quilt blocks complete!

Lately the scheduling elves at work have not been giving me full weekends off - lots of Friday/Saturdays though, so which feels like a weekend so I really can't complain. It also gives me the distinct pleasure of having the entire house to myself until about 6pm ... which is a) nice for my introverted self to recharge and b) allows me to turn the main floor of the house into a quilting-prep work station.

The other week my day off got spent photographing a number of piles of new fabric (thanks for my giveaway win, and the delivery of my Black Friday purchase) and doing so very much pressing and trimming and marking and cutting. Why, pressing what you might ask?

Working on these babies, of course:

35 of these, to be exact

Because somehow along the way I actually got all the blocks pieced. And laid out and now I'm working on sashing them. I'd been starting to get sick to death of this project, mostly because I didn't allow myself enough variation in fabrics. What was I thinking making a double quilt with only five fabrics, and one of them is white? The oddball blocks have helped relieve that tedium, though, and putting together my final layout and having a photograph of the finish line to refer to has helped.

It also helps that my niece and sister in law are super excited about it, and I'm getting update about new décor for my niece's room that are designed to go with the quilt. That's motivation: so if February 12th being the birthday on which I am aiming to gift this.

random blocks

Those three blocks where I've been much more random with the fabric placement completely allowed me to enjoy working on this project. Even thought it's just three blocks and it's colours and prints that are already in the quilt anyhow, they gave me some breathing room.

the layout!

The lighting on the layout picture is really crummy - the black and dark purples blend right into each other but really I took it more for my own reference than anything. The final quilt will look a bit different, just because of sashing, but now I have the blocks ready and a plan in place.

plodding along

Since Blogathon Canada is hopping through my part of the country today (uh, not quite today but better early than late) I thought that just maybe I should come up with a sewing post. Sound like a plan? Good. Next week I'll tell you about the book(s) that have sucked up most of the past two weeks of my life and taken all my sewing time. But now, sewing.

 

so many things to iron

I've been busy as a bee sewing away at these blocks. Thirty five blocks. If I'd been thinking I would have added in a lot more fabrics - sewing primarily the same five prints and patterns has gotten more than a little bit repetitive. But finally, finally I'm getting to the point of being able to see and end in sight.

they look a bit better after some pressing

The pile of blocks up there? I spent the better part of my Tuesday afternoon pressing seams on those babies. Then I moved on to the dining room and marked some seam lines on them (that is one extra step that hand-piecing requires that I could do without).



all ready for trimming and marking seams

At the moment these here are my favourites. Probably because they're my contrast blocks and thus they don't look exactly like the other thirty two things I've sewn. I'm looking forward to placing them in the actual layout and seeing that bit of pop. I'm also looking forward to figuring out what else I can make in the future with the black damask.

The most exciting part is that I've finished block #1. About thirty of them I just have one more seam to go, but there's about five with more significant work. Then sashing. Then backing. Basting. Quilting. This is kind of the forever project, or at least it feels that way.

finished block!!

quilt blocks, assembly line style

Some of my blocks here are getting so close to being done that it's almost painful. I'm getting excited to reach the end of the piecing process and turn this into a quilt. I'm going to have a very happy niece when either Christmas or, more likely her birthday rolls around.

The last times you've seen any progress on this I was just beginning, and plotting possibly adding some additional colours into the scheme, and then my last online purchase I showed off the new purple solids that I'm incorporating. Since then a lot has happened with this baby.

things looked a lot like this last time

The finished blocks are 12" square, and I'll need 35 of them total. Thus far the first 32 are in progress. The last couple blocks are going to be a little different - I'll reverse the colours a little, and use some more black on black prints for the main component. Working with such a small selection of fabrics has definitely made it clear that in my next projects I want to have a lot more variety of prints and patterns, even if I use a monochromatic colour scheme. Which is why I've starting shopping to stash fabric for future use - it's harder buying for a particular project than going out and buying a handful of kickass purple prints and choosing between things I already love.

so many blocks in progress

I've marked so many seams

I've also driven myself a little nuts with some sloppy mistakes. Matching the wrong colours together has made me need to pull out the seam ripper more than once lately.

can you spot the mistake?

I've still got several steps and seams to sew before the blocks are complete, but I'm reaching the point where an end is actually in sight. Of course once the blocks are made then there's the sashing to do, and after that I'll have to quilt the beast. Which I've actually got somewhat planned, actually.

I'm puttering my way along to the end and am getting super excited to start my next couple of projects. There's a log cabin planned to match my Scrappy Trip, and then there's the flying geese that I've been collecting fabrics for.

brick and mortar fabric shopping

The other week Bunny decided that he needed to go buy some outdoorsy things at Le Baron in Mississauga, which is a bit of a drive, and asked me if I wanted to come with. A day in a car with Bunny is better than a day at home without him, so of course I said sure. Then my little brain started percolating. If we were heading in a southward direction to begin with it seemed like maybe, just maybe, I should make him take me to a quilt shop in Toronto that I'd been eyeing for awhile. I'd have to amuse myself in a camping store, so why not have him amuse himself in a fabric store for a spell as well?

It was a good call, because I couldn't have been happier with our experience at the Sew Sisters Quilt Shop. It didn't take more than a moment or two after walking in to be greeted and given a general overview of where things were, after which Bunny was swiftly offered a chair. He jokingly also requested a beer and a hunting magazine ... and well, what do you know?

somehow this is the only picture we took

Somehow this was the only picture that was taken while we were there, because I was too busy oohing and aaahing and trying to make up my mind about what to buy because it was all so pretty. The selection definitely appeals to a mix of quilters, I think, not focusing too heavily on any one idea. There were lots of basics, lots of Kona solids, batiks, 30's prints and some nice modern fabrics. There were a few prints I was kind of hoping they'd have but wasn't expecting to see but I definitely was happy with the bits of stashy goodness I brought home.

I was shopping with a purpose: masculine reds and blues for my brother. I've got his quilt mostly planned, and I've decided I'm doing very scrappy flying geese. I think I did pretty ok - I got two half metres that I'm quite happy with, seven fat quarters and a remnant.



In the back is a little remnant from Once Upon a Storybook - .2 of a metre for $1.40 so I just couldn't pass that up. Then there's three fat quarters that were on sale for $1.75. None of them have selvedge, so I'm not really sure what I have there but they all work within my palette. Then I picked up fat quarters of Sketch in red and blue, and as well as Stockholm Hexagons. I prefer buying larger cuts, really, but knowing the project these are intended for a fat quarter was enough. The half metre cut on the bottom is Lost and Found by Riley Blake - on sale! Then there's the red cobblestone fabric, which is Red Glass from Light Fantastic.

Speaking of that line, you might notice one fabric up there that's just a little out of place. It was so pretty I just could not resist coming home with it.



it needs some ironing, and a plan

This beauty is also from Light Fantastic, simply called Butterflies Purple and I'm in love. I almost wish I'd bought more it's so yummy I just don't know what I'm going to do with it. The collection has this wonderful stained glass look and I just want to eat it up and snuggle it and maybe roll around naked in it. Oh wait, what? It's really pretty, and I simply had to bring some home, even if I don't have a plan.

These reds and blues together with what I picked up in my last spree from the Fat Quarter Shop, I may finally have enough masculine reds to tackle a my brother's quilt at some point soon, though I'll need to pick up more solids. Which maybe means next time I buy fabric I can start rounding out some of the other colours in my stash ... or buying more fabrics for the eventual bedroom quilt.

Q4 Finish A Long Goals

Two posts in one week? And both about sewing? Do I maybe just need to make a quilting blog? Decisions don't need to be made all at once. (There's also maybe a sewing post or two that's due for next week ... so warnings in advance if the sewing stuff isn't your cup of tea).

Since participating in the last quarter of the Finish-A-Long was so much fun (and I got to see so many beautiful quilts!) clearly I'm going to have to have another go around this time. Q4 is a bit ambitious for me as I'm really not sure that I'm on track to get anything done completely but setting a goal or two never hurt anyone.

1 - Cameron's Quilt

First off on the list is the quilt for my niece. This is the project du jour, really. I'm working on it pretty much on a daily basis, and I have almost all of the blocks at some stage of in progress.

excusing the crummy ironing board, here's a sneak peak

I've actually come a fairly long way since this picture was taken, and I do have an update planned to share for you soon. Just need to actually get the pictures off the phone and onto the computer.

Optimistically I'd like it done for Christmas. Which - three months? I'd like to say it will be done by then, but there's a long way to go and it's a biggie so we'll see. Realistically I expect it to be done by her birthday in February.

2 - Pillow Covers

 

 

I probably won't make much progress on this, as it's not a focus of mine, but hey it doesn't hurt to put on the list. Eventually these blocks will end up as pillow covers to co-ordinate with the Scrappy Trip I finished last month, but they're not serious sewing. I'm just using leftover scraps and backing fabric to make them and mostly they only get worked on when I'm testing new bits for new blocks. Right now I'm testing out some flying geese, so they are still slowly growing.

 

I feel a bit silly setting two goals and not really feelings that I'm likely to accomplish either, but hey, I'd rather aim high and "fail" than not even try!

 

 



Finish-A-Long Quarter 3 Results

Boy do three months ever go by quickly. It's amazing looking back to see both what does, and doesn't, get accomplished in that time period. Back when I was setting my goals, I had a pretty good feel that I would only actually get one out of the three done, and I was right. What can I say? My process is slow. Until I hurry up and get myself a sewing machine I'm never going to manage speedy finishes, and "buy a house" by necessity comes first, seeing as I have nowhere to put said machine right now. (Seriously, my fabric lives in shopping bags in a corner of the dining room. I iron on a half sized board that alternates living on the freezer, and on an unused portable toilet. I sew sitting in bed. I have no space for a machine.)

All that being said I'm very pleased with my progress on the projects thus far. Of my three original goals I managed to finish up my Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt.



the quilt in its typical use

It's gorgeous, it's riotously bright and colourful, I snuggle up with it nightly and Bunny and I are both thrilled with it. It taught me a lot, primarily that I'd like to say "I'll never use Walmart fabrics again", because really? they are not easy fabrics to sew and all the prints in the same line have different weights. The fact is I'm planning on making a co-ordinating log cabin quilt so we can have a somewhat matched pair of living room snuggle quilts.




always cuter on the dog!

That's my only finish and I'm quite ok with that. The pillow covers are still sitting pretty much incomplete. I've been using those same crummy Walmart fabrics to test out blocks for upcoming projects, and so they're growing bit by bit. I'm doing bits and pieces that slowly grow those, but I really didn't expect to finish them anytime soon, so I'm ok with that.

As far as my niece's quilt ... well it's progressing. I need thirty five blocks, and I have about thirty in various stages of completion. I knew from the get go that this would be a stretch to even have the top finished, and I was right.

Really I'm quite happy with my progress. I got my must complete item done and am toddling along on everything else. It was as much as I could have really expected.

Linking up to the FAL over at She Can Quilt.

happy mail

So last you heard about where I was at with the quilting, I was contemplating the purchase of some additional fabrics to go with the turquoise for my niece. It needed more contrast. So, I set her wild on the Fat Quarter Shop website, showed her what I had in mind, and told her to go ahead and pick any two fabrics she liked that she felt would go with her quilt. Then, since I only needed a half yard of each, I added in some extras I thought would go with her choices and picked up some fabrics for future projects. After that it was just get my hands on the credit card and wait.

Last Wednesday was practically Christmas morning in our house, as the fabrics arrived even before I woke up.

So what all did I get? I shopped with some sense of purpose and with the plan to spend exactly $100 so I could get the most out of my shipping money. The first priority was fabrics for my niece but after that I have two projects in mind. My brother will be next on my list and he's asked for reds in his quilt, and there's a red-and-blue quilt featuring many, many flying geese percolating around my head for him. Then there's the Swoon I'm planning for Bunny and my bed eventually, featuring eggplant purples and greens.

Excusing the mess in the background, I got all of this

I had a pretty good haul for my brother. Masculine designs and fabrics are hard to find, but I found some cute prints and interesting geometric shapes. I think a semi-improve flying geese quilt will do exactly what I need it to.

For Flying Geese

these houses are my favourites

The next fabrics are really just for me. I mean, Bunny has to like them, but who am I kidding. They're mine.

perfect colours, and from some of my favourite lines

Then, because I figure I'll always have a use for them, I picked up some neutrals. Apparently I like black?

more houses!

I also might be developing some favourite designers and fabric lines ...

such as V and Co (I really should have picked up the Ikat Diamonds in eggplant too)



and Sweetwater (I pretty much want the whole Road 15 collection)

Then, of course, there's the pile of fabrics for my niece:

The purples she chose ... and the wrong side of the turquoise I'd been using

 And the black and grey print will also feature, just a little, in her quilt.

for accent blocks. I love the damask and honeycomb prints.

That's probably enough gratuitous fabric pictures for one day. I should have updates on the actual quilt top in the next week or so. I've definitely already cut into the purple solids and started playing.

new project time: for my niece

Now that the Scrappy Trip is finally finished I've had plenty of sewing time to devote to the newest project in my lineup: my niece's quilt. It's my biggest project so far, as its designed for her double bed but the actual block construction is very, very simple. It's inspired by the Labyrinth quilt, though I've done up my own pattern and it's got a much more controlled colour pattern than the original.

All in all I need 35 blocks, plus sashing. The blocks themselves are fairly easy to construct, and I've been doing so in an assembly line fashion. I've got the square-in-a-square sections all in various states of doneness and am working on getting up my required number of those before I move any further. This is the fussiest part of the blocks, with all the little half square triangles and 3" seams - later on there's long seams and strip piecing. These bits are coming together quickly, so it's not completely unreasonable to imagine that the rest of the quilt will.



Blocks in Progress

Nearly Done Blocks

I'm also feeling like I need to rethink the colour scheme just a little bit. Not much, just throw in maybe a grey or a lighter blue to give a little more contrast. Right now my pattern calls for strips of the two turquoise prints to go right beside each other and I just think the whole thing might have more impact if I add in a little more oomph to the colour scheme. I also might do a couple of random blocks where I reverse the colour orientation.

So now I'm plotting yet another online fabric purchase, because I want to use blacks or greys from the same line as the original fabrics. And since I'd only need 3/4s of a yard or so, and I'm paying for shipping anyway it just seems like I should plan a bit of a stash spree. There are some eggplant and green prints I've been eyeing, and there's a quilt I'm planning for that I need to start acquiring non-floral red prints for and I could use a few yards of solid fabrics ... and apparently there's a 20% off discount code that's active for another month. Yeah, this is dangerous.

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday. Why not play along, right?

Scrappy Finish

It's done!!! Done done done. I started working on this quilt back in January and it's been a long process with lots of updates along the way. I could have declared the blocks finished back in April, but decided to make just a few more (and I'm glad I did). After that it was basting the quilt, which I hated - my sore back and knees didn't thank me. Then there were the hours upon hours of hand quilting to make the cross hatch pattern. Then this past week I put the last few stitches in the binding and now it is done. And somewhere along the way I discovered a camera. (Next time I promise I'll give better update pictures, really.)

This quilt is seven months of my life. Zoning out and sewing on weekends and days off. Sewing a good hour each and every night while watching crappy tv and snuggling with Bunny. And each and every last stitch is done. You'll have to excuse all the pictures, I'm rather proud of it.

It's not as "scrappy" as some Scrappy Trips. It's made all with one fabric line (that I got at Walmart, so I'm a little short on details) - two jelly rolls and four fat quarters. Because it's not a line of quilting cottons specifically some of the fabrics (particularly the fat quarters) come at different thicknesses. The fabric doesn't have the give and glide of a quilting cotton, but I still have a companion quilt planned, featuring log cabins.

This is a fun pattern to work with, and because of the strip piecing it's perfectly suited to my style of quilting involving hand piecing, Doctor Who and maybe a glass of wine and I'm sure that once I find myself with a sizeable scrap pile I'll revisit this pattern in a true scrappy fashion. It's also a great beginner pattern, and helped me build up a lot of confidence.

Because I used the same 14 fabrics over and over in this quilt I wanted each square to lead into the next. The way I've achieved that is living up matching fabrics in separate blocks to create a more continuous movement. Colour placement on the blocks themselves was fairly simple as I gave each block I worked on a "theme" whether it was to be mostly one colour (like the green block in the bottom right) or to be mostly bright fabrics and it came together quite well into a cohesive whole.  Also, there is a my side and a Bunny's side on this. I'm picky like that.

The sunlight in this one makes the colours look a little deceptive, but you get the best view of the texture. I cross hatched the quilting here, going through each square on a diagonal in both ways.

Every single stitch of this baby was sewn by hand. I made Bunny buy me a cake when I finished. A hand made quilt deserves a cake, no?

so close to done!

That quilt there, on my kitchen table (please excuse the mess), that looks done, doesn't it?

 

Except it's not. One stretch of the binding is still only pinned on in the back. You can see some of the pins in the next picture, but if I'm being honest there's not much left. It just feels like a lot. Which would be why you're not actually seeing the quilt top - since I haven't shown proper pictures of this yet I feel like after making you wait since January you can handle another week to see the whole thing finished.

I'm so close it almost hurts. I've probably got another two or three hours of sewing left, which in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Almost six months of working on this, sewing about an hour a day most days (some days not at all, some days off for hours on end) every single stitch done by hand and I'm almost done. This last bit is driving me absolutely bonkers. I just want to be done already!!!

Luckily, how close I am to being finished this makes it a perfect candidate for an August entry to a "finishes" contest on a blog I follow. Getting the binding done on this and getting this washed and then finally usable is my August entry to the "Lovely Year of Finishes". If I can't finish this by the end of the month I have issues, really.



Also this hopefully means that soon you can get a peak at the other project I'm working on right now, the first bits of my niece's quilt. This one is exciting, though there are some design and fabric choice elements I'm rethinking. Buying more fabric does not need to happen, but it just might. Would that be so terrible?

For now, though, have a gratuitous picture of my dog. Because he's awfully cute isn't he?

what I'm working lately

It's been awhile since there's been an update on my sewing projects. I've got a couple more things on the go than usual - finishing up my Scrappy Trip (the end is finally in sight), turning some test pieces I'd made with fabric scraps into pillows, and the start of my newest project - the quilt for my niece is underway.

Since I've got all these things on the go, I'm also going to do something I haven't before and link up with the 2013 Finish-A-Long. I've been following this the first half of the year, and figured that since I have a few projects on the go I'd join in this round myself.

First, the Scrappy Trip. I've been working on this since late January-ish, when I started piecing the blocks. Finally a month or so ago I finished up my quilting and just the other week I got the binding cut and pinned on. The binding is half on the front, and I'm just working on stitching it on now. This should be an easy finish in the next month or so.



I don't really want to show too much because I'm so close to being done and can't wait to give you a big reveal. So far I'm adoring this quilt and I can't wait to get it in our living room and eventually have it on our couches. I'm also scheming the specifics of the co-ordinating quilt, which is the next start on my list.

Next up, and this should also be a fairly easy finish, is to make a couple of pillow covers for some blocks I made up as testers for the next quilt. I'd completely gummed up my math on making a square in a square, so I'm glad I did. It took no less than four tries to get the block right. Luckily I had scraps left over from the Scrappy Trip quilt, so I'd done the samples up with those. They already co-ordinate and I'm going to do them up into pillow covers, so they don't go to waste.

Finally - and I think I'm most excited about this - I've started the next quilt on my list. This is for my niece, and has the most delicious fabrics in it. I'm keeping the colour palette very limited, at the moment I'm only using four. Because of that bad math I might end up needing to pick up some more, and if I do that I'll probably throw a twist in with the fabrics. This is the first time I've used proper quilting cottons, and compared to the fabric I was buying before they've been a dream to sew with.

There's lots to do, and it's a stretch that I'd even be finished the quilt top (or all the blocks) by the time the Finish-A-Long deadline comes up, but the bit I've sewn so far I've been loving this sewing. This is only the first bit done - cutting for a few of the blocks and just barely starting on the piecing, but I'm enjoy the process.







Edit: I'm also linking this back to the Season by Hand series. This quilt has been entirely handmade, from piecing to quilting to binding and luckily enough the timing seems to overlap just right.

quilting update (with pictures)

The past few weeks every scrap of spare time that I feel like being 'productive' has been eaten by the Scrappy Trip quilt. Watching Community? Time to quilt. Hanging out at my mother in law's? Time to quilt. I miss my index fingers (they tend to disappear in this process under callous) but oh my am I excited. And I just passed the halfway mark.

Here's a little tease:

Even more of a tease, here's what a little corner of the front looks like so far:

Bunny chose the fabric on the back there, and I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it. Kind of wishing that I'd stuck to my guns with the brown or orange, based on our couch colour, but it's growing on me. I've got all the diagonal lines going one way, now I just need to go back and cross hatch them. So far I've done one little corner in the opposite direction and it immediately increased my love of this quilt a million times. Which I wouldn't have believed was possible, but what do I know?

I also forgot how flat the batting gets during the quilting process. I spent a good two or three days all sad that the batting was so compressed and felt so thin before I remembered that the best part about washing the baby quilt was the fabric puffing all up.

Speaking of teasing pictures, I may have also come home to real mail two days this week. A wedding invitation, which was lovely but expected. And a fabric order I'd placed but wasn't expecting to see for another two weeks or so.

These lovely patterns here are for my niece's quilt, which is my next project. I can't wait to get these chopped up and start stitching. I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I found a damask-esque pattern, and in turquoise. Those had been her two big requests: turquoise, and damask. It's going to be a fairly repetitive quilt, but I think it's going to be beautiful when done.

I also may have snuck these into the order. Just because. And apparently I buy in pairs. I can't decide whether I'll make myself something out of them, or if I'll be gifting. They've already received rave reviews from my mother in law, colour wise. I just don't know but they are so very, very pretty.

This fabric buying thing? It's becoming dangerous.