Even Exchange of Goods and Services

It's nice to have different types of artists as friends.  My friend Jackson is a hairdresser who is in need of a t-shirt quilt.  I am able to create a t-shirt quilt and have a head full of grey hair that needs attention.  Bam!  We have a deal.  I am making Jax his t-shirt quilt and he is helping me have confidence to go out in public again :)

I began the slightly ghetto way I began my own t-shirt quilt, by creating a sketchy patten by cutting and pasting and Sharpie and a little math...

To continue being super high tec, I did this to all of the shirts:

Jackson picked out a sashing fabric and I have placed and order for it and also more interfacing, since I don't have much in my stock.  I have started with some of the shirts with the little that I have.  I am also using the erasable pens for the first time.  If you haven't used them they seem pretty amazing so far- I'll post about specifics later if I think they are worth it.

 I finished up a lot of little projects last week- pot holders I've been working on forever, whipped out my screen again, and started making some little bags that I'll hopefully have posted soon.  Anyway, lots of new stuff up in my Etsy store, so take a look!

Ellisa's Houses Quilt Top

 I'm not sure why this photo is so blurry, but you get the idea.

Someone is very helpful during the quilting process.

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...

I'm Back!

Okay,  I know...  You've all forgotten about me.  I've been working and traveling and ignoring my quilting, but there are lots of projects coming up.  I somehow just found out one of my childhood friends is having a baby in EIGHT WEEKS!  So, I think I'll start working on that one today (although I haven't figured out what I'm doing yet..).  Also, my friend Jackson is coming over to discuss a commissioned t-shirt quilt I'm going to make for him.  AND, I finally finished Theo's 1st Birthday quilt top (never mind that he is almost 14 months.)

Back On Track

So, I have obviously fallen off the quilting wagon for a bit- but I think I'm back on track since a little trip to Fabric Shack and some new magazines have reignited my desire to spend the day sewing.  Today I made a Kindle case for my friend Jes.  She requested I make her one like my iPod case, but obviously larger.  She found this neat website called Spoon Flower which lets you print your own fabric or buy other people's custom creations.  Pretty cool in theory.  The only thing is that I would like the fabric to be a little higher quality- but it does the job: presses, moves, etc.  I haven't washed it yet though.

While on a lovely trip to Cincinnati I made a quick trip to Fabric Shack (my favorite shack!).  I spent most of my time in the scrap bin and the fat quarter section because I really had no ideas what I needed (maybe nothing?), but I did manage to leave with a full bag of fabric- some of it hilarious.

The big thing I've done is that I finally really starting piecing together the Kaleidoscope quilt that I started cutting (what feels like) a million years ago.  I'm off to a good start and I'm really excited to finish this quilt top.  If I stay excited about it, I think that I can get the top done by the weekend.  Here's some progress:

Wordless Wednesday

Not Going Well

So, I have begun my first attempt at the meandering quit stitch.  I really like doing curly cues, but Courtney really wants the meandering stitch for her thank you quilt and I have been putting it long enough.  I studied photos of the stitch, read a little bit about how to do it, but in actuality, it's not going so well.  My hope is that it'll start getting better the more I do it (it's a huge quilt, so I definitely have learning time!) and that when I wash it the stitching won't be so noticeable...  After this quilt, I may stick to curly cues...

Getting There

And thanks to Meredith for my fancy quilting gloves!

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!!

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.

Thank You Quilt Top

Okay, so I decided that I like this quilt a lot better today.  Seeing the top come together made me feel a lot better about the work I've put into it- also, knowing how excited Courtney is to get her quilt definitely makes it worth it.  I hope she doesn't mind that all of the lines don't line up perfectly, but that's what you get with handmade!  We're still deciding how to quilt it and if we're adding a boarder, but I have the fabric for the back and the binding.  In about a week or so I think I'll dive into the quilting portion.  I've gotta say, I'm pretty pleased with this, fingers crossed Courtney feels the same.

The top minus the sashing

Thank You Quilts

If you can remember back to the fall, you'll remember that I was in Ohio for about 2 months designing a play.  I was there for a week with no car (because why would I own a car, being a NYC resident?).  If you've ever been in Central Ohio without a car, you know how hard it is!  Thankfully, I have some very wonderful cousins who picked me up (a half hour out of their way) and drove me around, helped clean up the apartment I was put in, and drove me all the way to Cincinnati to get a car- needless to say, I'm not sure how I could have made it there without them.  As a thank you, they are each getting a quilt since they were both in the market and couldn't find any that they liked/could afford.  While I'm still waiting for Caitlin to tell me what she wants, I have been getting a lot of work done on Courtney's recently.

She found a quilt in a magazine that she really wanted and I did a little research and found the pattern online (above).  It's made with a jelly roll, which I've never worked with before.  To be honest, I'm sorta hating it.  There are lots of long straight lines, etc.  While I guess having the fabric pre-cut into strips is very convenient, it sort of feels like it takes the creativity out of making a quilt.  I've worked with patterns before, but you still get to pick off of your own fabric, etc which makes it feel like your own.  And, while we picked a jelly roll that is different than the one they suggest, it still feels more like work than like creating.  I hope that this changes once it's pieced together a little more.

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...

T-Shirt Quilt Top

I finally finished the top of the quilt.  I'm hoping to get it finished ASAP because I don't have any sort of throw in my apartment.  One of these days I'll make a perfect quilt.  This, obviously, is not it.

I still need to work on the back.  It's going to have some more bits of t-shirts that I either didn't have room for on the front or I found after all the front t-shirts were cut.  Not sure how I'm going to lay them out on the back, but I have room to do it now!  It's amazing how much easier this is when you have the room to lay things out!!

Well, It's A Start

I haven't forgotten about blog, I promise.  On Saturday I moved to Ohio for the fall.  Now I have a bit of time to quilt again!  I started piecing together the dreaded t-shirt quilt.  I need to get a little more interfacing (that'll happen tomorrow).  Here's what I've pieced so far.  I had to recut a lot of the rectangles because of the stupid knit jersey.  Well, lesson learned...

A Quilter's Requirement?

I feel like it's a requirement as a quilter to do at least one t-shirt quilt in your "career."  This is pretty perfect for me too; my whole life my mother has been telling me to get rid of my t-shirts.  Many of my t-shirts (much like my baby blanket) are worn out and were loved for a few too many years.  It turns out that once I start making stuff for myself I can't stop-- plus, I'm an Aries and we are really good at starting new projects, but very bad at finishing them...

I wasn't really sure how to go about making a t-shirt quilt for myself for many reasons.  First off, I don't have enough of any particular type of t-shirt to do a full quilt out of one type (I am very close with gymnastics t-shirts, but some of my oldest have mysteriously disappeared and there are some that I still wear to the gym).  Also, it would be hard to do the same sized squares for each t-shirts because they range in size from a kid's medium to a men's XL.

I decided to do a little online research to see some of the quilts that others had done, and I came across this pattern of sorts.

It is definitely too big for what I want 1) I want a lap quilt, not something you could put on a king sized bed and 2) I don't have the many t-shirts that I'm willing to cut up, so I printed it out and cut and taped it until I thought that it looked good and doable.

I have begun to cut the t-shirts, which is proving quite hard.  I hate squares to begin with, but with no salvage and with 15 year old jersey knits, some of them look a little wonky.  I'm going to have to get some interfacing if I actually ever want to finish it.  An other problem that I am encountering is that many of these t-shirts were retired because they were either so worn out that they have holes in them or I spilled something and stained them, or I used them in grad school as painting shirts.  For these reasons, cutting them is even trickier.  Obviously, I cannot have any holes in the quilt and I'm trying to keep it so there is also no paint, or food or hair dye stains.  I'm clumsy.

On a side note, does anyone know if you can recycle cotton?  I don't want to throw of the fabric that I cut off of the t-shirts and I can't imagine choosing to work with jersey.

I Have A Plan, I Swear

I'm in the process of cutting the fabric for the first quilt that I'm making for myself.  This picture sorta make it look like I don't have a plan, but I swear, I know what I want it to look like in my head.  I laid it out to see how many more strips I need in order to make it and I'm really glad that I did because I'm rethinking that size.  I looked up how large a quilt should be for a double bed and it said a minimum of 80" wide.  I laid it out of my queen size bed and it looks huge, but I may make it a bit smaller than planned, especially since the cool part of the quilt is going to be the detailing on the sides (trust me).  I also learned that I need some more neutral-y fabrics.  I chose these fabrics because most of them have meaning for me (duvet covers from years past, my love of football, gifts from friends, the first vintage fabric I ever bought), but it's starting to look large pattern heavy even busier than I thought it might.

I won't be posting completed photos of this one until October because after seeing it on my bed, I don't think that there is room for me to lay out the whole thing in my apartment (which I'm really going to need to do for this one), so I may have to wait until I'm in Ohio to put it together.  If I get anxious, I may be after to move some furniture in my living and dining room sewing room.  I hope this one turns out well!  I also want to get a darning foot for my machine and try to do something a little more interesting than a straight line for the actual quilting, but I won't be surprised if I ended up scratching that idea and just doing what I'm comfortable with (and have the materials for).  Time (hopefully not too much time) will tell.

In Progress

Here is a boys' quilt I'm making.  It's a play off of a photo of a quilt I saw online.  When it's done, I'll probably make a girl's version too.  I think it's really fun.

Two In Progress

Despite my lack of writing over the past few days, I have been hard at work on two baby quilts and I have to say, I'm pretty excited about both of them!

The first is the quilt that I've been working on for months called the "It's A Small World" quilt.  This one will definitely be finished tomorrow.  Here is a picture of my helper hard at work on it

The second is a play on a quilt I saw online.  Here are two of the blocks.  I hope to have this one finished tomorrow as well- definitely by Friday.  I'm not making this one for any particular reason, so it'll go on Etsy.

I'm hoping to have a big post on Friday after I have them both finished!

On a side note- does anyone know how to get yellow chalk out of cotton?  Washing did not work...