Double Wedding Rings!

So, when I first asked my sister what kind of quilt she wanted for her wedding, she showed some interest in the double wedding ring quilt pattern.  I decided not to attempt a whole wedding ring quilt - it just seemed too far out of my league.  But I did try making two rings and I am going to stick them on the back of her quilt.  I think they turned out alright.  I could maybe do more of these someday, but I definitely could use a lot of practice.  Here are some of my thoughts (for my own personal future reference) on double wedding rings:

-I used Kaelin's Quilt-along.  Love her blog, by the way.  Just a couple of things I came across that worked better for me:  I wish I had cut AROUND the arc templates, sewn my pieces on, and then cut the arcs on the line once I had sewn the fabric.  It seemed easier to cut through fabric when it was attached to paper, plus it could have saved a lot of time in cutting out the templates.  It was also easier for me to pin my arcs to the melons by starting in the center and moving out, rather than pinning the edges and then filling in the blanks.  But that was just me.  Other than those two things, Kaelin's instructions were TOTALLY AWESOME.
-This pattern requires a lot of hand cutting.  It really didn't take me too long, but it could have been a LOT of work to do a whole quilt.
-There was also quite a bit of sorting through fabric and cutting scraps into the right sizes.  A little bit of work, but a GREAT use of scraps!  That's part of the reason I think I might actually attempt this again.
-Piecing the arcs was my favorite part.  Sewing the arcs onto the melons?  Not so much.  I never really got the hang of it (as you can probably tell from the puffiness).  I think part of the reason the melons were so hard was because of my cheap white fabric, though.
-If I had known better, I probably would have just skipped the melons and white centers and just appliqued the whole thing onto my background fabric.  I had to applique it onto the background fabric anyway and I could have saved some effort and some fabric.
-My sewing machine is really picky when it comes to applique.  I should spend some time figuring out why I can't get a good satin stitch.

SO.  It was fun to make this little sample.  It would be a TON of work to make more blocks, but maybe someday I will try and brave it.

Car Seat Covers

I made these little car seat covers for my boys (who should be here in about 1 1/2 months.  GAH!).  I used some 1001 Peeps fabric I got using a gift card I won from Randi.  I used this tutorial from Make it Do.  It was a nice, quick project.  And I love how they turned out!  We are totally ready for our winter babies now.  Well, at least we are ready to transport them from the hospital to our house.  That's something, right?

Here is the front:

And the back.

I didn't want to spend a lot, so I just used plain black and white for the linings.

Aren't they cute?  Twinner car seats!

Some Finishes! Curtains and a Bento Box quilt top

It has been a really long time since I last posted.  I blame that on the facts that school has started, I am six months pregnant, and when I'm not too tired I tend to spend my free time sewing!  Or shopping for baby stuff.

But, I do have a couple of recent finishes.  My sister has been wanting new curtains in her bedroom for awhile now.  So I made her some.  They took a bit longer than I expected them to, partly because I wanted to add a little something to them to make them more interesting.  I decided to add a strip of pinwheel blocks.  Because I like pinwheels.  I choose yellow, blue, and green colors and I think they add a nice splash of color that match my sister's personality.  It was SO hard to get a good picture of the slinky forest green fabric I used for the curtains.  I think she will love the curtains.  Here they are hanging on my entertainment center...

My other big finish is the wedding quilt I am making for my OTHER sister.  She's getting married in December - right around the time my babies are due, so I'm feeling the pressure to finish.  Well, I now have a finished quilt top!  And it is HUGE!!!!  Wait till you see what it looks like on our big Queen sized bed!  I wanted it to be big, since the purple and green quilt that has taken residence on our bed is not long enough to tuck in and is constantly getting all twisted up and won't stay put - especially with the tossing and turning of a pregnant woman!
Anyway - here is the quilt top right before I sewed all the blocks together and before I added the border.

This picture is NOT true to color, but it shows a close up of the blocks!

And then I added a border.  I can only get part of the quilt in a picture, so here you go:

At least it will be big enough for her and her 6 1/2 foot fiance!  Now for the back...

Lucky!

I have been super lucky lately!  I think I might have to stop entering giveaways for awhile.  I never thought that I would ever in my life win something from Sew We Quilt!  (They are doing a Wantobe Quilter Campaign right now with giveaways every DAY!)  I mean, come on - they have thousands of followers!  Nevertheless - I won something!  Something BIG, too (I had to pay the shipping - and it was a big package, but I'm sure it will be worth it).  

Here is Madame Samm's picture.  It is way better than mine:

I won the cutting mat, three rulers (which I DESPERATELY needed - mine has TONS of little nicks in it - plus I have always wanted a square ruler!!), the cutter, and a bunch of fabric.

And THEN I got the package in the mail, with a whole bunch of EXTRA stuff!  YAY!

The extra stuff I got was some fancy batting for craft projects, some thread, a quilt book ("More 90 Minute Quilts"), a wooden purse handle set, a mini quilt pattern, fabric glue, and a calendar!

Here is the fabric I won - each piece is a half yard cut, so a total of 4 yards!  Hubby looked at it and said it would make a really cool African skirt.  I think I will save it (for after the babies come) and do just that with it!

I also got some matching floss to go with it!

Here is my new cutter, and the fabric glue I am excited to try out.

The rulers!

I think I will be making ALL of my blocks 6 inch blocks from NOW ON! :)

I was so pleased to see this little pattern in there!  Madame Samm must really do her research!  I saw this pattern a few weeks before on the blog and thought it might be cute for my little boys' room.  So I left a comment.  Madame Samm must have seen it.  Isn't she sweet to send it to me? 

About two days later, I won ANOTHER giveaway!  This one was from Sha at Craizee Corners.  Her blog is a recent find and I really like it because she has the same sense of style (especially for fabric) as me.  I won TWO charm packs from Me and My Sisters Designs!  I was super stoked because I am a HUGE fan of Me and My Sisters.  I got a "Me and My Sisters Favorites" charm pack, and an "Amelia" charm pack.  I was so excited, I had to open it up and sort through everything before I thought to take a picture (late at night - hence the bad lighting...).  This is the two packs combined:

And all sorted by color:

A few of my favorites - the swirls,

The white pebble looking flowers,

The big flowers, and the paisley print.

I think I'm going to use them to make another puff quilt.  After I finish making baby boy items, of course.


A few weeks ago I won a gift certificate from Randi at I Have to Say....  Hers is one of the first blogs I started following back when I discovered quilt blogs.  She has a quilt-along tutorial button on her sidebar that I used a lot when I was first learning how to do things.
I decided to use her gift certificate to buy this 1001 Peeps fabric.  I think I am going to use it to make car seat covers for the boys:

And then there is this fabric.  I didn't win it, I had to buy it.  But I found it for a really good price and convinced Hubby to let me have it. :)  It's going to become bumper pads for our cribs.  I better get busy!

Finished Twin Rainbow Quilts... and something a little vintage

The hubby finally came home early enough to watch a movie with me!  (Although, I had to watch another one this afternoon...)  I finally finished binding my second rainbow quilt (I've been calling them that even though they don't really have ALL the colors of a rainbow, but the name stuck).
I think I'm not a huge fan of sewing binding down by hand.  It takes so much longer and I'm not convinced I'm very good at it.  However, sometimes necessity calls.  I bound my puff quilt by hand because I didn't think my machine could handle all the bulk.  In this case, I decided to use 1 1/2 inch strips for my binding.  I know.  I must have been crazy - that is SUPER thin.  But I had TONS of 1 1/2 inch strips left over from making the blocks and not enough fabric to cut 2 1/2 inch strips.  So I decided to work with what I had.  I don't think it turned out too bad - plus I like the scrappy look on these quilts.  The binding is super skinny and it was a little harder to sew on by hand (more pulling), but I made it work!

As for quilting, I finally just decided to go with my regular old meandering.  And I'm glad I did.  I think it looks kind of cool with the quilting only in the sashing - makes the blocks pop.  Granted, the quilts probably needed more quilting (they are pretty puffy), but I DID do a little bit of stitching in the ditch for the inner squares. 
Here they are before I washed them:

And here they are fresh out of the drier!

Now they are SUPER puffy!

I used two different battings.  I can't really tell anymore which was which...  One was cotton/poly, the other was 100% poly

On another note, the hubby's grandpa brought down a cedar chest full of old quilts for my Mother-in-Law.  It was kind of fun looking at all the old quilts made by my hubby's great-grandmother.  There was one made from blocks each of the grandkids had painted.  It was a lot of fun to see.  But the best part?  There were a few baby blankets in there, and Grandpa INSISTED I take one for my babies!  I was quite delighted with this one

... it was made a long time ago, and it's kind of old fashioned - does that make it vintage?  I never really get these things.  The reason I LOVE it, though, is because I had a blanket just like this one growing up.  It was the one I slept with every night until I got married. :) I think mine was supposed to be blue (it is now gray), but it had that silky fabric that no one uses anymore, AND it was hand quilted.  Naturally, I am super excited that my little boys will have one of their own as well - to share, of course.

Cutting...

I did something scary (when it comes to my quilting world, that is)... I cut into two of my biggest and most expensive stacks of fabric!  Gah!  I hope I didn't mess up... Cutting fabric can be a little scary.  I measured and double checked LOTS of times.

This set is going to by for my in-laws someday (Shhh... don't tell them!) It went from this:

To this:

That's a lot of fabric!  Enough for a King size quilt!

And, of course, I did make one little mistake... I was cutting a group of "D" strips, and I made them too short!  I was so mad, because I was almost finished and didn't have a lot of big pieces left to cut new ones from.  SO I ended up piecing an extra half-inch or so into several of the mess-ups.  Hopefully it's not too obvious.  

I was all set to get started on this quilt, when my sister announced that she is ENGAGED!!!  She is getting married in December and I am beyond excited for her.  I promptly put the Fandango fabric away, got out another set of fabric, and proceeded to hack it up as well.  I hope she likes the colors. 

I went from this (well, actually - this is only half of it - I had to go and buy three more yards to make this one a King size too):

To this!

I'm so excited to be working on a new quilt!  My twin rainbow quilts are almost finished, too.  I'm just waiting for Hubby to actually get off work early enough for us to watch a movie together so I can finish binding the last one!

I started a list of all the projects I want to do.  Just to keep myself on track... maybe I need to add "new ironing board cover" to that list?  Or maybe I should focus on a few important baby items...  The list is over in my sidebar at the very bottom.  Hopefully having it on the blog will keep me motivated!

Oh, and remember this?

And remember how I had my fabric all picked out and ready to go?  Well, sadly, I made the decision that I needed to put it away and save it for another time.  I'm still planning to make the blocks, though.  My doctor seems to think that I will need to quit working at least a month before the babies come.  Maybe I will have a little time for some hand sewing then.  In the meantime, I'm just following along, enjoying what everyone else is creating!

Decisions, decisions...

I think the hardest part of the quilting process for me is deciding how to quilt a quilt!  That's why it takes me so long to finish!  (Well, that and basting...).   I've been debating how to quilt my twin rainbow quilts.  Ever since I finished my Free Motion Quilt Along, I have wanted to actually incorporate some of the designs in a real quilt!  Look, I even came up with this:

I tried about half a block, using my white thread, and it looked terrible!  I should have taken a picture.  The white thread just stands out way to much on the solid colors.  I never really anticipated the solids to be a problem.  I have a few colored threads, but I REALLY don't want to have to switch thread colors every 3 minutes, plus most of them don't match too well.
SO.  I had this great idea to try rainbow colored variegated thread.  I must have bought the wrong kind, because it was having ALL KINDS of issues in my machine.  Finally I relented and decided this thread will have to be for hand sewing ONLY.
I even tried hand quilting a few blocks:

This took FOREVER!  I'm just not that patient - plus, I REALLY don't have the right tools to hand quilt.  I suppose I could do it if I really liked the way it looks... But I'm not completely sold.  I feel like such a pessimist!
I think what I will do is get my white thread out and just do an overall meandering pattern that won't detract so much from the solid colors.  Maybe I could throw in a few stars or loops.  I can do a fancy pattern on some other quilt...

On another note, I made my first pieced backs!  I was very much set on using fabric I had ON HAND for these quilts.  I didn't have much white left, so I supplemented with the cheapo fabric I used to make my classroom's chair pockets several years ago.  This stuff has gone a long way for me!  It was kind of fun to work on the backs.  It was a good chance for me to experiment.  The whole thing was pretty improv.  I just kept adding more until I filled the space that I needed to fill.
The pictures might look a little funny - I laid them on top of my quilt tops to make sure they were bit enough.  I kinda like them!