Tuesday, November 26, 2013

A Finished Picnic/Whirlygig Quilt!

It's done!!  The Whirlygig Quilt is done! (Except for a quick wash and dry.  That part's easy.)


I decided to keep going with the circular theme and do spirals starting at the center of each pinwheel.


I then filled in between the spirals, copying the curves and getting smaller until the space was filled.


At the edge I also mimicked the spiral to fill in the space, so it looks like little curved pyramids.


The giant center pinwheel.  It was a little tricky quilting this one, at one point I had about 3/4 of the quilt in the throat of my machine. (And I have a Bernina 1008 - not a big throat!)


The pinwheels:
Pink - I love these fabrics.  The watermelon seeds and the pink hexagons! 


Supposed to be yellow - didn't find any bright yellows I liked at the store (the binding was bought later) .  Love the darker pattern, though, circles that make diamonds.


Purple - Love the contrast with the hard lines of the darker purple and the organic lines/seeds of the lighter.


Orange - Again, very geometric lighter and more organic dark pattern


Green - love the light, the random almost scribbled cross hatch.


Red - probably my favorite fabric is the light red.  I don't know why, but red is the hardest color to shop for.  It took forever to find ones that I felt were really red (and not maroon or what not) and not just polka dot or gingham.  Why is it so hard?


But look how pretty the flowers are! I know it's mostly white.  But it's my favorite. 


Blue - The darker pattern was probably a little too large for this, but it was the best color, so it worked out just fine!


This was supposed to be a slightly greener yellow - I love the lighter pattern.


Sneak peak at the back!


TA DAH! This pattern was so cool to me, and I didn't have a lot of green on the front and it's meant to be a picnic quilt, so it's good to be green - grass stains will be slightly less noticeable!  I just think the pattern's so cool.  From far away it looks more like flowers...


But closer in it looks more like interconnected rings.  So fun!  And yes, I took a picture of where my quilting was poorly done, because I'm ok with it!  It's the trouble with doing spirals.  This is where the two spirals met and so the fabric was being pulled in opposite directions.  Live and learn!


The spiral from the back.  I just used white quilting thread on the back. 


And then it was bound - I used the same fabric as the dark orange in the giant center pin, except I did it in bright yellow.  I thought in the sea of blue the quilt needed a hard, wide binding.  It's a double folded binding that I cut at 4", so the finished width is just a little under one inch.  And it's cut on the bias as well, so it could go around the curve.


I machine stitched the binding onto the front with the lovely walking foot my husband got me for my birthday.  And then my brain exploded and I decided I wanted to hand stitch the binding on the back.  It went quicker than I thought.  A few hours on Saturday afternoon/Sunday morning while my husband was out of town.  Not bad for approximately 18 feet of bias binding. 


This is also a gift, so the H is us, the B is the recipients, because we like them a lot!


I just love the circles/flowers!  And I love that I'm done!  I hope you love this quilt.  I do.


See you soon!
(...with another quilt project?)

Saturday, November 23, 2013

I've opened an Etsy Shop! Finally!

I'm pretty sure it was months ago that I said I was planning on opening a shop on Etsy.  Well, I finally did it.  Better late than never, yeah?  I'm so excited about it.  It's been open for all of 10 minutes and I'm stoked.  Go check it out!  Here are some glimpses of what I've listed so far.  I feel a little odd trying to advertise myself.  It's not really my style.  But having a shop doesn't do much if no one knows about it! Christmas is coming up and I think what I create would make great gifts.  So sneak a peak.




I've got clutches/cosmetic bags and some reversible pleated shoulder bags.  Love them all!







See you soon!
(...with a few finished projects!)

Friday, November 15, 2013

A Love Letter

Remember this horrible day?  When it all came crashing down?  It stayed there for a few days because I didn't have the heart to touch it.  Then it got rolled up and stuffed on a shelf until I had time.  Well, not that I had time, but my brain was fried from math and I couldn't concentrate on anything else.  So I worked on this.


It was a little crazy.  I had a picture of what half of it looked like, but I hadn't taken a picture of the whole thing (or at least I can't find it), the second half took a little longer because I had to read the code to put it together!  I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but this is a love letter.  Each fabric stands for a letter of the alphabet.  (When putting it together I found 2 missewn words.  I left the misspellings that were written in the letter, but I found 2 where I had replaced an 'n' with an 'm' and one where I forgot an 'e')


They were very much crumpled.  I had to iron them all.  I got lazy, however, and ironed straight on the table (with the batting in between).  DON'T DO IT! The steam got into the varnish and created white spots.  So I spent the last 30 minutes blow drying my coffee table.  (I should have continued reading the site that said it would probably clear up on its own in a few days).  The blow dryer worked pretty well.  I focused on one little area at a time and wiped it down to pick up some of the moisture.  


But I finished putting everything back in the right order.  And this time, I pinned them all on that batting  so until I figure out what to put as the spacing fabric (which I'm thinking a dark gray/chalkboard color) those pieces aren't going anywhere.   This word is my favorite.  It's rainbow, just because the code happened to make it that way.  Love it.  


Can't wait to go the fabric store and get some fabric to bring all this together.  Any other ideas on what to put in between the words? I love ideas!

See you soon!
(With a love letter sewn?)