Chain of Stars addition

As I said in my last post I made some modification to my Chain of Stars top. I decided to make it bigger, and also I didn't like it not having a border since the pattern went all the way out and it would've bothered my eyes after binding.
Remember the top when it looked like this?:

I love the design and wanted to make it float and stand out so I pieced some background fabrics together for a fairly wide border. I like it much better now. I was thinking to put squares in the middle of each of the borders so the square pattern can come together, but it would've been too much hassle, so I just decided against it.

It turned out this way:

It's a rainy day outside so I had to ask Fiance to hold the top up for me, pardon the fingers! 

I also made the binding @pantsfreesia-style! 

Now I'm just waiting for the backing to arrive which I ordered from Hancocks of Paducah since they had a sale going on, plus I got a 20% off coupon code in the email for Mother's day, so win-win for me! I have so many thing to do, and I really don't feel like piecing the backing for now.

I took pictures of how I did the borders without using a measuring tape, and will write up a tutorial on that in tomorrow's post.

'Til we blog again! :)

Oven mitts, and hot pads

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last posted. Time flies when you're having fun, I guess! I finally had my editing software re-installed after I got an SSD drive put into my laptop (by DF) for better speed.

I whipped up a few oven mitts as presents and since I was at it I also made some for myself. I used any strings I had on hand, they were all under 2". I made up the pattern using my own hand, and after I was done I just realized the insul bright I was using has a pattern on the packaging. Oh, well! I will use that next time.

I asked the design question on twitter of which quilting method people would prefer, and most of them voted for lines, so after I made the grid one, the second one stayed with line quilting.

The method I used making them was I cut out the shape of the mitten with a generous seam allowance from insul bright, and then started to sew my strings on top, and fold and press as I went. When I was done I trimmed it to size, and quilted it, putting the flannel as backing. I've sewn it right side facing, and also stuck a little hanging tag in between, facing the inside of the mitten. Finally I machine bound it, also with leftover binding from an earlier baby quilt.

So here's the one with the grids, front and back:

And the one people liked more, the line quilted:

I totally love the binding on this one! The inside is flannel, nice and soft.

Also made this square one after a pattern of my old hot pad because I liked the fact that it had a pocket and I could just stick my hand in there quickly and it didn't require 2 hands to put on. I forgot to round the corners a little bit, but I think it will just do like this:

This is the back:

I was rocking the machine binding on this one :)

And finally I made this one out of flannel, which feels super soft. The flannels were leftovers from 2 receiving blankets I made waaaay back when.

Here's the front:

The back (a little wrinkly since I've been using it for 2 weeks):

Before you ask what's with the stitches... First of all, since it was for me, I didn't bother with bias binding, so the binding is leftover I had from my blue and white quilts. Second of all, I made and oopsie and sewed the binding on the front first, then stitched it down on the back. Yeah. But no one else will see it, so I didn't bother correcting it. I remembered it on the second one I made, and that looks fine :)

That is all for now, I also made progress on my Chain of Stars quilt, but I will blog about that in a different post.

'Til we blog again! :)

Guess what?...

...I'm home this week, and finally put the last borders on my Celtic Solstice top. Yeah. I know it's not like I finished the whole quilt, but I like to celebrate the baby steps and this was a big one. Some of you saw my tweet about my helper wanting to help out with the measuring. I get moments like that :)

Smoky helping with the measurements:

I decided to make a yellow binding for this one, just to contrast the dark green outer border, I'll have to get working on that.

Yesterday I ordered the batting for this baby and another one I want to finish. Now I only have to figure out what I'm gonna do about the backing. The local quilt show is coming up in 2 weeks, so I might just wait and get wide quilt backs locally instead of ordering online. Hope they'll have a good selection! If not, I was really contemplating the new-to-me Robert Kaufman quilt backings. I just haven't decided if I wanted blue or green. Decisions, decisions!

Meanwhile, here's the top:

Fiance is a tall guy with long arms, but even he couldn't reach as far as the edges go so the upper corners are kind of cut off, but you can get the picture without them. :)

I'm trying to decide on a layout for my Lucky Stars 2013 blocks. I'm contemplating putting them on point, which I've never done before. I just want to make the quilt a little larger, since it's 36"x 48" with the 12 blocks that measure 12". I even mocked up my theory in EQ7, in straight setting with flying geese in the sashing, and on point with the same flying geese. Again, I'll just have to make up my mind.

Here are the blocks:

Do you have any suggestions? Let me know in the comment section below! :)

And finally my dear Sleepy turned 3 last Friday!

'Til we blog again! :)

Spring fabric postcard swap

Several weeks ago Sandi (@quiltcabana) who can be found at  quiltcabanapatterns.com/blog announced on her podcast that She's organizing a fabric postcard swap again, this time to celebrate Spring. As we all know that most of the country got a lot more snow this winter than we are normally used to, and I have to say, where I live we're still dealing with below freezing high temperatures during the day. I happily signed up since I really enjoyed the swap we had for Christmas. 

My swap partner was Sandy (@sandyquiltz) who is blogging and podcasting at http://quiltingfortherestofus.com/ 

She sent me this fabulous card which I loved!

As some of you may know orange is my all time favorite color so I was so happy to see that She used so much of it in the card :) The texture is really cool, the center of the flower has some really sparkly stuff, which always make me smile :) She has a tutorial of how She made it on her blog. Check it out, it's a REALLY nice technique!

I know She's really artsy, and I wanted to make a card for Her from one of my photos which I took either last year, or the year before, of a daffodil that just opened it's petals. Needless to say, I didn't find the picture on my hard drive, and decided to go for a less original method of looking for drawings in EQ7. I printed the pattern and wanted to try out Beth Ferrier's machine applique method using freezer paper. I modified my technique a little bit, as I didn't have to take the freezer paper out at the end, so I appliqued the tulips on a background fused to timtex to give the postcard some stiffness. It was fairly easy to make after I decided which pattern I wanted to do. Next I just glued all the tulips and leaves on the background (which I picked out thinking about blue skies) and stitched it down with somewhat matching thread I could find in my thread "collection" :)  Last, I wanted to satin stitch around the edges with yellow thread to represent sunshine, which Sandy very rarely have where She lives.

Here is the card:

I wrote the message on the back, took some photos,  and sent it in an envelope through the post office. I didn't want to risk sending it "bare" because I was afraid it'll get wet and the writing will run on the back. She really liked it which makes me happy. The little joys of life, right?

I am looking forward to the Summer swap which is coming up next, are you signing up? You better! You can go to Sandi's website to email her, or She's @quiltcabana on Twitter. Hope you will join us!

'Til we blog again! :)

Star Crown block

Hi Dear Reader,
Welcome back!

I've been away for a little while, working on some things here and there, and also made progress. Unfortunately no pictures, since nothing is finished :( I don't want to bore anybody with posting the same pictures over and over again with very little change.

There's one thing I finished, which is the Star Crown block for November of the Lucky Stars BOM 2013. This is the last block of the year, I mean last year :)

All is left to do is to assemble all of them into a quilt top. It's gonna be interesting to do since I think I want to put sashing around all of them to eliminate the paper and bring them all to the same size. I will lay them out on my design bed and put sashing on every other block. I can't wait to see what it will look like! Right now they're all hanging nicely on hangers on my sewing room door knob :))

Since I don't read directions with paper piecing, I had miss-cut the fabrics and did not reverse some of the units I was supposed to. As a result I got a pinwheel background instead of 4 squares. Oh, well, I will not redo it. For sure :)

The block was supposed to look like this:

And instead, partly because I didn't have a lighter gray fabric, and partly for the mistake, mine came out like this:

I truly like this one, the colors go together so well. I had to dig into my Christmas fabrics to pull the reds out. I store those in a separate box.

I am still working away on my Celtic Solstice top. I have the first 2 borders on, will have to cut the third, green border to attach and the top is done. 

I have so many ideas in my mind, and about 4-5 tops that would need to be basted. I feel like I can't make serious progress because I always want to start something new instead of basting the ones I have. I know once basting is done I can finish it quickly because I'm always excited for the quilting part.

Also still have to make my Spring post card for the swap I signed up for. Lots to do!

'Til we blog again!

I feel like I have raving to do...

So here's my story:

I am a member on Craftsy.com, the best website (at least IMHO) for taking online quilting/sewing/cooking/baking classes. They have awesome teachers, and once you buy a class you have access to it 24/7 and they never expire. If you have not heard of them, or have not taken any classes from them, I highly recommend them to anybody.

I signed up for quite a few classes and going through them slowly (you know a girl's gotta sew!). I get emails from them from time to time stating when they have sales, or they give out special offers. I got one of those a few days ago, letting me know that 2 of their classes were on sale, if I'm correct they were 50% off, both for $14.99. As I saw the class titles I knew I had signed up to both of them already, so just for fun I wrote back:

"That's a bummer, because I have both of them in the queue already... :)))" 

A few hours later I got and email from Patty who thanked me for reaching out to them and being an active member of the community. Talking about making me feel good! :) She explained to me that their goal is to reach out to members with offers that they think the member would be the most interested in. And since I have a ton of classes in my queue already, it's hard for them to offer classes that I don't own already. Ehem :)

She basically extended the offer and asked me which classes I would be interested in. I wrote back to her and named the 3 classes I most wanted to get (didn't want to be pushy and let her know that all of the ones I don't have already, LOL!). And also had a question which I think most of the quilting community would like to see, which is having the option to add friends on Craftsy to be able to see who is taking what classes and what projects they're working on. 

Patty put the 3 classes in my cart for the sale price of $14.99 each. I was stunned! Also She'd let me know that She will let the rest of the team know about the request of being able to make friends and they will consider it in the future.

I just wanted to say, thank you so much Craftsy team, you're doing a terrific job!

Disclosure: this blog post is my own opinion based on my own experience.

'Til we blog again! :)

Ready to sew the blocks

I'm thrilled to report that I'm done with all the units for Celtic Solstice Mystery, yaaaay! They are all sewn and trimmed, ready to be put into blocks. 

I just printed out the Clue 6 directions and will start to sew the blocks together.

Here are my Clue 5 units, which are the shaded 4 patch blocks that we also used in the Easy Street Mystery Quilt.

I got a lot of feedback from people that they liked the colors I picked. I can't wait to see this top all together!

I think I'm gonna have to make a list of my tops waiting to be quilted so I can go and buy the batting I need to finish them all. Exciting times ahead! :)

I'll be starting a new project with applique very soon with Gretchen from 120 blocks blog. We decided to tackle this together and I can't wait to start! I haven't decided if I want to do hand applique, or discover the machine applique world, or do both. We'll see what the future brings!

'Til we blog again! :)