WIP Wednesday - at last!

It has been ages since I have had time to write a WIP Wednesday post. I have spent a lot of this month working on UFOs.
First was the Pear Pincushion I was given at Quilter's Paradise (who are closing their doors! Dang!). They do laser cut fabric and this little pincushion was one of their projects. It was a freebie on the shop hop a few months ago.
It took me about 2 hours. I still have a lot of work to do sewing curves. Finishing the bottom was interesting. I had to fudge it. Good thing it sits on that part. :)

 Just hours after I finished it, it disappeared. We finally found it about a week and a half later in my boys' room where Littlest Miss had taken it.

While my moms were here for the baptism, we went to Fat Quarters Quilt Shop, where I got the sashing fabric for my Beginner's Quilt Along blocks. I hope it will pull all those crazy purple fabrics together. The plan for today is to get the fabric cut so I can start sashing those blocks.

 Another UFO is the Very Hungry Caterpillar Quilt. After one cutting hiccup, it should be smooth sailing, since it is just borders and cornerstones. I do have to rip one border side off, as the seams at the corners did not meet, and then put it and the last side on and it will be ready to quilt.

I made my pioneer skirt and bonnet.


And I also made Littlest Miss an apron in 35 minutes to put with her pioneer dress to kind of finish the look for Trunk or Treat at the church Saturday night. I used a sheet we had in the Halloween box for ghost costumes. It made the ties a little thick, but it works.

I made this spider hat for pack meeting crazy hat/hair night. It is my regular beach hat with plastic spiders from Target on it attached with glue dots and thread.

 And last is some altering I need to do. I bought a box of clothes from Wittlebee and hated all of them (long nasty story). I can't get a refund or exchange so I am going to do some de- and re-construction on some of them. Others are just getting donated.

This shirt looked cute at first glance until....

 ...I pulled it out of the box. What the heck? Bat wings. It looks really weird on. The "wings"  hang down the sides of her legs.  Littlest Miss refused to model either thing I am altering. I will cut out the wings and attempt to sew it straight.

This dress is okay, good color for her, although we don't do sleeveless at our house. But then I put it on her. It is one of those bubble skirts that seems to be all the rage, but I think are UGLY. And it looks really odd on her, the way it hangs. 



I will be ripping out the elastic that is between the green and turquoise fabrics and putting a regular hem in.

 I will try to get before and after pictures with the clothes on the girl. :)

That is all for now!
Have a good one!

Linking up at Lee's!

 

Quilt Along Blocks and goodies

I actually got my blocks done for the Beginner's Quilt Along done before the new block was posted this week! Yay! Miss K is potty training which for now means we stay home all day for at least a week. She watched Finding Nemo today so I worked on my blocks. I am terrible at quarter square triangles. They were fine until I had to square them up. You can tell, especially in the bright block, bottom right, that at most of them are squared wrong. But this is about learning so I am okay with it. I will need to practice these though.

BQA 11

BQA 11B

In other news, I got to meet Julie Herman on Saturday at her book signing at Quilt In A Day quilt shop in San Marcos. I completely forgot to take a photo with her. She is very nice and I wish I had not been so distracted by my little one running around the store so I could have taken more time to chat. There were not a lot of people there to attend the signing, but plenty of people shopping. They had a back room where you could buy fabric by the pound! I got a little less than a pound and spent about $10.00 on it. The yellow is about 1/2 a yard (it has a seam in it), the blue with red dots (Michael Miller is about 3/4 yard, the white with blue and red dots (also Michael Miller) is just a bit over a yard and the batik is a little bigger than a fat quarter. The alphabet fat quarter is the one Miss K chose for me to make something for her.

I am really excited about the book. It has great patterns in it and the instructions seem really well written. We shall see when I have to actually use them, but it looks promising.
I also signed up to do the Fat Quarter Shop's Designer Mystery Block of the Month. I got 3 blocks at once since it started in June, which hit my "Mad Money" rather hard, especially with my quilt shop visit this weekend. Now I have some number crunching to do. :)

I hope you all have a creative and great day!

 

Work in Progress Wednesday: 07-25-12

Check out the inspiration at the Freshly Pieced link up!

It is Wednesday, and I had fully intended to take stock of my WIPs/UFOs and get a nice little chart up.

That didn't happen.

But, I did get quite a bit of sewing time over the last week, most of it Monday and Tuesday during nap time.

I still have not touched the Hot Wheels mess quilt.
Instead I let my creative juices flow in a softer, gentler direction using 1 1/2 mini Aviary honey buns (by 3 Sisters for Moda) in a little quilty experiment.

Here is the progress as of about 4:30 Tuesday afternoon.

 I spent most of Monday afternoon sewing all the strips together and then ripping out all the seams later that evening, as I had sewn every gosh darn one of them the wrong direction. :) I also seam ripped a nice hole into my foot. That was fun. :P I also had to rip a seam in block 6 re-do (shown below) because it did not line up well at all.
 A side note:
     Have you seen Endgame? Oh I love that show. That is what kept me and my husband entertained while I ripped seams.

On Monday I also I made 3 blocks for the Beginner's Quilt Along. I was getting tired of the purple fabric so I decided to cut into my cute new fat quarters to create block 7. 7B actually, as I also made block 7 in the purple. I can't bring myself to wholly abandon the purple quilt yet. :) I also re-made block 6 without the yellow fabric. I accidentally reversed the fabrics when I cut, but it turned out, I think, better than the planned arrangement.

Block 7B

Block 7

Block 6 with yellow

Block 6 re-do

I am also continuing to work on my blocks for the Picture Perfect Polaroid block swap. I have 2 sides sewn on all the centers. I think I have about 40 to send in.



My other major Work In Progress is my effort to complete the Ease into 5K program. I have made it 5 weeks and lost between 5-6 pounds. We (my daughter and I) did our longest run Tuesday which was a 9 minute stretch. I never thought I would be able to run for 1 minute so 9 seems HUGE! :)


Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

 

WiP Wednesday

Go see who else is linking up at Lee's!

I have a few things in my active/semi-active list.

I posted about this yesterday, but it is a WIP so you get to see it again. I did not have time to make any further progress on it. :( It is the first block in the skill builder series being hosted by the lovely Leila at Sewn by Leila. (Leila, do you say lie la or lay la?) 

Then there is the dragon quilt my son made. I finally got binding of the premade sort and of course it does not match and of course he does not care. (But thank goodness he doesn't cause I want to get this thing done!) So anyway, it got all trimmed up and it is ready to be bound. I sure hope I can figure this binding out, because not only did I buy the wrong color but it is not the fold type I am used to.

And last is this pile of pretty papers. I will share more about that later this week.

I almost got to start another Supernova block as well but only got as far as opening the image of the fabrics for that block. Then I remembered that these papers were a priority. Then I had to pay bills and run errands and pay some more bills and feed the children and then it was bed time.
So maybe next week.
Have a great one!

PS - It wasn't Wednesday when I started typing and now it is Wednesday!

Skill Builder Sampler at Sewn by Leila

I am really pumped about this project! (Like I need another one, but anywho...) We are going to be working on building our quilting skills, obviously, making 3 blocks a month (if I understand correctly).
Go HERE to read more about it! It starts June17th.

WIP Wednesday

It is Wednesday! Time for the link up at Lee's blog, Freshly Pieced.

I have some progress to report on a couple of things.
First is the Supernova Quilt Along. I finally had some time to get my fabrics organized and started cutting. I only got one block cut. But it is one more than I had before! I did a collage of the strip sets for Flickr which showed me that I have a few changes to make, particularly with the browns. We are a little lopsided in that area.

I also had a chance to do some more hand quilting on my In-Spur-Ation quilt! I think I got 5 or 6 more blocks quilted, so it's about halfway done.

I also got a bias binding made for the Sleepytime baby quilt using this tutorial from Gene Black. I had a ton of trouble getting my angles to match up to make straight edges. The really annoying thing though was when I was explaining my frustration to my husband using scraps, I could make them match up every time. :)  I still don't know what I changed. I just need to try again. So anyway the binding is ready to be put on. I keep procrastinating it because I kind of want to try the Elmer's Washable School Glue method. It is really cool and looks like in the long run it would make the process so much easier. I need to watch the videos a few more times though, to get it set in my head.

I added one more project to the list because I have another baby shower to attend. I am probably going to keep it simple and just make burp cloths, but if I find the time I will do a flannel blanket like the other ones I have done. (Go here to see the pink one, here for the brown.) I have some green frog blankets to use for this one that match the little sleepers I got.

That's all for today! Have a great Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday

Seriously, Wednesday seem to be coming faster and faster. Check in with Lee at Freshly Pieced to see who else is making progress!

As for me, I am going to K.I.S.S. it today and just keep it simple. One W.I.P. report.

Do you know what this means?

 

  I finally started my Supernova cutting!

I just got the first strips done, but I made progress. I am happy with how the fabrics are looking together, but I think may need to add one or two more shades of brown. I'm not sure yet.

I probably could have done more but I have had a major case of the yucks. I think it is just allergy related, but man it is taking it out of me! I hope to have more progress (as in actual stitching) before Thursday, but I am not going to push it.

Another Quilt Along!

I have been hoping Lee would share her pattern for the Hope Valley quilt and she is via Quilt Along! Come join the fun. The quilt has been re-named Supernova for the quilt along. Very cool!
Hopefully I can keep up. I have been known to get WAY behind  in QA's and also have a few too many projects going on.  :) But I can't pass this up.

Trying to catch up

I am a teensy bit behind in all the quilt alongs I am participating in. So I tried to catch up on at least one while we have been stuck in the house for a week. I got my 4 sets of coins for the Sliced Coin Quilt Along organized and even got one set pieced. It ended up too short though so I need to make some adjustments. But, then again, I may just piece all of them and see how they end up.
I forgot to take a picture of the pieced strip, but here are all the coins laid out.

I also got my vinyl labels put on the toy boxes.

I got these from Piccadilly Peddler as a custom order. I still have a couple more that I asked her to make for me.
I have had the boxes labeled with words, but the little people who can't read just throw things in willy-nilly so I am hoping this will help keep things a little more organized.

Beanies and stuffed animals, dress up, and building bricks.

Dress up and bricks, Megablocks, wood blocks, and miscellaneous toys, games and balls.

Megablocks, wood blocks, and miscellaneous toys, games and balls, Little people sets, wood trains, and cars. On top of the shelf there is one more with action figures and dinosaurs. The vinyl is an army man.

Little people sets, wood trains, and cars, puzzles, dolls.