A Quilt Sent, a Giant Made, a Question to Ask

Here it is, my lovely lone star quilt for my niece.  I know I already showed it, but it looks better now, better lighting, better with a husband behind it!

I got up the courage and washed and dried it (I want it to be launderable, no soaking it in the tub or hanging it out to dry, I want it thrown in the wash because it gets so much love).

I know now firsthand the wrinkles everyone mentioned when you wash it for the first time (I hadn't prewashed my fabric).  I like it!  Looks cozy, ready to wrap up in.

I love how the label is camouflaged (Hey, I almost spelled that right the first time! Just forgot the 'u'). 

I can't get over the back.  It's my favorite part.  

Rolling it up to get it sent on its way to a lovely 12 year old!

From her aunt!  Me!!

I had some extra fabric and 2 extra diamonds, so I made some pillowcases to go along with the quilt.  To make the bed cohesive if she'd like to.  They're identical.  Diamond on the front, yellow on the back.

So, I need a little help from my friends.  I'm working this out, but struggling with it.  I made the giant pinwheel for the center of my GillyWhig quilt.  My question is, do I put the small pinwheels around it in a rainbow pattern...

or random pattern...

Thoughts?  Ideas?  I just want it to look the awesomest it can!

See you soon! 

(with more ideas for this quilt hopefully!)

A Quilt for my Niece - Part 2!

And the quilting began!  Yes, indeed, I have a very small armed machine, and yes, indeed, the quilt is about 6 x 6 1/2 feet.  It was fun times for all.  Surprisingly it wasn't horrible, which I was sort of expecting.  It slid through the arm much easier than expected when I needed it to and I tried quilting in a way that didn't require an enormous amount of whole quilt turning.

I love the back.  I quilted around each diamond in the ditch, then made an X through each large diamond (again stitching in the ditch) that made up the star, effectively creating 4 diamonds inside the larger one...

...which looks like this on the back, which I love!!!

This is a larger picture of the back.  I didn't divide up the diamonds that go around the star, I liked leaving them emptier, bringing the focus on the center star.  (Sorry for inadequate pictures, I was in a poorly/not really lit at all apartment in Salt Lake.)  

This next one is to show you how amazingly my seams match up!  I was quite proud of myself.

I quilted nonagons in each corner triangle of the quilt.  (Yellow side is top, lilac side is the back).  I quilted both top and bottom in yellow, so it blended on the top and just peeked through on the back.  

I then quilted each yellow square around the star with things my niece is interested in.  The fabrics a bit wrinkled from being folded, but you can still see the quilting.

A microscope for her love of science...

The deathly hallows symbol from Harry Potter...

A piano keyboard for her love of music...

and a wolf, because they're awesome! (and she likes them)

I put stars in the other 4 squares.

2 Star of Davids...

And 2 five pointed stars...

I was so excited to be done with the quilt, when I found this...

Somehow the fabric got sliced through, all the way from front to back.  I don't know how, since I wasn't near this thing with a rotary cutter once I started sewing it together, yet that's what it looks like happened.  So I put my thinking cap on.

I hadn't made a label for the quilt, so I decided to use this as an opportunity.  I embroidered her initials on a scrap of matching yellow and stitched it on the front to patch the slice...

...and then embroidered my initials and the year on purple and stitched it on the back.

I think it was rather genius, and now there's a bit of a label on it.  So there's the quilt!  I'll try to get it outside and in natural light for a nice big picture before sending it off.  But in the meantime, check out our chicken pot pie we made today...

Yeah, it was a bit much.  We took off the top half of filling and saved it for another pie for another day.  Yay for more pie!

See you soon!

(with a sneak at a current project!?)

A quilt for my niece (Part 1)

Remember when I mentioned that I was going to make a quilt for all my nieces and nephews when they turned 12?  I'm super excited because I've now officially made my first!  I was nervous to put it up (because I haven't sent it off yet) but then I realized that she probably has no idea I have a blog, and I'm not sure her mother does either, so they won't accidentally happen across it.

It started with me asking her (through her mother and facebook) questions about all her 'favorites': colors, shapes, animals, books, movies, hobbies, etc. 

While her favorite colors were gold, aqua marine and lavender, I didn't have quite the selection of fabrics to get that specific, so I took artistic license and used the following instead.

The 3rd from the left was actually gone when I went back to buy the fabric (I hadn't done all my measuring and calculating yet) so I got a cute blue geometric square fabric pictured in the diamonds below.  Her favorite shapes were diamonds, stars and nonagons (yep, 9 sided), and I decided to not try to piece a top with nonagons, so I stuck with the first two, originally wanting to do a beautiful top like this beautiful quilt.

But when I accidentally cut the strips wider than planned, the finished quilt would have been over 7 feet square.  Too big.  So I changed plans to what became the finished quilt.  

But a funny thing happened on the way to the finish line.  I accidentally sewed the strips above exactly as pictured.  In my original inspiration, the diamonds all went from light to dark to light, but the above ones are doing that the short way across, instead of the long.  I sewed 8 like this.  (At least I had the sense somewhere in my subconscious not to do them all!)  So I panicked, then decided to put those 8 as the diamonds that surround the center star, and then the change in color would continue on perfectly.

So I sewed the other 8 the way I had originally intended and chose this lovely pale yellow as the color for the blocks and triangles to finish the top.  (The gold bolt in the back was just too much IN YOUR FACE!!! color, so I ditched it)

Here's the star with all the squares sewn on.  I used this awesome video to know how to piece it all together.  (It was also my inspiration for the final pattern).  Y seams are easy! Yay!!! 

Then onto the bordering diamonds.  

I would like to say, this part was the easy part.  The hardest, scratch that, longest part was sewing the diamonds together.  To get all the seams matched up I tediously marked a quarter inch on each seam, then pinned each seam match up with a stay pin (is that what it's called? Where you put it straight up and down through the 2 fabrics?) and then pinned on either side of the stay pin.  Then I sewed.  So marking and pinning 25 seams for each diamond x 16 diamonds = 400 seams + 40 for sewing the diamonds into a star = 440 + 48 for all the square corners and bordering triangle corners = 488.  

My seams line up beautifully, though.  I'll find a close up shot (or take one) and share it with tomorrow's post, but I'm super proud of how nice the diamonds look.  Well worth the time and itchiness felt to move on.  

The top is finished off with corner triangles, and then to lengthen it a little (I feel uncomfortable with square quilts, seems wrong inside, I need a longer edge!) I added a 3 strip border on top and bottom, yellow, blue diamonds, yellow, and a single yellow border on the side.  

It didn't fit on the quilting frame that my mother in law lent me, and I was being a hermit in Salt Lake, so I did what I could.  Lay the batting down, lay the backing on top of it, smoothed it out, rolled it up and flipped it so the backing was on the floor.  (I tried doing backing then batting but I couldn't smooth the batting out, too sticky).  I didn't have basting spray or anything, just lay the top on the batting, smoothed it as best I could and safety pinned away.  I didn't do too bad, but I also wasn't planning on quilting it extremely dense or fancy, so it worked out just fine. 

I'm exhausted by the process, just explaining it is bringing it all back!  So I will leave the ending for tomorrow.  

(P.S. - I went to a rodeo! So exciting! (and rainy))

See you soon!

(With the final product!)