A Swoon top

I am happy to proclaim that the swoon top for my parents is finished! And I dont' hate it! Although really, I don't know that I can claim to like it. It is just way too loud for me. It is somewhere around 88" square. Instead of 2" sashing all around, I did 3" in the middle and 6" around the outside so I wouldn't have to figure out a border and I think the bigger borders for the blocks really help. I think it should be big enough to be considered queen. I picked up thread and batting and everything so later this week I will get down to basting/quilting and then I just have to figure out binding.

I did pick up a back, but it is way different from the front. It is actually a duvet cover I found that I thought would be cool but I am a little worried because it has nothing to do with the front. And the blue thread I am using to quilt it might look funny although I still need to decide for sure how I am going to quilt it....I'm not looking forward to a quilt this big on my little machine. I don't know, when you back a quilt, how much does it need to coordinate with the front?

Farmer's Wife - Week 8

So I figured it out, and if I do 4-5 blocks each week, I should be able to have this quilt finished by my birthday. Which would be a pretty spectacular gift to snuggle under. With that in mind, I made sure to get 5 blocks done this week :) They all came out quite nicely and this brings me to 42/111.

#98 - Waterwheel

I am not in love with my fabric choices on this. I think they are a bit too busy and the design gets lost.

#61 - Northern Lights

I thought about switching this one so that the main design would be the pattern and the background white, but I stuck with the light/dark from the original and I'm glad I did. I love this!

#80 - Single Wedding Star

This one I did reverse the color value. It just seemed like something called a single wedding star should be a nice yellow :) So bright and happy!

#50 - Honey's Choice

I think this is a bizzare one. I don't know why, but my eyes loose the pattern a lot of the time. It wasn't even until I took a picture that I could clearly focus on the pinwheels. It's a cool block though. 

 #95 - Temperance Tree

 I like how this turned out although I was a bit skeptical at first. 

And here they are together. A very warm colored group :) I guess that means next week will have to be a lot of blue, purple, and green!

And this weekend may be one spent stuck in the house since our area is having some pretty terrible flooding (like national news, worst in recorded history terrible). Luckily so far we just have a little water in the basement (a pretty normal occurrence) so we are hoping we don't lose power/water. We shall see. Hopefully that means I will be nice and productive!

Skill Builder Sampler: Month 3

3 months and 9 blocks down! We are 1/4 of the way through this quilt along. This month was all about flying geese. We practiced 3 ways of making them (I'm partial to the magic way myself) and I feel like I am actually a lot better at making them now. They are certainly less wonky then in the past and I am not so scared of them. So I consider that a raging success :) Anyway, the roundup of blocks for the month

Block #7- Virginia Star. This is a block that was a part of the Summer Sampler Series. It was actually kinda nice to make it again and this one came out much better. I don't love the fabric choices (too much boring tan! :-P), but it should be a nice addition to the overall quilt.


Block #8- Breaking Out. This block was so much fun! I love the cool pinwheel it makes. It is the kind of block I would have never made on my own before this, but I really love it.

Block #9 - Double Star. I did this one a bit differently than instructed as far as fabric choices go and I love the result. Really I just love everything about it. I am so happy I decided to just go with two colors and a white background. I did have a bit of a mishap where I spaced and forgot to iron after the first step in the magic method of flying geese, so I did have to rip half of each goose off, iron, and sew them back on, but it worked out fine.



So that is it for this month of skill building. I feel like I've got the hang of flying geese now and I'm looking forward to this next month. It actually made me really want to make some sort of star quilt so I might just go ahead and add that to the list....

WIP Wednesday {9.7.11}

So sewing wise, this week has consisted of a whopping 2 days for me, the rest was travel and then a dr. appointment yesterday during naptime so I haven't had a chance to do much. That's okay though, today I get to work on FW blocks and we will hopefully get back into our routine quickly.

Completed:

Skill Builder Sampler - Block 9

I kind of love this double star block. I went with only 2 colors and I am really happy with it and it looks so good with the others. My monthly post for that will be up tomorrow.

FWQAL


I finished 4 blocks bringing me up to 1/3 done!!! I love this set of blocks. I even survived an appliqued basket handle.

New: Nada

Still Going:

Swoon

SBS

FWQAL

And that's pretty much it. I have a few things I hope to start this week in addition to sashing my swoon blocks and having the top finished. We'll see how what's left of the week goes. At least I don't have any looming deadlines at the moment so I can hopefully focus on clearing some things up; that's always a good feeling :) Now if only it would stop being so cold, rainy and gloomy...

Birthday Gifts Part II: for my sister

As I mentioned, in addition to the set of make-up bags for my mom, I also made a birthday gift for my sister whose birthday is later this month.

I got the idea from the Travel Handmade series. Jeni of In Color Order reviewed simplicity pattern 2274 for a duffle bag and I loved it. It looked simple enough and I thought it might make a good gym bag. As it turns out it is way to big for a gym bag, but it should be good for weekend trips anyway. I used some fabric I got at a LQS during their tent sale for $1.71 and lined it with a linen blend. I did straight line quilting instead of the wavy lines in the pattern and it worked really well with the plaid fabric. I really didn't have any problems following the pattern and I am very much looking forward to making one for myself!




I really like the pleated zip pocket on the end, and it was so much easier to make than I thought it would be. My sister loves it, especially the pink handles. I do wish it held its shape a bit better on its own, I don't know, maybe the fabrics are too lightweight. But it still works. I am hoping to make myself one before all the holiday traveling beings, but we'll see. I like the idea of something so big and soft since it should be easier to just shove wherever we can fit it in the car :)

Birthday Gifts Part I: for mom

The birthday gifts have been given and well received, so now I can talk about them! I will post these this morning and later this afternoon the other gift I made since there are so many pieces to this one.

First up, my mom turned the big five-oh the other day! It was a big birthday, and I ended up making a 6 part gift to go along with it. One of the things she requested when I asked her if there was anything she'd like me to make was a set of make-up bags. Then she started explaining her problem. What it came down to was that she needed a brush roll to organize her brushes, a big bag to hold all her basic everyday stuff, and some small bags to hold each color scheme. Did I mention this is what she keeps in the car?? So with that, I set about plotting how to make it work. In my dream world, I would have made a set that somehow connected to keep it more together and organized, but in reality I was tired, sick and time crunched.



So what she got was a brush roll using this tutorial. Now here's the thing about me; I don't use makeup. At all. Chapstick is about as good as it gets, not even tinted. I didn't even wear any for my wedding. Point being, I had no real idea what I was doing as far as the make-up brushes went. I have a basic knowledge of these things, but I just kinda guessed on how big to make the brush spots so hopefully that works.



Bags, on the other hand, I get! I had no problem whipping those up. I made a big boxy bag using this tutorial. It is my second time using it and it came out pretty well. I added a layer of batting for structure and quilted it a bit, but it didn't seem to make much difference. I also messed up the corners, but it was my own fault for not following directions. It works though and it is super huge.


And then there are 4 smaller bags using this tutorial but with slightly smaller dimensions. My pieces were 6"x7" and I boxed the corners at 3/4". I did do a bit of quilting on each side of each bag so that they could theoretically be washed without the batting bunching, although I don't know that the laminate should be washed anyway. I decided to do some hand quilting on a couple of the bags, but I don't love it.





All of the bags are using scraps from the swoon blocks (which my mom picked out so I knew she'd like them) and some of my Amy Butler laminate for lining. It was so much fun to work with the scraps and make different little bags. I ordered a pack of 25 zippers from zipit on etsy and used those for the small bags. It all came together really nicely and she likes them a lot and can't wait to use them. I am not great at making bags, but I am getting better and zippers are so much less scary. Which is good since I have a few more in mind. I'll be back later with the post for the gift for my sister!

Farmer's Wife - 1/3 done!!!!

Woohoo! 1/3 of the way finished! I managed to get 4 blocks done this week, including the applique for the flower basket handle, which I was a little worried about, but turned out fine. I am really happy with this group, definitely some cool blocks. It brings me to 37 blocks out of 111 done so that leaves 74 blocks left to do; not bad! It was so relaxing to work on these today after all the frantic gift making of the past few days :)

So here they are!

 #35 - Flower Basket

I am actually pretty proud of my basket handle although it's not perfect. I used heat n bond light and then zig-zag stitched it down. I don't know why the handle seems so short, but I cut out what printed and it wasn't scaled so whatever, and it seems like so much space at the bottom which is weird. I also don't love my choice of the green polka dot as the main basket piece, but it's okay. Wow, I just made it sound like I don't like this one at all, but I assure you I do like it.

 #8 - Bouquet

I love this one! Again, it could be the purple, but it just came together great! Very cool block :)

 #65 - Peaceful Hours

Another really cool block. This is one where I changed up the color values from the original because I liked the look of the dark and light blue in the book and I am happy with that change. I think it's fun doing the more oddly shaped pieces instead of just squares/rectangles and triangles. (This also accompanied my favorite letter so far, it kinda cracked me up).

#23 - Country Farm

This was a fun star block. It is put together differently since it is on point, so it took a while to straighten it out in my mind. Mine has much less contrast than the book since yellow is not quite as dramatic as some other colors might have been, but I really like it. I also chose to not follow the color values again with this one because I thought the star shape would have gotten lost. Point being, happy yellow star block.

And all 4 together:

What a happy little group! Every week I get more and more excited about this quilt :)

Anyway, I'm off for a long weekend with the extended family. 3.5 hour drive =  no fun, but it should be a good time once we are there. Here's hoping for a happy baby on our travels and some lovely weather! Happy weekend everyone!!