Chugging Along

You know, it really stinks when work gets in the way of hobbies. But hobbies don't pay the bills, so work it is. I really didn't work on much this past week, really I just kept working on my Good Fortune quilt. Last Sunday I finished one of the two blocks. I think I finished the easier block first, because the other block in the quilt is a little more tedious. 

It started with all the half square triangles. Those took me two days just to sew and press after work. Thankfully they all turned out almost perfect so there was minimal trimming afterwards. 

And then there were the half chevron blocks, those were the most tedious. Because it involved marking the line corner to corner on the back of squares, but also the line for the bonus triangles. 

All of those are trimmed and ready to go, but wow. A) they are tiny and B) I realized how much I hate drawing lines to see on. I'd much rather use the masking tape I have on my machine to sew corner to corner.

So because I'm impatient, I skipped ahead and put together four blocks to I could see how my colors will play together. And I'm really happy with the result, but before I sew any more blocks together, I need to sew all the half square triangles together. Which brings me to my last thing for this week, because this is all I managed to get done. If you do a lot of chain piecing, you really should get yourself one of these. 

This one has a regular blade in it, but they make them that you can put old rotary blades in. That kind was sold out when I purchased this one and it makes chain piecing so much better. No more clipping each unit apart, this gadget makes it so much faster. The blade, which you can't cut your finger on, cuts apart all the little chaining threads between your units. 

This week I hope to get the rest of the half square triangle pairs together and if I'm lucky, I'll finish the other block. After the blocks are together, I'll go back and make the last unit I need for the border. And maybe on Saturday, I'll have the borders on Old Town as well. I might have to show up for jury duty on Tuesday (yippee), and if I do, I'll be taking my doodle notebook and maybe coming up with more quilt designs. Or write the patterns for some that I've already doodled out. 

Happy sewing!

Back in the Saddle

After a nice December break full of holiday activities and baking cookies, I'm back in my sewing groove. So far this month, I have managed to do a little bit of quilting almost every day. Projects that have taken up my time in the last week or so have been the Quiltville Old Town mystery and an old Quiltville mystery Good Fortune. Yesterday I finished sewing the blocks together, I think I had six left to go, and all the sashing. And since it was still early, I laid out all my blocks and started sewing. And I got to the point where the quilt top is in 4 large chunks before I lost steam. But even after I get the center sewn, I'm at the point where I have to make a lot more four patches because I decided to change up the outer border. So instead of her large squares, I'm going to make a lot more 4 patches and create a checkerboard border.

Honestly, it's not even the thought of cutting or sewing that many units, it's the pressing of that many units that has my head spinning. I haven't calculated how many more I need to make, but I'm pretty sure it's a lot. But that project is currently sitting at my boyfriend's place. And the intention was to get the center together earlier today, but the snow came in faster than expected. And since we're supposed to get between 5-8" and I need to go to work tomorrow, I stayed home today and made soup. Because snow days, specifically weekend snow days, call for soup and fresh bread. And sewing. Lots of sewing and ignoring housework that could be done. 

Since the Good Fortune mystery is over and I have the reveal, I switched up the colors knowing how they would all play out in the end.. I'm pretty sure I decided to start this one as soon as I finished my Ice Crystals quilt. But I received two fat quarter bundles for Christmas, Flowerhouse Camille by Debbie Beaves and Shoreline by Camille Roskelley and I was surprised how well the two bundles worked together. I only have one of the blocks done, I'm working on clues out of order so I can do a block at a time and not lose parts and I'm loving how well they're coming together. Next up is the alternate block using navy blues and greens. 

What else, the baby quilt for my friend is a top, it still needs to be quilted and I haven't taken any photos yet, my apartment doesn't have very good lighting and I've been working on it in the evenings. I meant to take a picture today, but because of the snow, still not great photos. I might not get any photos until it's done at this point, but I will say it has turned out super cute. 

And I'm sure everyone has heard the news with Joann Fabrics. I won't lie, I made a trip to the bigger store on Friday after work. That store looked like a disaster zone. There were boxes everywhere and empty shelves, but I will say that the employees did look like they were trying to keep a positive take on things. I walked out with a lot of fabric, something like 25 yards. And with all the holiday sales going on, I think it came out to about $5/yard with the coupons I had. I grabbed a few quarter yard cuts of some novelty prints. I think this next baby quilt is going to be an I Spy quilt and my novelty fabrics are quite slim. Other than that, I stocked up on neutrals, of which I'm always running low, and some oranges. Along with a few fabrics that caught my eye. I want to say I didn't go nuts, but I feel like 25 yards is going nuts. 

But despite the reason why I went, it is always fun to inject new fabrics into your stash. You end up with combinations you wouldn't have paired otherwise or sometimes there's one fabric you want to make the focal point and you already have the rest in your stash. And I won't lie, if the worst happens, and there are liquidation sales, I will go buy fabric. And probably another storage bin for it since the two I have are quite full now after this last shopping trip. 

Right now I should probably work on those baby quilts, but I really just want to work on Good Fortune. So that's probably what I'm going to end up doing. The quilt for my friend only needs to be quilted and I can probably get that done in a day. And her baby shower is over a month away. And the I Spy quilt isn't needed until August, so I have lots of time there. Or I might end up hand quilting as that quilt has been keeping me company on the couch next to me untouched for almost two months now. Decisions, decisions.

Happy Quilting!

Happy New Year!

I can't believe it's been almost two months since I shared anything. There have been things to share, but not as much as I would like. My current job involves shipping and as you can imagine, it gets a little hectic at work around Thanksgiving and lasts through Christmas, and if I'm being honest, January is a little crazy as well as everyone stocks back up on things after the holiday rush.

I was able to sneak a few things in quilting wise over the last month, but it's been quite sporadic and it takes a minute to figure out where I was when I pick it back up again. I started my first big stitch hand quilting project right before thanksgiving but haven't picked it up since. I did finish that last baby quilt (more on that last part later), All was going really well until I was joining my binding strips. Would you believe, while cutting the excess binding away so I could join the ends of my flange binding, I cut the quilt top? I was so upset with myself that I set the quilt aside for a few days. 

In the end, I ended up patching both sides as the cut was about an eighth of an inch past my binding. And somehow I was able to match up almost perfectly the front pattern. When asking for help on how to fix it, one person suggested I use a bite shaped patch in a different color as there were dinosaurs in the prints used. And while that sounded like a great idea, my skills are not there yet so I didn't want to go for it. But I will keep that in mind for a future oops. Not that I'm planning to make that kind of oops again. This one was handed over to my brother for delivery on Christmas and he has said that the couple is very appreciative. 

Oh and as far as that last baby quilt? I got a text on New Year's saying that another friend is going for a first ultrasound in a few weeks so he's going to need another one by the end of summer. At this point, I really should just make a few tops for either gender and maybe a neutral one so they are ready to go when he needs one. But before that, I need to make one for my friend. I have a free pattern picked out and fabric was delivered so I can't wait to dive into that. 

I think it was a day or two after Thanksgiving that I decided I wanted to make a Christmas table runner to put under my nativity set since it's porcelain and I am always afraid of bumping it and knocking them over, so off I went and whipped up Baking Day from the Barnstar Sampler book. In an attempt to make the table runner as flat as possible, I tried matchstick quilting. Which I enjoyed a lot more than I thought I would, but unfortunately the seams were too think in the table runner for my nativity pieces to stand up. Those little sheep are just too small and light to handle anything slightly bumpy. But it found a home on the table and made the dining room a bit more festive. 

Let's see, what else? I've been working on the Quiltville Winter Mystery. I mostly kept up through the whole thing and decided a few weeks in to make it the full size, so I did end up ordering the rest of that beautiful backing. Now just to finish the quilt as the reveal has happened. 

And then, while I was super impressed with myself for finishing 14 projects in 2024, I decided last minute to try to finish my Ice Crystals quilt. So I spent the Saturday after Christmas crawling around on the floor basting the quilt and then Sunday and Monday quilting it. Binding went on Tuesday and it was washed and dried before the clock struck midnight, which brought my 2024 finishes up to 15. Wow, I was busy last year!

Ice Crystals does not have a pattern. Yet! I'm trying my hand at pattern writing and finding that it's not as easy as you would think, but also I'm not sure if I'm just wordy, but with lots of pictures and diagrams I think the pattern is around 26 pages. Included are a cover page and a coloring page, but directions, materials, and diagrams make up the remaining 24 pages. And I still need to find at least one pattern tester before I figure out how to go about publishing a pattern. 

Which has led me down another rabbit trail of how to go about opening an Etsy shop, and while that part looks easy enough, it's the tax and legal side that is currently mystifying me and giving me a headache. My goal for this year is to be able to open an online store, so don't hold your breath that it will happen in the next month, but cross your fingers I figure it out at some point this year. I have a bunch of patterns I have doodled out that I want to make and if I'm going through the effort of figuring it all out for me, why not make it available for others as well?

Happy quilting! My sewing machine is calling me!

My Barnstar Sampler

As promised, this post is mostly all about my Barnstar Sampler by Shelley Cavana that I recently finished. I saw the pattern for the first time last September/October and mentioned that I really loved the pattern and thought it would look beautiful in Lori Holt's Bee Vintage line. I added the pattern and fabric to my wish list and didn't think much more of it. I already had a bunch of projects in the works and didn't have enough money in my fabric budget to buy anything anyway. 

Fast forward to Christmas last year and everything I needed was under the tree. Apparently he was adding to cart as I was going on about how cool this pattern was and bought months ago. I think he's a keeper!

So naturally after all the Christmas festivities were done and we're ready to sit back and relax, I started looking through the color requirements and fabric I had and and assigning fabric to colors in the pattern. Some colors had more than they needed and others were a tad short. That's just what happens when you're using a fat quarter bundle and the pattern calls for 3/8 of a yard. 

But between the Bee Vintage bundle and a small calico cat quarter bundle from Lori Holt as well, I only needed to order a half yard of fabric in chocolate brown to get enough contrast. Not bad. The background neutrals came from my stash, but I tried to keep them very low volume and more light cream than white.

I started sewing the blocks together the day after Christmas and started with block 2 as I was waiting for the chocolate brown fabric to make block 1. In hindsight, I'm not sure if I would start with the largest blocks again, but it does make sense since they need so much fabric and it took almost a whole fat quarter for some so if I would have waited until later, I'd be making some creative design choices. 

As it was, I did end up making the quilt larger than the pattern. I had measured the finished size on my bed and realized I'd prefer a little more overhang off the sides of my bed. Instead of just adding a strip of 8" blocks down one side, I looked at the end of the pattern on how the quilt was put together in sections and added my blocks in that way. I look at the finished quilt now and I can't tell you which blocks I added. I'm quite impressed with myself. 

It took about a month and a half to piece the entire top, many blocks were made that week between Christmas and New Year's since I took off from work that week. But I worked on it a little after work each day, some days only choosing colors and cutting all the pieces, other days cutting and sewing. It just depended on what I had the energy for after work. 

But it felt like the real work began once the top was done. I had decided when I received the pattern that I would be hand quilting this one and as the blocks came together, that I wanted to do custom quilting in each star. Oh, and why not use 12 different color threads while I was at it? So while I was finishing hand quilting my 12.5 year grandmother's flower garden quilt, I doodled each of the blocks out and started contemplating quilt patterns at lunch while at work. 

Since this felt like a super special quilt, and I was planning on putting it on my bed over winter, I decided to use Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting for this quilt. I feel like the investment was worth it. Wool is a dream to quilt through as I only learned last year and I also thought that the loft of the wool batting would let my quilting show up a bit better. Now that it's been washed and dried, and honestly even before that, this quilt has the best texture. While it doesn't have as much crinkle as cotton batting would create, the loft creates a contrast with the stitches. 

I outlined each block, thinking that would help the stars pop off the quilt a bit better, then I crosshatched the entire background an inch apart. Despite taking 2 spools of thread, the background was probably the easiest/quickest to quilt. Ok, I lied. I started cross hatching the background but my hoop was getting caught in the wool batting and leaving bits of fluff everywhere. So I completely quilted the entire outside edge about 8" in, so I could bind it before quilting the rest. I used a scrappy binding made from leftover fabric, of which I have enough to make a lap quilt, and I think that was the right choice over a single binding. 

Once bound, I was back to finishing quilting the background. Then the fun really began. I tried out a bunch of new quilting designs, at first they were marked but about halfway through I mainly started free handing it, and I don't think you can tell. I learned that larger feathers I don't mind so much, but small feathers I don't enjoy at all. You can sort of see the small feathers in the white chevron shape below. 

All in all, I had a lot of fun working on this sampler quilt. And I would make another sampler quilt, not this pattern again, because I tend to not make a pattern more than once unless I'm drastically changing something (completely different colors/shades/values) or I need a quick quilt (such as the Oh My Stars pattern that I made twice last fall). I also found that I think I enjoy the asymmetrical samplers more than a sampler of all the same size block. I received another sampler book for Christmas this year and there has been one that I've been wanting to make since I started quilting. I may or may not get around to making those this year, it kinda depends on what else is going on.

Happy quilting!