Swooning, Stitching, Setting Goals

I'm just dropping in for a quick post today.  I've got a couple little finishes, and one goal to share for May.

First off, I got to make this Swoon block for our Humility.Do.Good Stitches bee.  Isn't it great?  Jaime asked for blocks with red, black, and white.  She wanted us to use bold black and white prints.  Since I had NOTHING like that in my stash at the time, I went shopping and this is what I picked.  :)  Her quilt is going to turn out SOOOO awesome!

I just had to include my toes in this shot to prove just how HUGE this block is!  24" x 24"

Second, I've been plugging away slowly on my Quilty Stitches Sampler.  I got a little busy with some other stuff, so I fell behind.  But I gotta be honest - I prefer it that way.  I would hate to be fully caught up and suddenly have nothing to work on when the urge strikes!  ;)  Here are blocks 1-5.  SO.  MUCH.  FUN.

And thirdly, now that I've finished some major projects, I decided it was time to reorganize the scrap bin again.  Luckily, I came across Lori Holt's post and I am going to copy her strategy.  This picture isn't pretty, and you can see that I've been working along side my boys.  :)  

This brings my to my goal for ALYOF May.  A dear friend/colleague/mentor from my teaching days is retiring this year!  Naturally, I'm making something for her to celebrate.  I'll be using some of the aforementioned scraps to make something simple, but cute and hopefully useful.  Stay tuned!

Linking up:

After the Storm: Quilting

It's finished!  Yay!  I tried to take tons of pictures of my "After the Storm" quilt and I've decided to save the final reveal for later.  I know you are all soooo bummed.  You see, I've noticed that I tend to blog about my quilts in stages as I work on them (probably like most bloggers you follow)- the beginnings, a progress post here and there, the finished quilt top, and then the finished quilt.  Usually the finished quilt post is taken over by talk about the quilting, which I think is a pretty major stage in the process and deserves it's own post.  So this is going to be the post where I talk about how I quilted "After the Storm" and show you some sneak peaks of the finished quilt.  :)

Sneak Peak...

First of all, after MUCH deliberation, I decided to go against the norm and use thick polyester batting, as opposed to thin cotton batting.  I was worried about it being slippery or bearding lots and lots.  However, the person for whom this quilt was intended happens to love the puffy look polyester batting creates.  And as you may know, I'm not a huge fan of my quilts turning super crinkly in the wash (I don't like to see all that hard quilting work get hidden in the crinkles) and polyester doesn't shrink as much.

But here's the thing - I wanted to use a method I picked up in Ann Peterson's Craftsy class ("Quilting Big Quilts on a Small Machine" - AWESOME CLASS BTW).  This method called for more batting than I would have normally needed because of its QAYG nature.  Suddenly my king size package of batting wasn't big enough.  So I ended up piecing a bunch of larger batting scraps from my closet.  Don't tell anyone, but these batting scraps weren't all the same brand/thickness/fiber.  But they were close enough and I'm pretty sure they were all polyester, so I made them work.

Following Ann's advice, I first stitched-in-the-ditch around all of my blocks using invisible thread.  For anyone considering using polyester batting on one of their quilts, I HIGHLY recommend it!  Tons of people warn against using polyester because it's so slippery, but I didn't really have any problems with it and I think it's because I ditched so much of my quilt before doing any FMQ.  Or maybe the wrinkles and puckers are just hidden in the puffiness...

I liked how the quilt looked after ditching and even though the quilt's recipient probably would have liked it better this way - simple, puffy, with the blocks highlighted - I got a little cocky and decided to add some fancy free motion quilting.

First I took my colored sketch and stuck it in a sheet protector to practice designs with a dry erase marker:

I went with the top design, for those of you who can interpret this photo.  :)

Choosing thread was SUPER hard!  I had originally bought a variegated thread that I thought would be fun, but I was worried it would be too dark on the lighter sections.  But I auditioned a couple neutral threads and they stood out even more, so I stuck with the variegated.   By the way - I went through TONS of thread quilting this thing!  I had to go back to the store two or three time for more.

Auditioning thread.  Look closely and you can see the light gray, variegated, and dark gray thread.

I knew I wanted a swirly design that looked like ocean currents for the middle Storm at Sea section.  I also wanted the design to be pretty large, because I'm not sure the recipient loves super tight quilting the way I do.  It was kind of hard to quilt such a large design because of how often I had to move my hands... And I have a confession to make.  I quilted the ENTIRE section and then decided I didn't like it and could do better.  So I picked it all out and started over using almost the same design, but with a little more marking and planning.  It turned out better, but it's NOT perfect.  There are still lots of wobbly lines, square curves, and the thread doesn't always blend in.  But it looks great from a distance.  ;)

 
The Snail Trail sections were more fun to quilt, because it was so much easier to blend thread with the neutral fabrics.  I went for more swirls, but closer together - as if the sea is churning in a storm.

And those big huge neutral borders were just too tempting.  So I broke my "try not to quilt too densely" rule and quilted lots and lots of pebbles.  Smaller pebbles on the inside blend into bigger pebbles on the outside, with random swirls thrown in here and there.    The very outer edge was the perfect width for feathers, so I did one giant feather around the whole quilt.  

 Of course, the back looks pretty cool.  I always try to match my bobbin thread to my top thread, so most of the thread on the back is white, but I used brown for the areas where I used variegated thread.

For the most part, the polyester batting worked out great.  This is the only major pucker I had in the entire quilt, and honestly I'm just happy there weren't more.  

Here's another confession.  I actually bound the quilt before I finished quilting most of the outer borders.  See, I had an opportunity to spend 8 hours watching LDS General Conference, and it seemed like the perfect chance to sit and hand bind the quilt.  So I did.   And then I finished quilting my already bound quilt.  The best part was that I didn't have to worry about having the edges of my backing fold over and get caught in the quilting.  :)

One more sneak peak.  Stay tuned for the final reveal!  I'm trying to decide if I want to wait until the Blogger's Quilt Festival or if I should just share it sooner...

P.S.  Finishing this quilt was my April goal for ALYOF and I'm happy to be linking up:

 My goal setting post can be found HERE.  My post was linky #36.

A Few Goals

I didn't quite meet my goal for last month's ALYOF link up, or the Finish Along Q1 link up.  I was SOOOO close, though!  My goal was to finish quilting my After the Storm quilt, and I had a few setbacks (Etsy orders, ripping out lots of quilting), but I won't go into that now.  Luckily, this should make my April goal easy because this quilt is still at the very top of my list.

For April, my plan is to FINISH "After the Storm."  Yay!

Also, it's time to share my goals for the Finish Along, Quarter 2.  I know I am not going to reach all of these goals, but I want to have all my current projects out there, even though most of them are just fabric stacks (with a plan) at the moment.  Here they are:

1.  Finish "After the Storm."  I don't want to give too much away before the big reveal (hopefully in a few weeks), but here are some sneak peaks at the quilting (obviously no cleaning fairies were disturbed in the taking of these pictures...):

2. Finish "Deck the Halls."  The top is finished, and the back has been started.

3.  Make my twin toddler bed quilts.  I'm using "Cruizer Blvd" and I'm planning to make one Jungle Path quilt and one Broken Herringbone quilt.

4.  Building Fun quilt.  I bought THIS pattern on sale from Geta Grama (check it out, it's SO cute!) a few weeks ago and after much debate, I finally settled on this stack of fabric from my stash (actually, I won this in a giveaway.  Thanks, LethargicLass!).  I've been wanting to make this quilt FOREVER, so I'm excited.  I think I'll probably list it in my shop when it's finished.

5.  Secret project for one of my family members.  I don't want to give anything away, but here's a hint:

6.  I'm not sure, but I think I want to make another Hello Sun set for my MIL.  We'll see what happens.

7.  I got these charm packs for Christmas and I intend to turn them into another Puff Quilt, probably for the shop if nobody around me has a baby girl anytime soon.  :)

8.  I think I might turn these charms into a raggy puff quilt too.  Or maybe I'll make one from the chevron flannels.

9.  My Etsy shop is in need of a few more bib sets and I plan to use some of these fabrics to make a few more.

10.  I'm also planning on making a Letters Quiet book.  I've got it all planned out, the patterns, printed, and a pile of supplies.  I don't have a picture of it, but here's one of my Shapes book in progress:

11.  I also got this Jelly Roll for Christmas and it needs to become a quilt.  I'm thinking something with stacked coins, maybe.  

Edited 4/9/14:
12.  I highly doubt that I will finish this one before the quarter is over, but I'm going to add it to the list so I don't forget about it.
I've been wanting to make a sampler quilt for a long time now.  We just scored a new King sized bed and I'm thinking we need a new quilt for it!  I'm thinking of using some of my stash of Oakshotts:

Or maybe mix in a few of these Simple Color cuts I picked up on sale the other day:

The hubby doesn't want any girly colors, and he also doesn't seem to like bright rainbow colors like I do.  I'm thinking lots of blue and green will keep him happy (with a pop of something else, just for fun).  I'm thinking I'll probably do Faith's Solstice Stars, or Lee's Summer Sampler.  I'll pair them with lots and lots of negative space, probably in Gray.



Whew!  That's all I can think of for now.  Here's to a productive quarter!

New Quiet Books: COLORS!

I made some new quiet books a couple weeks ago and thought it might be time to share them!

This time I wanted to make a Colors themed book, and this is the one I came up with originally:

I drew my inspiration from THIS cute design, but decided I wanted more variety in my shapes.

The first time I made it, I only used quilting cotton from my scrap drawers.  When I took it to my mom one day to show her, she mentioned that it might be fun if there were fabrics with cool textures.  That was all it took, and that week I made a few trips to various fabric stores and bought about 3 inches of a bunch of different types of fabrics in different colors.  And then I proceeded to sew a few of the new fabrics on top of a few of the old ones in the book.  Now they are fun.  :)

Of course, once the first book (with buttons) was finished, I realized that the buttons were way too hard for my already color savvy toddlers to navigate, so I made a new, slightly smaller version with velcro dots (and lots of textures):

Complete with a baggie at the back for storing all the shapes (hopefully they won't get lost!)

And THEN I had to make one more.  See, the main purpose for making these books (aside from having something for the boys to do during church) was to have samples to list in my Etsy shop.  I thought maybe I could make a smaller version for cheaper, and hopefully bring in more buyers.  So I made a mini version with even smaller pages.  Luckily, it didn't take quite as long as the first two.  Whew!

And there you have it!  I was happy to have these finished so my boys could have something new to play with during church.  They are already masters at their colors, but they seem to like them anyway.  Surprisingly, the button version is their favorite even though they have to have one of us help them with the buttons. 

Next up: Letters!  I'm excited about this one, although don't expect to see it for awhile...

P.S.  All three of these quiet books are available for purchase in my Etsy Shop HERE.

Just one more...

One more post about my "After the Storm" quilt.  And then you won't see it again until it is FINISHED!  :)

The "top" is done!  I use the term loosely, because the sections aren't actually sewn together yet.  I'm using one of Ann Peterson's methods for quilting large quilts, sort of like QAYG (quilt as you go).  So these are the best shots I could get of my finished "top."  I was forced to take these in the basement - the only spot I could find that was big enough for the whole thing.  Wanna see?  Okay.

The swivel chair is there for size comparison.

And here's an idea of what the back will look like.  I've been collecting solids from the remnant bin at Joann's and this is what I ended up with.  Sorry for the wrinkles.  It wasn't worth it to iron them all just to fold them all back up again for the closet.

Time to quilt!