Time to Slow Down!

So.  November and December were CRAZY busy for me!  I had this big old to-do list to begin with, and then my Etsy shop sort of exploded.  Things in the shop had been pretty quiet for awhile, but once Christmas shopping season started, I had all sorts of things lined up to make for others.  Mostly stockings and Rummy mats (that's another post, I think) and one huge quiet book.  I barely managed to finish it all and now that things have slowed down I'm going to do a big old photo dump right here on the blog over the next few posts.  ;)

Oh yeah.  One more thing.  We're having a baby!  Yay!  It's another boy and he'll be here in early May.  Does anyone have any good ideas for boy names?  We are stumped, since we already used our first two ideas...
Of course, we are super excited for baby #3, but I must admit that I didn't feel too great for most of September and October, so there was a bit of a decrease in production/blogging around here for awhile.  Let me just say that the 2nd trimester has been awesome.  I LOVE not being sick all the time.  :)

Alright.  Lets get to it.  Here are all of the things I have finished since my last post in October:

First of all, my Mom had a birthday back at the end of October.  She just had back surgery and I found out that she's been taking my sister's pillow with her to church every week to sit on and decided she definitely needed her own!  She really liked the cathedral windows block I made for my Something New Sampler quilt, so I that's what I went with.
Here is the finished Cathedral Windows block:   I loved going through my scraps to choose fun warm/cool prints.

And here are a couple of crappy phone pictures taken right before I delivered the pillow:

I even used some of my hoarded Simply Color Ogee print for the envelope back.  I don't have a lot of purples, but I love this one.

(This pillow was #9 on my Finish Along list)

Next up, baby Braden!  My Sister-in-Law had a baby in November and Braden's Grandma ordered a growth chart for him to match his older brother's.  They wanted to stick to the BYU theme.  These are kind of fun to make.  :)

(This was finish #2 on my Finish Along List)

We are lucky that our new baby will have a cousin his age on BOTH sides.  My sister is due with her first baby any day now, and requested a puff quilt for her baby shower.  She's going to name the little girl Avonlea, isn't that cute?  I actually made two puff quilts with the intention to list the other in the shop.  As soon as the second one is bound, I'll get some better pictures.  :)  This puff quilt was a big hit at the baby shower - it even inspired one of my aunts to make one of her own! 

(This is finish #4 on my Finish Along List)

Of course, I snuck in a few bee blocks during all this madness.  Vickey asked for Churn Dash blocks for November.  The first few I made turned out pretty washed out because of the one really busy print I used, so I made her a few extras to make up for it.  I love the pinwheel one.  :)

Amazingly, someone ordered one of my ABC quiet books, which was awesome.  All 28 pages.  The whole thing took me 22 hours to make!  I actually went and bumped up the price for this book after making the second one because WHEW!  That was a lot of work!  I also updated some of the pages with bigger and better images, which I was happy to have a chance to do.

I even got to make a couple customized name books.  These short names were a breeze to work with and I updated the cover to add a few extra details.

I made a new M page, since Emily's book already came with a mailbox for M.  Luckily, my boys were able to tell it was a monkey and not a bear...

And lastly, I whipped up this tablecloth in those final days before Christmas.  This was a gift to my mother-in-law from all the siblings.  Our family is getting bigger and we no longer fit around a normal table, so she usually sets us up at the ping pong table.  :)  Unfortunately, she can never find a tablecloth big enough to fit the ping pong table so she always has to layer two or three tablecloths on top of each other.  Now she has one that is custom made to fit (which is totally DOES - I am SO relieved)!  AND it's double sided.  The first side is for when her friends (who don't spill) come over and is made with regular quilting cotton.

And the second side is for when we (the spillers) come over and is made from vinyl. 

(This is #8 on my Finish Along List)

And I lets not forget the quilts I made for my twins' birthday at the beginning of December.  They are waiting for a proper photo shoot so they can have their own post.  But in the meantime, here is proof that I finished them!

(These are finishes #6 and #7 on my Finish Along List)

Most of these projects were part of my Quarter 4 Finish Along list (YAY!), so I will be linking up here:

Something New: Quilting

I finished quilting all of my blocks for the Something New Sampler!  I trimmed them all last night and now they look nice and pretty waiting for me to sew them all together.

Since all of the blocks are so different I decided they NEEDED to be quilted using some kind of quilt-as-you-go method.  That way I could focus on trying a few new quilting styles on each one.  I also knew that I wanted to use the basketweave layout for the quilt. 

There are several different QAYG methods out there.  The most common method seems to be the one where you sew thin strips of sashing between each block and then hand sew the strips down on the back (similar to what I did with my Fandango quilt).  However, the thought of hand sewing 20 blocks, PLUS borders steered me away from that idea quickly.  Besides, it didn't work well with my layout plans.

I found THIS video tutorial that shows you how to combine QAYG blocks completely by machine, WITHOUT using sashing.  I was quite intrigued and plan to give this method a try someday.

Ultimately, I decided to go with Maureen Cracknell's method.  It involves quilting each block with the top and batting only (no backing), then sewing the blocks together the normal way, and THEN attaching the backing.  I have been hesitant to try this method, because I really like the look of the quilting on the back.  Plus, quilting with the batting exposed made me nervous.  But I didn't want to worry about cutting more pieces of fabric for the backs, and then having to sew them together - even by machine.  I justified my backing/quilting worries by telling myself that this quilt is intended to go on a bed, so no one is going to see the back.  The backing will be sewn down every 8ish inches, so I'm pretty sure it will hold up.

Here are some of my thoughts on Maureen's QAYG method (SO FAR):
-Quilting with the batting exposed wasn't really a problem.  I just kept my feed dogs down most of the time.  I left them up for the blocks I used straight line quilting for, and it was fine.
-I did have to clean the lint out of my machine three or four times.
-I've had an itchy nose for a few days - presumably from the little tiny pieces of cotton that are probably floating around my sewing room.
-Once I realized I didn't have to pull up the bobbin thread, I was able to save a little bit of time.  Plus, it's nice to know that when my stitches look horrible on the back, but fine on the front, I don't have to rip the stitches out because no one will know!

Since I was using batting scraps (donated by my awesome friend), I decided to piece together all of the smallest pieces to get the 18 inch squares I needed.  I used a loose whip stitch where I probably should have used a tighter zig zag stitch.  Some of the pieces came apart a little towards the edges where I tend to tug a little more in an effort to keep the quilt sandwich smooth.
I also didn't plan ahead and give myself any extra room around the edges of the block tops, so I had to quilt all the way to the edges.  This was fine, but it would have been easier to have some more wiggle room.

Anyway.  Enough talk.  Would you like to see my pictures?  I took a lot of them, since I know I won't be keeping this quilt.   I apologize for the glare.  I was working with a limited amount of time/light.  :)
I had a lot of fun trying new designs on these blocks and took a lot of inspiration from Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project.

All 20 blocks neat and trimmed

I'll have to get more pictures of the quilting on the "back."  Here you can see what happens when you aren't careful sewing pieces of batting together.

Starting with the oldest blocks, here are my Bargellos. 

They each got an allover boxy meander, plus #1 got wonky back and forth lines.

My folded blocks got tacked down about 1/8 inch away from the original seams (so the flaps still have room to wiggle a little).  I love the pebbles in the white strips of #2.

I started playing around a little with the Reverse Applique.  The stars just got echoed, but I tried some Leah Day designs in the circles.

I did some more echoing in the big circle, Feather Universe in the yellow circle (except you really can't see it), Spinning Daisy in the red circle, and pebbles in the blue circle.  I tried Ocean Current in the negative space around the circles specifically because I want to do something like it on my Storm at Sea.  I think it makes it look like outer space.

My two Sashiko blocks just got some simple straight lines so as not to distract from the stitching.

The Trapunto blocks were fun.  I did a tiny meandering stitch around the stars to make them pop, with a star design (which I picked up HERE) in the colored strip.  The squares got some radiating designs in the middle, with wavy lines in the extra space.  I added the pebbles to make it denser and I LOVE the effect.

The Cathedral windows got some simple echoing/straight lines in the windows.  Then I quilted little orange peels (tutorial HERE) around the big windows, and extended the design around the little windows.

By the time I got to the Curves blocks I had decided I wanted to try feathers.  I've never been great at them, and I'm not super impressed with the first block.  The area for the feathers was just too big.  For the second block I used Leah's Flowing Glass and it's one of my favorites now.

I thought about trying some kind of Baptist Fan pattern in my clamshells and decided I didn't like it on the first block - probably because I felt like the stark white thread detracted from the fancy stitching.  So I ripped it out and stitched in the ditch around those shells.  The second block ended up getting a variation of the Baptist Fan and I LOVE how it turned out.  Funny how these things work sometimes.

The Scraptastic blocks are super busy and called for a simple allover meandering design.  I threw in some stars to keep with the Patriotic theme.

And lastly, the flags.  I couldn't figure out what to do with the red stripes, so I just left them unquilted.  After lots of drawing practice, I went with feathers on the first flag (MUCH BETTER), and stars on the second flag.   I think I might try to throw in those stars in the border somehow.

I debated a lot on what to do with the white sashing areas.  I originally thought I might do feathers, then I considered straight lines.  I ended up using this Checkerboard pattern because then I wouldn't have to worry about matching seam lines when I joined the blocks together, and it will help make the blocks look like they are floating in a border of white, rather than only having white borders on two sides.

Whew!  Now all that's left is to sew them together!  I'm anxious to see if this new method really works or not.  Then I need to create some kind of border.  I've already purchased a sheet for the backing, so I won't have to piece anything together - SCORE!  Off I go...

***EDIT:  For those who are curious, I have now finished the whole quilt and here are my thoughts on the finishing process:
 
-Maureen tells us to use 100% cotton (natural) batting.  I'm pretty sure (although I really have no way of knowing) that mine is 80/20 cotton/polyester batting.  Sewing the pieces together was fine and for the most part, so was ironing.  I did notice a funny smell that was similar to the smell I get sometimes when I iron polyester fabrics.  And then a few days later when I was working on my borders, my iron suddenly spewed out a whole bunch of water and what looked like dirt.  I'm guessing it was from ironing my batting directly with steam.  I cleaned out my iron the best I could, and from then on I ironed the batting side of my seams with the point of my iron only, NO steam.  Then I flipped the quilt over and steamed the heck out of it from the top.
-I still had to baste my backing fabric to the quilt, but it was a lot easier because I didn't have to tape anything.  I just laid my quilt top side down and pinned the backing fabric on top of that.
-To attach my backing fabric, I stitched in the ditch around my quilted blocks (which was actually really easy since the "ditches" were so "deep").  This means that the back is only tacked down every 15 inches or so, which seems kind of far apart to me, but the pattern of my blocks makes it difficult to sew any closer.  I think everything will be fine, though.  Besides, the quilt is HEAVY!  Quilting the backing to the rest of the quilt was doable on my home machine, but there was a bit of pushing.
-The seams created from sewing the quilted blocks together are a little bulky, but the quilt itself is so heavy from all the quilting (and some of the heavy blocks) that it doesn't seem so obvious.  I think washing it often will help soften the lines.

And here are a few pictures taken in the middle of the night of my quilting on the batting side:

Linking up: