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! :)

OPAM Finish - Cherry House Quilt Along

Cherry House did this awesome quilt-along quilt using SOLIDS.  I've never done a quilt in just solids before, so I was really excited to do this quilt along.  I chose not to pick one of the color ways she did hers in.  I chose a purple-ish grey for my background, and different shades of purple for my pops of color.

I had a lot of fun quilting it.  I LOVE quilting feathers, so I quilted feathers going in alternating directions in the long grey columns.  In the pieced color columns, I quilted circles.  I'm really happy how it turned out.  Oh!  And I used a purple thread called Thistle to quilt it with!  I'm really, REALLY happy with it.  It's hanging on the back wall of my corner of the shop, above my bookshelf, out where everyone can see it! :)

Chalk up another finish for March OPAM :)

22 More February OPAM finishes!

I am totally on a roll!  I have gotten so much done this weekend.  Of course, most of it doesn't count as a finish, yet, but it will soon!  I quilted the Cherry House Quilt Along quilt I made (pics to come soon).

There was a quilt top that was abandoned at the shop over 6 years ago.  I've tried to contact the piecer, but she hasn't come to get it in 6 years, so  took it home yesterday to finish.  It just needed to be squared up and have the 3 remaining borders attached, so I did so.  I also seamed the back.  I need a little bit more of the binding fabric, and then it will be ready to be quilted.  We are going to donate it to Colton's Angels for the hospital.

I also pieced a quilt top together for the local high school.  They commissioned me to make a t-shirt quilt for their principal, who left the school for a district job.  It turned out really great, and I can't wait to share pictures with you all when it's finished!

I've also been working on some blocks for Blockapalooza.  I have 3 of the 10 blocks finished, so far.

So, like I said, none of them really count as finishes....yet.

BUT THEN!  I have had a giant IKEA blue bag full of fleece blankets sitting on my living room floor for the past 3 weeks.  At Colton's Angels we cut out and fused little heart appliques onto the blankets.  All they needed before they were finished was to be zig-zagged around.  I volunteered, and took the bag home.  Today, I finished zig-zagging around 22 of the blankets!  It's only about half the bag, but at least they're ready to go back to the shop!

Aren't they cute?  We did blue for boys and white for the girls.  They are going to go in newborn kits with a onesie and pair of socks that the hospital can give to indigent mothers of newborns.

I'm hoping to get the rest of the blankets (12 more, I just counted) done sometime this week.

More OPAM finishes for February

Here are a couple more finishes.  YAY! I'm totally on a roll, yeah?

This is a cute little quilt I threw together for my cousin's new baby boy.  I love the Cat in the Hat fabrics.  I backed it using a yellow minkee, making it extra soft for baby, and quilted it with a large meander in yellow thread.  I used leftover pieces from the fat quarters to make the binding.  It turned out so super cute, and I'm glad I finally got it finished (it only took me a few months! haha)

This is the Fat Quarterly Quilt Along quilt from last fall.  Yeah, it's finally done.  I used Mary Englebreit's Christmas fabric from 2009, called The Caroler.  I was hoping to finish it in time for Christmas last year, but I guess we'll just have to use it this year instead.  I backed it with black minkee, making it extra soft and snugly for those cold winter nights on the couch watching TV/movies, and quilted it with a meander in black thread.  I bought some polka dot fabric that matched for the binding.  

And I'm not sure if this really counts or not, probably not, but I refreshed my wreath for my front door.  I made it about 2 years ago, when we first moved into our apartment.  After 2 years out in the sun, snow, rain, wind, etc, it was looking very faded and sad.  I went to Walmart, bought $9 worth of silk flowers, and stuffed the wreath full.  I really like how bright and colorful it is now.  Hopefully I'll be able to get at least another 2 years out of it before I have to start completely over.

More October Finishes for OPAM 2010

*The following is the story of a quilt that has taken me FOREVER to complete.  Sorry it's a little long, but the quilt took me a lot of time to make, and I wanted to document it for posterity's sake :)  *


I am happy to finally report that this MASSIVE quilt project is finally completed.  Yes, it took me over a year (just barely) to finish it, but it was a lot of work and I am really, really pleased with the end result.

No, you don't get to see the full thing laid out because I don't have a clean floor space large enough to do that!  It ended up about 101 x 121.  Yeah, it was HUGE.

I can't even believe how overwhelming the project had seemed at first.  When she had brought it to me, with all of the plastic storage boxes filled with ziploc baggies containing the triangles of fabric and their coordinating ties, I was very overwhelmed.  It took me about 27 hrs just to unpick the ties. (There were a lot of ties!)

Piecing it was a challenge, as I had never worked with ties before (most of them silks) and I didn't want to interface the backs because I wasn't sure how the fabrics would work together, if at all.  I did end up interfacing most of the fabrics used in the Sisters' blocks, pieces from shirts and skirts and dresses, and they turned out nicely, I thought.

My biggest mistake was picking such a weird size for the blocks:  9.75 inches square.  What was I thinking??  Apparently I was not.  I had to square up each block, then add pieces to the edge to both stabilize and enlarge them to the proper size.  Yeah, like I said: I was a little stupid.

But, the end look is really nice, and I can't imagine trying to sash all of those blocks without having the cotton quilting fabric as a small border around them.  It definitely would have been much harder to keep everything square.

I was really pleased that I had purchased enough fabric, too, as the project took me so long to complete.  I was worried, toward the end, that I didn't have enough of the sashing of sashing post fabric to finish, but I had just enough.

As far as fabric selection went, my client left it all up to me.  I wanted to keep the fabrics I used for the sashing, posts, and border very neutral and not too distracting from the blocks.  Since the quilt itself was so colorful, I opted to use neutral creams/tans/beiges for the sashing/posts.  The border I knew needed to be darker, because she wanted words quilted in it, and darker fabric with a light thread would work so well, I thought. 

Now, I have to add that I am old-school when it comes to mixing brown and black.  I abhor it.  Seriously.  I do.  My husband is not allowed to wear a black belt and brown shoes.  I even have a hard time liking couches that are black leather with brown upholstered cushions (even though, I admit, they do look nice).  I just have a hard time with it.  It makes me cringe a little inside.  But, I am getting better, obviously, because the border fabric is black and brown!  I know, so bold of me, huh? haha

For the backing fabric I wanted something close to the sashing fabric I had used on the front.  I had also hoped to purchase some 108" wide fabric to use.  Unfortunately, that was not to be.  Instead, though, I found this really great 58" wide fabric in a soft, crinkly neutral color.  I think it is in the Kona Crush line (is that even a line?  I don't remember the name of the fabric, sorry!) 

As I got everything onto the machine and ready to quilt, I had an epiphany of sorts.  I had recently quilted a quilt of my own, and had done words on all 4 borders, turning the quilt 2 times to get the text the direction I had wanted it.  To avoid having to unpick basting stitches, I quilted the border area with monofilament thread.  It worked like a charm.

So, why not use that technique here?  After all, I was going to quilt the center of the quilt in an all-over meander in monofilament thread anyway.   Why not just quilt the entire quilt that way?  So I did.  :)

The meander is fairly tight, and it was amazing how nicely all the extra fullness from some of the tie blocks (I had been seriously stressing about it for days, to be honest) worked its way out.  There weren't any puckers or tucks.  Everything was fabulous.  I was very pleased with it.

I added the binding using my longarm.  I knew that there was NO WAY I was going to be able to feed all 442 inches of binding through my tiny little domestic machine.  There was NO WAY.  It went on really nicely, and then my client took it for their mission reunion.

I've had it back in my possession for a few weeks.  I finally finished binding it.  It took forever.  My poor living room was dwarfed by the sheer size of the project as I sat on the couch and watched Amazing Race while I bound it.

But now, it is FINISHED.  And I am so proud of it.  It looks so great, and my client was really happy with it when she took it to the reunion.  It's the best possible outcome I never would have imagined when I first saw how much time and effort would be needed.  (Seriously, you don't know how daunting it is be staring at 2 rubbermaid tupperware storage boxes, 2 large bags, and a couple of grocery sacks full of ziploc bags with ties in them.  Ties that all needed to be unpicked and kept with their coordinating triangles.)  But now it is done, and I am happy, and a little bit relieved, to not have to worry about it anymore :)

The Shopping Fairy

Look what the awesome Shopping Fairy brought me!!
I got Giada's Kitchen for 1/2 off, and the other 4 books for $1 + shipping. What a steal, eh?

I can't wait to start the Farmer's Wife. It's going to be so much fun!

And the Shopping Fairy couldn't help but purchase these. Persuasion is the best! Rupert Penry-Jones is so swoon-worthy in this version. The collector's Set included Sense and Sensibility (which I haven't seen) and Miss Austen Regrets (which is quite good). I haven't seen Wuthering Heights yet, but based on my Bronte-along friends, it is the best version.

Then the Shopping Fairy stopped at Hollywood Video/Game Crazy, which is going out of business, and purchased these fun things for less than the price posted on the Chronicles of Riddick game. Rec is really good, and the Spanish/original version or Quarantine, the recent US remake.

And of course, why pass up perfectly good, brand new in plastic game guides for only $3 each? The game was the most expensive item, and the movie was only $2, so all in all, the Shopping Fairy did an awesome job.

I'm waiting for the Shopping Fairy to bring our new propane grill (pictures to come) - the Weber Q220. The Shopping Fairy used some Home Depot gift cards to buy some accessories for it already: a 3 piece stainless steel grill set, a grill cover, and a $3 grill pan (on clearance, marked down almost 80%....awesome find!)

The Shopping Fairy is on a roll! Also, I hear that the Shopping Fairy ordered 3 more quilting-related books, and the new Stephenie Meyer novella, so I will post pictures when those arrive as well.

(I secretly hope the Shopping Fairy decides to buy me a Kindle or Nook or something along those lines for Mother's Day, but I'm not going to hold my breath.)

In need of a quilt pattern

I need help.


I have a wedding coming up this summer. Not mine, (I'm already married, remember?) but a friend's.

Anyway, I usually make a quilt for close friends and/or family who get married. This is the problem:

1) I can't tell what her colors are from her registry. The towels they registered for are stone colored, and the dishes are turquoise, red and gold. That's the only color in their whole registry.

2) I don't have a lot of time until the big day, so it can't be too complex.

3) I usually do a throw or wallhanging size quilt. Nothing too big.

SO! What do I do? I love color over neutrals, but are neutrals safer? And what's a fun, quick, and easy pattern that will look like it was hard but again, was really EASY?

Any help would be great :)

OPAM 2010 - January Finishes

I joined OPAM, One Project a Month 2010 (I participated in the 2009 version of OPAM), and am already proud to report some finishes! :)

First, is Penelope Ruffles, by Izzy & Ivy. Lola, my SIL (and the designer behind Miss Penelope Ruffles) made one that looked like this for our New Moon fundraiser. She used black and white, and red fabrics to creat this dazzling purse, and I knew I HAD to make me one just like it if I didn't win it at the raffle (I didn't win). It took me a while, because I am not used to following anything but "sew with 1/4 in seam allowance on the right side" type of instructions. I am a quilter, not so much a sew-er (as opposed to sewer, which is stinky).


There weren't directions for making the key fob, so I made up my own pattern based off of the sample on the pattern envelope photo.

I am not sure if these next two count, but I'm going to count them anyway. :)

The day after Christmas, all of the Christmas crafts at Joann's went on sale an additional 60% off. These two kits were originally $16, but I got them for less than $4 each.

I just love the Santa, and so does Marshy. When I started it, all I had done were the boots, but he knew INSTANTLY who it was supposed to be.

My fourth finish is my NQT NYD MQ 2010.

What in the world does NQT NYD MQ 2010 mean? Well, it means "Not Quite Traditional" New Year's Day Mystery Quilt 2010. It's a class I took from Longarm University. It was all online. It was really a lot of fun. Here is my finished product:
We did not quite traditional cross hatching and Baptist fans. It was fun.

There was a ton of quilting involved!

Surprisingly, I got it quilted and bound in just 2 days! I guess I was feeling motivated by OPAM to finish so I could report it. :D

Below is the back. I based the fabrics I chose off of fabrics I had in my stash. I really wanted to use the lime green/turquoise (backing fabric) and the lime green (binding fabric) from my stash. Unfortunately, I didn't really have enough of anything that matched, so I had to buy the rest of the fabrics used in the top. It wasn't that much, though, so I'm happy :) Funny story, the fabric for the back is actually fabric from a Halloween line that I bought on clearance at Gracie Lou's. It doesn't look like Halloween fabric to me, though, which is a good thing.

Cindy, our instructor, recommended we use contrasting thread. I thought when I ordered my thread that it would be enough of a contrast. Turns out it blended in really well. Now that it's all quilted, I'm glad that the thread isn't too contrasting, because the texture from the quilting is so nice. I used Kate Green on the turquoise bits for the Baptist Fans, Ferrari for the lime green background quilting, and Gerbera Daisy in the hot pink fabrics. They are all by So Fine! threads.

I am having so much fun doing OPAM already. I just hope that I can continue getting things finished. Here's to 12 months of finished projects! :)

LOVE

I rang in the new year by making this fabulous quilt! I used the Turning Twenty pattern by Tricia Cribbs and used Love by Amy Butler. I just love Love! It's so beautiful! I picked 6 of my favorite fabrics for the blocks and another fabric for the border.

Isn't it so beautiful?! I just love it!!

Here is the finished set: backing (blue), the quilt top, and the binding.

I'm going to quilt it tomorrow/today and hopefully have it bound by the end of the weekend. :) I bought Star Trek on blu-ray the other day, so I'll have 2 hours of fabulous movie to keep me from getting bored of binding! :)

P.S. - Mike came down as I was ironing the last piece of border and asked me how come I get a huge quilt (I think it's twin sized) and he only got a throw sized quilt for his birthday. I had to explain that you can only use so much of the denim from his holey jeans. Then I promised to make him a bigger quilt soon. Pattern ideas? I'm thinking maybe the Super Simple quilt or just squaring up some fat quarters and sewing them together. What do you think?

It's that time of year again

Our neighbor across the street put up his Halloween decorations today.

I recently learned that our area doesn't do Trunk or Treat because they think it's "stupid," but instead opt to traverse the neighborhood (hopefully avoiding the houses on the Sex Offender Registry) with their children.

Two years ago I had already finished Marshy's costume. This year, I have the front of the turtle shell done. Oh, yeah, and it's the 18th. I have what? 12 days to finish it? We'll see if that happens.

Tickets are still available for New Moon. Please help support two wonderful charities by coming to our special showings of the movie. You know you're going to see it anyway, so why not see it for charity, right? Thanks!

Quilts are starting to pour in. This is nice. I like being busy. Although, it's hard to get work done with a potty training 3 year old who doesn't want to quit playing to go to the bathroom. Ugh. He's relapsed a little bit and has started going in his pull ups again. I think he's rebelling because we are now only rewarding poops on the potty in an effort to get him to actually do that.

This year will probably be yet another year without a family picture. {sigh}

I have decided to give up sugar....somewhat. I am still debating if I want to include Coke. I also need to start working out. I am trying to decide between Turbo Jam and Power 90. Any suggestions? I like them both. Turbo Jam is a little more upbeat and dance-y, which is more my style, but when I did Power 90 in January I lost 14 lbs in a month. Of course, I gained it all back (and then some) quite rapidly. {sigh} My SIL Angel is doing the HCG diet. She looks great! I'm still debating. Maybe I'll just wait until January and start fresh after the holidays? I can't decide!!

It feels like FOREVER!

I AM SOOOOOO SORRY I haven't blogged in FOREVER! Life has been incredibly hectic lately.

I finally updated my quilting blog. YAY! GO check out some of the really cute quilts people have brought me!

This is my sweetheart puppy. He belongs to Mike's parents, but they are at Quilt Market in Houston and will be gone for a week and a half. They didn't want to leave him home all by himself for that long, so we are puppy sitting. Well...he's like 4 1/2 years old, so I guess it's really doggy sitting.
He's a little depressed I think. He curled up next to Mike on the couch and passed out. Poor little guy. I think he was a little freaked by the change. He's staying at our house, and he's never been here before.

Also, this is my carrots page for the BOM that Gracie Lou's is doing. It's really a page every two weeks, and it's for a really cute quiet book. LOVE IT! The carrots page was HARD. It took me an extra week to finish it.....all those stupid green things at the top. haha.

This is my sweet little cheeser, standing in front of Cameron and Lauren's quilt. He is so funny. He loves to have his picture taken. Every time I get the camera out he says: "Momma, Marshall?" he wants his picture taken all the time. I'll have to take him to get his picture taken in his Halloween costume....if I ever get it done.

Another one of these cute cheeser moments. I love this boy!

Also, in Marshy-land we have some happy news. He has been potty training for a little over a week, and now is going number 1 almost all by himself! We are still working on the pooping part of the training. Today at the shop, while I was gone BTW, he pooped and then tried to dump it into the toilet all by himself! Apparently he came running out of the bathroom butt naked yelling "GREEN POOP! GREEN POOP!" Poor Angel had to help him clean it up. I AM SO SORRY ANGEL! Hopefully we'll get to the point where the pooping will occur on the potty and not in the pull ups (which we call training pants, because they look an awful lot like diapers, but I'm tired of throwing away poopy underwear.....they are EXPENSIVE to replace!)

Quilting updates

Just updated my quilting blog. Again. It seems to keep getting away from me, so every time I go to update it I have like 5 posts to do!

Anyway, please go check it out. There are some really cute quilts on there. Some of them you can get patterns, fabric, notions, whatever for at Gracie Lou's. They have the cutest things! I swear, if I had unlimited resources, didn't have to sleep, and had all my time to myself, I would totally quilt all day!!

Also, I know that school is just starting (next week), but it's never too early to start thinking about custom made Christmas presents. T-shirt quilts make great Christmas presents, and you don't even have to do anything to get them! I will do all the work, you just provide the t-shirts. The quilts start at $14.00 per block. That includes everything needed to make the quilt: materials, labor, quilting, binding, batting.....EVERYTHING. Including FABRIC.

Salem Days Quilt Show

The Salem Days Quilt Show was awesome! We had 59 quilts shown (not counting the 5 on display for the raffle). It was FABULOUS!
(Above: I quilted this one.)

(Above: this was one of mine)

(Above: this is one that I quilted)

I love this one! It is so cute! And it was hand quilted.

I loved this one too. It was hand quilted, and has the US Marines symbol in the center.

This is Izzy and Ivy's quilt.

(Above: I quilted this one, too)

(Above: This is one of mine. It's an original design to boot.)

We only had 1 male entrant, and this was his first quilt. It was amazing!!

This one was really cool. It was hand appliqued, and then hand quilted.

(Above: I also quilted this one)

I love this one. It is fairy tale scenes embroidered on the white with bright piecey borders. Super cute!

(Above: This is one of mine. Pattern from a Fons and Porter magazine.)

This was our booth for the raffle. Proceeds went to Colton's Angels so they can put a Christmas tree in the Festival of Trees this year. For not advertising very much (or at all, really, except for this last week) we brought in a lot of money. Thanks to everyone who came down and bought raffle tickets. We really appreciate your generosity! :)

This one was called "Oh my gosh!" because that is what you say when you see it. Holy cow the pieces are TINY! Like maybe 1/2 inch squares? less than an inch for sure. And it's all pieced together PERFECTLY. Impressive.

I quilted one similar to this last year. I love this quilt. I wish I had the pattern. It looks like it would be such a fun project. Lots of applique, but still, super fun to make. Super cute when finished.

I love this quilt! It is a Book of Mormon quilt, and is so cute!

(Above: I quilted this one.)

(Above: I quilted this one, too.)

There were some cute Halloween quilts, too. I love the litle witch table toppers.

We had such a fun time. I can't wait for next year. Hopefully we'll get as good a turnout, and maybe we'll do voting/judging or something. :)