WIP Wednesday: April 27, 2011

I haven’t had much time to sew this past week. Here’s what I have been able to accomplish. Check out Freshly Pieced for more WIP Wednesday goodness.

Current Projects:

Matching Floralgraphix Pillows

The hexagon pillow stills needs borders but I’m really close on the plus pillow.

Call Me Crazy {4/42 blocks complete}

Once I got the hang of it, I found that I really enjoy improvisational piecing!

Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #2

All five rows are sewn together. I might not add borders although the pattern calls for them.

On hold:

Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #1

Do I have to add borders? I might not add borders to this one either.

Forest Friends Embroidery

Still no progress.

Scrappy Nine-Patch {8/70 blocks complete}

Haven’t touched this one recently.

WIP Wednesday: April 20, 2011

Here’s what I have been working on this past week. Check out Freshly Pieced for more WIP Wednesday goodness.

Current Projects:

Call Me Crazy {1/42 blocks complete}

I’ve always been intrigued by crazy quilts, so when I saw this pattern from FunQuilts, I decided to give it a try. This pattern is from the December 2007 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. I gathered a bunch of blue-on-blue fabric, made one block, decided I would make the whole quilt and then promptly forgot about it. This week, I pulled it out and started working on it again. It is slow going, as improvisational piecing is new to me.

Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #2

Four of the five rows are sewn together.

On hold:

Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #1

The next step is adding the borders.

Matching Floralgraphix Pillows

The hexagon pillow needs borders and I’ve barely begun on the pluses pillow.

Forest Friends Embroidery

I would be more motivated to work on this if I could find the frames I need.

Scrappy Nine-Patch {8/70 blocks complete}

Scraps are a quilter’s best friend. Whenever I use scraps, I feel like I’m using free fabric, even though I paid for it at some point. I really enjoyed reading the posts about this Scrappy Nine-Patch quilt over on crazy mom quilts. It was a one-a-day quilt along. I have neither the time nor the dedicated space to sew every day, so I’m going at a much slower pace. When I do get to work on this quilt, I make two blocks at a time.

Second Finish of 2011: Drawstring Bags

Sometimes when I’m working on bigger projects, I will throw in a small, quick project just so that I can feel the satisfaction of a finish. A while ago, I saw a tutorial for drawstring bags over at Pink Penguin and just had to make some. I made two patchwork bags from the tutorial and loved them. Then I got the bright idea to use drawstring bags instead of wrapping paper when giving gifts. Making patchwork bags would take too long, so I adapted the pattern to suit my needs. I use 2-3 fabrics for each bag, I make them a little bigger and I developed a different technique for the casing. I made a bunch for Christmas and was very pleased with them.

I bought the fabric for these bags while on a trip to visit extended family and made the bags within a month. For me, that’s a really quick turn-around for using up fabric. Sometimes I buy fabric for a specific project and it sits around for years. The bag on the right, made from Central Park fabric, has become my embroidery bag. The bag on the left, made from Sunkissed fabric, will be used to wrap a gift.

Sunday Stash #1

In general, I don’t buy fabric without a specific purpose in mind. Usually I build my stash by buying more fabric than I need for a project. If a pattern calls for ¾ of a yard, I will buy a whole yard and use the extra in another project. I will also buy a fat quarter here and there. However, recently I bought fabric from Pink Chalk Fabrics with no project in mind whatsoever. I’m drawn to their monthly solids club, but haven’t signed up yet. Then I saw last month’s offering was a set of gorgeous green fabrics. My favorite color is blue, but I work with green frequently as it is the favorite color of several family members and friends. You can order their monthly pack even if you aren’t in the club. While I was on their site, I checked out the Sherbet Pips line. It’s not really my style, but I have been admiring it. I decided that the grey and blue square fabrics would be nice to have on hand. I love grey, but rarely buy grey fabric. Then I checked out their selection of blue fabric and decided to order some of the Kona Deep Blue, just because. It looked a little navy online, but I was so happy when it arrived. It is my blue! It seems that most of the blue fabric coming out right now is light blue or aqua. It’s hard to find the darker, richer shade of blue that I prefer, but now I’ve found it.

WIP Wednesday: April 13, 2011

One of the main objectives of this blog is to document the quilting process. Too often I forget when I started and finished a project. No more! I really enjoy the WIP Wednesday posts on Freshly Pieced (and on A Quilter’s Table!), so here is my first of many Work In Progress posts.

Current Projects:

Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #1 and Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #2

Years ago my mom made a series of baby quilts using the Yellow Brick Road pattern from Atkinson Designs. I liked those quilts so much that I bought the pattern and held onto it for years. Recently I was inspired to make quilts for two special babies and decided to finally use this pattern. For Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #1, the blocks are pieced together, but it needs a border. The blocks for Yellow Brick Road Baby Quilt #2 are done and sewn into rows, but the rows need to be sewn together.

Matching Floralgraphix Pillows

I just can’t get enough of hexagons! I’m making two pillows for myself out of the leftovers from a quilt that my mom made me for my birthday. One pillow is hexagons and the other is pluses.

Forest Friends Embroidery

During my pregnancy, I developed a craving for embroidery. I wanted to make something for the nursery and found the perfect patterns at Sublime Stitching. I added the name of each animal in Spanish. Now they just need washed, ironed and framed.

Hopefully I will have made some progress on these projects by this time next week!

First Finish of 2011: Blue Pillows

My first finish of 2011 was a gift that I wanted to keep for myself. When one of my dearest friends moved into her own apartment, I wanted to make something for her new place. Like so many others, I love working with English paper pieced hexagons. I thought they would be the perfect project for my third trimester when I couldn’t use my sewing machine and could only sew by hand. I underestimated how time-consuming hexagons can be. I started the hexagon pillow in October of 2010, gave birth in November 2010 and didn’t finish the hexagon pillow until January 2011. The smaller pillow I started and finished in one day.

One reason I wanted to keep these pillows is that blue is my favorite color. Also, I used scraps from three different quilts, in addition to a fat quarter from my stash. One of my favorite things about quilting is using the same fabric in multiple projects. I love how quilts are connected that way. The scraps used in these pillows came from my first large quilt, the only wedding quilt I’ve made, and a quilt that I recently gifted to a co-worker. I still have some scraps let over, too!

Neither of these pillows is from a pattern. I just made it up as I went along. I ran into a little bit of trouble because the 14” and 16” pillow forms actually measured 13” and 15” respectively. Luckily I had added borders that were wide enough to trim down, so it buffed out. My mom let me use her sewing room and mad babysitting skills so that I could finish this project sooner rather than later. Thanks, Mom!

Welcome to My Humble Blog

After much contemplation and even more procrastination, I have decided to start my very own blog. I intend to accomplish three things with this blog:

·    Document my adventures in quilting, embroidery and other creative endeavors, thereby inspiring me to grow creatively.

·    Establish an online presence in the crafting community so that I can participate in swaps, bees and quilt-a-longs.

·    Focus on the positive.

I look forward to joining the blogging community and seeing where this blog leads me.