March Along Progress

We are a little over halfway through the month, and since weekly check-ins for March Along have not happened, a halfway point check-in seemed like a good idea.

I did very well for the first 2 weeks, but week 3 I got very busy with life. Between kids events, job interview, church stuff, school volunteering, doctor appointments, dance lessons and then getting sick with the Flu (I think), I was just tired out! Sewing did not appeal.

I am still sick, so I think today I will just read my newest Block magazine for my 15 minutes.

Here are some of my efforts this month.

Pieces cut for making a "Farm Girl Vintage" quilt block.

First round of fabric choices for the quilt pattern test.

Squares cut for quilt pattern test. The light where I sew is not good for photographs. See the photo below for truer colors.

Scraps from the quilt pattern test. They look very different in this light. It is pretty true to the real colors.

Diaper clutch made for a neighbor of my mom's.

Shirt appliqued with a little shamrock for St. Patrick's Day.

St. Patrick's Day outfit with a  rosette on the headband  and an appliqued shamrock on the shirt.

2 of 6 rosettes made for St. Patrick's Day. These went to teachers to pin on their shirts.

Drawstring bag made to carry a camping sleep-mat. Later it will house my yoga mat.

Throwback - when I was a kid, I took clogging lessons. I have recently started taking them again with my sister. It is quite fun and funny. We laugh a lot!

 

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Pinwheels on the Playground

I am entering this baby quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy, at http://amyscreativeside.com.
You can find information about the Festival HERE.
I am entering in the Original Designs category. Voting opens next week and if you like my quilt I would love to get your vote!

About the quilt:

A WIP that lasted almost 2 years (first fabrics purchased 8/12/13) is finally complete. It took longer than that if you count the first top made for this baby when we though it was a boy.

 I designed this one myself. I knew I wanted to do pinwheels and it had to have robots because our husbands worked for a robotics company so that was kind of a running joke amongst the wives. It was called the robot quilt through most of it's creation. I re-named it Pinwheels on the Playground.

I found Funbots by Anne Kelle for Robert Kaufman to use for the focus fabric. The pink is Remix Polka Dots Pink also by Anne Kelle. The background is Kona White. The yellow is 2 different polka dot fabrics, one of which, the small dot, I no longer have the selvage for so I can't tell you what it is. The large dot is Fashion Plate by Barbara Jones for Henry Glass. I had to use 2 different yellows, because when I was doing the math, I miscalculated and when I went to get more, it was gone, so I had to substitute.






The backing fabric was very different from what I planned but I really love it. It is from the "Glamping" line by Mary Jane Butters for Moda. (side note: I love her Milk Cow Kitchen line!)



I used my home sewing machine to do the quilting. I did free motion in the white areas with a few hidden messages and used decorative stitches to do the yellow and pink areas and also to attach the binding to the front. I did a bias binding since this is going to be a very used quilt (I hope). (I used Gene Black's Bias Binding Tutorial for cutting the strips.) I always have trouble meeting the ends of my binding so I used  Pam's tutorial and got through it with only 1 seam rip. I have learned not to trim until I fold it back up to see if it is right. :)

I am super pleased with how it came out and both the mom and the little girl LOVED it!

 

Pinwheels on the Playground baby quilt

A WIP that lasted almost 2 years (first fabrics purchased 8/12/13) is finally complete. It took longer than that if you count the first top made for this baby. It is in the wash as I type and I will deliver it this afternoon.

I designed this one myself. I knew I wanted to do pinwheels and it had to have robots because our husbands worked for a robotics company so that was kind of a running joke amongst the wives. It was called the robot quilt through most of it's creation. I recently came up with Pinwheels on the Playground.
I found Funbots by Anne Kelle for Robert Kaufman to use for the focus fabric. The pink is Remix Polka Dots Pink also by Anne Kelle. The background is Kona White. The yellow is 2 different polka dot fabrics, one of which, the small dot, I no longer have the selvage for so I can't tell you what it is. The large dot is Fashion Plate by Barbara Jones for Henry Glass. I had to use 2 different yellows, because when I was doing the math, I miscalculated and when I went to get more, it was gone, so I had to substitute.

The backing fabric was very different from what I planned but I really love it. It is from the "Glamping" line by Mary Jane Butters for Moda. (side note: I love her Milk Cow Kitchen line!)

I used my newish Brother machine to do the quilting. I did free motion in the white areas with a few hidden messages and used decorative stitches to do the yellow and pink areas and also to attach the binding to the front. I did a bias binding since this is going to be a very used quilt (I hope). (I used Gene Black's Bias Binding Tutorial for cutting the strips.) I always have trouble meeting the ends of my binding and I used to use Pam's tutorial but the pictures aren't showing up. I was still able to use her directions though and got through it with only 1 seam rip. I have learned not to trim until I fold it back up to see if it is right. :)

I am super happy to have this done and even more happy to be able to deliver it.


 

Quilting

Sorry, this might be a downer post. It has been one of those days/weeks/months.

I mistyped quilting in the title at first and it was quitting. Which was fitting. (Which rhymes with quitting.) Because lately I have felt like quitting.

I am working on a commission bag. It is not going well. I want to quit. I can't quit since I committed to making it. I have been working on it since the beginning of March. Which seems to me like a long time to work on one bag. Especially when I have made smaller similar bags. It is the zipper pocket that is causing problems. I can't get it right. Also, snap placement has become an issue, as has finding a nice lining fabric. 

Then I have the baby quilt that I meant to give as a gift last year when the baby was born. The baby has now been one for a month. I finally got the backing fabric at at 25% off sale Saturday.

On top of that, our rent is being raised so we are house hunting and that is not going well at all. And our last rent check bounced thanks to the bank putting a hold on my husband's paycheck until tomorrow. And now we have to pay a late fee and  2 bounced check fees.
So yeah. I am ready to quit.

Instead of wallowing today, I pin basted the baby quilt and started quilting it. I tried out the stippling stitch on my birthday present, a Brother CS6000i we found at Target on Clearance.The stippling was way too dense. It looked cool, but took too much thread and time both, so, I will be ripping out stitches already. I moved on to FMQ and it is going well.
Then came the call about the bounced check. Now I am unwinding from talking to the very firm and stickler-for-the-rules leasing agent who would not budge on the late fee even though we have never been late on rent in 3 years except the time they lost our check. Sigh. And they want a cashiers check from our online bank. So we have to overnight it. Sigh some more.

And so I give you a pretty picture of the baby quilt being quilted to hopefully brighten a dreary post.

I'm going to go look for some chocolate.

Another Diaper Clutch

A friend of mine is having her first baby so I made her a diaper clutch.
 I love these! If I had time I would make 2 for her. One for the diaper bag and one for the car for the "emergency stash". I added a wrist strap with the theory that it would be easier to carry while carrying the baby. Sometimes you don't want to haul the whole diaper bag, so I think this makes it easy to just grab the essentials and get 'er done!

The original tutorial can be found HERE.
You can view my other diaper clutches on Flickr in my Diaper Clutch set.

 

Stitching away!

I have had some actual real sewing time over the last week or so and it has been so nice!
I have had a couple of burp cloths that I needed to finish up. My mother in law was kind enough to stitch up some embroidered terry and a cloth diaper for me using  Piece N Quilt's embroidery patterns and then I used the tutorial to make some cloths with them.

They are cute, but as a mom, I think they might be on the small side.  They end up about 9 1/2 inches square. I plan on asking the recipient in a few weeks how they work for her.

I also made a bag for my teen daughter's toiletries.

Our cupboard was getting a little out of hand and after looking at baskets and bins and bags at various stores, I came back home and remembered something I had pinned a while back. I went and checked out the pattern and it looked like it would be just right for the space and things that needed to be organized. It uses Jeni of In Color Order's drawstring bag tutorial and then an add on to add the pockets by Terri at Sew Fantastic.

I love that it stands up on it's own, thanks to a piece of cardboard between layers. It will make it so I can't wash it, and next time I will use some plastic, but it's good for now.

I have also been making progress on my pillow.

I got the applique stitched down and picked up a large hoop today to do the embroidery. I checked out 2 books from the library to help me learn more about applique and embroidery.

I tried almost all the stitches in the embroidery book, Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners.

I am still struggling with French Knots. I think I need a video, because following the written instructions either gets me a little tiny stitch or a kind of sort of French Knot. They don't quite look right. And I need those to make my little gnomey's eyes, so I really have to get them down.

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I get kind of twitchy usually when I do small fiddly type things. But I did okay. I can't quite call it relaxing yet, but maybe someday.  This book was just about right for my skill set and most of the instructions were easy to understand. There was one diagram that they left the letters off, by accident I'm sure. The letters were identifying where your needle was going in and out from "A" to "B" to "C" and back to "A" and so forth, so missing letters made it kind of tricky to figure out. But overall I liked the book.

When I finish the pillow I want to try some of the applique techniques in the Stash Happy: 25 Fresh Projects for Fabric Lovers book. I also want to track down the other books in this series. They all look great.

Aaahhh... a lovely little quilt top

I spent a fair amount of time sewing over the weekend. We don't do the whole Superbowl thing, and we stayed home from church since 4 out of 6 of us were sick. That meant lots of free time.

I was able to finish the baby quilt flimsy that has been on my plate since last January! Woohoo!  I will need to get more backing fabric since I used about half of what I had purchased for it in the top. And I need batting as well, so it is back on hold for the moment.

I am just so glad I finally made it this far! Yay!

 

Baby quilt progress!

After nearly a year, the baby quilt is finally making real progress. It took ages to just get the pattern sketched, then purchase fabric. I think I started actually making blocks at the end of November (2013). Then I got hung up on 2 things.
1: I did not like my fabric I had chosen to frame one set of the fussy cut blocks. It was not working in the layout like it did as yardage in the shop.
2: I made one pinwheel and it was too small by 1/2 an inch.

That brought me to a screeching halt.

I took the project with me on Christmas vacation hoping to get some help and/or inspiration. I didn't even take it out of the bag.

I got home and finished making the half square triangles and squaring them up, then set it aside for a couple more weeks. Last week I took the time to make half pinwheels (2 HSTs sewn together.) This afternoon, I finished up the pinwheels and then put everything out on the floor to see what inspiration hit.
What I came up with was:
Just use the yellow blocks and eliminate the green fabric altogether. But without those green blocks the quilt would be tiny.
So then I would to add a border to the yellow blocks using my backing fabric (UGH!)to make them bigger.
Then I would add a white border to the pinwheels, making them sort of float and making them the same size as the yellow blocks.

I needed a couple more yellow blocks to finish off the layout and I had just enough yellow to do it. IF I had cut it right that is. I stitched up two more blocks, added them to the stack and they were too small. I had cut the borders a 1/4 inch too narrow. I had enough yellow left for one and a half blocks. I needed 2 more.
I ran to the quilt shop and of course they were out of my yellow. They had another fabric so I decided to just have one extraordinary yellow block in the quilt. :)

Brought it home, bounced the idea off my daughter and she vetoed. I decided against stitching scraps together to make the rest of the block and instead made 4 blocks with the new yellow and took out 2 of the old yellow blocks.

Now I am chain piecing borders and I might even have a flimsy by next week!  It feels like a weight has been lifted now that this quilt is moving forward with real momentum. I might even get it to the baby before she turns one at the end of March.

2 in a row!

Here are a few things I have finished over the last couple of months.

I made some burp cloths and a diaper clutch for a friend having a baby.
I can't believe it but I did not photograph the clutch. I think it was purple. Maybe.
Here are the burp cloths. I loved that fabric! So cute!

 Then I made a clothespin holder for my friend's Clothesline. I saw that she was using a plastic grocery sack, and remembered this cute pattern I had seen at my LQS.
It took a while since my kids' schedules were ramping up and the pattern had some small pieces to make. I had to fudge a couple of things because either A: the step didn't make sense in the pattern or B: my fabric didn't fit the pattern because of the way I wanted it turned.

I also won a t-shirt quilt making kit with a ruler, interfacing and press cloth from Happy Quilting and June Tailor. It was kind of cool because I hadn't really intended to enter the giveaway. In fact I didn't even realize it was a giveaway until I saw how many comments there were. I was just stoked that there was a great new tutorial out there, since I have a bunch of t-shirts collected to make quilts for my kids with. I also had one t-shirt saved to make a special quilt with to donate to a charity auction. As soon as the kit arrived I pulled out that single shirt and prepped it for the quilt. The ruler worked really well.
I will have to post those photos later.

I spent some time organizing and condensing my daughter's puzzles and will hopefully get a post on that sometime soon as well.

I have fabric for the baby quilt that has been on my to-do list since January. I have the quilt designed. I just need to do some math so I can start cutting.

I have another bag planned for a friend but need to get some likes/dislikes info from her spouse.

And that is if I have free time. :) Right now I am stealing time from laundry, dishes, vacuuming and Halloween costumes to do a brain dump here.


Here is a little sample schedule of my day. It changes a little every day, depending on band, scouts, preschool and church. This was Tuesday this week.


5:50 Take to school
7:05 Take to school
8:10 Take to school 
8:50 Take to school
11:20 Pick up from school
1:45 Pick up from school
3:40 Pick up from school
4:10 Take to tennis *this was a makeup for a rain out
5:20 Pick up from tennis
6:45 Take to Scouts/YW
8:00 Pick up from Scouts/YW

Obviously this is just my travels and does not include grocery shopping, making meals, or cleaning anything.  I drive around 200-250 miles during the week just doing that schedule. That little space of time between 9 when I drop off 11:30 when I pick up is my "free" time, most days. I am usually making bread and paying bills on those days. My kids get one outside activity to participate in if they choose to keep things somewhere in the ballpark of sane.  We have Band and Tennis going at the moment. Scouts is part of church so it doesn't count.
We are enjoying marching band but are very much looking forward to the end of the season.

And so that is what I have been up to in the last few months. I will try to get the bunting tutorial finished soon and posted.

I hope you all have a happy crafty week!

 

Baby Quilt done!

Quilt pattern is a disappearing nine patch, machine quilted with straight line quilting in a super-size crosshatch with squares in the centers.
I used a marker directly on the quilt to label it, though it faded a lot in the wash, it was still legible.
It says: Made by Amy W.... for E.....H.....W...... Vista CA, 07-16-2013

This quilt was machine quilted originally with a meander in the blue areas, with some custom doodles, like the baby's name, but it had to all be un-sewn due to major folding and bunching of the backing fabric. After hours of ripping stitches, I had to walk away from it for a while. When I came back I decided to go with straight lines instead.
On the first try it had just been pin basted. Second go round, I tried basting spray with a few pins around the edges. Not sure I like the spray much. See how wrinkly the back is? This is before I washed it. It helped up nicely for quilting and I had no trouble at all with bunching or folds in the back. But, it also gummed up the needles.
I actually hand bound this one, even though it is going to used. I usually prefer to machine bind for sturdiness but I had some down time at the dentist coming, so I used the opportunity to improve my binding talents. :)

One more UFO off the list.

WIP update

**Go HERE for the giveaway post.**

It has been a while since I posted anything about Works In Progress. I am not linking up anywhere, this is just for fun.

I haven't made a lot of progress on any of these since February.
 Yesterday I decided to get some stuff moving forward.

The Baby 2 quilt needed to get off the back of the chair in my bedroom and get done so I could put it away. The baby turned out to be a girl and this quilt leaned heavily in the male direction. So I wanted to finish the top and pack it up so I can focus on doing a girl quilt. I have fabric chosen, just need to click the purchase button. :)

Dots 'n Tots Quilt Pattern by Debbie Taylor (It's Sew Emma Little P). Print fabric is Going Coastal and Shore Thing, both by Emily Herrick for Michael Miller fabrics. I added the extra little stripe in the center corners.

 

 

Beginners Quilt Along sampler quilt.

I have more sashing and borders to add to these blocks before I can quilt it. It is pieced in four rows of three blocks at the moment. I haven't ever sewn blocks together in rows and then added the cornerstone-ed sashing. I usually do it block by block. I hope it lines up okay.

My current WIP/UFO list

To Start:
Beach Blanket
Come What May
Coins
Crayons Box
FQS BOM
Halloween
Sewing Machine Cover
Teal and Brown Sleepytime
T-Shirt gift quilt


Finish Piecing:
Lavender Sampler
Alford BOM
Doll Quilts
Hot Wheels
MOTP QA
Supernova
Tree Skirt quilt


To Quilt:
Baby Quilt
Baby 2
Bliss
Candy Land
Log Cabin Topper
Neutral Mediterranean
Sliced Coins
Spools Table Runner
Very Hungry Caterpillar



In other sewing news, my husband surprised me with a tablet for my birthday last month and I needed a stand for it to rest on while I was cooking and sewing. I found a tutorial here, that looked simple enough. I made it even simpler by not cutting out her pattern pieces, but instead used my sour cream pouch tutorial and just added the extra stitching across the bottom and filled it in the same places as she showed in her photos. It works great!

 

March Along: Week 1

 

 Darla at The Scientific Quilter is doing her March A-long again this year. I missed it last year, but decided to join in this year. I think it will help with my UFO goals. Basically you commit to sew or do something sewing related for 15 minutes every day. Pretty awesome!

The first week went well. I only missed Saturday, but I kind of made up for it I think, since I got in a couple of hour+ blocks of time during the week.
One thing specifically it has helped with was un-sewing the baby quilt. I started quilting it, got 2/3 finished and checked the back and found pleats. I couldn't leave it and the whole thing would have to be picked out. That was a daunting and discouraging task, but I am a fan of the theory that one can accomplish hard things if  you just do it in15 minute increments. Since the baby is here already, that deadline is past. Now I would just like to get it done before he moves from bassinet to crib.

I made a calendar to keep track of my sewing.

Projects worked on this week:

St. Patrick's Day Stay Put Kitchen Towel

Stay Put Kitchen Towel Tutorial

I made towels for my friend and the ladies I visit teach. I have a couple more to make. Better hurry  up!

Diaper Clutch

Diaper Clutch Tutorial

Diaper clutch and matching burp cloth

 I made the clutch and burp cloth with a dishtowel from Target that was on clearance and a fat quarter. I was hoarding the towel to make an apron. I got home from fabric buying and then I didn't care for the other fat quarter I chose to go with the pink check. Looking through my stash I spotted the towel and it looked so nice with the liner fabric that I went with it. The clutch turned out quite large. I am not sure why. I have made these before and never had any size issues. Maybe my seam allowance was smaller. She will be able to get lots of diapers in there! :)