A Quilting Break ... to work on a lengthy WiP

I decided to take a quilting break and tackle a to do that's been on the list for a while.

I've been working on this cross stitch pattern on and off for the last 2 years.  Notice all the holes in the reflection of the sun set/rise?  I got frustrated because of the randomness of the stitches, so I took a break from it.  I finished the rest of the pattern (minus some stitches that require some blue thread that I ran out of) and was ready to start back stitching the outlines when I realized I had to conquer this fearful task.

And I did it!  I didn't even complain in the process.  It was manageable.  And I feel soooooo good having it done.  Now all those animals really look happy.  Before, I felt their judgmental stares.  Why hadn't I finished their ocean yet?  Now they are delighted, feeling quite swimmingly I'd say.

And here's a little quilt inspiration.  I love tile work! And I love that I can get inspiration out in the world.  So much fun looking for it.  Like a giant, never-ending, rule-less scavenger hunt.  

See you soon!

(with a completed flimsy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

GillyWhig's Everywhere! a WiP Quilt

This is my GillyWhig Quilt.  I would have called it the WhirlyGig Quilt, but my husband couldn't remember that name.  GillyWhig is what came to his mind.  So GillyWhig it will be called!  (Though he just called it something new - Squirlywiggle. Excuse me, I've been notified that it should be two separate words - Squirly Wiggle.  I like this one a lot.  Looks like I might need to make another quilt!)

It's a round quilt, because I couldn't get those darn 90 degree corners to work!  Well, that's not the only reason, but it's a nice thing to think about!

My husband suggested a pinwheel quilt and I decided I liked the idea, so I found the pinwheel block and created my own design from there.  I like the above pinwheel though, where the lighter color is 2x as large, as opposed to the ones where they're the same size.  This is more like the real whirligiggles.

I/my husband also thought that the wigglewirls were way too pointy, so I used that fancy plate tool to curve off the corners. (Not the ones that met in the center, just at the top of the light triangles.)

I then had to sew curves!! First ever, from what I recall. I used the curved pinwheel as a template for the blue triangle piece.  (It would have been a lot quicker if I had made a real template.  Each one was a little different (darn those plates), so I had to trace each individual blade of the whiggywhirls.  Took much longer.  But it ended eventually!)

Sew those curves! I didn't bother pinning.  There was lots of haphazarding going on, so I was ok w/o pinning and just squaring things up in the end.

The blue end seems a little wonky, just ending in the middle of the side, but with the 1/4 inch seam when I sew it to the blue background, it'll curve nicely into the seam, no odd endings.  I love my rainbow of girlywhigs.

Husband likes the blue and green and purple.  I love the dark orange, red and pink.  (Sorry for the off colors, I'm photographing inside under a yellow bulb at night.)  But that's why there are so many!  So everyone can have a favorite!

I love my pretty rainbow.

What I don't love are blisters.  Like the following blister I got from steam!! Evil steam.

Never have your fingers close to the top of a pot of cooking rice as you take off the lid!  Your finger will blister up and get all shiny and painful!

The only thing I had in the freezer that wouldn't defrost and get all nasty as I sat through a concert that night was a bag of chocolate chips.  They didn't help a great deal with the pain, but they were a tasty treat while I listened to the orchestra!  Chocolate cures everything!

See you soon!

(with fewer injuries, I hope!)

A Finished WiP!!!

Thank you, Emily, (aka sister) for your awesome advice of how to sew this picture onto one layer of fabric!  I chose the option of placing regular printer paper behind the fabric and sewing through both layers.

Next time I'd use a slightly smaller stitch length to make ripping the paper out easier and create less pull on the stitches.  

I used my Computer Programming notes.  I didn't mind tearing those up.  Mostly because I didn't need them.  That class was so fun!

I did all the sewing on the machine with my regular, every day foot.  It was a lot of stopping and starting, lots of lifting and lowering the foot.

Once it was done I had to decide what to do with it!  I was planning on doing a border on it, but then realized it probably needed something to back it, since both the top and border fabrics were quite flimsy.  Since I am working on my first quilt that will have a binding on it, I decided I'd make this into a mini quilt and get a little practice in.

I had some leftover batting from my second quilt (a baby quilt for my niece) and it was the perfect width.  It was small enough to tape it to one cutting board, since my floors are mostly carpet.  I chose a musical fabric for the background because it was black and white, I had the perfect amount for the backing (though it's sideways to make it fit) and it was fitting for a dancing picture.

I layered my backing, batting and top and pinned.  I have a feeling my twin size quilt will take a little longer and a few more pins than this project!

I first sewed around the edge of the top.  There was a little bit of puckering.  Firstly, I don't have a walking foot, so the top dragged a bit.  Secondly, considering the first issue, I probably should have sewn the same direction down both sides.  Thirdly, I probably should have 'quilted' it first.  But I didn't, and I'm ok with it.  It's not quite as ripply in person as it looks on camera.

To quilt it, I just sewed with white thread all the way around the outline of the picture, usually about 1/8 inch away.  But down at the bottom by the skirt, I cut a few corners due to the difficulty of making small, tight corner changes with a regular foot.  

See, the puckering isn't quite as noticeable.  I love the orange border.  A little pop of color.  I also got the chance to practice my binding skills on a smaller project.  I need a little work on folding it over consistently, but that's why I practice!

I had a little scrap of musical fabric, just the perfect size to fit the 'quilt' except that it had to be placed sideways in order for it to cover.  But that's ok.  I thought music was appropriate and people won't be staring at the back when it's up against a wall, but I know it's there.  

See you later!

(with an older project?)

Owning Purple, and a (WiP) Quilt Almost Sandwich!

I love this picture.  Here we have the backing fabric for my WiP quilt (bottom right), my favorite pair of scrubs, gifted to me by my husband (top right), my favorite pair of tights, gifted from my mother (bottom left) and my phone case, picked out by me (top left).  I kind of like this color, no?

I never liked purple when I was younger.  My favorite colors were green and blue.  With four kids, my mother needed a way of organizing our schedules (we all had sports and music and church activities, so it got crazy sometimes).  She put a huge calendar on the wall every month, and whenever we had an event, we had to put it on in our color.  Here's where purple entered my life.  The boys naturally got first choice with green and blue, my sister had orange, my mom was yellow, dad black? and family stuff in brown (or something like that).  I was not a pink fan (I added my 3rd pink item to my wardrobe on Friday, a pale pink knitted shirt.  The other two are a pair of neon pink corduroy shorts and a neon pink and tan striped jersey skirt).  Point being, pink is not my color.  Red was too close to pink.  So my mother chose purple for me.  I believe I felt a bit of loathing at the beginning.  Seemed so unfair that the boys got green and blue because they were 'boy' colors.  But I love my brothers, so I stuck with purple.  

It started changing me.  I began to feel a sense of ownership over anything purple.  Toothbrushes, bags (woah, just realized, my favorite backpack, that I picked out for myself when I was in 2nd grade and kept using through high school - with safety pins holding the zipper closed - was purple.  Maybe I didn't 'loathe' it.  Odd).  Anything that was purple seemed to say it was mine.  When I got a kindle, my sister gave me an awesome case for it - purple.  I found out purple looks good on me (though my scrubs and tights are the only purple in my wardrobe right now).  Few games have purple tokens, but if they do, they're mine.  Purple became a really important color to me.  I still don't love most shades of it.  Most are too blue or pink.  I love the shade pictured above with a nice dose of red, but I love the idea that it's not a 'favorite' color, but it's a personal color, very close to me, one which is hard for me to not live with.  When shopping for a random household item, if I'm not drawn to any other color, I'll get purple.  It's my safety net color.  I like my purple.  Purple means me.

So to me, this back says "Tess pieced this!"  I love the colors together.  The blue really pops.  I'm glad I didn't make it any wider, it would've been too much.  

I was going to attempt to baste it by pinning/weighting corners/taping it to my carpeted floors because I had no other options, until my husband happened to mention it to his mother who was coming up for the weekend - and she had an old quilting frame!

So with all my pieces assembled, that's what tomorrow will be - sandwiching all the layers on an old wood frame, tightening and push pinning everything into place, safety pinning it like a mad woman with as many pins as I have (I'm a first time quilter, can you tell?).  I'm so excited and can't wait put it all together!

See you later!

(with a basted quilt!!!!?????)

Straight A's and a (WiP) flimsy

I can sometimes be very impatient, so when my last final ended a week ago, I was checking for my grades every day, sometimes a few times a day (maybe they'll post them after lunch?)  For the last few days I have almost not wanted to check for fear of a disappointing empty space where the grade would be.  So very half-heartedly I decided to check this morning, trying to expect nothing.  But they were there!  And I got straight A's!  That hasn't happened in a while.  I was really nervous about my Probability class, and I must have really aced the final to get an A in it.  I'm so excited!  Now I can fully appreciate that classes are over and move on with my summer!

Or really get on with this quilt.  It's officially a flimsy now!  (Look at me knowing quilting terminology!)  The top got sewed together last week.  (It's on a queen size bed, but it's meant either for a twin or for a 'cozy up on a couch' size.) My husband would go off to work, my brother (who was visiting for the week before he started the summer semester) would sleep in until 1 or 2 (yes, pm) so I had all morning and early afternoon to sew and cook.  We fattened my brother up 6 pounds the week he was here.  He needed some good, home cooked food.

He was very helpful and went with me to JoAnn and picked out these lovely shades of Kona.  The backing will be mostly berry, with a horizontal stripe of turquoise in the center to make it big enough, and the binding will be turquoise.  He picked a beautiful blue thread to quilt in and suggested a really cool way of quilting, which I'll attempt to explain (or just show) in another post.

This is an artificial view of what it looked like when I was sewing 6 blocks simultaneously.  It was usually bunched up behind the machine as the next strips were laid out in the space to the left.  But I was sewing on the last strip, so I made a pretty circle.  I don't get much natural light in this room - except early in the morning, which is not when I sew.  And there always seems to be something obstructing the light when I have it.  Working on that. 

It felt awesome to stack all the blocks up.  I hadn't ironed them yet, so it made the pile taller.  Which made me feel better, of course.  I didn't get a picture of the ironing process, which was: after I laid the squares out in an order I liked, I sat on the floor with a portable ironing board next to me and scooched (which is apparently not a word) down the rows, sitting on un-ironed rows.  It was fun.  Strangely fun.  

See you soon!

(With a pieced back and basted quilt...?)

Cheese and a (WiP) Quilt

I was looking in our cheese drawer the other day for some tastiness to add to a savory crepe sandwich when lo, I beheld that we had quite a selection.  I was curious and soon discovered that we have 12, yes 12 varieties of cheeses in our fridge (14 if you include cottage and cream).  They are: spicy cheddar, pepper jack, asiago, smoked gouda, spiced gouda, gorgonzola(crumbled), another nameless blue cheese(solid), fontina, gruyere(we actually have 2 packages of this - we love it), parmesan&romano(combined so counted as one), feta and laughing cow.

I love cheese!

Anyways.  I decided to start a quilt.  We'll see if I end up liking it.  I got inspired by, and am using Quiltville's post as a guide.  I love it because it's an all scrappy quilt, no unifying sashing or anything.  But my possible problem is that my scraps aren't from other cute quilts like good scraps are.  Mine are random fabric I've acquired from old clothing, thrift stores, clothing/whatever swaps and things found on the streets.  I don't know what material is used for most of the fabric.

Here it is: so far a bunch of strips cut and placed in 6 strip blocks.  I placed them in a rail fence pattern to separate them visually but still pack them into my enclosed sewing area.  

I needed 5 more squares, and I'm cutting entirely new fabric for the most part so they'll get rearranged.  The hard part is not knowing how it'll look in the end.  I know it'll change once it's all cut and resewn and there are few layout options as well, but the suspense is intense!  

Below is the pile of strips for the above squares (6 strips/block x 19 blocks = 114 strips measuring almost 3 inches tall).  I've gone through some MacGyver, the Voice, The Fashion Star, Project Runway and Hell's Kitchen episodes to cut them.

I'm a little nervous about the end result, but strangely getting more excited as I write this.  I got a new iron today, too, since my old one just decided it didn't like being hot anymore.  So now I can unwrinkle the rest of the fabric I need to cut and maybe tomorrow (finger's crossed) I can start sewing blocks together.

One thing I am excited about (which I know may put me in a minority) is that once they're all sewn and recut into tubes (check Quiltville's page to understand the process), I'll have work to take with me for on the go, waiting in a line, got to class a few minutes early, waiting for the red light at the bottom of my street that sometimes takes 2 minutes to recognize I want to get across.  I love having something to do when I'm not in the house.  Yay!!

So I'm working on this one.

Excitedly.

See you soon!

(with a quilt top sewn?)