Chugging Along

Do I have quilts that have deadlines that need to be quilted? Yes. Is there a baby quilt I still need to finish designing so I can make it? Yes. Did I decide to work on any of those next? No. Ok, so story time I guess.

Do you remember my Good Fortune quilt that I started after Christmas last year? The Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt pattern clues that I saved and never made until this year? The one that I started quilting and didn't like it so I ripped out the quilting I didn't like? Yeah, that one. That's the quilt that I started quilting again. And with the same pattern that I ripped out. But this time I used my FMQ foot rather than a walking foot to make the orange peels. And it looks better. It's certainly not great and some of my curves are looking a little flat, but they look better than the walking foot curves. 

Why this is the quilt that I suddenly needed to work on, I don't know. Part of me wanted it done by the end of the summer, but here we are in October, so that came and went. The only thing I can think of is that come Halloween, the colors for the next mystery quilt are going to be announced and I really wanted to have it done by then. Every year, her Facebook group gets much more active during mystery quilt season, and in the week up to it, many people share photos of past mystery quilts they've made and I would like to be able to include Good Fortune this year. It's also getting chillier and I want to add it into my rotation of bed quilts. 

I also wanted to practice my FMQ on a larger quilt too. My fiance requested a quilt for his bed, he picked a pattern and the colors. Except, I'm stumped on how to quilt it, since the sashing is narrower than the blocks, I can't do straight lines without it looking weird. So I'll probably just do loops or something, but I've never done FMQ on a quilt that large. This is my convoluted thinking on how to finish a quilt that doesn't actually have a deadline. 

But I did finish it! So that's 15 quilts finished so far this year and only two were wall hangings. I think I'm on track to have 18 finishes this year, it kinda depends on if I get that quilt for my fiance done or if I get moving again on hand quilting. 

Which, I did put some stitches in for the first time in months. There's just something about sitting under a quilt in the summer that just feels weird. But I also bound that one since I stole the excess backing of it to bind Good Fortune. So now, I really need to just finish quilting the background. But I'm going to run out of thread at some point this week, so I'll have to stop at Michael's or Hobby Lobby and pick up another spool. 

And I didn't get any pictures, because it's not done and the overhead light doesn't work and I'm not committed to a final floor plan, but I started setting up my sewing room at my fiance's place over the weekend. And by rearranging some furniture in the one bedroom, I believe I will have a space for a proper design wall. And the main part of the floor will be empty to make basting easier. 

I did get Fairy Ring and the snowflake quilt basted yesterday, so hopefully I can get at least one quilted this week, but there's a wedding planning meeting this week with the venue which is going to cut into quilting time as well. Same with taking my car to get an oil change. Life really gets in the way of quilting sometimes. 

And this is your friendly reminder if you haven't cleaned your machine recently, that you probably should. Get that lint out of there so you can keep quilting without issues! Alright, off to put some stitches in something!

Happy quilting!

All the Things

I really am trying to be consistent here, it's just that nothing in my life right now seems to be consistent! Wedding planning really throws a wrench in life, you know? Well, maybe you don't, but I'm learning that first hand. Some of my free time has been spent putting favors together and flowers wrapped in ribbon. But then there's meeting with vendors which took a break over the summer, but now we need to start making a bunch of decisions again and many of the vendors want things settled before the holidays ramp up, which makes sense, and I would rather that too. And on top of all that, I'm slowly moving stuff out of my apartment and into his house. 

But I figured out what I'm doing for that last gift quilt and it was all because I stumbled on the perfect fabric line while browsing Etsy. 

Tell me that's not the perfect fabric for a tween girl who's style is "woodsy, gothic, cottage core." It's amazing though how quickly a pattern formed in my head. Those pretty prints are begging to be fussy cut and mushroom blocks were needed as well. 

Which left me with this. And while a black background isn't my favorite to work with, I'm not old, but I just don't have the best lighting in my sewing space. But don't they look so cute fussy cut in the middle of the stars? 

Once I had all the stars made, I moved into the mushroom border. Because how do you have a fairy ring quilt without mushrooms? I wasn't super confident on the pint flower print, som times it looked like it worked well and other times it stood out, but once all sewn up, I like the little bit of interest it gave. 

So now on to finding a backing and figuring out how to quilt it and with what color thread. I think I saw a mushroom print at hobby lobby that might work which would be super convenient as I also need more batting. 

But I wasn't solely working on this quilt, and I do make quilts that other people have designed too. 

Like the Snowflake Quilt by Modern Handcraft. This pattern has been on my list to make for quite some time, and I knew I wanted to make it for my future sister in law and that I wanted a blue snowman fabric to feature. I just couldn't find anything. But then this fabric line came out this year and it was absolutely perfect. And it came with a panel that I'm going to sew into the backing for an extra special touch. 

But that's what I've been working on over the last few weeks. I haven't had a lot of time to just sit and sew, it's a half hour here and 20 minutes there and it does add up, it just doesn't feel like I'm getting a lot done. 

Hopefully I can get some more regular quilting time in soon, because despite all that's going on right now, I still want to participate in this years Quiltville mystery that starts right after Thanksgiving. But this year, I'm not going to decide halfway through that I need to make the full size. Half size is much more manageable and useful. I already have a bunch of bed sized quilts, not that I don't have a bunch of throw size, but they're also easier to wash since the cats love them so they get switched out more often. 

Happy Quilting!

Aren't PTO days the best?

It's amazing how I can go from not feeling like I'm getting anything done to four finishes in a few days. All it takes is having a day or two off from work with no plans to go anywhere and the quilts just stack up! But let's back up a bit.

So those half square triangles took forever to sew, trim, and press, but once they were made, these blocks went together really fast! And I'm happy to report that my pressing instructions that I wrote for the pattern mean that every single seam nests. And I mean every seam. Which made Tide Pools really fast to sew together as there's no sashing so you get the repeating pattern. And these blocks are big too so they go together even faster. 

Once I had the top of Tide Pools done- and I did the victory lap on Tide Pools and Tennessee Tumble at the same time- it was time to baste. Which is probably my least favorite part right up there with ironing the backing. Thankfully for these two quilts, I had a big enough floor space so I didn't need to pull out my basting boards which make basting a quilt easier and harder. I only have a few feet where my space is long enough to use them, but everything stays flat and I don't have wrinkles when I use them. 

Once the quilts were basted, and I don't have pictures of that because I just wanted that part done, it was time to audition thread colors. I opted to quilt Tide Pools first because I was using my walking foot for some gentle waves and I wasn't feeling up to tackling the free motion quilting I was planning on for Tennessee Tumble yet. 

I ended up going with tan for Tennessee Tumble and blue for Tide Pools. I could've gone with blue for both, but the back of Tennessee Tumble is green and I liked the tan on it better and I wasn't sure if I would have enough of the green to do the whole quilt.

But before I could do any quilting, I had to get my machine threaded. And it was Tuesday morning before work and I figured I had time to get a few rows in. And maybe it was because it was after a long weekend and I didn't want to go to work, but it took me 10 minutes to thread my machine. 10! 

Turns out gentle waves/curves are quick and easy to quilt and I had it quilted up in two days before and after work. Which meant that Thursday, which I had off of work, I could tackle some free motion quilting. Which I haven't done since before I got my Babylock Presto 2 almost 2 years ago. So a practice block was in order!

Turns out, I haven't forgotten as much as I expected. And also, if I use the stitch my machine recommends for FMQ, I get a lot of eye lashing on the back, but if use a regular straight stitch, no problems! This little 17" block was found in my orphan block box. I figured if I was going to be potentially picking out stitches, I didn't want it to be on something that was precious to me. And I'll be honest, I'm not even sure where this block came from. I don't have any of those fabrics in my stash and it's not a style of fabric that I would have picked up. It's possible it was in a box of scraps I was given. But either way, it's now quilted up, bound, and even has a little hanging sleeve on it in case I feel like displaying it. 

But since my quilting turned out better than I expected, it was time to tackle Tennessee Tumble. And tackle it I did! I only needed to rip out a few sections of stitches where my thread either broke, I accidentally crossed over somewhere I shouldn't have, or I ran out of bobbin thread. 

I don't know if you can see it very well, but when I free motion quilt, I draw a line with a water soluble marker to follow. I don't follow directly on the line, I meander back and forth around it, but it helps me to not quilt too densely in some spots and very loose in others. It looks like a bunch of S and M and W marks across the quilt top, but once it's washed, you can't see my guide lines. 

But then it was time for one of my favorite parts, trimming the quilts! I love quilts when they're done and bound, but I feel like once they are trimmed, you get a better feel for how big it is and how the quilting turns out. Except this happened. 

Which means more unpicking of stitches happened to fix it. but thankfully it wasn't all that much and it was right at the edge, so it was easier to maneuver when trying to line the stitches back up. But then came the binding marathon! I machine sew the binding to the front and hand stitch to the back. And you know what felt great? I didn't have to go to the store for any of the binding for all three quilts! My stash had exactly what I needed!

Friday was spent sewing down yards of binding. And somehow it goes so much faster with a good movie on the TV. Preferably something I've watched before so I can just listen. But then I decided that since the FMQ went a lot better than expected and the binding went on faster than expected, I would pull out a UFO baby quilt and get that one quilted up and bound. So Friday was full of finishes, four to be exact!

While all the quilts were being washed, patterns were being edited and finishing touches were added so that Saturday I could release both Tennessee Tumble & Tide Pools. 

Which meant that after days of spending time at my sewing machine, I spent two days in front of a screen without touching any fabric. This week, there will be sewing! I have one more quilt I need to make, a baby quilt for my matron of honor, and a quilt that I'm hoping to have done for a Christmas present. And there are two more patterns in my head I want to make, but those might just have to wait, because the Quiltville mystery is also going to be here before I know it and I'm also planning a wedding! I really wish I could just quit my job so I could quilt all day. Anyone else?

Happy quilting!

Well, I was on a roll!

I'm still here, I promise! But how is it the end of August already? This month just flew by! Sadly, there hasn't been much quilting going on this month, just a little here and a little there as I find tiny pockets of time. When I last posted, I was working on Tennessee Tumble and I did finish the top, but it isn't quilted yet. I like to use my felt covered 2x4s to baste quilts and I took those over to my fiance's house (slowly moving some stuff over there). I just keep forgetting to grab the batting when I go over there, so it's waiting in the queue. Of course while assembling the top, there always has to be one block that decides to turn the wrong direction, so some seam ripping was needed to fix that because it would bother me, even though I'm not keeping this one.

So while I have no quilt to quilt right now, I'm working on piecing the next one. This one was also originally doodled in different colors, but the recipient of this one is also a beach lover and I found the perfect bundle of fabrics. Bonus is that they are batiks! And since this still to be finalized name quilt is mostly half square triangles, I love it even more since batiks are so delightful to press.

And I am delighted to report that as of last night, all the flying geese and half square triangles are trimmed and pressed and ready for me to begin block assembly! The picture below is of all the units before sewing/trimming/pressing. 

So why the limited quilting time this last month? Some of it good, some of it frustrating. To start, my apartment building changed management companies and they decided to add key pad locks to all the units. Which I thought was going to be great. Except I got a faulty/finicky lock and was locked out of my apartment twice in a week for 2 hours each time waiting for the maintenance guy to get there and unlock my door. I now have a physical key so it shouldn't happen again but it was frustrating, especially since it was my day off and I had better things to do than sit in my car and wait!

Then there was my now sister-in-law's bachelorette party. She wanted to do a paint and sip thing and it was fun and I tried my hand at painting. I'm happy with how it turned out but I still think fabric is my artistic medium of choice.

Then we move back to the frustrating because a week later I started laundry at my fiance's house and sat on the couch to watch some TV with him only to hear the dreaded drip...drip...drip and realized the ceiling was dripping on the chair in front of my sewing machine that I keep at his place. The machine was quickly moved and buckets were found and thankfully it was during the spin cycle that it started dripping. So now there's a lovely hole in the ceiling and the leak has been fixed (we hope!). But my machine is safely stored out of the way while we wait to make sure there are no more leaks and fix the ceiling. 

But back to the happy news, last weekend my younger brother got married and my parents came indl for the wedding so we were busy celebrating and spending time with them. 

And while I want to say things have calmed down and I should get more sewing time in soon, especially since I'm back to having more free time every other week, I'm looking ahead at the calendar and realizing that a lot of things for my own wedding are going to start happening. So I may not post as regularly as I'd like in the next few months, but I will try! At the very least, there are 3 or 4 quilts that need to be made before my wedding next March so there will be quilting to help keep me sane!

Happy quilting!

I'm on a roll!

Apparently, I just need to take a break for a month or so from quilting every year or so. Because when I come back, I come back full force and ready to go! A lot has happened in the last two weeks. There were quilt starts and finishes, patterns being published, new patterns being written, the beginning of pattern testing for those and more.

So back to the beginning. I decided that I didn't like the quilting that I was doing on Good Fortune so I ripped out the stitching in the three rows that I had quilted. I don't know what I'm going to do instead, so it's been folded up and tucked into the closet. Aside from anything else, my wrist was bothering me a little bit. I think it might've been quilting on my old machine since the machine bed is smaller and so is the throat space. There was more tugging and trying to hold the quilt in place than on my new machine so I think I might leave the quilting for the new machine. Either way, I didn't want to aggravate it more and then not be able to even sew. So what was I sewing? I was pattern testing my newest quilt pattern, Ocean Waves. 

I needed to finish writing the pattern for it, so that came first, but then I was able to dive into my stash and start cutting and sewing. I wish I had more darker tans because my lighter tans ended up blending with the cream backgrounds a little more than I liked. But the blues and tans remind me of the ocean waves washing up onto the beach, and I have a recipient in mind for this one, but I need to finish a few others first. I have plans and secrets and on the off chance the recipient finds this page, I don't want to spoil the surprise. 

My original doodle for this quilt was to make it in Christmas colors, because who doesn't need another Christmas quilt. But sadly, my Christmas fabrics are lacking and I didn't think I would have enough fabric (?) but also because I wanted to make a quilt for this special person and they are a beach lover. Instantly, this pattern came to mind and I reworked the colors. But I still want to make Ocean Waves in Christmas colors. Maybe some day. 

In between the chain piecing of Ocean Waves, I also worked on two disappearing nine patch quilts for the two pregnant women at work. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to make them quilts, but then the one asked me if I could help her out with a milestone blanket that had the wrong name on it because it was ordered and then decided to change the name. So I might be working on that this week, that's going to be a bit of a challenge and take a trip to hobby lobby because I have a feeling it's screen printed, not appliqued. But I had some really cute baby prints and loved the excuse to take more onto my plate and fit more quilts in. I'm crazy, and I know it. But didn't they come out so cute?? I like the construction truck one more. Maybe I'm just a little tired of dinosaurs right now.

So not only did I finish three quilts in one day (it was a day of binding and PTO is an amazing thing), I was also working on my fiance's quilt as well. He just wanted blue and green squares and I'm not gonna lie, it kinda bores me. But because I love him, I'm powering through. I also started writing the pattern for my next quilt, Tennessee Tumble. I'm working with the same palette as Good Fortune with many of the same fabrics and I can't wait to start stitching that one as well. 

I also published the pattern for Play Date. This is one that I made a while ago and finally got the pattern written. I've made this one twice, once in Christmas fabrics from a lot of different lines in the king size. And twice in the baby size using one line of fabric. And both turned out beautiful. I kinda want to make a throw size one now too. I have a box of miscellaneous charm squares that don't match much at all, but would look great in this pattern. 

And Joy was gifted her quilt when I saw her this week. She was speechless and overwhelmed. And she cried. Which I didn't mean to happen, but she said she was so grateful for it and all the verses on the panel meant so much to her and she told me it was like God was speaking right to her. Which is exactly what I felt coming home from a massage a few months ago. I knew the remnant of a panel that I picked up at Hobby Lobby that I had sitting in my stash was bought for her and I didn't know that when I bought it. 

And that's what I love the most about gifting quilts I think. It's a tangible way to speak to someone in a way they aren't expecting. It's a hug when you need one and no one is around. A reminder that someone cares about you so much. And now I'm getting all teary just thinking about it. 

I hope your quilting can bring some blessing into your life as well as those around you. Happy quilting!

Still Here!

Ok, so I wasn't intending on taking such an extended break. Or really, any break at all. But life happened, in a good way! I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but my brother got engaged a few months ago and my future sister in law asked me to be a bridesmaid. And she needed to go dress shopping because their wedding is this summer. So that took up some valuable weekend sewing time (aside from it also being nice outside which also cut into sewing time). But then, the end of May, my boyfriend proposed, so wedding planning took center stage of all my free time, but I think we have all the big things taken care of so planning will calm down for a few months. So while I am extremely happy and excited, I think I did maybe 2 hours of sewing in the last 2 months. But I will probably end up disappearing again for at least a month early next year.

But I'm back! I turned on my sewing machine for the first time in weeks on Monday. And I have two finished quilts this week to show for it. First, I finished Rising Stars. I wanted to call this one Shooting Stars, but because I released this one as a quilt pattern, and auto bots can be dumb, I was afraid the shooting part would somehow be flagged by Etsy. So a rename was needed. 

Rising Stars has no planned recipient. It was inspired by the piece of brown flannel in the middle that was a remnant I picked up somewhere, most likely Joann's. The blue and the green came from my stash, those were also leftover pieces from another project or also remnants. I tend to pick up any solid remnants I see when I'm fabric shopping, mainly because I don't gravitate towards them but they do come in handy. Even the polka dot came from my stash, though I did need to go back to Hobby Lobby to get an extra quarter yard because that's how much I was short. 

So this was almost a true stash buster for me. I did buy backing, I don't have a lot of large pieces of fabric that I can use as backings. Most of my fabric is about a yard or less, but the binding came from my stash! As did the batting. This was a true frankenbatting because I'm pretty sure there are at least a dozen strips sewn into it. Which also explains the dense quilting. I didn't want any of it to move or bunch up if possible. 

Then, yesterday, I finished Joy's Stars. At least that's what I'm calling it. I believe the pattern is actually Ohio Stars and Courthouse Steps, but that's a mouthful and a lot to write on a tag. I did omit a few stars so I could use pieces of a panel that I had (also a remnant). I had a handful of fat quarters that I loved together and I wasn't sure what to use them in until I saw this pattern.

Joy's Stars is for my friend and massage therapist, Joy. And the original plan before I got sidetracked by wedding planning, was to give this to her as a housewarming gift. All I need to do was put the border on (already cut) and quilt and bind it. I had the backing, the batting, and the binding fabric, it was just put on hold and will now be two months late. But I can't wait to give it to her when I see her in a few weeks. 

I love the striped binding I used and it was only after sewing down the third side that I realized that since it wasn't a random stripe like I normally use when I use a striped binding, that it would be noticeable where I joined the two pieces since the pattern would repeat weird. As you can probably imagine, I squealed a little bit with delight when I got to the point of needing to join the ends because the pattern lines up perfectly. As do all the other joins, but I planned those that way. This wasn't planned, just a happy accident!

So what's up next? I think I want to finish quilting Good Fortune so I can take that one off my plate and I'm sure there will be some hand quilting going on again now that we're in the dog days of summer and it's not quite so nice to want to be outside. But also, because my schedule changed at work for the summer, I won't have as much quilting time as I did last year so things might be a little slow going. Maybe I'll work on pattern writing in the evenings. I have a few quilts that are already made that I could write up patterns for as well as some I've designed that I need to write the pattern so I can make it. So what have you been up to while I was away?

Happy Quilting!

This was supposed to be quick!

No, not my Etsy shop. I'm under no impression that it will go crazy. Big stitch hand quilting. That's what I'm talking about. It was supposed to be faster than traditional hand quilting. But it's partly my own fault. A) I'm learning something new and B) I don't think I originally planned enough quilting. I thought it would be enough quilting, but once I started quilting the sashing, I realized there were still some big gaps between the quilting. 

Which left me with a dilemma, what now? Do I go back and add more to my sashing quilting? Not sure how I would do that without it looking awkward. I could add more to the block quilting by adding another row of stitching around the outside of each flower, but I kinda thought that would look weird. And then there is the issue of the dark blue thread that I used on the front completely blending in on the back and not being able to see it at all. But it is the back, so does it really matter that much? I'm only going to see it when changing the quilt on my bed or washing it. 

What I ended up deciding, was to add cross hatching to the background. It really is my favorite way of quilting quilts. But I decided to quilt it in white, like a trellis behind what I have already quilted. For the moment, I'm not going to cross hatch the border. I like how the white stands out on the back, but I don't want it to detract from the leaves I quilted on the front since the border and backing are the same fabric. 

That decision will most likely be made once I'm done with the center. You know, when I'm ready to be done with this quilt or I just bought another spool of thread so I could finish it and I didn't even use a quarter of it. It's going to probably work out that way. But on the bright side, I didn't have to order white thread online, they had some at the local big chain craft store. So that was nice that I didn't need to wait for it to show up. I'm not done quilting the sashing yet, I have eight more to go I think, but I just needed something simple and easy that didn't require spinning my hoop 60 times just to do one motif. 

There's been a little bit of EPP going on over here as well, but that's also well, slow going. But I knew that going into it. It's not my first EPP project. I've been wanting to sit at my machine, but it's nice outside because it's spring so something I noticed over the past year or so is that when the weather gets nice in the spring, I don't do as much quilting. I want to be outside planting flowers and enjoying the weather. Once it gets really hot, I'm back inside. But I anticipate quilting to slow down just a little bit over the next month or so.

But also, I Spy Stars is done! The fun thing about baby quilts is that they usually don't take long to quilt or bind. Much less time that queen size quilts, that's for sure! I'll have photos next time as it's currently in the dryer so that I can hand it off to my brother later this afternoon. But I will share this, every time I use a stripe for the binding, I wonder why I don't do that more often. 

Happy quilting everyone!