Category Archives: Quilts

This Weekend

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First of all, Happy First Day of Fall! I am really excited about the upcoming cooler weather and all the fun fall happenings that go along with it! I need to go get some pumpkins today to bring in the new season.

This weekend is full of events so not too many crafting plans to share, but I do have a few things up my sleeve that I’d like to get done.

  • finish piecing together the guestbook quilt. I’ve been plugging away at this in my spare time and have gotten about 75% of the piecing done so I’m hoping to grab a few minutes to finish this…then to worry about how to quilt the humungous thing on my machine! I will share the finished top with you next week- fingers crossed!
  • tape together and cut out my pattern pieces for the oliver + s bedtime story pajamas. This week’s challenge on project run and play is to make something using a white sheet as your main fabric. What better to make from a sheet than pajamas? Probably not original enough to win but I am excited to see how these cute pjs turn out. It’s my first oliver + s pattern to sew!

Those are my two main sewing goals. Other than that we have: an outing to the park with our church group that a friend and I are heading up, a fun yard sale this morning for some friends heading across the pond, and, of course, church tomorrow. Oliver will be wearing his snazzy new outfit tomorrow. 🙂

Hope your weekend is full of relaxing, fun, and some crafting endeavors! Any big plans you want to share with the class?

This Weekend

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Last night the hubs and I dropped Little Man off at Grandma’s house and went on a date night to the Indie Craft Parade Gala event. Sooo worth the money we paid for tickets! This is their third year running the Parade and our third year attending. I look forward to this every year! The Gala event featured yummy food, live music, and giveaways, (and I won! 🙂 ) not to mention a chance to peruse everything without the crazy crowds of Saturday and Sunday. If you are even somewhat local, I encourage you to come down to this event. So much fun! Spoonflower is a sponsor of the event this year and has donated fabric for everyone to make their own stuffed elephants ( from the indie craft logo). There is also a free photobooth for your posing enjoyment.

I got to meet the lovely Rachel of Stitched in Color and got stuck for a long time at her booth. So many pretties. I ended up splurging and taking home one of her fabric-covered journals AND a picnic quilt. I just couldn’t resist the quilt- full of Lizzy House and Flea Market Fancy pretty fabrics. It just called to me!

Here’s a bit of a photo journal of last night- mostly stolen from my hubby’s instagram feed.

The loot I bought: handmade cloth napkins, picnic quilt, fabric-covered journal, and children’s art book.

My winnings! Cory Godbey print (which happens to be part of a collection we have in Oliver’s room), Lily Pottery ring, Ink Meets Paper letterpress greeting cards, found*ling leather wrap bracelet. Valued at $173!

 

Now for the rest of the weekend. Since I more than emptied my paypal account last night, I need to get busy stocking up my Etsy shop with lots of goodies that will hopefully make up for the fun I had on my spending spree. 🙂 I am also happy to report that I have made some progress on the guestbook quilt and plan to plug away a little more at that as well. Oh and LIttle Man is officially a big kid and is moving up to toddler nursery tomorrow at church! Sniff, my baby is all growed up! 🙂

Modern Quilt Guild

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I am back from a whirlwind anniversary trip to New York and have tons of things to share with you including a new Tova top, but it is late and I must get to bed so I am just popping in here to tell you to check out the Greenville modern quilt guild’s new blog– moderated by yours truly. 🙂 Excited to see the unfolding of this new guild and hope some of you will join me!

Will be back tomorrow with New York pics- Purl Soho! and my new Tova…

This Weekend

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It’s been a pretty crazy week over here on the home-front. We had family here for a week and have been super busy cleaning up from that and getting things ready for our big anniversary trip to New York City next week. Whee!!! So excited about it!

Any-who, in my little spare time, I have been so busy filling up my etsy shop with lovelies that I haven’t had much time to sew for myself, but I have fabric waiting for a Tova Top that I really want to bring on our trip so I will try to finish that before Thursday. I had been focusing on embroidery hoop art for a few weeks and decided to work on some onesies this past week to give my shop some variety. I used some of the fabric that I picked up at Whipstitch (business expense 😉 ) and am loving my new creations! I have a few basic designs that I am fine-tuning: vests with ties or bow ties, fat ties, and suspenders with skinny ties or bow ties. Check out the mini houndstooth print I found- so perfect for the suspenders and vests! It’s so silky soft too that it is super nice for baby garments.

I was just commissioned to make a cloth diaper hanging wet bag for a friends and am trying to find the perfect fabric for her and her little girl. I am making something similar to Jeni’s lined drawstring bag here: except I will line the bag in PUL fabric to make it suitable for cloth diapers. I went ahead and bought Jeni’s pattern because she gives you a license to sell and that way I don’t have to do the math by myself- so worth it if someone else has already done math for me! I am excited to see how it turns out and will be sure to show you. I would like to finish it before my trip also so I am sure to be quite busy the next few days!

Last item to update you on. Greenville now has a branch of the Modern Quilt Guild! We had an introductory meeting today with a few people and are planning on meeting the second or third Friday of each month. I volunteered to take over the blog site and will be updating it as we find out more information. I have wanted to have one of these for a while and am quite pumped that it is beginning. Check out the website if you want more details- there’s not much there now but will be soon. I cannot wait to meet like-minded quilters and crafters in my town. If you are local, we would love to see you at our meetings, even if you are a novice quilter!

This Weekend

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I always enjoy seeing a summary of other’s weekends and the random assortment of craftiness they have accomplished so I thought I would begin a series of weekend posts updating on the miscellaneous crafts/fun times that aren’t enough for a blog post in themselves.

Most of the pics will be instagram because that is how I roll these days…are you loving this app as much as I am?

First off,  I worked on my quilt top some more this weekend. I really wanted to get more of it finished but began having some bobbin issues late Saturday evening and that was my cue to put it down for a bit. Right now I have almost 5 of the 9 blocks quilted! I am doing each block a different style of quilting to further the sampler quilt idea and give me more practice with free motion quilting. I was practicing with loops Saturday.

I worked on some more hoops for the etsy shop…having fun coming up with different ideas! It is teaching me tons about photography, marketing, and creativity and I really enjoy it. I am determined to keep this etsy experience fun and not drudgery so I am moving somewhat slowly but enjoying every minute of it! I have had some good views and favorites this past week and hoping they will move into some more sales soon!

I have had a purse planned out for several weeks now that I haven’t had time to get to and I decided this afternoon that I would work during the boys’ naps. I really wanted to finish it today, and I didn’t quite make it but I don’t think it will take me too much longer. Here’s a pic of my progress so far. I will blog about the purse and pattern I used when I finish. So far it is shaping up exactly how I envisioned which is super exciting for me!

And finally, not at all sewing related, we picked up my little brother from the airport today after his summer at a camp in California and I can’t resist sharing the super cute pic of the little man giving Uncle Alex a big hug!

Ta-ta for now. Hope your weekend was full of fun, family, and a bit of craftiness as well. 🙂

Let’s Quilt! part 5

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Part 1- here,                  Part 2- here,                         Part 3- here,                      Part 4- here

At last I have finished my quilt blocks! Or finished them as much as I plan to- we’ll get to that in a minute.

Drunkard’s Path block-

I really enjoyed this block. The original block from our class had a smaller circle but I wanted a different look so I enlarged the template circle a bit and am so excited that it turned out. I went on Pinterest to look up ideas for this block so check out my quilts board if you want to see other ways this can be used. I love how with just moving the blocks around, you can totally change the look of this block. I feel confident about sewing curved seams now. The only thing I didn’t like about the block was that it requires LOTS of pinning so it becomes quite time-consuming: difficult when your sewing time is limited to a toddler’s nap time.

Dresden Plate block

This block was our practice in applique. I have been doing quite a bit of applique recently so this was a review, but I enjoyed putting it together. I opted out of hand-appliqueing for time’s sake and did a straight stitch around all the edges. MUCH faster and I still like the effect though I do prefer a hand-applique look for a block like this. I used a freezer paper template for the center circle and even with this template, I had a hard time getting my circle completely round- but I’ve determined not to stress out about small imperfections!

Tumbling block

Ah…this block. What can I say about it? I spent much time painstakingly cutting out tiny diamonds, sewing said diamonds together, and mastering the y-seam, only to have to scrap this block for now. 😦 I was really happy with how this block was turning out as I was sewing my diamonds together. This y-seam thing wasn’t hard at all, I thought to myself. And then I began to sew the rows to each other. I just could not get them to work! The seams were so far off that in no way were they ever going to meet and I would have to resew all the individual rows to try to fix the problem. I also realized that my template was so tiny, I was going to have to make twice as many little blocks to fill my 18 inch big block. So, I scrapped it for now. We had 10 blocks built into the class, and I only need 9 for my quilt top so it wasn’t a big deal to opt out of it. I would like to revisit this block at some point and learn how to make it correctly because I love the visual effect it gives. Here’s my instagram shot of my progress.

Now that all my blocks were finished, I had to decide on sashing and borders.  I was going to do a sashing between my blocks but the only solid I have on hand to match is a very dark grey, and I didn’t think it would look good so I decided to put them together with no sashing. However I am going to do a 6 inch border of the dark grey. I got as far as sewing all the blocks together tonight and will work on the border and backing tomorrow. I am pretty excited because tomorrow’s class begins the discussion of free motion quilting- something I very much want to learn!

Let’s Quilt! part 4

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Part 1- here;                                   Part 2- here;                               Part 3- here

I have gotten a bit behind in my quilt class because I spent most of my time last week finishing my Father’s Day quilt so I am trying to get caught back up this week. I’m making fairly good progress and have 3 more blocks to show.

First off, the Double Pinwheel

I just finished my pinwheel quilt so I wanted to challenge myself to try something new in this double pinwheel. I like how I could showcase my large scale print fabric in the big wheels. I did not have any problems with this block and am happy to report that all the points line up in the middle…yay! So happy that Deborah gave us some magic numbers to use when figuring out how big to cut the squares for the half square triangle shortcuts because I’ve never been able to figure out that math!

Next up- the Ohio Star

I’m trying to balance out the blue-greens and pinky reds in the quilt so I knew that I wanted this block to focus on the blue and green prints. I also wanted to branch out a bit from using white as a background and decided this light green print would work well. Since it is such a small scale, light print, it works well for a background. I liked doing the quarter square triangles the easy way! I’m pretty happy with how well my points lined up. There are a few places where they’re off a bit but for the most part, it’s good. I like the effect of this and I am hoping it coordinates with all my other prints even though I didn’t use white as the background.

Lastly, the Card Trick

This block was extremely challenging for me and I think it pushed my skills quite a bit. Previously, I have only made triangles using the easy method of sewing two squares together and cutting them in half. I did spray the blocks with starch before I cut them and I think that helped them not stretch so much. Some of the sections, I got my points to line up perfectly and other sections are off quite a bit. I was a little discouraged because I thought I was doing much better with keeping things in line, but I guess I still have work to do. I like the effect of this block, but since it was so much work, I don’t think I will make it too often- definitely not a whole quilt of this block! I do have a bunch of triangles left over so maybe I will try to put a small version of this together for the backing of my quilt.

All my blocks so far- 7 in total.

A quilt for Father’s Day

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Last weekend, I was trying to decide on a good gift for my father for Father’s Day. I had a revelation-a quilt! He likes to sit around and read or study so a nice lap size quilt would be a great gift. I didn’t have to think too long about what kind of quilt. My dad is a big Clemson fan and likes to collect Clemson paraphernalia so I knew he would like a Clemson quilt. I quickly looked up some ideas on Pinterest until I found a design that my sister and I liked. (My siblings happily went in with me on the monetary aspect of the quilt-making since I would do all the work for them 🙂 ) Unfortunately, the picture I found does not lead to a website so I couldn’t find any specifics out about that picture, but since it was just a patchwork square quilt, it was pretty easy for me to personalize. I tweaked the design a bit to make it rectangle instead of square and decided on 8.5 inch squares. Thankfully my local Hobby Lobby carries some Kona cotton and I was able to find the colors I needed there- Purple, Clementine, and Bleached White. The backing is a Clemson logo print. I appliqued the tiger paw onto the middle block- purposefully leaving the edges a little raw so they will fray nicely. I made this quilt pretty quickly in any spare time I had this week so I didn’t take the time I should have to make all my patchwork squares line up perfectly but it’s not so bad that most people would notice- although my husband did make a comment about it. :/

The quilting is just straight lines quilted a 1/4 inch from each seam. I bound it in the same Kona cotton purple that I used for the blocks. I used my walking foot for the quilting and binding. This was my first time using the walking foot and I was happy with the help it provided, but it did take a bit of getting used to. I quilted most of the day Saturday and finished the binding Saturday night so I decided to machine stitch the binding in order to be finished by Father’s Day on Sunday. I don’t  think I will make that decision again. While it turned out fine, I prefer the look of the hand-sewn binding.

The other change I would make is to sew the tiger paw onto the block before quilting next time- I wanted the paw outline to be on the back of the quilt, but since haven’t figured out the free motion quilting on my machine yet, it was really difficult to maneuver that part around.

I am happy to report that my dad loves the quilt and I am glad to have it finished so I can catch back up with my quilting class…I’m 3 blocks behind! Hoping to catch up on that this week and show you my progress soon.

I couldn’t resist showing off my cute photographer’s assistant 🙂

 

Let’s Quilt! part 3

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Find Part One- here

Find Part Two- here

Modern Herringbone block

We used the tutorial from Sew, Mama, Sew’s Modern Block of the Month series to make this block. I love the end result of this block but the process was a bit strenuous. If I were making 12 inch blocks, it would have been no problem, but since I am making 18 inch blocks, the math became a bit sketchy. Deborah had posted an updated pattern for those of us using larger blocks but I messed up on some of the numbers and had to do some seam ripping and re-sewing. Math has never been my strong point! I think that if I ever make this block again, it will be much faster. However, the other thing I did not like about this block was that you end up cutting off quite a bit of fabric and, to me, that is somewhat of a waste. I do enjoy learning new skills though, and this block taught me some good math/block construction skills.

Double Nine Patch Block

I have always wanted to make nine patch blocks but never gotten around to it so I was happy that a block was included in this class. This block is a bit of a twist of the traditional nine patch because it includes large blocks of fabric in with the nine patch blocks. I had planned on doing a different layout, but as I looked through my fabric I realized that I had quite a few 2.5 inch strips left over from my Log Cabin and Rail Fence blocks- I even had a long strip already sewn together! I then decided to save time and use the fabrics already cut and combine them with a solid white Kona cotton to break up the scrappiness. I do so like how this turned out!

I’ve completed 4 out of the 10 blocks for this quilt class and learned so much already! Next up, I’ll be working on some HST (half-square triangles) as I make a double pinwheel block. I have learned so much already from this class and can’t believe it is almost half over 😦 . Every day I can’t wait to log in and see what new block we are working on!  Hopefully these blocks are inspiring you to learn some new skills as well!

Let’s Quilt! part 2

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For part 1 in this series go here.

I have finished two blocks for my online quilting class- a log cabin block and a rail fence block. I have done a log cabin block several times but never a rail fence. I found the construction of both blocks to be fairly simple and straightforward. I did take a long time in deciding color/fabric choices for my blocks because both of them can turn out very differently based on where you place your fabrics. I am happy to announce that both my blocks ended up 18.5 inches square- a rare feat for me! I think the solution is accurate pressing of the strips as you sew.

First: the log cabin block

I really wanted to show the two color palettes in this block. I also wanted to have a graduated intensity toward the outside of the block. I really like how the finished block turned out. This block doesn’t look square, but I promise you that it is!

Next: the rail fence block

This block utilizes dark, medium, and light fabric hues to draw your eye across and down the block. I spent forever debating medium versus dark fabrics and finally ended up with the choices you see here. While I don’t know if this is a perfect representation of the dark, medium, and light hues, I am pleased with the flow of the block. I will definitely keep this block in my repertoire to use again.

I had hoped to have a third block to show to you tonight, but alas I am struggling with the construction of this one and after sewing wrong sides together 2x in a matter of minutes, I have decided to put this aside until tomorrow to complete with a fresh mind. Do you find that as you rush to finish projects, you make stupid mistakes? I most definitely do and am learning to stop when I get to this point in order prevent unnecessary frustration! Here’s a sneak peek at that third block and my mistake.