Christmas Gifts - Round 1

I managed to finish quite a few projects for Christmas.  First up are some surprise finishes for my husband!  First I made him a throw pillow.

The front is a panel that I put small borders on in order to make it the right size.  The back is a simple envelope construction.

He suspected I was up to something, but I still managed to (mostly) surprise him.  I couldn't make so many people something hand made without making something for him!

Then I threw together some nerdy pillowcases!  The body fabric is all sorts of mathematical terms and figures.  I found this fabric just before Thanksgiving at The City Quilter in New York City when I had almost given up finding something suitable.

Linking up with Finish it up Friday.

On the Winds of North Carolina

That mini quilt challenge I had in my sights?  I managed to pull it all together!  In two days I designed, pieced, hand quilted, and constructed a 12x12'' pillow.  Phew!  But I'm very excited to show it off!  I may have done a happy dance after it was all pieced.  It came out better than I hoped.

The Glider

The challenge was to make a mini quilt based on a holiday memory.  I thought that was really cool!  Then I hemmed and hawed and got stuck.  I have lots of awesome holiday memories, but it was hard to pull something from them that could be made into a quilt in 2 days.  But after much struggling to choose, Wednesday morning my pattern just fell right out of my head.  Quilt plan and all!

Me in the middle!

This summer we went to the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  While we were there, we took the opportunity to give hang gliding a try.  There are some awesome winds in the Outer Banks (sometimes a little too awesome! Apparently 25mph is too strong to hang-glide on...) and sand dunes that at least made me feel as though it would be a soft landing.  I loved it.  If I lived near a gliding hill, I think I'd go once a month!

Family and friends tried too...

So without further ado...  I give you hang gliding, quilted style!
(I'm sorry the pictures are a bit dark, it's nasty out today.)

If you look closely, there's a needle in the arm of the chair!

You may notice that the sky fabric that I acquired the other day came in very handy.  I'm glad I bought extra!

I added a couple of clouds, a good wind keeping the glider aloft, and wind patterns in the sand.  The back is made from white polka dots, because who doesn't like a good polka dot?

It was a good trip, a great memory, and it became a pretty neat pillow!  I hope you enjoyed coming along on my trip down memory lane!

Linking up with Finish it up Friday, Fabric Tuesday, and a Holiday Memory Challenge.

Winged Square Ready to Fly!

Unstuffed to show the quilting.

It took some hard work, but I managed to pull out a Friday finish!

Last time I had shown this pillow I had been debating whether I should try to quilt this by machine.  I love my hand quilting, but it is a serious time investment.

So when we were leaving for our vacation, I added it to the pile of projects I was bringing just in case. (It was a larger pile than was reasonable, but a girl has to take what time she can get!)






I had intended to work on some big projects while we were in the Outer Banks.  But on day one I realized my mistake.  There was no way that I wanted to sit under a blanket in that warm humid weather! 

Stuffed and looking like a proper pillow!

So I pulled out this little guy and started sewing.  And once I got going on it, there was no stopping me!

I used Gutermann black quilting thread, mostly because I only had a little bit left and I wanted to use it up.  (Which I did, by the way.  With nothing to spare!)  My usual thread is also Gutermann, but it doesn't feel so waxy.  I wonder what I had used the rest of the spool for.

It took me just under 8 hours to quilt this little 12 inch square.  And then I wonder why I can't finish anything quickly!

I promise my walls
are not so chartreuse!

The back is a plain black envelope back.

Doesn't it look so inviting on this chair?  Alas, I can't keep everything I make, so this one's up in my etsy store!

Linking up with Finish it up Friday.

Hand Quilting in NC

Reporting live from the Outer Banks!  Surf...  Sand...  Sun...  Stitches!

Center section down! 20 Triangles to go...

Linking up to W.i.P. Wednesday.

Penguin Pillows and Back Troubles

By this point I'm sure that you all think that I only make penguins!  It's not true!  Though I have nothing to show you this week to prove otherwise - you'll just have to take my word for it.

In between painting sessions in the new sewing room, I've been working on a pair of pillows to go with my penguin quilt.

I've also been trying to put together the back for the penguin quilt.  Turns out I have less fabric leftover than I thought.  I am short one 12x50 inch strip.  So back to the drawing board.  And I need to have the back finished by Wednesday.  Thursday I'm off to my yearly quilt weekend with my mom and the penguins go to the quilter while I'm there!

Free Motion Frustrations

My pillow

I'm not sure why I thought that I would be able to just pick up machine quilting and go.  I certainly have no reason to believe that should be true.  Nevertheless, when I decided to machine quilt my latest pillow, I thought it was going to be easy.  Oh, how wrong I was.

I thought a spiral would look nice and give my pinwheel some motion.  My first attempt was to try quilting my spiral the same way I did crosshatching (that one time) in the past.  My thought was that I would draw the inner bit of the spiral, start following my chalk line, and then follow the rest with a seam guide.

One trial run later I was at my local quilt store to see if I could find a seam guide.  I couldn't find one with my machine, and I may or may not have even had one to begin with... 

And somehow I walked out with a free motion quilting foot!  I'm not quite sure how that happened.  I've never been interested in machine quilting, yet here we are.

After recruiting my husband figure out how to attach the darn thing, I spent most of the week trying to figure out how to regulate my machine again.  I'm not sure I'm making any progress, and I'm pretty sure I could have hand quilted it by now, but I'm determined to stick it out a while longer.

In the meantime, my pinwheel pillow sits untouched and patiently waiting for me to figure out what I'm doing.

Linking up at WiP Wednesday.

An Orphan Finds New Life

Obviously thrown together without care.

 An orphan block that is...

Once upon a time I put this block together intending, I think, to continue adding blocks to it until I had a scrappy rail fence quilt.  The flaw in this plan being that I've never been known to handle scrappy well (although I am trying to expand out of my comfort zone - slowly).

After months of not finding anything in my stash or my scrap bin that I wanted to expand this block with, followed by months and months of leaving the poor block sitting in a dark corner of my UFO bag, I decided it was time to pull it out and do something with it!

Revitalized!

I thought it would probably make a decent pillow, but the block didn't really seem to stand on it's own.  I felt a rail fence pinwheel would probably be better as an independent block.

When I took the center seams apart, the rail blocks were about 6.5 inches wide by an assortment of sizes long.  I'm not sure why I thought that was a good idea, so I started by trimming the blocks down into squares.  (Much better!)  Then I rotated them around and tried again.

So here it is: one 12.5 inch block ready for some experimental machine quilting and life as a pillow!

Linking up with Design Wall Monday, Fabric Tuesday, and WiP Wednesday.

Scraps

Ever since I've started quilting, I've saved scraps of fabric.  Pretty much every scrap: big scraps, small scraps... my mom's scraps (Hi mom!)...  pieces smaller than I want to use, even.  I would open my scrap box, stuff in the new scraps, and that would be that.

But I recently decided to take a chance and open an etsy store, which prompted me to start making some small items.  So I opened up the shoe box that contained my scraps, and fabric that hasn't seen the light of day for a while now has hope of being used again.

Well the first thing to do was to change my storage method.  Every time I went to look for a scrap I had to pull every piece out of the shoe box, one by one, and the piece I wanted was invariably on the bottom of the box.  So I went and got some bins, and now my scraps are separated by color.  There were only eight drawers so some colors have to share, but it's much, much better than it's been.

Well, if you've made it through all that, I do have some sewing to share.  I've been wanting to make a winged square block, so I pulled out some scraps, and found all those triangles already sewn!  I took that as a sign.  I think my favorite part is the yellow circle centered in the middle of that small square in the upper right!

One winged quilt square, ready for some quilting!

Quilt Plan

Now I'm trying to figure out how to quilt it.  I have a quilt plan, ambitious as usual, and I am primarily a hand quilter.  But I was shocked at how long it took me to hand quilt the last pillow I completed, and the quilting wasn't even that complex or dense!

So I'm looking for some advice.  Do go with my original quilt plan and hand quilt it?  Do I come up with a quilt plan that I can execute on my machine?  Or do I compromise and do a little bit of both?

Linking up with W.i.P Wednesday.

Penguins Are Everywhere!

I have been tossing around the question of whether to blog or not for a while.  Since I’ve decided to start documenting my process and find out how much time making a quilt takes me, I figure this is a good time to try out the blogging world and see what comes of it.  Hopefully I’ll have lots to report on since many of my projects are coming due!

Recently I’ve been working on a penguin quilt.  It’s been quite the process getting started.

Usually there’s the easy way to do things, and then there’s my way.  But this time I actually scaled back a quilt plan.  When I started making blocks I realized this quilt was going to take way too long!  My first plan was very ambitious (30 penguins and 74 three inch nine patches!  What was I thinking??) and a throw with a couple of pillows will be just as cute, right? 

Queen                                                         Throw

So now that we have a much more manageable throw (55x67) instead of a monster queen (79x91), hopefully I’ll be able to finish it!

 

 

Even though the original pattern calls for paper piecing, I carried on avoiding paper piecing for just a little bit longer.  One of these days I want to try it, because there are many neat paper pieced blocks out there… but perhaps not when I’ve got a deadline!  I drew a plan, tested my numbers and got a cute little pillow out of the deal.

Quilt status: 5/12 penguin blocks and all 20 blue on blue nine patches.

 

Linking up with W.i.P. Wednesday.