New York Beauty Zip Pouch--Riley Blake Challenge

I finished up my little project for the MQG Riley Blake Challenge the other night.

  

I had been thinking about this idea for a little zip pouch for a while, and then realized the orange, yellow, and light blue challenge fabrics would work really well. I hand quilted it with orange, yellow, and aqua embroidery floss.

  

The back is another one of the challenge fabrics. This one is quilted with gray perle cotton. I quilted it while we watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

I made a big mistake when I was getting ready to assemble the bag, after the quilting was finished. I've made several zip pouches with machine quilting, and I always use my rotary cutter to trim the edges of the quilted pieces so they will be the same size. I didn't even think about it before I rotary cut some of the slightly crooked edges off the front piece for this bag... then I realized that cutting hand stitches is a bad idea. I ended up pulling out a couple inches from several rows of quilting, enough so I could tie a knot, and then requilting the areas I had needed to undo.

I'm glad I fixed it--the quilting stitches should all stay in place now--and I won't make that mistake again!

Valentines and Winner

I made some simple Valentines for my family today. We still have leftover pink construction paper from a birthday party a couple years ago, and I used a glue stick (to baste) and then free motion "quilted" the hearts to the paper. If my machine had been set up for regular sewing, I might have zigzagged them or done a cute decorative stitch.

  

Random.org says that the winner of the Seams Unlikely book giveaway is #2, Vicki W. I've already emailed her. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Seams Unlikely Book Review + Giveaway

I was asked to participate in the blog tour for Nancy Zieman's autobiography, Seams Unlikely: The Inspiring True Life Story of Nancy Zieman, and today's my turn to tell you what I thought.

And here's what I think: Nancy Zieman is an amazing example of hard work and determination and has endured significant physical and medical challenges to become one of the most recognized names in the sewing industry. She built Nancy's Notions, her sewing supply mail-order business, from the ground up starting in her basement, and has had a successful sewing television show for over 30 years. She is a true inspiration.

In her book, Nancy describes health challenges that started when she was a baby, including Bell's Palsy, knee problems, and multiple surgeries. She describes her life living on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and the work ethic instilled in her by her parents. I especially liked reading about her experiences in 4-H because I took sewing 4-H for four summers too--and I got an amazing education in apparel sewing through 4-H, even though I was so young.

It was very interesting to read about the growth of her business over time as technology changed and her customer base grew.

I appreciated reading about Nancy's family as well, and I loved the chapter near the end that described the adoption of her younger son (and her older son's reaction to the new baby... so, so sweet.) Nancy worked with her husband for many years and was honest about the challenges and benefits of them being in business together.

Visit Nancy's blog to read her explanation of why she wrote the book, and to enter in her giveaway of 20 copies of the book.

And I have a copy of the book to give away, too. Comment on this blog post and I'll choose a winner on February 14.

You can read more about Seams Unlikely at the other stops on the blog tour:

February 4          Nancy Zieman           http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog

February 5          Eileen Roche          http://dzgns.com/blog/

February 5          Pat Sloan          http://patsloan.typepad.com/

February 6          Melissa Stramel          http://melissaslilaclane.blogspot.com

February 6          The Long Ladies          http://www.mariemadelinestudio.typepad.com/

February 6          Tori Thompson          http://totallystitchin.net

February 7          Amy Barickman          http://www.indygojunction.com/blog/

February 7          Melissa Mora          http://mellysews.com

February 8          Shari Butler          http://www.doohikeydesignstudio.com/blog/

February 8          Vicki Christensen          http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/

February 9          Carolina Moore          http://alwaysexpectmoore.com

February 9          Kate Mclvor          https://theconfidentstitch.squarespace.com/blog/

February 10          Amy Ellis          http://amyscreativeside.com/blog/

February 10          Melissa Mortenson          http://www.polkadotchair.com

February 11          Ilene Miller          http://happyvalleyprimitives.blogspot.com/

February 11          Liz Hicks          http://blogerisms.blogspot.com/

February 11          Rachael Pannepacker          http://www.jaybirdquilts.com/

February 12          Bill Gardner          http://www.quiltersnewsletter.com/blogs/insideqn/

February 12          Elizabeth Evans          http://www.simplesimonandco.com

February 13          Amy Webb          http://www.amylouwhosews.com/

February 13          Lindsay Wilkes          http://thecottagemama.com/blog/

February 14          Gertie Hirsch          http://www.blogforbettersewing.com

February 14          Veronica Philips          http://cloverusa.wordpress.com/

February 15          Jenny Gabriel          http://www.sewvacoutletblog.com

February 15          Laura Wasilowski          http://artfabrik.blogspot.com/

February 16          Frieda Anderson          http://friestyle.blogspot.com/

February 16          Rita Farro          http://ritassewfun.blogspot.com

February 17          Cindy Cloward          http://www.rileyblakedesigns.com/blog/

February 17          Joan Hawley          http://www.lazygirldesigns.com/blog/

February 17          Patty Young          http://modkidboutique.blogspot.com

February 18          Nancy Zieman          http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog/

 
Disclosure--this blog post contains an affiliate link. I was given a free copy of the book. All opinions are my own.
Comments are now closed.

Seattle MQG Retreat

I spent this past weekend at the Seattle MQG retreat on Vashon Island. I had a great time, sewed a ton, ate good food that I didn't have to make, didn't sleep enough, and came home happy to see my family and watch the Big Game last night.

One of the things I've been wanting to make good progress on is my scrap block quilt. I started making 6.5" scrap blocks sometime in 2011(in Kansas) and have worked on them off and on since then. I've made about 35 since the end of December. Here's the final stack:

 

I had a number in mind when I was finishing up the light blues and dark blues, but I ended up with more than I expected. I had to make one more block at the retreat to finish up the last row, and it was kind of fun to use scraps that a few different people gave to me for that.

This is the final layout:

and then here's what it looked like all sewn together (but not pressed yet.)

 

This was an instagram photo and the bottom row is cut off. The quilt has 117 blocks in it.

I pressed all the row seams open this morning and I'm hoping to get it ready to quilt later on this week. 

I worked on a couple other things too, here's a few more scrappy trip along blocks:

 

I have 21 of them now, not sure how many I will end up with.

And I participated in a group Improv Round Robin session which was a ton of fun. We had groups of 4 people, and each person started with her own fabric and then passed it to the next person in the group a total of 3 times, so we all ended up working on each others' quilts. Here's my mini after Louise, Debbie, Chandra and I all worked on it:

I'm not sure if I'm going to add more piecing or not, but it's a beautiful start and it was so fun to work with my group on this. I think I'd like to do this on a bigger scale someday, too. 

Overall the retreat was such a good experience. I didn't know anybody in the group really well before going, but I feel like I made friends and it was so cool to get to know people better in a setting of sewing and chatting all day long.

 

Finished Christmas Pillow

I finished up this Christmas pillow cover yesterday. I had to take my sewing machine in for a tuneup early in December, and when I got it back home I thought I would have time to finish this up, but my machine started squeaking partway through the quilting. So it went back to the shop for another week. The second half of the quilting was squeak-free, thankfully.

I had originally thought I would make the pillow with big triangles on the front, but decided I liked the smaller ones better. I had a bunch of the large ones cut out though so I made the pillow back with them. The back pieces overlap by about 5.5" and are made of a double layer of fabric, but not quilted.

I kept the quilting pretty simple, I like it. 

I cut out a few quilt blocks while my machine was back in the shop and that's what I started working on today. I hope to have some more finished projects to share soon!

p.s. I edited my Made in 2013 post to actually show my mosaic, changes over at flickr have been messing up my blog a little bit! 

Made in 2013

Hello, and happy almost New Year! Here are most of the projects I finished up in 2013:

I finished up 6 quilts by May (one baby, one king, two twin and the other two in between) and then slowed down a little bit after that.

I feel the need to point out that I did the machine quilting but not the piecing on the blue quilt in the 3rd row down, and that the scrappy trip quilt (also on the 3rd row) was a collaborative quilt with my do good stitches bee.

My main sewing machine has been out of commission for most of December and I've been sewing scrap blocks with my Hello Kitty machine (an accurate seam allowance is less important for these blocks.) I'm getting really close to having enough of them for a throw-size quilt and hope to show them here on the blog soon. Or you can pop over to instagram if you want to see sooner.

I have some cool things I've been working on that I'm excited to share during the first few months of 2014 so stick around, ok? I'm hoping my sewing machine comes back from the shop (again) very soon and that it will be functional and not squeaky so I can get lots of stitches in soon. Happy New Year!!

Finished Red & White Scraps Quilt

(I am challenged when it comes to creative names for quilts, I know.)

I finished up my red and white quilt for the Seattle MQG Binary Challenge a week and a half ago.

 

For binding, I used a white fabric that has textured dots for the binding. With three tiny red segments on the left. 

Here are some close-ups of the machine quilting:

 

 

 

I added some more red hand quilting after I took this photo.

The binary quilts will be on display at Island Quilter in January; I'll let you know as soon as I find out the exact dates.

The winner of my giveaway was #97, Heather. I've already sent her magazine on its way.

Happy quilting!

Happy Giveaway Day!

Happy giveaway day!
Twice a year, the folks at Sew, Mama, Sew host a big giveaway day, where lots of sewing bloggers give away sewn items or sewing supplies. This time I have a copy of the newest issue of Modern Patchwork to give away.

 

This issue of Modern Patchwork has instructions for a pillow I designed. I still think the block would look good made up into a quilt... maybe someday.

This giveaway is open to anyone living on planet earth.

To enter, please leave a comment on this blog post telling me something interesting. (Something more than "pick me!")

The giveaway will be open until December 13, 2013 at 5 p.m. PST.

I'll notify the (randomly chosen) winner by December 15, 2013.

Good luck with all the giveaways!

Scrap Rainbow Double Wedding Ring

Hi everyone! I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. We got together with a group of friends and had a great time with delicious food. And games and movie watching too. It's been nice to have a little vacation and some extra sewing time.

I spent most of the last two days working on my quilt for the double wedding ring challenge put on by NYC Metro Mod Quilters, and got it finished around 9 p.m. last night.

 

It's another project made almost entirely from my scrap bags. 

My friends on facebook and instagram cheered me on as I shared progress pics. Here's one that shows the pieced white centers a little better:

 

Sewing all those curves was not easy. I did a lot of pinning. At the beginning, I had to unpick small sections on almost every curved seam, but I got better at it as I worked through the project. I used the Simpli-EZ double wedding ring template and I have a couple questions about it if there are any experts out there reading this. First, I had to change my machine settings to increase my seam allowance a bit so the pieced arcs would fit the little melon pieces. (I usually put my Janome on 4.2 for a 1/4" seam but for this project it needed to be on 4.0.) And then the weird thing for me was that after I sewed on the first arc to the melon, the narrow ends of those melon pieces had a little chunk slightly larger than 1/8" sticking out and I wasn't sure exactly what I was supposed to do with it. I looked at a couple videos specifically about this template but they didn't show the up close details, just the general construction information.

Anyway, I made it work. I'm looking forward to getting the single arc template and trying another double wedding ring.

The quilting was fun. :D

I quilted a different filler design in each of the four ring centers, flowers in the squares (not easy to see though), S-curves in the melons, and loopy zigzags in the arcs.

clamshells, swirls

 

echoing, pebbles 

I had a hard time deciding on the binding but went with red because I thought it would look good and there is only one red arc in the quilt. And because I had red on hand. I got other good suggestions from friends--I think a dark purple or a black with a multicolor print would have looked great too. I got a little worried about the red after the binding was sewn on by machine but before I had it hand sewn down to the back--it was too much red and I thought I might need to redo the binding. I kept going though and decided it looks a lot better sewn down than it did before that step was completed. 

Binary Challenge

Seattle MQG's next quilt exhibit at Island Quilter is coming up and our challenge this time for quilts was 2-color quilts, aka the Binary Challenge.

I had red and white on my mind and decided to make my quilt with scraps. My scraps are all stored in those large ziploc bags (why do we call them gallon size? because they are not) and my white bag was completely full. I don't have a ton of reds but I went through my red scraps and found the fabrics that were only red and white, with no other colors.

Here's a collage of my instagram photos taken as I made the blocks and figured out the quilt layout:

I still had a lot of white scraps so I made the back with scraps, too:

 

And then last week I quilted it. I did some hand quilting with red embroidery floss, and then machine quilted.

 

 

It still needs binding and a little more red hand quilting, but I'm happy with it so far!

Halloween Wrap-up

We had a busy week or so of Halloween celebrations including a school party, preschool wear-your-costume-to-school day, church party, and the actual day of trick-or-treating. It was fun but I'm glad it's over.

I quilted my pumpkin mini-quilt at a Seattle MQG sew-in and got it bound and on my wall a couple weeks ago.

 

I made the leaf quilt in either 2010 or 2009. It has been fun to see all the modern maples quilts on instagram and blogs the last couple weeks. My maple is a little different, and smaller, but I love the big block and autumn colors people have been using in their modern maple quilts.

I've been cross stitching but it is slow going.

I got about half way done with my Halloween sampler and decided to take a break from it and work on my Woodland Sampler again. I took a photo of my Woodland Sampler but the fabric weave made the photo all crazy so I'll try again soon so I can show that off here. The Frosted Pumpkin has some cute Christmas patterns coming out soon, but I want to finish up the two samplers I have started before I start something else.

And I made a mermaid costume. I made the mermaid skirt based on this tutorial, with a couple small changes.

For the mermaid top, I used an Ottobre pattern to make a velour tank top. I winged it for the flounce/peplum, and then started to do a rolled hem with my serger but it was bunchy and yucky so I cut it off and left it unhemmed. Here's my girl wearing both parts of the costume:

She had pink hair and wore a cute wreath/crown thing in her hair along with her costume for the church party. Her hair is still a bit pink; that stuff takes a while to wash out. Here's what all three kids wore out trick-or-treating on Halloween.

 

We had a joker thing going on with the boys, and my girl decided to wear a princess costume (I think that's what she called it) instead of the mermaid which she had already worn twice by then.

The candy is mostly gone! and things are pretty good. The girl had a 12 hour tummy bug but she's feeling a lot better. I'm working on a couple quilts and ordered the template so I can make my Double Wedding Ring Challenge quilt.

Scrappy trips for Do Good Stitches

Hi friends! I am late to the party but wanted to get my blog post up before the Bloggers' Quilt Festival deadline. Looking back, I realized I've only completed two quilts since the last Quilt Festival in May, so I decided to finally finish up my scrappy trip-along quilt.

 

I made two of the blocks in this quilt and had my friends in the Believe circle of Do Good Stitches make two block each as well. For the color scheme, I asked for red, yellow, blue, a neutral (white, black, tan, off-white), and an obvious dark or light for the center diagonal. 

After I received all the blocks, I laid them on my design floor and sewed them up in that first layout. It's kind of hard to mess up this design. :)

Then, last summer, I took it with me to Utah and quilted it on my mom's longarm. Which was fun... but I ran into a snag because my backing fabric wasn't long enough. It would have been fine for pin-basting and quilting on my domestic machine, but it should have been a few inches longer to work right with a longarm setup. So after we came home, I put it away for a while. But all I had to do to finish quilting the last few inches was sew a small additional piece of fabric to the back, do 5 minutes of quilting, and then it was ready to bind. It feels good to finish up a quilt again!

I quilted it mostly with loops but also tried out a few swirls and other designs too. It was much faster to quilt this way than my normal quilting set up, but also a bit challenging because of the differences.

I really like how it turned out and how gray-day photos sometimes look better than you think they will.

If you want to make a quilt like this, check out the tutorial by Bonny from Quiltville. 

Please visit Amy's site and check out all the other quilts! Thanks, Amy, for all the hard work that goes into hosting Blogger's Quilt Festival for us!

Basting and stitching

One thing I don't think I've shared here yet is the cross stitching I've been doing for the last few months. I subscribed to the Frosted Pumpkin's Woodland Sampler at the end of June, and decided to do their Halloween sampler too. Their patterns are so cute and I've had fun stitching them up. Here's my Halloween sampler so far:

 

I am using a fabric color called "stormy night" and I think it's perfect for this project. I stitched some more of the lacy border today and am ready to start the next square. 

I have a couple of small things pin-basted and ready to quilt, too.

Here's my second HST pillow top:

 

I think I used the darks from this fabric collection better in this design. Still not sure how I will quilt it.

And I made a little pumpkin last week. I copied the idea from Amy at Diary of a Quilter; she posted it on her blog last year and I had put it on my Halloween pinterest page.

It's going to be a little wall hanging. I'm going to the Seattle MQG sew-in tomorrow, maybe I'll do the quilting while I'm there.

We had a family outing to the Halloween store yesterday; my girl got really scared and we decided I'm making her a mermaid costume for Halloween this year. I'll let you know how it goes. 

HSTs and Value

I made this pillow a couple weeks ago with half-square triangles cut from my PB&J layer cake. I was going for a zigzag look but the values in these fabrics didn't really work well for that. I still like the pillow though.

 

So yesterday I decided to try again. This will be another pillow the same size as the first, but hopefully the design I am making with the triangles this time will show up better.

 

And if not, I am learning about value and how it works and how being limited to a fabric line can make a project like this a bit more challenging.

Jan's Quilt

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a good fall. We are adjusting pretty well here to a busier schedule. My 4-year-old is in preschool this year and I'm dealing with different leave and get home times for all 3 kids. Things are good though and everyone is happy to be back in the swing of things.

A while back I finished up and photographed a quilt that I quilted for my friend Jan. This quilt is a true twin size, around 90" x 70", so I had my boys stand up on the rock ledge in our yard to hold up the quilt for photos:

 

(one boy is shorter than the other, we tried to get the quilt even and this is the best we could do)

The quilt top was made a long time ago by the grandmother of one of Jan's good friends. I made a back for it, and then quilted it. Here's the back:

 

I had fun working on this for Jan; we worked together on choosing the main back fabric and then I came up with the creative part of the back with the red strip and log cabin block. I like how it turned out, but I think it would have been better if I had made the log cabin block a few inches larger.

Madrona Log Cabins

I finished up my Madrona Road log cabin wall-hanging quilt the other day.

 

It's made with the scraps from my other Madrona Road project. (That one's still not quilted yet.) I quilted some paisley/clam shells in the gray background. The thread's a little darker, I like how it makes the quilting stand out a little.

 

The log cabin blocks have different quilting in each round, done in off white thread. Maybe I should take a photo of the back so you can see the quilting.

I didn't have a lot of the binding fabric so I went with a single fold binding this time. I think it turned out ok and is a good choice for a wall hanging or  other mini quilt. 

Moving right along...

First of all, I broke my toe yesterday. It hurts but not nearly as much as the broken/crushed fingertip of 2012. I accidentally bumped it into the door jamb on my way to the laundry room. I saw an orthopedic doctor today and he thinks it should heal up without surgery (whew). So I'm keeping it taped to its neighbor, wearing an ugly hard uncomfortable velcro shoe, and thinking healing thoughts.

Some other stuff happened this week--we went to the EMP Museum on Monday and saw lots of cool stuff like stakes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a Dalek and Star Trek paraphernalia and lots of clothing of Women Who Rock (my daughter LOVED the frothy pink Loretta Lynn gown). A replica of a meat dress, even. Oh yeah, and Princess Bride stuff! It was pretty amazing. Buttercup's wedding gown is beautiful.

Then school started on Wednesday, for my boys. Here's hoping for a very good school year for them both.

Last weekend I went to a Seattle MQG sew-in; it was pretty fun. I finished up 4 x-plus blocks, one scrappy trip block, and started some selvage Christmas ornaments. I had a good time visiting with friends too, it is so good to get to know people a little better and there are some way cool people in that group.

So here is my sewing photo catch-up:

x-plus blocks 9-13

 

x-plus blocks 14-17

Unswapped berry-colored selvage potholders--I made these for the September Seattle MQG meeting but it was on the first day of school, which was the night before the first early middle school day, and I felt like I needed to stay home and do bedtime with my kids. We're trying hard to get really solidly into our routine and I think it will help a lot. So I didn't swap my potholders. Maybe there will be some others that still need to swap next time. Or maybe I'll just keep them. I like them.

 

I have a few projects I'm thinking about while I'm resting my poor foot (and not driving places.)
The Double Wedding Ring challenge
Two color quilt challenge for Seattle MQG
Submissions for a certain magazine
And a secret project that I'm not all the way sure about doing yet.

I'm also finally watching the most recent season of Dr. Who and rereading The Graveyard Book. 

What are your plans for the month?

Summer Dress

Remember this dress?

I finally finished it up with the bodice from the original pattern.

I like it a lot better now. It is not the best time of year to finish up a summer dress, but the bodice is very wide and it will fit my daughter for sure next year so I'm not too worried about it. 

A couple things--I didn't have enough of the right interfacing so I used muslin instead of interfacing the bodice. I don't know if I would recommend that but it worked out ok for now. I also didn't do the straps exactly as recommended in the pattern, but they turned out just fine as well.


The pattern is from Ottobre Design 3/2006, #22. My daughter likes it, a lot!

Sewing with Mom

Mom and I had some time to sew together last week before she and my dad left to go home.

I had bought a new pack of bar-mop dishtowels and we embellished them with strips of tumblers:

 

We started out with the turquoise/salmon fabrics and then I dumped out my scrap bin looking for the leftover tumblers I'd saved from earlier projects. I found them and we added them into the mix. Mom took two of these home and I kept two.

We also made some more scrap blocks to add to my pile. I got out my bag of pink scraps and mom matched up fabrics and I sewed and pressed. We ended up with 8 blocks.

 

These were fun to make as a team. It's a lot faster that way too, at least for me. I might over think things a little when I make these on my own.

Here's an old blog post showing most of my scrap blocks. I've made a bunch more since then, and it might be time to lay them out and look at my progress again. Maybe it's almost time to make them into a quilt. :)

Japanese X and + blocks

I've wanted to make an x plus quilt for quite a while and I started making my blocks last week. So far I've finished eight of them.

 

I've used a lot of red and yellow so far, and no orange at all. I have a 2009 inspired Brown block coming up soon. (Remember when that was the popular quilting neutral??)

I am following the tutorial (and original measurements) on Badskirt Amy's blog. I made a couple of these blocks for a bee in a larger size, but I like the 8" block better.

Also, I started a Pinterest board with my favorite x + quilts/projects, if you want to check that out.

My parents have been visiting for the past several days and we went north and spent some perfect time at a beach and went on a whale-watching tour. We went over to Pike Place Market with them yesterday and it was a lot of fun. (They ate their first gyro sandwiches, yum.) I am enjoying this summer a lot more than last year when I was having the summer of pain after breaking my finger. Mom and I are going to do a fun little project; I am breaking out the Go! Baby to cut some tumblers....