Gifts!

Thanks to the lovely faces from Believe Magic, I made some fun little gifts.  The first was a housewarming gift for my friend Cristina who moved across the country.  The other is a thank you gift for Meredith for all the awesome quilt stuff she's taught me and given me.

 "home is where the heart is"

 

"thank you"

Ellisa's Finished Quilt

Today I finished Ellisa's House Quilt!  It was supposed to give me about 5 days to get it packed up and shipped to Kentucky before she entered the world.  Ellisa, however, surprised us and arrived yesterday (I healthy 10 pounds!).  Now it's all packed up and will be sent later today.  I am mostly happy with how it turned out.  The quilting was pretty detailed and looking back, I probably should have quilted the windows and doors a little more, but I think that it's very cute and I hope she (and her mom and dad) like it!

More Houses

So, I've been on a roll this weekend (thanks to lots of football to watch while quilting).  I've finished all nine of the houses for baby Ellisa's quilt.  I did end up having to order fabric for the sashing and backing, so I'm at a stand still until that comes in on Wednesday.  I really hope this quilt ends up being cute!

Stay tuned for more- including a new, exciting, and different type of project on Sunday (I'm taking a class!)  Until then...

**I really need to stop using my phone as a camera...

Elissa's Houses

One of my childhood best friends, Hilary, is having her second baby, a girl, due in eight weeks.  When she was pregnant the first time around, I made a cute little baby blanket, but never finished it and felt like a terrible friend.  This time around, I'm changing that.  SO, since time, money, and space are all tight, I decided that I wanted to buy as little as possible and use some of the fabric that has just been lying around my apartment for months and months.  I love the cool little wonky houses on blogs like House of Krom so I thought that I'd try to make my own.  After a really disastrous attempt, I decided just to go with a pattern.  Now that I sort of understand how to do houses, one day I hope to be able to design my own, but until then, here are some of the houses I've made...

I'm an Aries

One of the trates of an Aries is starting grand projects and abondoning them for other projects, which in turn get abondoned to other projects- it's a nasty cycle.  This is also the story of my life (you should see my half organized closets).  I have so many projects that I'm supposed to be finishing right now (my mom's Birthday gift, Courtney's Thank You Quilt, Brown Bag Quilt (which has been disqualified for being late), and my baby blanket recreation) and what am I doing?  That's right, I'm starting a new quilt...

I bought this pattern off Cluck Cluck Sew and am using only fabric from my stash to complete the top- money is tight, so I'm going to try to keep my fabric shopping sprees to a minimum.  I've cut all of the pattern fabric and half of the solid, but I am going to force myself to get a big chunk of my mom's gift done before I work on it anymore.  I'm very excited for this quilt though- I think the pattern is lovely.

The Dirty Thirty Quilt

Today is Cristina's 30th Birthday.  She is one of my closest friend and she, unlike me, is not too excited to hit the big 3-0 and she, unlike me, is celebrating in a nice normal fashion- dinner with her boyfriend and then a party at a bar.  Since we aren't going crazy with the celebrating, I decided that I needed to do something special for her for her birthday (especially since she will be traveling for mine).  I had put a nice little gift bag together for her when on Tuesday she let it slip that she'd love to have a quilt to use while watching TV if I ever felt like making one for her.  I also had plans to maybe see her on Thursday- Make an entire quilt in less than 48 hours?  Challenge excepted.

Who would have thought that I'd actually be able to pull it off?!  30 hours after I began the quilt, it was finished.  (Sleep and human interaction is highly overrated anyway...)  I have been thinking recently that I wanted to do more work with hexagons, because apparently I love them.  I also love a quilt that is in Elizabeth Hartman's book that is a white quilt that looks like it has peddles tossed all over it.  I decided to try to combine the idea and attempt to make a quilt that looked like there were hexagons sprinkled over the quilt.  For the most part, I think that I succeeded (especially since I patterned it myself- a first for me!).  Here is my wonky inspiration drawing and my notes that I used during the process.  Not a lot to work from, I know.

Also, since I had such a short amount of time to complete it, that I needed to only use what I had.  Thankfully, I'm pretty familiar with Cristina's aesthetic, so I just went through my stash, picked out stuff I knew she'd like, and cut hexagons using the hexagon template from Fresh Quilts.  The rest of it, I totally winged.  I played with the hexagon template and took all kinds of measurements.  Over all, I'm happy with the pattern (which will, forever be referred to as the Dirty Thirty Quilt), I think there is a little too much white, I think that it suggests what I was going for.  I might actually write up a little tutorial of this later if I'm feeling ambitious.  The back of the quilt is a few different vintagey fabrics that go pretty well together and the binding is actually from a top sheet that I no longer have the mate for...

And now, a word (or a few) about free motion quilting.  This was my first attempt.  At first, I HATED  it.  It was really loud (I thought my neighbors might complain) and really hard to control, the stitch lengths were crazy different, and I broke 5 needles.  And then, like magic, the foot broke.  No, seriously, this medal bar thingie snapped right off, and it was like magic.  Suddenly, it was quiet and controllable and faster (and no more broken needles!).  Maybe they sold me the wrong foot.  Whatever it was, now it's good, so I'm okay with it.  I did sort of curly cues mixed with circles- I wanted it to basically look like I had doodled on it (I even threw in a "Hidden Mickey" for good measure).  For a first outing, I think it went pretty well.

Cash insists on immediately running up and lying on any quilt (or fabric) that I put on the ground- especially when I want to take photos.

This is Awesome

I finished the top of what I will now refer to as The Baby Joseph quilt.  Is it perfect?  No.  Is it still awesome?  Absolutely.  Not to mention, I feel like I've found the type of quilting that I should be doing.  I love the shapes and colors, etc.  It has certainly inspired me to make many more quilts and to say with confidence that I am indeed a quilter.

I saw Rachel today unexpectedly.  Had I known 24 hours before hand, I would have tried to finish this sucker, but now I won't rush it.  It'll be done in plenty of time for the shower.

And Cash likes it too :)

Hell Yeah!

Excuse my language, but this is exciting!  I had made great stride in not only Rachel's baby quilt, but at being a quilter in general.

First, I finished cutting all 108 stash patterned pieces:

Instead of then cutting all of the off white fabric, I decided to cut about 15 or so and see if I was actually capable of putting one of these, uh, let's call them 'blocks' together.  It turns out, hell yes I am!  I mean, seriously, this is hard stuff and I actually managed to put it together without it looking terrible. 

Sure, this kid may have a doctorate by the time I finish this quilt, but I actually feel like I'm off to a very good start and am excited to continue.  The baby shower is in March...  I better get moving!!

Once Upon a Time...

I think I've let it slip a couple of times on blog that I'm a Disney fan, but that's not completely accurate.  I'm a Disney fanatic.  Okay okay, I guess "obsession" is a better word when describing how I feel about Disney.  In fact, for my 30th Birthday I will be traveling to Disney World with a handful of friends and my parents.  And, since I'm a Disney pro, I go all out- I've replaced a zipper of a Figment backpack from my childhood and then decided that I need a Disney themed wallet for the trip.  Why buy when you can make?  So, I grabbed the book Easy Japanese Quilt Style (a Christmas gift from my friends Shelagh and Doug) and loosely went off a pattern for wallets- I made two: Disney 'Once Upon a Time' themed, and one from the left over fabric from Courtney's Thank You quilt.

The idea for these wallets is really cute, but the directions are not the clearest ever, so I had to sort of loosely follow the instructions and sort of go with my gut on how to put it together.  Courtney's was easier than my Disney wallet, simply because all of the fabric already coordinated, while I had to decide which of my Disney fabric I was actually going to use.  I have a lot, but not a ton of options- no Mickey and Minnie (bummer), but two different Disney Princess themed, a little bit of left over Ariel from pot holders I made Courtney for her Birthday, a fair amount of Winnie-The-Pooh, and, of course, the Alexander Henry fabric that I'm convinced looks exactly like "It's a Small World."  I settled, however, on staying with the Disney Princesses.  Combining all of the fabric on such a small project looked a little messy and disjointed.

The thing that I really loved about this project is, now that I know the basic way to put a wallet together, I feel like I could make my own pattern and make it more functional and a better size.  If I do, I am going to attempt to write my own pattern.  Hopefully I will be more clear enough for people to understand me. This project also made me really appreciate Elizabeth Hartman.  Her instructions are so clear and easy to follow.  I hope she writes a million more books!

I can't wait to get to Disney World, so I can use this little guy!

I Must Be Crazy

My childhood best friend's sister Rachel, and her husband Ami, are expecting their first child about a month after my 30th Birthday.  Of course I'm making them a baby blanket, but decided that instead of doing the simple little ones I normally do, I'd do something creative, fun, modern, gender neutral, detailed, and stash busting and, evidently, super hard!

I'm not sure what possessed me to think that my skill level is up for this adorable pattern from Fresh Quilts, but I'm determined to do my best!  I've begun cutting the 100s of pieces that will go into this quilt- it is, by far, the most detailed I have ever attempted- in piecing as well as in quilting.

The cutting of the cute pieces of fabric has been a lot of fun.  The center pieces are an Olivia fabric I picked up at Fabric Shack.  The rest of the pieces are from my stash or fat quarters I just picked up while on my "vacation" in Ohio.  I have also ordered some off white fabric for the back ground and some fun dots for the back and binding.  Just cutting this is going to take forever and I have actually lay awake in bed thinking about how to actually piece this together, but I am determined.  You will all be impressed if this is ever when this is done.  Impressed.  It'll be all worth it.

Brown Bag Quilt

So, I don't know if I've mentioned this on my blog yet, but I have the best brown bag quilt partner, Leona over at Leona's Quilting Adventure.  Not only did she send me some lovely fabric when the contest started, but she also sent me a bonus holiday fat quarter that's part of the collection she originally sent me!

The reason I love the brown bag quilt is because I probably wouldn't have noticed or bought this fabric in a store, but now that I have it I absolutely love it and may look at fabric differently while shopping.  I am going to use a pattern from my new book The Practical Guide to Patchwork.  It's not terribly detailed, but the fabric is so lovely and has such large patterns on it that I wanted to make sure that the quilt I made was a showpiece for the fabric.  I've cut all of the pattern pieces thus far.

I am going to pair it with some solid light blue fabric that I have.  I'm not as happy with this pairing as I'd like to be, but seeing as I've only see quilting for 6 months or so, I don't have quite the stash I would like to have for projects like this.  A few more trips to Fabric Shack and I'm sure I'll catch up!

My goal is to finish piecing all of the blocks this week, so stay tuned for progress.

And on a side note, since it's the last week of regular season NFL football, I just wanted to say that there is nothing that I love to do more on a Sunday than spend the day quilting while watching football.  I'm going to miss this when the season is over...

3 Project Linus Projects

While practicing some easier quilting techniques, I decided to make a simple square quilt- working on exact cutting, stitching without pinning, quilting, and attaching binding.  I cut a 4.5" square of each patterned fabric I have and am pairing it with a purple/blue cotton that I was given during wrap on Taking Woodstock.  I have a ton of it and this seemed like a fitting use, seeing as the theme is leftovers.  I drew a little diagram (pattern?) so that there is some sort of structure to the quilt and it's not totally random.

I stitched the first 4 rows, but am still in need of some more squares, so I'm taking a little break.  Hopefully there will be a scrap box or super clearance section at Joann's this weekend (yay trip to Connecticut!)  So far so good, but I can't really tell if this is going to pan out the way I want since the fabrics, while in the same color family, are not identical.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I also finished two other blankets for Project Linus.  One is just a basic baby blanket.  The front is Alexander Henry fabric and the back is just a Joann's design.  Pretty cute though.

                          

The second one I finished was for the sole purpose of practicing.  It's made out of leftover fabric and some striped fabric that I had.  I tried to do some different things than I have done before and practiced that pesky binding.  There are obviously a lot of imperfections, but I hope some little boy will love it anyway.