another new project

Let's see how well cell phone pictures look here on the blog.

I've been arranging the pieces for a circle quilt. My sister-in-law Amy C. (I have a SIL named Amy T. too) is having a baby girl this summer. This is going to be her quilt! This was the very quick I-finally-got-all-96-pieces-cut-out layout.

Here it is after I changed it up a bit.

Amy said she liked the first one better. What I'm going to do is sew together all the quarter-circle and background square units so I have 48 pieces to deal with and then work on arranging them from that point.

Something I thought about while I was cutting these was doing a little tutorial for how to make your own template to make this quilt block. And maybe my technique for cutting them, too. Is anyone interested in seeing something like that here?

May blogging events

There are a couple of quilt-bloggy things coming up in May that I wanted to make sure everyone knows about!

Sew, Mama, Sew is hosting another giveaway day! Click on the graphic above to get all the details. If you don't already know about this, here's what it is: hundreds of bloggers will be hosting giveaways of handmade items or supplies for making things. It is a great way to find out about blogs you might not have known about before and I love entering lots of giveaways. The giveaways will be open until May 20 so you have a few days to browse all the crafty giveaway goodness. I don't have any idea what I should give away, does anyone have any suggestions for me?

And, we've all been waiting for it... on May 21st, Amy will be hosting the third Blogger's Quilt Festival. I just finished something today that I'm saving up to share that day. Again, hundreds of bloggers will be participating, and there will be prizes. I can't wait to see everyone's quilts!

placemat quilt swap 3

My partner received the little quilt I made for placemat quilt swap 3 today. Here's the big reveal:

The photo is a little washed out from too-bright sunlight. I am learning.... and hey you get a good view of the quilting in this shot, right? If you want to see it in better light, click here. Much better, huh?

My partner asked for "romantic pinks and greens" and I really like how this turned out. The star block was improvised, meaning I did not do any math before starting it (or while making it, really). I just started out with a 5 inch square and went from there.  I tried to make the pink triangles just fit the rectangles they are a part of, and because of this they don't have the "proper" angle that is usually found in this type of block.

This quilt was made completely from fabrics in my stash. I think if I did it again I might go get a couple of new greens because a couple of them don't blend really well. But overall, I do like it and think it turned out ok even if some of the greens were a little off. 

Here's the back:

This is my second UFO finish for the spring to finish challenge. I am working on finishing the binding for a 3rd and have the binding ready to attach to a 4th project. It feels good to get things done!

My ugly quilt

Natalia from Piece N Quilt is hosting an ugly quilt contest. I think it's a great idea! I've blogged about my ugly quilt before, it's also my first quilt.

I decided to take a new picture of it.

I had clothes made from at least two of these fabrics; maybe my mom can chime in if she remembers making clothes out of these fabrics for us. Or did Grandma make them? I had an outfit (pants and a vest maybe?) made from the turquoise print in the top left corner when I was 5, and lovely pants made from the fuschia/purple color that I remember from 3rd grade. In fact, that's when my mom chopped them off below the knee and made them into super-cute knickers. Come on, I know I'm not the only one that had knickers. These ones had a gold snap at each knee.

Anyway. Back to the contest. You can enter any time between now and May 11. Prizes will be gift certificates to Piece N Quilt. Go here to find out more about entering!

the winner!

Oops, I didn't get to this yesterday, sorry about that. Thanks everyone for entering, and for telling me more about yourselves. I actually have quite a few more pairs of novelty squares that I am thinking of giving away also, so watch for another giveaway in the next few weeks.

The winner is number 30, Mom on the Move! I'll be emailing you shortly to get your address!

I hope everyone's having a good weekend! I got a bunch of quilting and cutting done for a couple different projects yesterday. 

This is how the world went. (and some sewing, of course)

My middle child is almost 6. Here's what he told me the other day:
"Mom, I know how the world went. First there were dinosaurs, then Jesus. Then pyramids, then Indians, and finally electronics."

I tried to tell this to my friend, but I couldn't remember the whole thing. I did remember "first dinosaurs and then Jesus" (how could I forget that?); anyway I asked him to tell it to me again today, and this time he said "I'm going to leave out the pyramids, because they were at the same time as the Indians." So this time, it went: dinosaurs, Jesus, Indians, and then electronics.

This is the same boy who asked, a few weeks ago, "What is this At-um word I keep seeing everywhere?!" We had to explain what an ATM was. I love him so much.

Ok, moving right along... here are a couple of things I've been doing this week. Finally mailed out my April bee blocks, and I also made up some blocks for this project:

Yes I waited until rather close to the deadline. Maybe when I do my project like this (in the fall) I will have a fake deadline and then a real deadline for all the procrastinators.

I am also just about ready to send out my swap quilt for PQS3. Here's a picture of part of the back. I'm almost done sewing the binding down:

The sort of homespun woven green fabric there is from my very first quilt shop fabric purchase, oh so long ago. I'll be able to show the front of the quilt sometime next week, after it makes the trip to my swap partner's house.

I am quilting my Downy quilt now, and thinking about my UFO list and what to do next.

Don't forget to scroll down to the next post for my giveaway, if you're interested! I'll close comments and pick a random winner on Saturday night. Hope you're having a great Thursday!

Oh yeah, I have to share one more thing. This is hilarious--someone linked to it on facebook. You have to go read this, especially if you are a fan of the Mom jeans SNL commercial: Mom jeans and the dreaded long butt. I don't want to ruin it for you, but the section on grandma jeans KILLED ME. So funny.

spring giveaway

A long time ago, I made this quilt:

And I was new to quilting and had the crazy idea that I might make two of them. Because I kind of went to some trouble to find all those different novelty prints, I guess. So I cut out parts for two quilts.

But I never made the second one, and I don't want to. I still have everything for that second quilt top though, except the rainbow border fabric. I've thought about giving it away for a while, and today I went to my bin of ancient projects and got it out.

There are 24 pairs of novelty prints, a stack of purple rectangles for separating the novelty fabrics, some green strips, 1 1/4 (or so--I didn't measure) yards of the green, and some red/white heart print for binding. I'm sorry about the lack of rainbow border fabric, but glad I used it all up in some other projects. :)

If you want this sort-of quilt top kit, please just leave a comment on this post. I'd love it if you want to tell me your name and where you live and something fun you've made lately. I'll pick a winner sometime on Saturday, May 1.

**Comments are closed now, thanks for entering!**

something to look forward to

Sometimes for fun, I like to visit the "coming soon" section at fatquartershop.com. I'm always interested in what the next Basic Grey line will look like. Over the weekend, I saw a few new things to get a little excited about:

New, fall-ish basic grey line. I am not in a fall colors mood right now, but I think this collection will grow on me.
There is also a new line by Lila Tueller coming out, Spirit:

It's kind of hard to get the feel of how these fabrics look from this small image, so I was glad to see more pictures of these fabrics (some made into various clothing items) on Lila Tueller's blog. I love the rust and deep turquoise colors together. And the brown. And, there's going to be twill.

Oh yeah, there's also a new American Jane line, punctuation: 

I love those tickets!

PQS3. And more.

I had so much fun making my little quilt for DQS8 that I decided to join in the placemat quilt swap put on by Sarah of house of krom. This one is a one-to-one swap, and my partner is on. the. ball. I got my little quilt from her today:

Isn't it cute! I love the prairie points, I've got to try those one of these times. It was made by Ruth, aka ruthiequilts (link goes to her flickr stream).

So I have been imagining her quilt in my head. I finally pulled fabric for it the other day:

She said she likes romantic pinks and greens, I think I can make something cute with these. (It doesn't have to be mailed until the beginning of May, I still have time!)

In other news, most of my sewing time this week was spent doing this:

The trick to quilting with the walking foot and not having shifting problems, at least for this quilt, was to loosen up my presser foot pressure a bit. There are a few places in this quilt where parts were eased to fit and could have been a problem to quilt, but the quilting went really well and I didn't have the shifting I had on my last quilt. I need to pull out the user manual for my Janome (I used the Viking to quilt this one) and figure out how to adjust the presser foot pressure on it for the next time I do straight line quilting.


I did find time to switch out my walking foot for the quarter inch foot and make my blocks for The Block Swap 2.

I had to add the blue outer strips on the left block because I mis-measured and it came out just a smidge too small. I kind of like it though, and think this might make a cool block even if done on purpose. These blocks will go to Jennie of Sunflower Quilts.

Spring to Finish

Yep, Jacquie is at it again. She's heading up another UFO challenge with some prizes to inspire but is also encouraging everyone to plan rewards for themselves.

I am in the middle of finishing the mother of all UFOs at the moment (it needs 27 more lines quilted), I have some other old projects I'd like to get done, some newer things that need to get done, and I'm feeling like I'm making progress.

My reward. Make that multiple, rewards. In my comment on Jacquie's post, I said I would start my 5 year old's monkey quilt. But then I remembered yesterday that I have been telling myself for months that as soon as I finish my watercolor quilt I'm going to start a Dear Jane quilt. And finally, I would really like to make the skirt from Alabama Stitch Book too. So, more projects that will most likely take a while to finish. Oh well, that's part of the fun.

So--I have 8 UFOs. I wonder how many of them I can finish before May 15?

Do you have any unfinished projects? Head on over to Jacquie's and join in the challenge!

p.s. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAN!!
p.p.s. Happy Birthday to my Grandpa Taylor, too! He's 94 years old now and probably won't read this. :D

squeaking in a wordless Wednesday post.

:)

sew and tell Friday--quilt top!

I just finished up this quilt top. I really, really like it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet... it isn't for anyone in particular. I could donate it, there are a couple different options that I'm aware of right now for that. Or maybe I'll just keep it. I don't feel like I made much of a dent in my stack of vintage sheet fat quarters, so I think I'm going to try some other ideas with these fabrics soon.

I'm almost ready to start quilting my watercolor quilt--just need to go buy thread. I ended up going with pin basting, what can I say, I was afraid to try something new (spray basting or fusing) with this particular project. I'm going to quilt it with my trusty old Viking, with the presser foot pressure loosened, and hope that I can avoid any obvious shifting.

I'm linking up over at sew -n- tell Friday, go see what everyone's been working on this week! Hope you have a great weekend!

4 blocks

I made these blocks from my vintage sheet fat quarters this afternoon. I didn't even know I had that bird fabric... there were only 2 good repeats of it on the piece I had so I had to make a bird block. The next batch will start with my "darker" fabrics in the center and outside. They are going to end up at 12.5" square, I haven't trimmed them yet though.

My deep thoughts about log cabin blocks--every time I make them, especially improvised ones, I think the inner fabric choices are so important and then it turns out that the outer strips really make up so much more of the block than the inner parts. Maybe I need to plan from the outside in one of these times.

Saturday catch-up

I've been on a bit of a computer fast this week; as soon as I decided I was going to really cut down my computer time on Wednesday, my computer stopped working. So. There you go. It has been a good thing but made it harder to post on the blog.

I have been working on a few small things--a friend from church bought the supplies to make a bunch of blankets for Heart to Heart International and asked me to sew them up. I made 3 of them, and gave 3 more to another friend who said she'd help.

This is the first time I've used the satin blanket binding, and it's not too hard, but it takes some time. What I did was trim the two fabric layers, pin the binding on one side, then go sew it. Then I went back and smoothed it out on the living room floor again and pinned the next side. Repeat until done. I did one each day for 3 days.

I also made these blocks for Audrie who is the April gal in the bee beautiful group. These seemed pretty easy at first, but when I put the last seam in the first block, it was a little unfortunate. I had to redo it this morning and it turned out better. The secret is to make sure the pieced sections really are exactly the size of the template before sewing. Anyway, they are done and they didn't take a lot of deep thinking which is good some of the time, you know?

Speaking of online quilting bees... I saw this site on one of the blogs in my reader this afternoon. Quiltingbeeblocks.com is a site explaining virtual quilting bees--it has a directory of many of the bees that are going on, explanations of just what a virtual quilting bee is and how to start one, links to block tutorials and more. They also have a flickr group and they are having a big giveaway right now too! I'm looking forward to browsing the quilt blocks in the flickr group and seeing what so many quilters have been up to in their bees.

And finally, just wanted to share a little sneak peek of something I made for someone.

Going to get it in the mail really soon, I hope. I'll show the whole thing soon.

what to buy in April

Look what I came across the other day... April is supposedly a good month to find deals on fabric. Who knew?

I finished up a new charm pack dress for Lauren today. The fabric is Eden by Lila Tueller.

My charm pack dress tutorial is here, if you're interested. If you do make one of these dresses, I'd love to see a picture!

finally... finished baby quilt!

I finally got the last few inches of binding sewn down on this quilt tonight:

I'm going to wash and dry it, get a label on it, and mail it to its owner right away!

The quilting was done in sort of straight lines, some of them doubled up, in a grid. I thought I (pin) basted pretty well and I used my walking foot, but there were still some issues with the layers shifting as I quilted. I am looking for any suggestions or advice about improving my straight line quilting, because I am hoping to quilt my watercolor quilt next, and I was thinking (hoping) diagonal straight lines would be a good choice.

Here's a better view of the block I put in the back.

I also got some other things done in the last couple days:

Blocks for a charity quilt that the bee beautiful group is collaborating on.

And, jam. I made it with the quick set freezer method. My first time. Strawberries were on sale! I'm going to make another batch, probably in the morning.

Things are working out a bit better here this week and I'm actually going to post my link over at sew -n- tell Friday. Go see what else people are sharing!

quilting progress

I love how the color came out in this picture, I had just perfect lighting in the kitchen. I'm quilting a double grid, and it still needs some more lines but I ran out of thread. So I decided to make my binding. Here's what Sissy did with it when I was done piecing it together:

She cracks me up sometimes. Don't worry, I kept an eye on her the whole time she had this safety hazard around her neck.

sewing and telling

I'm in a little bit of a finishing mood lately.

Yesterday I made these bloomers and also did the buttonholes and sewed buttons on this dress. I have a new pair of ruffly socks for my girl to wear with her new outfit this Sunday!

I finished up my March block for Angela in my bee beautiful group. She requested an improvised, but all "90 degree" block. I love these fabrics and colors!

I also put together the back for my nephew Landon's Oh Boy quilt. I think I'm on this project now until it is all the way done and sent off to him. He's 9 months old, it's about time. My other sister-in-law should soon be finding out if the next cousin for my kids will be a boy or a girl, so I will have a new baby quilt to plan for and get going on in the next few weeks!

Don't forget to stop by Amy's blog to and check out sew and tell Friday!

and... we're back

So, spring break is over--we came back from our little trip last night and the boys are going back to school tomorrow. It was nice to get away but it wasn't the most spring-like weather--it got very cold and snowed a couple inches. We came home to about 4" of snow on our lawn.

I visited a couple of quilt shops and my favorite was Charlotte's Sew Natural. Here's what I got there:

The four fat quarters on the left are from the Dolce line by Tanya Whelan. I think they're so pretty. And I had to get the stripes and dots from Heather Ross's Lightning bugs collection too.

The fuschia in these goes well with some other fabrics I got a while back from Sew, Mama, Sew:

These are from the Timber line by Jessica Levitt and all of these prints (ok, not so much the pear tree) remind me of learning about them in botany classes in college. Gingko, magnolia, maple. The Norway maple tree was the first plant I ever identified using my dichotomous key, A Utah Flora. My university also has ginkgo and magnolia trees on campus. Magnolias are among the most primitive of the flowering plants. And the ginkgo is cool because it was thought to be extinct, and it is unique in the plant kingdom. I could go on, but I have wild children here who need to be put to bed.

I finished up my quilt top for quilts for kids today. Here it is before I added the borders:

A quick note about my watercolor quilt--a couple of people asked if I could do a tutorial on it, and I can't do that because it is from a pattern written by somebody else. The pattern was in the May 1999 issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine--it is called Colourwash Checkerboard and was designed by Deirdre Amsden. That back issue is sold out on the QNM website, but you might be able to find it elsewhere. I was able to find a book by Amsden, Colourwash Quilts: A Personal Approach to Design & Technique, at Amazon. It's out of print but there are quite a few used copies for sale. If any of you get this book and make your own watercolor quilts, please let me know!

I have been working on a little flock of chickens today, maybe I'll show you tomorrow.

spring break

So we are off on a little family bonding vacation. I brought my hexagons along but haven't done anything with them yet. I spent a lot of time with my math/logic puzzle book today. I decided to cheat a little and I think I'm actually learning how to do these puzzles better by reading the explanations in the back.

There are a few quilt shops where we are and I have kind of high hopes for the one I want to go to tomorrow. Maybe I will have some fabric pictures to show....

I wanted to mention Quilting Stash again, it's a great quilting podcast and blog produced by Annie Smith. I mentioned this podcast the other night at the KC Modern Quilt Guild and nobody in my group seemed to know about it. I listened to the newest Quilting Stash podcast last night; it's all about quilting books, including some history books and using your library to get quilting magazines to read. I'm totally going to see if my library has quilt magazine back issues I can borrow.

Hope you're having a good week--have you read any good quilting books lately? Or non-quilting books? I have.

early spring sewing

So I've been working on some small things here.

This is my March block for Block Swap 2. It is going to Carin of Margaret's Hope Chest and will be part of a "man quilt". Margaret's Hope Chest is a wonderful organization that gives quilts to people in difficult situations. Please go look at their website, and if you want to know more about them, you can go listen to their (Carin and her mom's) interview with Jennifer of the CraftSanity podcast.

We are in the midst of spring break here, and my kids made some finger puppets yesterday. My 9-year-old boy did these with minimal supervision (apparently he even has hot glue gun skills now.)

I am almost done with my block for my other bee, but I decided to start something new for myself instead of finishing that up today. I got a Neptune honey bun with my birthday money and knew I was going to make pillows for my bed with it. This morning, I saw this cute project on Moda Bake Shop and decided to use that block idea for one of my pillows. These little guys are made entirely out of 3.5" strips. I'm not sure how I'll put it all together, but I like what I have so far.

watercolor quilt back

So... I finished up the back for my watercolor quilt.

This took some time... steps included sewing the rainbow strips, sewing the siggies all together (after unpicking the strips they were originally sewn into), piecing the middle brown section with the siggie blog, measuring and sewing and cutting the rainbow strips to get them all equal lengths, attaching them to the brown center section, and then adding the final outer borders. (Sorry if that was boring, I had to say it though.)

So I decided to lay the quilt top on top of the back here to make sure it fits.

Maybe you can't tell. You probably can. (Look at the left side there.) The backing isn't big enough. Sigh. That's ok, there's enough extra on the top and bottom edges and I already sewed another 3.5" strip on one of the sides of the back. I'm going to sew a strip on the other side, too, because I want to be able to keep the design centered on the back.

As soon as I get the last strip sewn on this back, I'm putting this project away for a couple weeks. I have to go buy the batting for it, and in the meantime I'm going to finish up my nephew's baby quilt and my quilts for kids quilt. Do you already know about quilts for kids? They will send you a free kit to make a quilt that you then send back and they give it to a hospitalized (or otherwise in need) child. The kit includes all the fabric you need, but you have to provide your own batting (and maybe binding fabric, too.) The quilt I'm making for them is really cute and easy--4-patches alternating with unpieced squares.

Also--I'm linking this over at Amy Lou Who's Sew -n- Tell Friday, head on over and see some other great projects!

Watch This.

Ira Glass on creative work.

I love this video clip so, so much. Basically he talks about how it takes a lot of time and practice, doing work that isn't as good as you know you can and want to do, but eventually, if you put in the time and effort, you will get better and you will get to where you are making things/doing work that matches up with the vision you have for yourself. Please go watch it.

I think in some ways I'm really lucky because I learned this thing I love to do, sewing, of course, so early in my life. I can remember very clearly being 9 and 10 and 11 years old and crying in frustration over projects that didn't come out the way I wanted them to. I remember my mom being patient with me and helping me. And eventually I got to the point where I could pretty much accomplish what I set out to do. (Except sometimes I still don't. Oh well.)

But there are certain skill sets that I could definitely continue to work on and improve. Putting in zippers is still a bit intimidating for me. Maybe I just need to do 20 more of them or so and then I'll feel like a zipper pro, like zippers are no big deal. There are advanced sewing techniques like welt pockets, that I've heard of but never tried. There's the whole big learning thing that is sewing for myself and learning how to alter patterns to fit myself.

I could go on and on. In my quilting work, which spans a shorter time period, I can definitely tell that I've grown and improved but I still have things to learn and ways to grow (who wants to do a blog tutorial about Squaring Up Quilts before binding? I don't think I learned about this properly yet!) I also feel like I am still in a learning and slightly awkward phase in my blogging, and I hope to get better at it as I work on it more over time.

I'd love to hear your reactions to the video clip, if you watch it!

fyi: I saw this linked over on Creative Kismet. I saw the link somewhere else too, but I can't remember where. I have another quote thingie to share with you later on this week, it's another really good one. :)

rainbow

 

Here are the rainbow strips I have ready for putting into the back for my watercolor quilt. I measured them and I have enough to go around the quilt, about 10" in from the edge. 

The folded strip on the bottom in the picture is my pile of signature squares. I pieced them, alternating with colored fabric squares, into several strips. And now I'm thinking about undoing that and making a solid square or rectangle with all the siggies together. I kind of want the rainbow-y strips to be the main focus on the back (I didn't have a plan, and I sewed the signatures first). What do you think? 

I also made the cutest, tiniest, tiered skirt for my girl today. 

Hope you're having a good weekend! We have a neighbor's birthday party tonight (my husband is DJing) and church tomorrow.

almost wordless Wednesday

I might have mentioned, I'm going to finish up my insane quilt project.

catching up

So in the last week or so I've been busy with finishing up my bee blocks and sending them out, and getting my DQS8 quilt on its way as well.

I made a second block for Rachel, and a siggie block for her too.

I was really excited to get my DQS8 quilt in the mail one day last week,

 

My quilt was made by Tina, who blogs at Needles 'n' Notions. She sent these cards from a card swap she was a part of. I was really surprised by it, and I really like it. It is kind of a neat feeling to realize that someone made this specifically with me in mind. Participating in this swap was stressful at times for me, but I'm glad I did. (I don't know if I'll try to get in on the next one or not, yet.) 

I also finally decided to use the gift code my mom gave me for Christmas:

 

Thanks Mom! I had to take a picture of how pretty it all is! It took me forever to decide what to get, and in the end, the Happy Campers jelly roll was on sale so I did go ahead and get it. (They unrolled it to fit it in a flat rate priority envelope.) I have no idea what I'll use it for, but something will come to me. I'm planning on making another charm pack dress for my girl with the Eden fabrics, they are so pretty and just perfect for springtime. 

So this week I am kind of busy, mostly with fun things, and I have no sewing deadlines or obligations! Today I pieced together some large batting scraps so I can finish up this quilt. I am also planning on working on the back for the insane quilt project aka my watercolor quilt this month. Do you have any March sewing plans or goals? What are you working on?