Around the World Blog Hop

I was nominated by the lovely Jessica at Quilty Habit to participate in the Around the World Blog Hop!

In addition to the questions, I'll do a brief re-introduction of myself!

I'm Alison, married to Park Ranger Husband, currently looking for a job, have been sewing since my mother let me touch the needles and thread, have been quilting since I was 15, from Michigan, living in Maryland, and I have a bunny named Clara. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll get to see lots of pictures of Clara, sometimes she "helps" with my quilting. I also own and design patterns and quilts with my mom and sister under the name Honey, Bunny, and Doll Quilts. I'm the Bunny of the trio.

On to the real questions!

1. What am I working on?
A lot of things, actually. The last two days have been spent doing hand binding on a baby quilt (that I will post the finish of tomorrow!) and a gigantic queen sized (or maybe bigger?) quilt that I started an embarassingly long time ago and am just now finishing. It has been sitting in our apartment since May just waiting for binding.

I just finished this one! Hooray!

This is sitting on my floor taunting me right now.

I'm also working on finishing up a set of 12 inch blocks that I made in conjunction with a quilt along that I just hosted. I ended up planning this quilt along to have 12 blocks and I ended up being able to make 25 blocks from the fat eighth bundle that I was using. Hooray! Now I have to figure out how to set it. Here's the first 16 blocks that I posted for tutorials here on the blog:

I am also participating in the Wishes QAL hosted by the Fat Quarter Shop and the Sew Kitschy QAL hosted by Kristi at Quiet Play. Here are my most recent blocks from August:

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I'm not "stuck" making any one type of quilt. I make the quilts that I want to make regardless of how modern/traditional it is. I purposefully try to challenge myself to advance my skills as a quilter and not be stuck in a rut making the same types of quilt over and over again. I purposely learned to paper piece so I could make the Harry Potter Project of Doom.

I also am very apt to take a pattern and use a completely different color scheme. Some quilters aren't always inclined to do that and have always loved the outcome when I've done that. I think it's fun to envision those kinds of things and helps me put my own twist on things. The original pattern for my Twist of Lime quilt showed the quilt in red, white, and blue!

I make a lot of baby quilts because everyone we know is having babies, so I get to try a lot of different patterns and blocks. It also helps me work on my free-motion quilt skills on something I can easily manage on my home machine.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?
As I mentioned before, I create the things I want to create and in the beginning of quilting, every quilt that I made was for myself so I obviously had to like it! Lots of times I'm inspired by one fabric and then build a fabric pile around it and find a quilt to fit it.

As far as writing this blog goes, I started blogging about my quilts and quilting adventures my second year of grad school because I had no one to share it with in real life -- I lived alone, didn't go out much, and most of my grad school classmates would think my hobby was goofy. I try to be as genuine as possible in my writing and be honest when I'm stuck, when I'm having trouble, or if I'm just waiting for the mailman to come with the fabric that I need!

I've been blogging for over three years now, and I'm still not the best at documenting my process. I'll admit it and it's something I'm working on.

4. How does my writing/creating process work?
As far as creating goes, if it is something I am designing from scratch, I do a lot of quilt math. I really, really, really enjoy the math part and I know that's weird! I'll be perfectly honest that I'm a quilter on a budget and I try to maximize what I make with what I have and figure out the best sizes of blocks to use.

Sometimes I get bored making the same block or block unit over and over again for more traditional quilts so I have to switch around and not just sew HSTs for two days straight. That, to me, is torture. I did that  a lot when I was putting the blocks together for my two mystery quilts that I made from Quiltmaker magazine.

I also don't quilt for quantity. We have more quilts than we could ever use and I don't think I'm half as prolific as some of the other bloggers out there. I don't want to make something just to make it, and I'm not interested in mass producing simple quilts.

I write as I go with my projects. I don't usually work on things and schedule posts ahead of time (unless they are QAL posts) and blog about things that I completed weeks ago unless it's something I can't show right away because it is a gift.

I'm nominating Audrey from Hot Pink Quilts and Sarah from Berry Barn Designs!