Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2012

I am so excited to be participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival this year!  I've been following it for the last few rounds and was not a blogger, so I am thrilled to be able to enter one of my quilts!

The quilt I am showing has been seen on my blog a few times, but not completely finished.  I call it my "Crazy HST Scrap Quilt."  The pattern/block is called Spring Blossom from The Big Book of Scrap Quilts.  This was a very difficult and time-consuming quilt to put together, no fabrics are repeated.  This quilt is special to me because it uses a lot of the fabrics that I've used over the last few years as I've taught myself to sew and quilt.  Pairing up the fabrics and making each block was a great opportunity to look back on all that I've done on my quilting journey.  Also, I like that the style of the quilt is very traditional, while the fabrics are fun and bright.  The mix of old and new is to me what makes quilting fun.

Piecing and work aside, the quilt makes a great fort for almost 3-year-old boys who've been playing in the sun and dirt all afternoon!!

Thanks for looking, enjoy the rest of the festival!

Baby's First Quilt

For once I am feeling ahead of the game, I've finished a quilt for our October arrival.  My son didn't get a quilt until after his 1st birthday, so this is a big deal for me :)  I made this gender neutral, but we have since found out we are having a girl!  Of course, they told me this a little early (16 weeks), so we aren't painting the room yet, even though the tech was confident.  I have the big ultrasound this week, so we'll see if she has...um...sprouted into a he.  I don't think so, but you never know!    Anyway, on to the quilt!

The pattern is from Elizabeth Hartman, free at Sew Mama Sew.  It's a really quick pattern that shows off prints nicely.  I used Little Apples and a really cute bird print, as well as some of Tula Pink's Prince Charming for the binding and backing.  The Little Apples prints are perfect for fussy cutting and turned out very cute.

For the quilting, I did simple straight-line quilting.  In the prints I echoed the horizontal seams, while in the white sashing I did very dense lines.  I like how it adds a little interest to the plain sashing sections and mimics the pattern on the front and back.

The backing is leftover strips from the front as well as a chunk of Prince Charming, which I think matches perfectly in both color and style.  I think Baby will enjoy using both sides as a play mat.

Since we are mostly sure we are having a girl, I've already started on a girly quilt for the nursery.  Having pinks and feminine colors will be quite the change from my son's room, which is decked out in blues, browns, cars, and dinosaurs.  We can't wait!

WIP Wednesday - aka I'm Back!

Well, mostly back.  Sewing time is still much slower than I’d like.  But I have been busy over the last couple of months working on my latest WIP, which is….

Baby #2!

Yep – my little blond goober is going to be a big brother in October.  He tells me that it’s a girl and he wants to name it “Buck.”  Ah the thought process of a 2 ½ year old.

My first trimester left me completely exhausted. All.the.time.  I considered it pretty exciting to be able to stay up past 8:00pm.  Unfortunately, that’s when my son goes to bed, so I had no sewing time.  Now that I’m further along, I have loads more energy but am on physical restrictions from the doc that keep me from doing too much.  Not much of a problem for sewing except that I can’t crawl around on the floor to baste quilts, and my biggest sewing to-do list is completing a bunch of tops!  Looks like I’m going to have to figure out that table method of basting.

I did break the rules once to baste this quilt.  Luckily my hubby was willing to do a lot of the work.  This is my crazy HST scrap quilt.

I love it; just don’t look too closely at some of the mismatchy points!  The are no repeated fabrics and it’s all from stash, except for the backing fabric which I got for less than $4/yard.  The backing is from Hancock’s M'Liss collection, and actually has a nice heavy weight to it which made it really easy to quilt.

It doesn’t have binding yet, as I can’t figure out the best one from my stash.  I don’t want anything too crazy so I’ll probably be boring and go with a solid.

Also, I finished this easy peasy quilt top for the new baby.  Since this will be a fall baby and we don’t know the gender yet I thought Little Apples was appropriate.  There is also a cute teal bird print, but I’m not sure who the designer is.  The pattern is the Charm Squares Baby Quilt from Elizabeth Hartman, which is a great free pattern.  I actually made this pattern for a friend’s baby last year and didn’t want to give it away, now I have my own :)  At least this one I can baste it on the kitchen table!

We are also in the process of rearranging our house (slowly) to get ready for the baby, so beware of future house project posts.  Our 3rd bedroom is currently our den/sewing/office, and all of that is going to have to go to make a nursery.  We’ve already moved a desk into the living room, and now I’m looking for some type of sewing table/cart that can also go in there.  Losing my huge sewing space is going to be tough.  I feel like October is both really far away and really soon considering the huge list of projects to get us more baby-ready!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday!

Catching Up

Wow, it's been an entire month - oops!  To be honest though I really don't have a whole lot to report on the crafty front anyway.    Things have been uber busy at work and at home, with a string of illnesses, so my sewing machine has been sadly neglected.

But, I did finally get some sunny weather where the husband and I were both home so I got some decent pictures of my finished AMH Innocent Crush quilt.  It's been the resident couch quilt for weeks now so it's nice to finally get it blogged!

I quilted it in straight lines, 1/4 inch away from each seam.  It took forever and some of the lines where I didn't have a seam to follow are distinctly wonky, but I really like the effect.  The varying grid-like pattern is especially cool on the back.

The binding probably isn't the print I would have picked (this was a kit), but it is pretty and frames the quilt nicely.

Finally, I have actually been working - slowly - on a new project.  I've been making wonky log cabins from the Malka layer cake that I won.  I used a tutorial from From the Blue Chair.  It's a kind of slice and dice method and doesn't waste a lot of fabric, which I like.  Plus, my OCF self is not good with being purposely wonky, so...baby steps.  I've finally finished all the blocks, but this will give you the general effect.

Now I just need to get some sewing time again, and maybe I'll have more to report.  Happy Sewing!

Fun Things

This past week has been a really fun one, although not terribly productive on the quilting front.

We had our Triad MQG meeting, which I missed last month, and I was so excited to be back with our fabulous group of ladies.  For this month we did a travel pillow swap.  My partner, Colleen, loves all things DS Quilts and the ever-popular red/aqua color combo.  So I picked a bunch of red/aqua prints from the various DS Quilts prints at Joann's, and did a simple flying geese pattern.

The front is quilted with a basic zig zag that follows the geese, and the back is a simple stipple.

And it even has a zipper!  They aren't nearly as hard as they seem.

My partner loved it - yay!!  And, I love the cute, bright pillow I got from my other partner (maker?), Angie! See, it's even already nice and wrinkled from getting use in my sewing chair.

Also, even though I didn't get a lot of quilty stuff done, I did finally make peace with my serger!  I've already made a somewhat bizarre-looking practice shirt for my son that was sewed almost entirely on the serger.  It really is great for knits.

And now for one of the best parts of my week - I won this awesome A Stitch in Color by Malka Dubrawsky layer cake from Marmalade Fabrics from a giveaway over at Film in the Fridge.  Wow, talk about luck!  This was a great giveaway that I never expected to win, so wahoo!!  Now I just have to figure out what to do with it, so many possibilities!

Quilt Tops & Serger Struggles

These last few weeks have been pretty productive for me – which is rare but a nice surprise!  Of course, my share of the laundry and housework is another story altogether…

I just finished 2 quilt tops, and am completely in love with them both.  I also have another one just waiting to be cut, but I think I need to get a handle on these first.

First up is a fat quarter quilt from Anna Maria Horner’s Innocent Crush line (at least I think it’s all Innocent Crush).  This came from a kit that included a pattern, 16 fat quarters, backing, and binding that I got for a ridiculous deal last weekend.  I normally don’t like quilt kits, but due to the awesome price and the fact that my husband said he liked the fabrics, I jumped on this one.

The pattern is “Just ‘Tween Us Girls” by Carlene Westberg Designs.  I followed the cutting instructions and one of the layout options, but changed the block construction a little.  The pattern called for the different widths to be randomly sewn together.  Oops!  I have to say my Type A self likes the slightly more orderly look.

The backing will be the light purple print with the flowers.

The second is a longtime WIP.  I made the 6 inch bowtie blocks from Kona Coal and scraps a few months ago, and let the stack just sit.  I wasn’t sure how to lay it out until I saw this one that had a similar vibe.  I didn’t see hers before I picked my colors, but it was a happy coincidence.

The only problem I have now is that I’m wishing it was a little bit bigger to fit our king-sized bed.  The top measures 73 x 85 unfinished, so that’s a no go.  But, I’m out of most of the scraps I used for the top, and I can’t come up with a good way to make it bigger except maybe borders?  Times like this are when I wish we had a guest bedroom, just so I could display quilts!

In other much less interesting news, I’ve finally gotten my awesome Christmas present out of the box, a Brother serger.  It gets rave reviews online and I am really excited about it – except that I can’t get it to stitch correctly!  The right needle thread (1 of 4) makes giant loops like it has no tension, no matter what I do.  And that’s supposed to be the easy part to thread.  I should have known it was too good to be true when I had no trouble threading it the first time.  I’m probably doing something very obviously wrong.  My sweet hubby bought me a serger book to go with it, and I got some real serger thread today to use instead of the weird stuff that came preloaded.  Hopefully research and nice thread will give me the upper hand over my new nemesis!

Photobombers!! (Or, why I take my pics outside, alone!)

Valentine's Day Mini Quilt

    I always say I'm not really into Valentine's Day, but really I think I like it as much as the next girl.  After all, if I never got anything, even something really little, I would be so disappointed!  So even though I can admit that I do like to celebrate it, even on a small scale, I really don't decorate for it.  Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving,  Easter, and even Fourth of July I get, but Valentine's Day?  I'm a little weirded out by the retailers trying to convince us that it's the next Christmas in terms of decorating.
    My crazy rambling aside, since I started sewing I am slowly starting to get the appeal of Valentine's Day crafts. I love pink and white together, that's really my excuse.  So this year, after waffling about maybe making a quilt with V-day colors, I lucked out and saw this easy tutorial at asquaredw and just had to make it.  I have plenty of red and pink scraps for this, and from cutting to binding it only took 2 evenings to do.

    For the quilting I did a single straight line to trace each heart, and then a small stipple in the white spaces.  I think it makes the hearts pop nicely.

   I really like it!  My only problem now is trying to figure out how to hang it.  I've never made a hanging sleeve so I'm hoping to come up with something...uh...creative (jerry-rigged). 

    So now I guess I can no longer say that I'm the equivalent of a Valentine's Day Ebenezer Scrooge!