WIP Saturday

A few quick updates for some of my WIP/UFOs:

Another block finished for the stars quilt

And I managed to hoodwink my cousins into helping Jack move my desk into the basement, where I can Mechatronics to my heart's content.

You can see that I haven't gotten my stuff quite set up yet, so it promptly became storage for Jack's in-progress weapons ;-p
I have my thinking chair set up next to it and there is a small built in bookshelf to the right I can use.

Plus, I finished the binding on my purple cats quilt, inscribed a label on the back, and it will be all set after a good washing!

This one will go in my stack of finished un-dedicated quilts (its a small stack, but growing), but will probably end up getting donated to Project Linus this fall.

I also made some changes to the Stormy Path quilt. The fabric came in and is beautiful. It is washed and dried, so once I iron it, I can start. This quilt will take approximately 400 individual units and will finish at about full size, so it is my most ambitious project yet. I put the fabric swatches in EQ7, so this is a closer approximation to the finished quilt.

FMQ Friday - Purple Kats Kwilt

Well it has been a nice couple of weeks. Last weekend was a three day weekend and this was a four day weekend, thanks to the extra days I took off of work. I've been putting the time to good use, playing video games and sewing. We even went to see a movie, Iron Man 3. I think it was the best of them all.

Here is the purple kats kwilt UFO that I've been working on. Not only did I get all the quilting completed today, but I started stitching on the binding.

This was quite the adventure. There are puckers and ripples and about 50% of the time, the needle didn't go where it was supposed to go. A learning experience, we'll call it. Honestly, I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt anything much larger than this on my little sewing machine. We'll see what happens.

EDIT: I had some inquiries about the pattern for this quilt. The original pattern was by Patti Carey for Northcott and can be found here.

I also finished another stars block.

 

Two more to go for this quilt top, and then it will be done. I'm still considering doing this as a QAYG.

Well, two more days of my lovely mini-vacation to go!

Fishies!

After having completed the piecing on my purple Kool Kats Kwilt, I decided I wanted to do something different with the blue one. After all, scrappy coin borders are nifty, but  I need to branch out! Seriously! The last quilt I finished had the same style border (triangle log cabin). And it looks great, I just feel like I'm stuck in a rut.

However, thanks to my co-conspirators over on Quiltingboard.com (love this message board site by the way. Everyone is nice and friendly and full of both encouragement and great ideas), and a little fiddling over in EQ7, I have a plan for a new border on my blue cat quilt.

*epic theme music plays in the background*

TADA!

Now I don't know when I'm going to get to this, as I have a busy weekend planned. I get to spend the day with my favorite niece, go to my cousin's basketball game, see The Hobbit in theaters one more time, and host a Red Wings party. I took Monday off work and I know Jack wants to write on that day so hopefully it will be a crafty-ful Monday.

No New Projects Weekend (Okay, One New Project)

I promised myself I wouldn't start any new projects this weekend. Which was rough, because my bargello quilting has been especially difficult and I just wanted to throw it aside and forget about it for a while. I spent more than 2 hours tearing out quilting that "eyelashed" around the curves.

My "eyelashing" problem. No, I didn't invent that term - I found it on another quilting website!

 Now I obsessively stop every few inches and check my tension. 75% of the problem turned out to be that I was going too fast around the curves, so I slowed down. Also it seems to be VERY important to raise the presser foot before threading. It still didn't stop my thread from breaking at least once a sunflower but I finally got all the quilting done, tedious though it was. The density of quilting is a little uneven, but I think that will improve with practice. The binding is on and just needs to be hand-stitched along the back.

Completed quilting with binding half-stitched

I've been looking for an interesting way to use some of my scraps from my scrap box. I'm not a big fan of the typical scrappy quilt. However, I did find a couple of great options. My favorite thus far is the Mod Mosaic Quilt Block by Elizabeth Hartman. Her tutorial includes a downloadable pdf.

Mod Mosaic Quilt from Elizabeth Hartman

In the case of her example block from the tutorial, I would have NEVER chosen to put all those fabrics in the same block. I think they clash. However, once the sashing is added and the block sewn together, it looks amazing! Perfect for using up scraps.

 Also making good progress on my purple Kool Kats Kwilt and I'm really enjoying the unusual symmetry of the quilt.

Since my crafting supplies budget is suddenly and unexpectedly eliminated, I've been doing research on suitable substitutes for quilt backing and batting. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that batting can be anything from a lightweight sheets to cheap fleece blankets to mattress pads to sweatshirts, and the backing can be made of anything cotton or flannel. Quilting started as a recycling craft, using leftover scraps for the top and anything warm for the batting, back in the "good ole days" when expensive craft stores were non-existent and pioneer women had to make do with what they had. I'll be bringing back a little old school quilting over the next several months, raiding thrift stores for old sheets and blankets. Should be interesting!

Oh and by the way, I totally failed at not starting a new project. I just couldn't resist trying the Mod Mosaic. Dug into my scrap bin and ran with it.

All in all, it came out pretty nifty! I've got a weird combination of prints. Someday I'd like to do a coordinated one, maybe in all reds or something.

Hodge Podge of Projects

I continued quilting the bargello quilt but my machine was acting up. I got through about 3/4 of the quilting but the thread kept breaking. I'm finally getting the hang of the sunflower pattern (thanks much to everyone who left encouraging comments on my previous post!) I replaced my needle, cleaned and oiled my machine and fiddled with the tension. And after a few hours gave up in frustration and move on to less irritating projects. Oh the things we love the most can be the most frustrating can't they? I'll try to finish it in a couple days. I've been working on a hodge podge of different projects today instead.

So I started working on a quilt for my Nana, from Carol Doak's Easy Machine Paper Piecing Book. It has three different paper-pieced flower blocks and can be found on page 85 of the book (Birds of Paradise by Nancy Bell).

And continued working on my Kool Kats Kwilt.

Somehow one of my setting squares is 3/4 of an inch too short on one side, so I'll be tearing it out and replacing it. Not sure how that happened! Good news is I can fix it easily. The border will be about two inches wide when stitched on. However, next time, I hope to be able to do this braided border pattern that I found:

It was actually on TLC's website (go figure), here's the link: Braided Quilt Border Pattern
I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Kool Kats Kwilt

I'm up to 3 unfinished quilts (tops are mostly complete, need borders) but I couldn't resist starting another one. I found this pattern, Kool Kats Kwilt by Patti Carey (click to download the pdf) and thought I'd give it a try. Its an innovative combination between a pieced cat and a snail trail block that makes it look as if the cats tails are curled together. I created the cat block in EQ7 and played around with coloring until I found something I liked.

I've actually changed this a bit based on available fabrics and how large I want the quilt to be. I will be making a total of four sets of cats, two sets in pinks and purples and two sets in blue/yellows/greens. I'm not sure how it will turn out. The plan is also to rotate the units slightly so that I can have four "wonky" units.

 There are a lot of units and the directions aren't as clear as I would like so I found it helpful to cut out one set of everything and label them using sticky notes, then stack and whack the remaining pieces.

Here is my finished collection of pieces, conveniently placed next to my sewing machine for chain piecing.

It took almost the whole weekend, but I finally mostly finished the blocks. I didn't like the way the two color sets looked together so I'm going to make two separate quilts. I'll just have to pop into the fabric store to pick up a couple more yards of background fabric.

The quilts will probably be close to 3 ft by 4 ft when completed, so crib or lap quilt size-ish. I'm debating the merits of a pieced border (flying geese maybe?).

Linking Up to MarciasCraftySewingLinkyParty
and: