Works in Progress

The Wookie

I've been pretty busy lately.  Adjusting to having this darling new little one is a lot harder than I thought it would be!  I guess I thought it'd be easier, since my 5 year old Munchkin can pretty much fend for himself.  Boy was I wrong!!  I haven't had nearly as much sewing time as I'd like to have.  But, what can you do?

I have managed to find time to start several projects.  This year I decided I was going to continue my fabric purchasing moratorium.  Yeah, I know it's going to be hard.  It kills me that I can't buy all the darling fabric out there that is being released.  But, when I complain about it, my husband says "You can save that $10.50 per yard and put it towards our Disneyland trip in November.  Besides, you have 24 drawers FULL of fabric.  Why do you need more?"

It's true. 24 drawers.  He's totally right.  So the fabric purchasing moratorium continues.  The only thing I'm allowed to buy is fabric (mostly solids) to finish off projects that I have most of the fabric for already.  Speaking of solids....Fat Quarter Shop has the best selection of Kona cotton solids, and at an awesome price.  I'm totally in love.

SSS Quilt 2

So one of the projects I started was the Scrappy Plate Club.  I've never done a Dresden plate, but it's been on my "someday I'll make one" list for a while.  When I saw this free BOM, I jumped at the chance to actually do one!  I had a fat quarter stack that was soo cute (Simply Sweet by Barbara Jones of Quilt Soup for Henry Glass Fabrics).  The Dresden plates only used 4 inch strips, 1 of each fabric, so I had all this leftover fabric and no plan.

Until I thought of what I could do with that extra 16 inches of fabric, and I realized I could do 2 (yes, 2!) Surprisingly Super Simple quilts out of the leftovers.  I separated the colors into "really girly" and "could work for a boy" and got sewing.

Of course, it wasn't until after I got the "could work for a boy" quilt top done that I realized it was definitely too girly to give to a boy.  Turns out though that I have a friend having a baby girl later this year, so now it has a purpose, other than just sitting around waiting to be quilted.  :)

SSS Quilt 1

Another project I've been working on for what seems like FOREVER is my husband's t-shirt quilt.  About 2 years ago I went through his closet and pulled out all of the funny t-shirts he had that either didn't fit, he hadn't worn since high school (yes, he still had some of those), or were totally destroyed along the seam lines and completely unwearable anymore.  I stuck them all in a giant white trash bag and shoved it on the shelf in our closet.

Fast forward to last September, when I was cleaning out the closet and found the giant garbage bag full of shirts.  I decided that it would take up less space if I got them interfaced and trimmed into 15 inch squares than if I left them in the garbage bag.  Then, I got this wild hair that I could get it done by Christmas, and I hurried and pieced his quilt top together in November.  Naturally, by the time Christmas rolled around I was too tired and too pregnant to even think about quilting and binding, so it sat in a bag at the shop waiting for its turn.

T-shirt quilt

I finally got it quilted my first week back to work after my maternity leave.  Now I'm working on the binding, and eventually it will get done.

I quilted it with a tight meander, outline quilted the majority of the t-shirt designs, and quilted in a few special things.  Like, on his t-shirt from work (Verizon Wireless) I quilted "Can you hear me now?" It's my favorite shirt block out of all of them.

You can't really tell from the picture, but I backed the quilt in some grey minkee that I had laying around (I had bought 11 yards 3 years ago for $2/yd...killer deal, right?).  I'm binding it in a black/grey swirl print that was leftover from the back of a quilt I did for the Breaking Dawn movie.  I was so proud of myself, because I didn't have to buy anything but the lightweight polyester batting to make this quilt.  Cheapest present ever, whenever it gets done!

Made in Cherry Quilt Along

The last project I started lately was a quilt for our bed.  Have you heard about the "Made in Cherry Quilt Along"?  There's a link in my sidebar, and you should totally join us if you want to!  I used 2 different fat quarter sets that I had laying around.  One had 6 prints and One had 7 prints.  They're Art Gallery "Alhambra" and "French Riviera".  They aren't from the same line, but I thought they coordinated well together.  I bought solids for the background, the backing, and the binding.  It's going to look great when it's quilted.  I'm thinking about doing a cross hatch in the star center and then echoing the star out into the background.  It's going to look cool, I think.

Sorry my picture is so crappy.  I took it at night, and the light in our room is really bad.  I'll take a better picture when it gets finished.  Hopefully it will be day, too, so the light will be a bit better :)

Now that these projects are all done, I'm working on a few others.  Can't wait to share what I'm doing!

And hopefully it won't be too long before my next post! :)