A quick update

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted  to put out a quick blog post to let you all know  that I'm still here!

We got an invitation from my friend (whom I haven't seen for at  least 3 years!) a week ago to go visit them and see  their 4 months old baby girl for the first time. Exciting! But you all know what that means! I have to make a quilt! And make it quick!

I had a hard time deciding what should I make because I didn't want to do the usual pinwheel pattern that I love to make for kids. After a long consideration I decided on the Dresden plate pattern.  It will be pink and white, of course :)) I can't share any pictures yet, because I have a commitment  to do a tutorial on July 17th for  the Let's get Acquainted! blog hop and if I share the pictures now I'll have to come up with something else... which at this moment I'm not really capable of :)

I will also have to work on my  log cabin quilt  which I wanted to finish by Sunday. It's our 12th anniversary and would have been nice to finish it by then, but the baby quilt just took it's place. Now I'll have to think about something else to get for Fiance... UGH!

I'll keep working on the Craftsy  BOM blocks after I'm done  with the baby quilt, now at least I figured  out how to applique the letter "D" on the background.  The Dresden plates made me practice :)

I also signed up to Wendy Butler Berns' machine quilting class on Craftsy.com. I never in a million years thought that the videos are so thorough! I'm really happy with the class so far and will use her basting method with my log cabin quilt when I get to it. I even walked to Staples the other day in 90F  to get some binder clips, only to realize that their thickest is 1 inch. I decided not to buy it because I had a feeling that our table is thicker than that. After coming home and measuring I gladly noted that  the top is only 7/8 inch thick so I'll go back and get the clips!

That's all for the updates for now, I only have my helper Szundi's picture to  share. He likes to climb into plastic boxes, but lately I realized that He prefers the ones that have fabrics in them. Smart cat!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

After reading some wonderful blogs I got to the point that I decided to participate in the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's blog this year. I'd like to participate with my quilt that I made not so long ago and it was clearly a very favorite. I was inspired by Sandi Colwell's Leahbelle's Garden Quilt.

My friend was expecting a baby girl and I was thumbing through the magazines and found this quilt which I really liked. I took the idea and pieced the background, then drew some flowers then fused them down. I decided to put chenille strips to outline the flower petals. It  was my first time making chenille strips and I got so many questions about it that I wrote my first tutorial. It ended up on craft gossip and I got a lot of viewing on my blog. At that time  I started to follow Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project where she demonstrated a different quilting technique every week. I started to practice free motion quilting and decided to stipple the quilt. It came out really nice and I'm proud of this one. My friend was stunned when they received it.

My interpretation came out like this:

Some close-up pictures:

And the pieced back:

I'm linking up to Amy's Creative Side. If you feel like it, please join the fun!


Til' we blog again! :)

How about this one?

All right. Yesterday's post brought me a suggestion which I took seriously. Nancy from Four dogs and One Quilter suggested a link which has the alphabet made of hexagons. She suggested to check out this link. What can I say? I was in heaven! I started to take my D-wanna-be apart and stitched the first few hexagons, but then it got too late and went to bed. Also the movie we were watching ended and didn't want to stay up just to finish the block. I knew I'll have to drive a lot Today  and I was kind of tired already.

Today after I got home I started stitching again and finished a better looking "D". What do you think?

I actually edited  the colors so this pictures show the true colors of the fabrics. I kind of like this one!

Hexies progress

I keep on working on the Craftsy BOM blocks and I'm in the month of April which is English paper piecing month. In my last post I stated my own  method for that, the result will be pretty much the same anyway.  Except! The original block was supposed to be the way the hexagons were arranged in a column on a plain white background. 

Below is a picture:

I thought it's really pretty. But to me a bit boring... So I thought I'd try to find another way to arrange the hexies I made. I came up with an idea of shaping them into a letter. I'm making this quilt for my friend's grand baby who's name is Dominik so I tried to arrange them into a "D" shape.

Does this look like a "D"? That's the question!

I'd sew it on a white background as it was supposed to be originally, but first I'd like some feedback, what do you think? Is it OK for a letter D or should I figure out something else? My other idea was to form a triangle if I made 2 more. Thoughts anyone? Your opinion is very much appreciated! Did I mention I'm a terrible decision maker? Yeah! That! :)  Please help meeeee! :)

'Til we blog again! :)

Making hexies tutorial

After finishing my Spider Web block last night I started my hexies for the April blocks. The video has suggestions for the English paper piecing method, but I kind of don't want to take the extra step to remove all the basting so decided to make them my way. Surprised? :)

I've collected round plastic things (e.g. sour cream and cream cheese tops, Chinese takeout tops, etc.)  and traced the template on them. After cutting them out I punched a hole in each with my hole punch. I took the fabrics I wanted to use (needed 13 of them) and pinned the templates on the wrong side, trimming the fabric down leaving about a 1/4 inch seam allowance.

They looked like this when I was done:

Next step was to tuck 2 sides in and pinch it with my thumb getting ready to baste.

I took a threaded needle  and stitched 2-3 stitches to secure it.

I was going around the whole shape  doing the same thing.

And finally back to where I started, it's all done.

All 13 of them together:

My helpers for the day were:

Kormi helped me keeping me on my toes, making sure I can't sit down to baste.

He even volunteered to find my thimble in my sewing box. 

Szundi made sure I'm burning extra calories with standing. His favorite place is wherever I need to be sitting/sewing/or whatever.

'Til we blog again! :)

Broken Spider Web Block done

Yaay, another block done for March, so happy! This time I've cut the   foundation square 1/8 inch bigger than instructed and trimmed it at the end about the same :) I incorporated some more fabrics in this one to make it look more scrappy. No frustrations this time! I assembled the block after I got home this evening (Fiance went fishing, hurrah for fishing season!) while watching Step Up 3. Love that movie, love the dancing and the music, can't watch it enough times.

Finally a picture of my finished Broken Spider Web block:

I had another finish Today. I finished reading the Hunger Games books! Great story line, if you haven't read it yet, you must! Someone told me that it will end sadly so I  expected something totally different, and I have to say I kind of liked the end of it. I was not crazy about the movie, it looked kind of slow in the beginning and if I haven't read the book before I would've even been bored... I'll watch it again when it comes out on DVD and maybe it'll grow on me, who knows? I heard excellent ravings about it  and a lot of people liked it, I'm thinking did I miss something? Anyways... back to the sewing room and start the blocks for April!

'Til we blog again! :)

Learning my lessons

It  was a very nice weekend with sunshine and higher temperature, nothing was too bad. Now I woke up to a humid, grey, rainy morning which isn't bad either hence that I forgot to water the petunias.

I went to a machine quilting class with Debby Brown Saturday afternoon and now I'm totally re-charged quilting wise. It was a great class, She was teaching a longarm class which I would like to do eventually. We learned how to pin the quilt back on the leaders, how to center the quilt back, why you need to baste the batting and then the 3 layers together before quilting and all that jazz. This was my second machine quilting class with her and I just can't get enough! We did some quilting which was the best part, we were going to take home the fabric piece we made, but didn't want to bother with it at the end. I just wish I took some pictures of my practice pieces they came out pretty nice. 2 of the ladies I was sharing a machine with have a machine at home so they were pretty good. It was nice to see how other people approach longarm quilting and that I wasn't the least skilled :) I came out of class with lots of design ideas and things to practice, it was a wealth of  information.

I am not allowed to sleep 7 hours anymore. Starving Szundi (translated Sleepy, yes, from the seven dwarfs) is waking me up around 4-5 AM depending on his mood. He needs to be fed immediately and if I don't get up he starts to rub his face against mine, walking up and down on me and if I'm still not getting out of bed he finds my feet and starts rubbing then just simply  biting on my toes. That does the trick and he knows it! :) I spoiled him too much with the bottle feedings and after a year he still remembers. Because of all  this I just had to take a 45 minute nap yesterday afternoon because I felt like I just can not function anymore. I woke up like I was re-born :) And to celebrate that I just dove into my sewing room. 

Still working on my Craftsy BOM and March is next in line with the foundation pieced string blocks. My first time, again. I wish Amy would've said on the video (which I watched 2x before I started) to cut the foundation a 1/4 inch bigger because my square shrunk about an 1/16 inch by the time I was finished. I had to fudge the cutting and sew the squares together accordingly which I managed just fine. I just like to make things a little bigger  and then cut them down to the right  size. Guess it's part of the getting more experience thing. Now I just have to go and take a picture of my masterpiece :)

Here it is, my String Block in all it's glory:

I know it's a little sad that this is all I could come up all weekend, but I'm happy I even had time to make this one block. It might be easy, but it is surely time consuming. You have to cut the strips first, then make the marks, position the fabrics, press every strip one-by-one  as you go, and then finally sew the whole block together. I'm not sure if I wanted to make an easy quilt this would be my block of choice. Just sayin'!

'Til we blog again! :)