Finished Bento Box Quilt - Feels Good!

Isn't it just a great feeling to be all the way finished with a quilt?  This quilt has been such a huge undertaking that getting to the finish line has been a little strange.
I actually finished last night, and today I didn't know what to do with myself!  I may or may not have watched several episodes of Gilmore Girls (I won't tell you how many I watched in a row - but it was somewhere between 3 and 5).
Finally I trooped outside with this gigantic (and HEAVY) quilt.  It hasn't been very sunny today - but as soon as I realized the weather was getting WORSE, I decided it's now or never.

So here is my finished Bento Box Quilt.  For a minute there I thought it had gotten a lot smaller after quilting.  Then I put it on my bed for perspective.  Nope.  Still huge.  93" x 106".

I went with an overall meandering quilt pattern - because it's fast, it's easy, and very forgiving.

There are still tons of puckers.  Here is my worst one.  I figure it won't look so bad after we wash it... :)

I decided to just fold the back over to the front to create binding - once again, it's fast, easy, and somewhat forgiving.  I'm not sure I like it though.  I don't really like the white - it makes the whole thing look a little unfinished.  And because of the back, we get the scrappy look on the sides.  I hope my sister likes the scrappy binding look!

And here's the back (which almost looks like a second front to me...).  It started to get pretty windy at this point.  The red thread really stands out on the white fabric.  Next time I'm not going to worry about getting cute swirly white fabric, cuz you can't see the swirls anyway, now that it is quilted.

Overall, I think everything turned out pretty well.  It looks really good if you stand back and look at the whole picture.

I still think my next quilt will NOT be a king size, though.

Quilt Stats:

Started: Julyish 2011

Finished: November 2011

Fabrics:  All from Joanns, with the exception of the scrap fabrics used for the double wedding rings

Finished Size: 93" x 106"

Recipient:  Younger sister K - for her wedding to J - December 2011

Wedding Rings Quilt Back

I am making progress on my sister's wedding quilt!  My original plan was to have a plain white back with the wedding rings and initials in the middle.  Turns out I grossly underestimated how much fabric I had.
When I went to the store, they were all out of the white swirly fabric I wanted, so I was left with a dilemma.  I knew I needed a few more yards of fabric to cover the back.  I am not very good at making these kinds of decisions, so I just bought three fat eight bundles and sewed them together.  Then I supplemented the rest of the quilt back with everything I had left over from the quilt top.  If I had been thinking clearly, I would have saved some for the binding.  Oops.  I think I might end up doing the "fold over the back and sew it to the front" binding method.  We'll see.

I took this outside, since it is so HUGE and I could never get a good picture of it inside my house.  Turns out that taking outside doesn't make it any less huge.  This is about 2/3rds of the quilt.  But you get the gist:

I have been hard at work quilting this bad baby on my home machine.  Quilting the middle has been pretty difficult, but I am managing - it just takes a bit of wrestling.  And a willingness to accept that there WILL be puckers in this quilt.  I have already discovered some pretty nasty ones on the back.  But I'm kind of on a deadline right now - gotta get this done before the babies come!  Luckily, the quilt is for my sister and I don't think she will care about a few wrinkles.  I usually quilt with rubber gloves on, but with this one, I have to take one of the gloves off so I can feel whether or not I am quilting wrinkles into the back.  Makes it a little harder to move around, but I think it's helping.
Oh yeah - and I tried spray basting for the first time!  I just bought the stuff they had at JoAnns, and it seems to be working pretty well - other than maybe it is part of the whole "wrinkle" problem.  But I think it will be worth it in the end.  I wasn't about to crawl around on the floor to put a thousand pins in a king size quilt while almost 8 months pregnant!

My goal is to finish this by the end of the week!  And then the babies can come.  Wish me luck!

November Placemats

We got a new table!  Well, kinda.  We bought an old table at a yard sale for super cheap, spent weeks and weeks sanding it whenever we had free time, and gave it several coats of finish.  I am kicking myself for not taking any "before" pictures.  Oh well.  Now we have a really nice looking, sturdy oak table in our kitchen.  Much better than the last table we had - and the best part is that it came with six chairs that are NOT falling apart.  They will be our project next summer...
However, having a newer, bigger table means that our tablecloths don't really fit anymore.  The first time we sat down to eat at it, the hubby asked where the placemats were and we could only find one.  Oops.
So I decided to take a short break from the king quilt I am working on to make placemats.  I am totally okay with the fact that all our old ones have disappeared.  :)  These placemats took all of two evenings to put together!

 Since it was, like, November 1st when I started pulling fabrics for these, I tried to pick a lot of "November-ish" (but not necessarily "Thanksgiving") fabrics from my stash.  I was going for brown/green/orange.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of orange.  This is what I came up with.

I used this special batting I got from Madame Samm when I won this giveaway.  I threw away the paper, so I have no idea what kind of batting it is, or what it is supposed to be for.  It is definitely not like normal quilt batting.  It is thick and stiff.  I figured it would work pretty well for placemats.  It didn't give me any trouble.

I quilted with straight lines, because I have learned that they are less bumpy and less likely to cause spilling when I put my cup on top of them. :)
For the back, I had JUST enough of this "Pumpkins Gone Wild" fabric to fit one placemat.  The hubby hates this fabric, but I kinda like it for some reason.  To each his own.  When I figured out that the placemat was about the size of a fat quarter, I set out to find a peice of fabric that was - in MY opinion, the ugliest I had.  I came up with this brown print.  And now it is all used up!

I still need to get better at machine binding, though.  I REALLY want to be good at it because it is so much faster!  I guess I should practice some more.
And there you have it!  I have every intention to make a new set of placemats for each month now.  Someday, hopefully.  They are great stash busters!

Crib Bedding

I finally got around to using my "Ready, Set, Go" fabric to make some crib bedding.

I had an old plastic bumper already, so I just made a cover to go over it.  Then I used the leftover fabric to make a little crib skirt.

I didn't really know what I was doing, but I love the fabrics so much, that it looks pretty good to me!

 Also, I couldn't help but sneak in this picture (sorry it's such a bad one - I didn't think to go outside, it's getting cold here!).  These are the "diaper bears" that were made by a friend for my last baby shower.  Aren't they adorable!

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Pal's Bookcase Quilt

Hi!  Welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere.  As part of Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival this fall, I wanted to show you an older quilt.  Unfortunately, I don't have very many finishes from the past 6 months because I am pregnant with twins and life has been a little crazy.  However, the doctor just put me on modified home bedrest, so I should have 3 to 6 weeks left to finish as many sewing projects as I can before the boys get here!  Yay!

Last year, I made this quilt for my sister.  She has a name, but I just call her Pal.  She LOVES to read and has TONS of books.  I'm kind of jealous of her book collection.  And her bookcase quilt.

My original inspiration for this quilt came from here. 

I wanted to make the books nice and thick, partly to make my job easier, and partly because my sister has so many THICK books!  I'm sometimes amazed at how fast she can read through them all.

Did you notice my little mistake?  Yep.  There are two floating books on the top shelf.  My bad.  

I tried my hand at straight line quilting (okay - wonky straight line quilting - but I think I like it) for the background.  I couldn't decide what to do with the rest, so I just meandered.  Quilting with different color thread in the bobbin is too scary for me, so the quilting shows up really well on the back!

I'm not sure what I intended Pal to use this quilt for, since she is so tall and the quilt isn't quite long enough to fit over her feet (sorry pal).  But it turns out that she decided to hang it on the wall in her apartment!  It looks AWESOME there.  Someday I want to make one of these for myself.

Now, if you haven't heard of Amy's Quilt Festival, and you have a LOT of time on your hands, go check out the rest of the entries!  (The link is at the top of my sidebar.)  There are some pretty awesome ones.  And at the time of my writing this, there are only 472 quilts.  Isn't the quilt blog world amazing?