have some fun with this mini mini! Hope you have a good weekend y'all, happy sewing!

Getting tiny!

Linking up with Finish it Up Friday and TGIFF!

On the Design Wall: Orange Peels!

Howdy y'all, hope your Thursday is going well! I delivered Missed Punchline last week at my grandma and grandpa's 60th anniversary party. To my surprise, she absolutely loved it. :) She couldn't believe I was giving it to her and everybody was talking about how pretty/nice/etc. it was. She wrapped up in it when she got in the car to go home, so I say that it's a success!

After finishing Missed Punchline, I couldn't decide what to do next. I knew I should piece my backing for City Blocks, it's been sitting on the WIP pile for too long. But the onset of cold weather just made me want to curl up on the couch, not trek upstairs to the spare room where I keep my sewing machine. Passing through one day, I looked at my design wall and saw my Orange Peel blocks waiting patiently and decided to get my supplies out. I hadn't had an appointment in a while, so they've been sitting stagnant for a little while (here's the last time you saw them!).

I really need to consider a bigger design wall. Lol

So for the past week or so, I've been snuggling under my Supernova and stitching like crazy on orange peel blocks. I absolutely LOVE where these blocks are headed, it's such a fun design so far! Depending on the night, I've made anywhere from one to nine blocks in a night. I'm a slow hand stitcher, but I like to settle in nice and cozy and relax with it. I get to watch my favorite Youtubers and sew, what could be better? :)

Hope you guys have had a good week, we're almost to the weekend! A quick note: My camera broke before taking these pictures, so you may notice a change in the quality of my photos. I'm not sure when a replacement camera will make it into my hands, so please bear with me! And also, a mandatory picture of my favorite fur-boys. :)

Not quite best friends, but we can get close to each other without war breaking out. :)

Linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday!

Throwback Thursday on a Saturday: The Beginning

It's that time of the month again! That's right, Jenn @ Quarter Inch From the Edge is hosting another link up for Throwback Thursday!

I've talked about this crazy little mess before here, but I didn't share any pictures. It's quite a travesty, but it still holds a bit of charm for me. Points are decapitated more often than not. I had no guidance on how to make a binding, so I just winged it (seems I've had that mindset from the beginning! Lol). I didn't know you could machine quilt either when I made this, so I rushed a crappy hand quilting job to be done within the time period I was given.

This originally just sat on my bookcase, but after I moved out of my parents' house, it became a mat for my sewing machine. It kept my machine from bouncing around when we had a glass topped desk and now makes it easy to slide it around on the card table I use. When I made this, I never realized it was laying the groundwork for where I am now! It's funny how things work out! There's still a little bit of time to link up with Jenn for Throwback Thursday (it ends tomorrow night!), so hop on over and share some of your quilty past with us! 

Missed Punchline: A Finished Quilt

I almost called this quilt 'Blank Spaces' but realized that Taylor Swift has a song or album or something by that name. And I like T. Swizz and all, but I just couldn't do it. I mulled over the name of this quilt for a while, knowing what I wanted to convey but not quite able to find the right combination of words to do so. And after all that, I left the name off the label. In fact, only you guys will know the name because I won't tell anybody in my family its title.

I decided to name this quilt 'Missed Punchline', not so much for the quilt but for the recipient. I touched lightly on the motivation behind this quilt here, but looking back, I was frustratingly vague and for that I apologize. I wasn't ready to lay my cards on the table then, but now I am.

This quilt is for my grandmother. We've never had the best relationship and for a long time, that really bothered me. As I grew up and became an 'adult', I came to terms with it and for the most part, I didn't let it bother me. Though it started slowly, my grandmother has been in a decline for about a year or so. Nobody in my family has told me specifically, but my grandmother has dementia or Alzheimer's (or are they the same thing? I need to educate myself on this more). And even though she has hurt me countless times in the past, my heart hurts for her in the most awful way. I can't imagine the frustration, confusion, and fear of slowly losing myself and not knowing while everybody around me seems to know exactly what is going on. That is where the name of this quilt came from. Sometimes when I'm with my grandmother, she will look around at everything, completely clueless but too afraid to say that she doesn't understand. It's like she's missed the punchline of a joke but just laughs along because everybody else is.

The quilt began out of necessity but I hated it early on. Every time I looked at it, it just made me mad. There were times I would just scowl at the blocks or the top, fuming at it for no reason. But as I worked my way through, it was sort of like I was letting go of all that stuff that was making me angry. The quilting especially was a favorite of mine. I'm not one for straight line quilting, but no other quilting was acceptable in my mind. And despite one wonky corner, this is the best quilt binding I've had I think. The label was like the cherry on top. I sat in the floor and stitched it on by hand, savoring every little stitch. By the time I was finished, this quilt made me smile in the most comforting way.

It's funny, this is my favorite picture of the whole shoot!

Though it isn't my style at all, I like this quilt. I like the snuggly flannel backing, the scrappy binding, and the fact that I remembered to put a label on it. I hope my grandmother likes it. I made it kind of small because she's a little lady and isn't the strongest, so I wanted her to be able to carry it around the nursing home if she gets cold (which she always is). I'm hoping to overcome my fear and go visit her this week with my mom. I want to give this quilt to her sooner rather than later, and I want to be the one to give it to her. She forgets me sometimes, but when she does remember me, I want it to be good things.

I feel so serious after typing all that, yikes! I promise I am smiling, especially after pestering everybody in the house with my latest finish. I made Mr. LBC and Elvis wear it like a cape, and LBC got a little snuggle with it before I hung it on my quilt ladder for safe keeping. I'm not sure what to do next, I have a few options to choose from. We'll just have to wait and see! Happy Sunday y'all!