Prairie Points and Pinwheels

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Anne

A friend of mine had a baby shower this weekend, so I am able to post pictures of her quilt now!

I followed the Moda tutorial here, and as usual, had a few things to learn as I went along.

I used Kona snow for the neutral, and a Lily & Will charm pack that I’ve had since before I quilted. Back when I thought you had to pre-wash charm packs… It turns out that to do something as fussy as a pinwheel, you need to have consistent sized pieces, and it generally helps to cut a slightly bigger block and trim down to size after sewing the HSTs. Starting from pre-washed somewhat wonky charms is not EXACTLY the right way to go about it if you want things to line up!

Also about halfway through I decided I hated the color scheme. Actually, I think I decided it about a quarter of the way through. And I hated it pretty much until I finished the entire quilt. Now I like the calm colors although it is still not colors I would choose for myself, I can admit it’s probably appropriate for a baby. And I don’t hate it anymore!

I backed it in a pale yellow flannel, which is super soft and shows off the quilting lines. I should probably learn free motion at some point, but I love the look of straight line quilting, so it makes it hard. I used almost 3 bobbins of thread to do the straight line quilting on this (and the quilt isn’t that big!) so I can’t imagine how much FMQ must take up!

I also love prairie points. The ones on the end got sewn into the seam (oops) a bit, but I still love them. They’re so fun! I wish it was appropriate to have prairie points on a grown-up quilt. Anyway, here are pictures of my slightly wonky pinwheels & prairie points baby quilt.

Front of the quilt

Categories: arts + crafts, completed | 2 Comments

Blogger’s Choice Bundle Challenge

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Anne

I’ve jumped on the bandwagon, I just couldn’t resist! Quokka Quilts and Fat Quarter Shop are running a contest to find the next set of Blogger Choice bundles. I had loads of ideas, but was having trouble finding the fabrics I really wanted to pair.

Then today I was looking for fabrics at the local quilt shop, and noticing how much I loved their fabrics with letters/numbers/type/handwriting/whatever on them, and my brain went back to that old teaser, “What is black, white and red/read all over?” It works better said aloud, obviously, but I came back home and immediately started pulling every writing fabric Fat Quarter Shop had. They had way more than 12, so I pared it down and ended up with this bundle. It’s fun and quirky, and I am kind of in love with it.

So here it is, the Black, White, and Read All Over bundle:

Black, White, and Read All Over

 

The fabrics are:

Prints:
1.  Hometown Stop Sign Town Square Yardage - SKU# 5460-11
2.  Writer’s Block Black Symbols Yardage - SKU# 11860-2
3.  Always & Forever Romantic Red Love Script Yardage - SKU# 19521-12
4.  Perk Me Up Brown Coffee Words Yardage - SKU# C8693-BROWN
5.  Cupcakery Tan Words Yardage - SKU# 22564-Tan1
6.  Cool Cats Brown Feline Phrases Yardage – SKU# Y0780-15
7.  Etchings Slate and Parchment Script Handwriting Yardage - SKU# 3728-36
8.  Lost and Found Red Worn Dots Yardage - SKU# C2605-RED
9.  Lost and Found Cream Labels Yardage - SKU# C2601-CREAM
10. Hall of Fame Red Game Jersey Yardage - SKU# DC5363-REDX-D
11. Circa 1934 Black Garbo Yardage - SKU# 37001-14
12. Circa 1934 Cream and Red Chaplin Yardage - SKU# 37002-15

Solids:
13. Michael Miller Vanilla Cotton Couture Solid Yardage - SKU# SC5333-VANI-D
14. Michael Miller Taupe Cotton Couture Solid Yardage - SKU# SC5333-TAUP-D
15. Michael Miller Cranberry Cotton Couture Solid Yardage - SKU# SC5333-CRAN-D

That was far too much fun. Thank you Quokka Quilts for such a fun contest!

Categories: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

End of year

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Anne

Yep, it’s the end of the year, and the time to look back at what we’ve done and where we’re going!

This year, I learned how to quilt. And then I got a little bit addicted!!  Here are the projects I made this year:

Finished projects, in reverse of completion

 

1. Doll quilt, 2. Rectangle Squared, 3. Both pillows, 4. Garden Fence done (front), 5. sliced coin quilt finished!, 6. Done and stuffed
You’ll see I’m a bit behind on posting projects, but that’s because they were for Christmas presents, and I couldn’t show them off! So, real quick..

First I made a double-sided doll quilt for my niece’s new doll. This was my first time doing diagonals, and there are all sorts of little gotchas in there. The book I was using (Pretty in Patchwork: Doll Quilts) didn’t give a lot of guidance, but I managed to figure it out. I probably should have looked up a tutorial for it all, but I was far too stubborn for that!

  

Front of the doll quilt for my niece

Back of the doll quilt

The back strips are a bit straighter than they look in this picture. In retrospect, I should have put the white border on the top and bottom, but I was a little rushed to get this done in time for Christmas.

I also made the second of the quilts for my vet. They use essex linen for the sashing, and I really like working with that material. It just feels so sturdy! I used the tutorial from Film in the Fridge, and the quilt pattern is called Rectangle Squared.

Second quilt for my vet, using the Rectangle Squared pattern

Back of the quilt with an embroidered paw print.

The back was made with leftover pieces from the front, and it managed to use up a good number of my scraps. And of course I embroidered a paw print. I tried to make it the same size as my St. Bernard’s paw, but she wasn’t being very helpful when I tried tracing… ;)

Not shown up there, because it’s technically not a quilt, I painted a swoon block of flea market fancy prints onto a plate at our local pottery place. I gave it to my good friend and president of our local chapter of the modern quilt guild. She was really happy with it! Yay!

Painted at one of those paint your own pottery places

Detail shot

Finally, also not shown, I created an inspiration box for a friend of mine. It’s full of inspirational quotes written on decorated matstack (used in scrapbooking), and the two bags include little goodies. It’s all in a bamboo recipe box. The bags used the pattern going around by In Color Order. You can find a tutorial for one of the sizes here or buy the pattern for loads of sizes.

Inspiration box

 

So that closes out this year.

 

What is in store next year? I graduate with my PhD in June, so this year is all about new things. I have an idea for a startup, creating online tools for crafters. It’s an exciting possibility, to say the least! I can’t wait to see where I end up this time next year, that’s for sure!

And with that, I wish you all a safe and happy new year!

 

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Dear Kona

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Anne

Dear Kona solids,

First, I need to tell you that I love you. I love all the colors you offer. But unfortunately, I think it’s time we saw other people. While you have over 200 colors to choose from, it feels like you favor some colors a bit more than others. And maybe sometimes, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, your colors aren’t as bright as they could be.

So I hope you understand why I felt compelled to purchase these new Dear Stella solids. They have a beautiful sheen to them, and the colors are so whimsical and fun. And it feels like a slightly thicker cotton than what I’ve come to expect from you.

These colors almost look good enough to eat.

But Kona, I still do love you and what you offer. I assure you, it’s not you, it’s me. And I hope we can still continue to see each other.

-Anne

Categories: arts + crafts | 1 Comment

Couple other finishes

Garden Fence front
Posted on November 27, 2011 by Anne

Hrm, it seems I got so busy that I forgot to post a couple of finishes I had over the summer.

First off, I finished that sliced coins quilt.

Sliced coin frontSliced Coin front
Sliced coin back

Sliced coin back

I have since added some paw print embroidery to the back.

A friend of mine was also due to have a baby girl, so I made my first baby quilt! I’ve been excited by the Garden Fence quilt pattern since it first started making the rounds, so I jumped at a chance to make this one.

Garden Fence front

Garden Fence front

Baby quilt back

Baby quilt back

 

I’m currently working on another quilt that uses the Max & Whiskers line that the sliced coins used, and I am ready to baste that one. And then I’m in the design stages for two other projects for Christmas. Hopefully they will take much less time than the pillows did!

 

Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The tale of two pillows

front of pillows
Posted on November 26, 2011 by Anne
Cathedral Window Pillows

Cathedral Window Pillows

I am very pleased with how these pillows came out, and they’re super pretty in person. There is a bit of a story that goes with them, however!

It all started when Rachel at Stitched in Color posted a Celebrate Color autumn extravaganza back in September. I love the colors of autumn, so I knew I’d have to enter something! And the event went on for three months, so maybe I could even enter THREE somethings. So I went through my pinterest board to see what inspired me. It was there that I was reminded about the cathedral window pillow tutorial on Moda’s Bake Shop by Angela. I thought this would be a great time to try it out, since the window shapes reminded me of leaves. I immediately envisioned autumn colored petals/leaves with aqua/blues for the diamond shapes. It’d mimic the sky starting to show through the leaves as the trees got more sparse, and it’d be a nice way to capture the changing of the season. Awesome. No problem. Let’s do this!

So, as anyone who knows me will be happy to tell you, I’m a little picky when it comes to pretty much anything visual. Fabrics are no different. Colors especially so. Here’s the problem. This idea I had involved a LOT of colors and a LOT of fabrics. And worst of all, I had to pick a solid background/sashing color. I stood at our local fabric store, comparing Kona Espresso to Kona Snow until I started feeling pretty guilty for taking so much of my friend’s time. Finally I realized that I was going to have so much leftover fabric, I could just make the same pillow twice, each with a different solid! And if I made it the same setup, I’d know at the end which I liked better! Brilliant!

So that’s what I did. Armed with my new fabric, I started following the tutorial (which is really well written!) and got to work. Except that I have the world’s lamest iron, and the first step involved a LOT of ironing. (Seriously, my iron is a small travel iron that is over 15 years old. It’s steam setting means that it dribbles water and then heats it up when the iron hits it. This is the designed functionality, not just poor workmanship.) So I decided to wait until my quilt guild meeting to bust out all the ironing prep work for the squares. No problem.

I got three done. Because it takes. freaking. forever. Of course, there’s not a lot of quilting time at the meetups, so I figure I’d do it at my friend’s house during one of our bi-weekly get togethers. By the time I finished ironing the snow colored blocks, we’d moved into October. Well, i still have two months left, no problem! But then it turned out I didn’t have the right aqua fabrics, so I ordered some online. And then I had to wait. And then I was gone for a couple of week for conferences, and before I knew it, we were into November, and I hadn’t even finished the first pillow, let alone the second one!

I’m fairly stubborn though, so I decided that even though my schedule is a bit beyond hectic, I was going to finish these things. So I started actually sewing, and suddenly everything sped up tremendously! And it was so fun when it came time to sew open the petal parts! And of course, being the engineer that I am, I had to figure out the traveling salesman problem of the optimal path so that I wouldn’t have to start and stop the sewing. I sewed up the backs (my first time trying envelope backs, I learned a few things there…) and added the borders until 2a the night before Thanksgiving. I finished hand sewing the binding on one pillow while waiting for Thanksgiving dinner to cook. And then I tried machine binding for the first time on the second one after dinner. (Much faster, but I’m not that great at it yet)

So now, with one day to spare, I present my two cathedral window pillows, made with the same layout and the same fabrics, featuring different solids (and backs). The difference of the solid is incredible, even more than I thought it would be. I am not sure I could pick a favorite, I love them both for different reasons. The espresso brown one is dramatic but the snow one reminds me of a watercolor. They are so colorful and in the end, I really loved the way the color scheme came together. I think it really captured the look I was trying for of the fall sky and autumn leaves.  And I still can’t believe *I* made them.

I shall end with a ton of photos that I took. Most of the sewing happened late at night, so please forgive the cell phone progress pictures.

fabrics

Some of the fabrics I picked, auditioning on the cranberry colored chair where the pillows will live.

In progress of the windows coming open.

In progress, as the windows are getting opened. It's like opening little packages of pretty things!

Both pillows

Done and DONE!

front and back

Front of one, back of the other

front of pillows

The fronts, with natural light

pillow backs

The backs of the pillows

 

Thank you Rachel for the creative nudge required to make these!

Celebrate Color

 

Categories: arts + crafts, before + after, completed | 3 Comments

Finally, time to sew!

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Anne

I’ve been sketching ideas for months and months for a pillow I wanted to create for my best friend. She LOVES orange, and so I’ve been collecting fabric as I went along. I finally sat down and decided I should do SOMETHING, and I had finally gotten all the pieces to try a string quilt, so I decided I’d go with that. I used Film in the Fridge’s tutorial here.

I cut strips of all the orange fabric, and put them into three piles, dark orange, medium orange, goldish/light orange. I used Kona Charcoal for the solid and decided on a whim to do one half of each square as a mixture of light and medium orange, and the other side a mixture of dark and medium orange.

The scrapbooking paper I was using turned out to be more like thin cardstock, which made it super easy to tear off, but also left the seams kinda loose. I’ll have to pick up some thinner paper at some point. I would definitely enjoy making another one of these, it was super fun, quick and easy!

Once I had my four squares, I realized a couple of things. One, my finished pillow was going to be about 23″ square which is HUGE. Two, there’s a lot of different ways to line up four squares!

I tried a few layouts:

Layout idea #1

Layout idea #3

Layout #2 is missing because that’s the one I went with. :)

The first layout reminded me of a sunset, and I thought it was quite pretty. However, I realized it wasn’t really featuring the orange as much as the gold. The third layout just didn’t do it for me at all, so in the end I decided to go with the orange center.

I took some of my scraps, sewed them together randomly, cut it down, and made the back. Then I used my favorite zipper tutorial (here) and voila, new pillow! (I make it sound easy, but really there was a lot of tearing out of seams and a miscalculation on the back which required cutting more fabric, and I couldn’t find my seam ripper so I was tearing out all the seams using a pin. But! Done!)

Front of the pillow

Back of the Pillow

The pillow is kind of comically large, so I took a picture of it with my St. Bernard, to give some perspective on what a 23″ pillow looks like.

Mishka + pillow

I’m cutting up some fabric to make binding tonight for my sliced coin quilt. So that should FINALLY be done soon, too! Yay, summer!

Categories: arts + crafts, completed | Leave a comment

Summer, finally

Posted on June 11, 2011 by Anne

Yes, I’m still here! I got hit by paper deadlines and research craziness and haven’t had any free time to craft which has been a bit depressing.

However, I’ve still been following blogs and such, and I saw this new quilt design pop up that I immediately fell in love with! There are already a few of them out there, so I tried making one of those mosaic things of them.

Three pictures of different garden fence quilt designs

Garden Fence Quilts

1. Garden Fence Quilt, 2. Garden Fence FINISHED!!, 3. Garden Fence tutorial
Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

I’m dreaming of doing one of these in aqua, lime, pink and grey. In all that spare time I have!

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Where did Spring go?

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Anne

I feel like we’ve gone straight from winter to summer!

Last weekend, the streets around our house looked like this:

 

Mailman didn't bother trying to deliver the mail.

This week it’s been hot enough that I’m going to have to break out the summer clothes!

I’ve been focusing on research a lot this month, and I’ve made a lot of good progress. I’m starting to feel hopeful again that I’ll be able to finish my PhD next spring. I have taken some crafty breaks, though!

I did the spoonflower Project Selvage contest, with the theme of baby boy fabric. My fabric wasn’t chosen as a semi-finalist, but I learned a lot and really enjoyed working on it. Looking at the other fabrics, I apparently should have made the design area more compressed, but I like the airy, playful feel.

 

Robots at play

I also finished off the 2nd of my quilting boxes, and it came back from being fired with no problems. It’s always scary handing over something I’ve been working on for months since there’s always a chance something can go wrong with the firing process. I’m pretty pleased with it, but I actually like the colors of the first (smaller) box a bit better. The third box is planned for pink and blues (to tie the three together) but it’s going to be a while before I do another one of these fiddly projects. I can handle them about once every 6 months or so.

 

The two finished ceramic boxes.

The inside of the two boxes are both peach colored.

pink, lime, aqua, and chocolate!

Finally, I’ve finished off the columns for the sliced coin quilt a while ago, but haven’t had done the sashing because I can’t decide which layout I prefer. I cannot take good pictures of these blocks, partially because my “design wall” is in the darkest room in the house. So sorry for the dark, weird pictures. I won some batting in the Stitched In Color giveaway, which I just received and I’m planning to use it for this quilt. :)

 


Layout 1 - Color progression

Layout 2 - Pseudo-Random

I’ll try to decide this weekend and get the sashing done. Then I have to decide on what type of mini-quilt to do with the rest of the layer cake. I’m considering a plus quilt, but wondering if I shouldn’t try something else instead. So many options!

Hopefully the nice weather sticks around for the weekend. I have a ton to do around the house!

 

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WIP Wednesday already?

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Anne

This week has gone by both glacially slow and unbelievably fast. It is both only Wednesday and already Wednesday!

I’ve been focusing a lot on making research progress the last week or two, but a few things have been going on crafty wise.

Finished

Otter coin – I wired the money to the mint earlier today, so I should be hearing back with an estimated ship date soon. The coins should arrive in 3-4 weeks after I okay the final, final artwork. I still need to buy the tracking codes to get to the mint, but it’s definitely time to start working on a new coin design as this one is on to production.

Ceramic box – Finished!! I finished this yesterday and it’s being fired as we speak.

 

I forgot to take a picture of the finished box pre-firing, so here is a WiP photo.

 

In Progress:

Project Selvage – I doodled for a while yesterday and came up with something I like. Now I just need to expand on it, get it colored, and submitted.  I should double check when the deadline is, but I want to finish it tonight regardless.

Sliced coin quilt – We’ve been having a lot of pet-related issues lately, and our vet has been fantastic about cutting costs and in some cases doing things for free. A lot of phone calls without requiring visits, doing minor work when I have the dog in for her allergy shots, etc. As a thank you, I’m putting together a gift basket and I decided to use it as an excuse to do my first quilt. I’m doing a smaller version of the sliced-coin quilt-along led by Don’t Call Me Betsy using the Max & Whiskers line of fabrics. I’ve finished the first two columns of coins. I’m hoping to have the top done by the end of the week.

Two columns down, two to go!

Stats:
Finished – 2
Started – 2
No progress – 2
Total – 4

 

Categories: arts + crafts, completed, geocoin, wip | 1 Comment