Saturday, January 26, 2013

Finished Lemon Squares

I finally finished my Lemon Squares quilt this week. Last Saturday my husband had to do a little work then went to play football and both of my boys took nice long naps. So I had over 2 hours to myself to quilt. And I ended up finishing my whole quilt in my little marathon. It is a pretty small quilt only about 55 inches square and I did a large meandering stipple. I am also way too lazy to hand sew the binding on, so I machine stitched it on. That probably took me as long as quilting because I went so slow and wanted even stitching on both sides. Here is my husband holding it up for me:
Finished Lemon Squares
Front--extra crinkly from where my son was rolling around with it on the floor
Finished Lemon Squares
Back-I was just a little short on fabric so it is pieced at the top too.
I used all Dear Stella Mimosa fabrics in orange, pink, and yellow. I used a half yard of all except the dark pink and used up every bit, even in the scrappy binding.

This is my January finish for
A Lovely Year of Finishes

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

PinkPlease!: Heroes Helping Heroes Quilt Take Two!

PinkPlease!: Heroes Helping Heroes Quilt Take Two!: Last year, over 40 women from all over the world pitched in to help create a quilt that raised $1000 for the Heroes Foundation. PinkPlease is making another quilt this year and she has posted a tutorial to make improv 1/4 circle blocks to send in so that she can make another quilt. I just finished my first one to send in and I will try to make some more for this charity.

Monday, January 21, 2013

Waiting Impatiently

I am getting a package of fabric goodness today. Hopefully even two! I ordered the pattern and some fabric for the Weekender Bag. I had seen it blogged a couple of times (here at oh Fransson!) and knew that I just had to make it quilted with my new Notting Hill bundle. I can't wait for the UPS man to come drop it off so I can rip it open and get to work.

I made a lot of progress on my Lemon Squares. First I made a little improv block with some scraps so that I could practice my quilting: I'm rather proud of it. I think I might make it into a pillow to match the quilt.
Practice

 I sandwiched the quilt one late night then during nap time the day before yesterday I quilted the whole thing. I did a rather large meandering stipple and it isn't the greatest, but I'm rather proud that I did it all in one day without any bunching or anything. I am currently adding the binding by machine. It is slow going to make it look good, but much faster than doing it by hand.

I finished my baby girl Starburst quilt top, but no pictures yet :) The backing fabric is in the package with my weekender pattern, so it's a toss up with which will actually win my attention first. Although since it is flannel I will definitely prewash it. How many of you prewash? I started to at first, but when I'm using the really nice stuff like Moda and Michael Miller, it isn't worth it. Once it's washed it gets softer and makes it harder to work with unless it has been iron and starched to death and I really don't need more work between start to finish. And I've found that the fabric never bleeds or shrinks noticeably.

Thanks as always for stopping by!

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Starburst Quilt-a-long Progress

I have finally finished cutting and started sewing for my baby girl starburst quilt. We were technically only supposed to cut up our fabric this week, but I did a little more...ok, a lot more. I'm kind of cheating since I am only doing one block, but it's a big block and it took me a good three days cutting fabric. I am a slow cutter to begin with, then I have to deal with babies interrupting me. But I was so inspired that once I finally got it all cut up I started sewing the pieces together. I stayed up extra late the last 2 nights working on it. Here are some pictures my flying geese and half square triangles (hst) steps.

Mark your diagonals!




Press, press, press...


HST


Starburst progress
This was nearly 1 in the morning and I felt so accomplished.

The next morning I woke up and started doing more.


Only a few more seams.

I'm either going to finish these up tonight or tomorrow, but I just ordered my backing fabric yesterday so I have a few more days before I can begin quilting it. I ordered Michael Miller's pink bicycles with the gray background flannel. Have any of you ever quilted  with flannel? Is it any different? I know I will definitely prewash it first because flannel shrinks like crazy, but hopefully it isn't much different. And I haven't picked a binding out yet. Any suggestions? I will probably stick with Michael Miller and his ta dot or dumb dot, but not sure which color.

As always, thanks for stopping by!
Chelsie :)

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

WIP Wednesday

I did most of my cutting for the starburst quilt-a-long. Here is my pink and white star (in a very bad picture) that I still need a few more white squares for and I have all of my fabric cut for my boy version. However, I tweaked the pattern a bit to make it look more like the swoon pattern, so I won't be linking that to the quilt-a-long.

Icky lighting on my phone...
I finished my first quilting bee block--a quilted pillow case. She pretty much said anything goes, so I searched around for a pattern and found this one with hexies. I tried them out and really like them (so much so that I joined a Hexagon bee too!) Here is a little sneak (well, a big sneak peak) of the finished pillow case. I am very happy with how the quilting came out and the scrappy piping is cute too.


I've had no progress on quilting my baby girl pinwheel quilt. I need more than 5 minutes to sit down and work like I usually do with my little ones around.

I also still haven't started on my Lemon Squares quilting. I still don't know how I want to quilt it either. I think I'm going to try my hand at a large all over stipple. The fabric is very flowery so I don't want to do any straight line quilting on top of the very square blocks. I am determined that I will at least clean up my living room so I can get the backing out tonight and figure out how I want to finish piecing it. 

I hope you all had a productive week :)

Saturday, January 12, 2013

WIP Weekend

Normal people like to do their works in progress on Wednesdays, but I'm not that normal. Really, I just got so caught up in what I've been working on that I forgot to write up a post. So earlier this week I posted about the pinwheel I started with my Gypsy Girl charm pack and I finished the top the other night. I love the prairie points! I couldn't get them just right in the corners, but oh well, they look cute anyways. I'm currently working to free motion quilting.

First try at FMQ

The "We Bee with it" bee this week. The host this month requested a block for a pillow rather than a quilt, so she left us to our own devices. After lots of searching on pinterest I finally landed on this post for a quilted pillow:

I made my first set of hexies and just finished quilting it today. I couldn't just send her an unfinished pillow, and adding a back and binding won't be much harder. We are supposed to do two blocks a month anyways because it is a 6 month bee. I will post a picture of the finished product whenever my bee member gets it :)

I also started cutting out my fabric for my single star block baby quilt. I found this adorable one that I posted about last week and I figured out how to make it from another tutorial here. I will probably still join the starburst quilt-along, but do a single baby girl quilt. It is much girlier and I can't think of any baby boy fabrics that would really work. I don't want to do a white background. I'm thinking pink with an all white star. Simple with solids would be beautiful...if I can get my piecing accurate. Here is a little mock up that I made on paint. Just put the simple shapes over a picture of the block so it is very rough:
Feel free to take it and add your own colors. I am all for helping other. I could never create anything without lots of guidance, inspiration, and patterns from other blogs and books that I have found.

I signed up for another bee: Get Your Hex On. It's all about EPP hexagons. I have only done a few but I'm excited to do more. I found this tutorial to make a hexagon holder and I have finished all the hexies to make the cover and now I am piecing them together, slowly but surely. Hopefully I can work out all my mistakes now so that when I go to make some for other people they look really good. 

Well, that is all I've been working on. I really need to set some of these aside for awhile and start working on my Lemon Square quilt so that I can link it to the Lovely Year of Finishes. Thanks again for stopping by!

Monday, January 7, 2013

New Year, New Projects

[On a side note, I had written this post the other day and when I went to add pictures from my phone I somehow deleted the whole post. Silly problems like these discourage me from blogging. I have enough troubles trying to write without having to rewrite it.]

Earlier this afternoon I started to worry about not being able to complete the quilt I had linked to A Lovely year of Finishes because I have been working furiously on two baby quilts. And then I realized "it's only the 7th!" Silly me. I feel like so much time has passed since getting back home from Christmas with my family. I started working on a new baby boy quilt. I got the idea from Camille from The Bonnie&Camille designers for Moda. She had done a single star block quilt with Michael Millers dumb dots and his bicycles as backing. So I searched for a free star block and I made my own star from Faith at Fresh Lemon Quilts. 
Star block

The first one I was pretty proud of but thought it was too small just to have one on the whole quilt front so I decided to make 3 more. I don't know where I went wrong, but I kept coming up short on the outside quarter inch. I eventually have up. Now I have a 15 inch star block and a yard of bicycles. I might just make it into a wall hanging for my boys room and make a minky blanket with the bicycles. Or I might start over with this new block I found. It is in three different sizes: 24, 32, or 40" block. You can find the tutorial here.


Once I got over being devastated from failing on my first try at paper piecing I got my Gypsy Girl charm pack in the mail. I had picked it up for $2.50 on Missouri Star Quilt Co. over the Christmas break on one of their daily deals. I really should have bought more. The moment I started looking through all the fabrics I fell in love. The flowers and birds and all the colors are so cute and girly.  I searched around for an easy charm pack pattern and found this one on Moda Bake Shop. I quickly put the pinwheels together, but as I was trimming them I realized that 5 of them were clockwise and the other 7 were counter clockwise. Another bump in the road! 
Baby girl pinwheel quilt top

After fretting over if I should rip out the five and fix them, I finally decided to just rip apart one so I would have six of each. After arranging them this way and adding the sashing I am feeling better. Hopefully I can finish up this part tonight and start working on the borders and prairie points tomorrow.
A Lovely Year of Finishes     
     My to do list for the rest of the month:
1. Complete my crazy 9 patch square for the swap
2. Sandwich, quilt, and bind my Lemon Squares quilt for the Lovely Year of Finishes
3. 2 blocks for the bee host for We bee With It--whenever they send the information. 

Check back later to see how things are going :)

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

First Sale!

I made my first sale! Unfortunately it was over Christmas break so I had to go home one day to ship it off. It feels good to know that someone else likes what I made--although they haven't received it yet so they still can change their mind! But hopefully they will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. I started off making blankets for baby boys because I noticed so many baby girl blankets and there was nothing for me to buy for my two little guys. So I whipped out a half a dozen blankets and posted them on etsy. They sat there for awhile and I fell in love with quilting, so I stopped making blankets. But I finally sold one of my first blankets-my favorite one too.
Sorry I'm sideways! This is my youngest and resident blanket model.
The cute animals are a flannel from Micahel Miller and I bought the rose minky from fabric.com. I just did a quick rolled hem and curved corners. It sewed up quick--it took longer to clean up all the stray minky hairs. I'm defiantly going to do this combo again, but I will have to charge more because these fabrics aren't cheap.