Swap Goodies

A few months ago when Stephanie, of Peas in a Pod, visited we made arrangements to do a private swap. I made her a cover for one of her sewing machines.

Her machine is much bigger than my Bernie. I had to put my camera bag underneath the cover so that it would stand up nice for a photo.

She made me a new pillow for my sewing room chair.

Click on the image to make it larger so you can see all the details. The star is English Paper Pieced and then appliqued on the background. Notice all the lovely hand stitching she did echoing the star. And the pompom fringe is so fun. On the back she put in a hidden zipper so I can take out the pillow form and wash it, if necessary.

Good swap partners always include extra goodies and Stephanie is a good swap partner!

The small circle on the right is a little tin which contains a tape measure. I sent her a fun tape measure too. The little "quilt happy" book on the left is a book of sticky lint remover sheets. I've never seen a book of lint remover sheets before. Every quilter needs a lint remover and these sheets work well! The spiral bound book is a journal. On the cover it says, "I am fairly certain that given a Cape and a nice tiara, I could save the world." How fun is that?! I love journals and use them. I am the secretary for my art group and this journal is going to be used to keep us organized.

Thank you so much Stephanie! I am so lucky to be able to call you my friend! Go visit Stephanie's blog to see the cover I made for her on the machine it is intended for as well as the extra goodies I sent her.

Unexpected Squishy Mail

My mail carrier brought me a nice surprise this week - this lovely covered notebook!

It was made by Stephanie of Peas in a Pod out of some Kate Spain Good Fortune. Check out the back.

I put it to use immediately. I had just spent half an hour looking for a little notebook that I know I have somewhere to jot down notes to myself and such. I took a break from searching to get the mail and then quit looking for the other notebook. I'll probably find it now since I don't need it anymore!!

Thank you Stephanie!

Yellow Brick Road

Here is the second Yellow Brick Road quilt I've made recently.

The first one I made is sort of a Yellow Brick Road. I read the pattern wrong! I made fun of my friend Stephanie for doing the same thing recently. Here's another thing we have in common Stephanie! I thought I had a picture of it but I don't. It is already basted and waiting to be quilted. I'll get a picture for you later.

I made the first one on New Year's Eve night. I guess I was tired. When I realized what I had done it was too late to rip and retry. I'd already cut stuff. Any of you who have made this pattern know that you use up every last bit of fabric with this pattern. So I rooted around in my stash and found another set of 6 coordinating fat quarters for the quilt shown above. I even had almost a yard of the black kitty fabric for the border. I had about 1/2" of it left after cutting the borders.

One of my goals for this year is to use up fabric I have been hoarding for no apparent reason. I've already got the backing fabric pulled for this quilt. It is an older print I've had for more than 7 years. That is, I bought it before we moved to our current house. For lack of a better measure, this is what I am using to define "older fabric" in my stash. If I bought it before we moved here then I need to find a use for it to make room for the pretty new stuff I'm buying.

Both of these are going into my gift stash. The first one is a boy quilt and this one could go for either I think. I'm also working on another charity quilt. I got all the blocks pieced as a Leader and Ender while making my two Yellow Brick Road quilts.

Blogging and My First Giveaway

I first discovered blogs about 3 years ago and started following a few. After about a year of reading and following I decided that I'd like to start my own blog. My main goals for my blog were to document my projects and share patterns and techniques I like. I was not prepared for the friendships and sense of community I would get in return.

I haven't been sharing on my blog most of the work related and personal issues I've been struggling with lately. I try to keep the blog mostly about quilting and sewing. However, I have made a very good friend, Stephanie of Peas in a Pod, through my blog and I've shared these things with her. Check out the sweet surprise she sent me last week as a little "pick-me-up."

Five Kona solid fat quarters and a sweet card - THANK YOU Stephanie!

To celebrate my 500th post, which was last Friday, and to thank all of you for your friendship I'm having three giveaways this week. Today is the first one. I'm giving away one of the thread catchers I made recently.

To enter leave a comment and include where you are from. That's it. It would be nice if you became a follower, but it is not necessary. I will draw a winner on Friday (Sept. 9th) morning. I notify the winner by email and post the winner on the blog on Friday. Be sure that I have a way to contact you if you win. If you are a "no-reply" commenter and do not leave your email address in the comment then I will just draw another name. International commenters are welcome too.

The other giveaways this week will be on Wednesday and Friday.

April Challenge Reveal

This month Stephanie and I decided to do something a little different. We each made a block for Em for her Van Gogh's Cats quilt. And to make it even more fun, both Em and Caroll are making blocks too. We are all revealing our blocks today so click on the links to go see what everyone else made.

I chose the Matisse page.

And this is what I made.

I cropped the photo of the page twice, once to isolate the figure and the second time to isolate the cat. I had to play with the sizes to get the proportions right and to make them fit the 16 1/2" block size Em wanted. For the stars I just looked at the photo and drew shapes that mimicked the stars in the image. My appliques are all just fused to the background. Em with sew them down when she quilts it.

This was a fun project. You should check out the other blocks Em has made and received from others. This is going to be a spectacular quilt!

On a personal note, I'm sorry for the sporadic posts lately. The end of the semester is near - one week of classes left then finals week. I am very busy with work this time of year and don't have much sewing time. I'm on the computer a lot with my job, especially lately. Sometimes I don't feel like "playing" on my computer after spending so much time working on my computer. In addition to all this, I'm suffering worse than normal from seasonal allergies. I'm congested, sneezing a lot, watery and itchy eyes and have had several bad headaches. I'm not sure why it is worse this year, but boy howdy, this sure ain't fun.

Non-Pattern Pattern Block

I've been a follower of The Silly BooDilly blog for a while. Victoria does amazing work! She has written a few articles for Quilting Arts magazine, has an etsy shop, a flickr account and some embroidery patterns published in a two different books. Just browse the right hand side of her blog for links and information about all of her work. Definitely check out her Work Quilts series! These are what first introduced me to her work. If you haven't checked out her blog, you definitely need to click the link and check it out!

Recently she posted that she was thinking about writing a pattern for the Slumbering Spring quilt she blogged about. She started writing up the pattern, read this post for that, but then came up the with idea for a non-pattern pattern. And oh my! This is what sent me over the edge, so to speak. I literally could not stop thinking about this idea. On Friday afternoon, despite having a million other things I really needed to be doing, I just had to make one of these blocks using Victoria's idea. Here is what I made.

I totally love this block and Victoria's method for creating it. I'm currently trying to decide whether or not this block needs "friends" to make it larger or if this one is done. I will definitely be experimenting some more with this idea though. Thank you so much Victoria for your generosity in sharing this idea!

Stephanie posted her March challenge project late last night. Click here to go see what she made. See my previous post for what I made.

March Challenge Project Revealed

For March, Stephanie, of Peas in a Pod, and I were suppose to work on "narrow inset piecing." I started out making half square triangles. I had no plan, I just felt like making half square triangles.

I played with many different arrangements of these half square triangles and finally settled on the above. Then I went to work piecing them and inserting narrow bits.

It hung on my design wall like this for a while. I auditioned various borders. Below is one option.

I finally settled on just using the darkest gray from the half square triangles and quilted it using only Aurifil thread.

How cool is this!? With no prior planning on my part, I happen to own exactly the same colors of Aurifil thread as the Kona solids I chose for this project! I picked the fabrics only because these were the ones in my Kona solids scrap bag for which I had 4" squares already cut.

As I was piecing this I was thinking about what to title it and how to quilt it. The title "Best Laid Plans" came to mind.

The on point squares represent how sometimes things go exactly as planned. The gray square with the green insets represents how sometimes unexpected things can be squeezed into our plans without changing them too much. The green and white rectangular parts represent how plans can change and lead us in unexpected directions. The gray square with the blue inserts represents how we try to keep the original plan intact in spite of the big unexpected events that occur. The quilting mimics these ideas. In most of the piece the quilting is straight lines that spiral or wander but stay within a confined area. Then along the top and right hand side I quilted spirals and echos of spirals. This represents how life can sometimes spiral out of control despite all planning.

Stephanie will hopefully be posting her project soon. She has been out of town a lot recently and didn't have as much time to work on her project this month as I'm sure she would have liked. She does have some beautiful silk fabrics that she is using though and wants to embellish it with beads which is why I did the bead tutorials (part one and part two) on her blog last week.

Another Guest post

The second part of my beading tutorial is posted over at Stephanie's. Please head over there to read it. I'll be back tomorrow with the regularly scheduled programming, that is, my usual ramblings.

Guest Blogging

I'm doing a guest post today for my friend Stephanie over at Peas in a Pod. Please go over to Stephanie's to read my beading tutorial, part one.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

My little guy never did catch a leprechaun. Oh well! I got him a shamrock plant today though as a little gift. He's been wanting a plant (and a fish and a bird and a ....). You get the idea. Shamrocks are pretty easy to grow so maybe he'll be able to keep this plant alive for a while. He has named it Patricia.

Yesterday I was feeling the need to sew, but I didn't feel like working on any of my in progress projects. I know, this is how UFOs are born, but come back tomorrow for my UFO Bust report and you'll see that I am making progress in that department. Anyway, I pulled out my solids scraps and found some that were about 4" square so I paired them up and made half square triangles.

This little piece has turned into my challenge project for the month. The monthly challenge I am doing with Stephanie from Peas in a Pod. The assignment this month is "narrow inset piecing." I know you don't see any narrow inset piecing in the photo above, but I'm not going to show you that yet! This is just a sneak peak. We reveal our challenge projects around the end of the month.

While making these half square triangles yesterday I also finished my other two blocks for the Just One Star project. See yesterdays post for details about the project. There is still plenty of time to participate. Here are the blocks I am sending in.

And will you just look at this crazy cat!

What is that she is killing? It is my bunny slipper pin cushion. (The link will take you to my blog post where I showed how I made it.) I have had to rescue it three times today!

February Challenge is Curved Piecing

Today is the big reveal of the second challenge I'm doing with Stephanie from Peas in a Pod. She is also revealing her project today so please go visit her too. In case you forgot, we are working through Jean Wells' book Intuitive Color and Design. This month we did the second assignment - curved piecing.

First I started out by piecing some curved strips.

This is okay, but then I got totally distracted by my Radiator project. The link will take you to the post about my process creating it. Here is photo of the finished Radiator Quilt.

Back to my challenge project:

I didn't make any progress on my curved piecing assignment until the recent retreat. I took most of my solids with me on the retreat. The curved strips weren't thrilling me so I decided to try something like drunkards path blocks. I got so excited by the idea that I forgot to take pictures. But never fear, I did it again after I got home and I'll post how I made these blocks tomorrow.

So here are my drunkards path blocks along with the curved piecing strips.

Then I felt like combining these two some how. I ended up with this before leaving the retreat.

I sliced up the curved piecing strips into four sections and used it in the border. Then I machine pieced the whole thing. Voila!

I love how it turned out! I have titled it Circle Play.

As for Goldie, my son folded up one of his baby quilts and put it into her bag.

I think she likes it.

Radiator Quilt

I had my annual check-up on Tuesday of last week. I took my sketchbook with me to the appointment and drew this sketch in the waiting room.

The waiting room has a whole wall of windows with a hot water base board radiator running underneath the windows. I just liked the lines, the juxtaposition of horizontal and vertical (opposites of a sort), so I just quickly drew the lines.

Later that same day I was in another waiting room. This time the dentist office waiting while my son got his teeth cleaned. I drew this sketch and didn't even finish it. This sketch is derived from the first in that I took the little rounded rectangles from the radiator cover and scattered them over the page.

I thought about this sketch for the rest of the week, frustrated because I had no free time to explore it further. Saturday dawned and I found myself with a few free hours. The husband did not go skiing and instead took the boy out to breakfast and then to Science Saturday. Ahhh! I didn't even shower, just took my coffee and went straight to my sewing room.

My plan was to work on my challenge with Stephanie. We are doing the curved piecing exercise this month. So I pulled some solids and started.

I got to here and thought to myself I wonder how this would look if I used the idea from my second radiator sketch. So I got out some freezer paper and drew some rounded rectangles on it.

I cut out the rounded rectangles carefully using an Exacto knife and a ruler. Then I adhered it to my pieced fabric.

This is okay, but I don't get the pieced lines going both vertical and horizontal with this. So I put the cut out rounded rectangles on the pieced fabric.

Yes. Now I can get both horizontal and vertical lines in my rounded rectangles. Then I chose a background fabric - Kona medium gray. I adhered the freezer paper to it and using the starch method, cut out the rounded rectangles and starched back the seam allowances.

I cut out the rounded rectangles from the pieced fabric, leaving a 1/4 inch seam allowance all around. I left the freezer paper on top so that I could line them up properly in the windows of the gray fabric. Using my machine and gray thread, I sewed the pieced parts to the gray fabric. Here is how it looked before removing the freezer paper.

And then after removing the freezer paper.

I should say that I removed the freezer paper from the gray fabric before sewing the pieced fabrics into the windows.

I quilted pebbles on the gray.

And now I am embellishing the pieced fabrics with hand stitching. I love how this all started with a very rough sketch in the waiting area of the doctor's office!

"Fun" Quilt Finished

I finished my "Fun" quilt yesterday evening.

You can click on the picture to see it larger. My post on Feb. 1st contains all the details about this challenge.

I thoroughly enjoyed making this one! Stephanie and I have already planned our challenge for this month and we will both post our progress on or about March 1st.

January Challenge Project

Stephanie from Peas in a Pod and I are working through Jean Wells' book Intuitive Color and Design. We are going to try to do one exercise a month from the book and started with the first exercise for January.

Stephanie and I both started with these fabrics.

All Kona solids, a few greens, a few neutrals and a zinger - the plum.

I started by piecing a unit.

Then I pieced another.

And I continued this way until I got a strip.

It is not straight but it is about the right length. I like that it isn't straight and I will just go with this curve.

Then my camera batteries died and I didn't want to wait for them to recharge before continuing, so I just put them on the charger and kept sewing.

By the time they were charged, I had the center together. My original plan was to add a few borders to this, square it up and call it done. Then I got my copy of Word Play Quilts by Tonya Ricucci.

This book is the kind of book I love. It is heavy on technique with only a few projects. She explains in detail how to make each letter, but gives no specific measurements - awesome! There are lots of diagrams so you really don't even need to read the text to make a letter. Back to my project.

I just had to make some letters after getting this book and I already had the fabrics for my challenge project out. So I made a few letters.

Then I pieced them together.

Then I added my word to the bottom of my center and bordered the whole thing. Voila!

I call this my Fun Quilt. I am embellishing this with hand stitching, so I am not finished.

Here is a detail shot of the stitching. I am using a 12 wt. Sulky Blendables variegated thread. The colors range from light purple to dark plum and light gray to almost black.

I am thoroughly enjoying the "embellishing with stitch" process so I am taking my time with it. When I finish I plan to do a traditional binding with the dark gray border fabric. The quilt will end up being about 14" by 20". The letters are between 3" and 3.5" tall.

If you haven't already done so, go check out what Stephanie made with the same fabrics. You won't be sorry. She did an awesome job! We have already chosen our next challenge project for February. We will both post about what we make this month on or about March 1st.