Adelaide Lemonade

Circle Quilt

Last weekend I finished this little circle quilt

I'm feeling a bit like this will be my last chance to make very many clothes for Addie.  It's getting harder to get her to wear the clothes I make, and in the fall, she'll go back to wearing her uniform again.  In spite of all that, I'm on a total quilting kick.  I know better than to try to deviate from where the inspiration takes me, so I'm just giving in to it.  (Even though I've spent this weekend trying to finish an outfit I already had cut out.  I keep stopping to draw quilt designs.)

I've been in a circle mood ever since I saw this quilt by sewlandia in The Cherry House flickr group.  I noticed it when I was adding my City Park quilt to the group.  The circle quilting is gorgeous, so - pardon the pun - I think that's what got the wheels turning in my head for circles.  Then I stumbled across this really cool blog post from Machen & Tun where she makes these sort of reverse applique circles or holes or portholes.  Once I saw that I couldn't sleep for wanting to put those two things together.  Of course, I think both crafters' products are way neater than mine.

I had fun quilting the circles.  I know it's a quilting no-no, but I just used my regular sewing machine foot.  It seemed to work out okay.  I'm not sure how much the quilting really shows up in this photo of the front.

But you can really see it much better in this shot of the back.  For the back - and the whole quilt really - I used scraps and the leftovers from Addie's Ice Cream dress.   I also had this big piece of Kona Grass that I scored in the remnant rack at JoAnn's.

When I showed the quilt to my husband, he asked if the circles were supposed to be off-center.  I got a kick out of that wondering what he would have said if I replied, "Oh no!  They're off center?"

What's not supposed to be crooked but is, is the stripe and three blocks on the right side of the back.  I just can't seem to master the art of making the quilt sandwich.  Everything was nice and straight on the back when I made it, but I obviously didn't line the quilt top up properly.  Oh well, hopefully, it just looks like I made it wonky on purpose.

Owl and The PussyCat

Owls and cats and frogs and trees and flowers and sunshine.  

I finished another quilt this weekend.  Woo hoo!

I had a terrible time deciding how to quilt it.  I finally decided on pebble quilting.  I've never done more than a small square of this, and it was very time-consuming, but I loved the look.  It's a small (32x 40) quilt, so I determined that I could do it, but . . . 

I was a good girl and started of with a sample of the scraps leftover from the edges of the quilt, and I could. not. get the tension right on my machine so that the magenta thread from the back didn't show on the front or didn't end up being terribly loose on the back.  I tried different tensions, different needles, but I just couldn't get it right.  I even tried gray on the back, but it looked awful.

So I ended up with some straight line stitching which I like quite a bit.  I hadn't done much of that either.  It took a while.  And it sure comes out nice and wrinkly, crinkly, quilty after the wash.

Here's the back - which admittedly might be a little crooked - but the picture's a little crooked too making it look worse than it really is.

I have to confess that I just used my regular old sewing machine foot.  I don't like my walking foot.  It's too loud and doesn't seem to make that much difference.  I'm probably doing something wrong.

All for now - I have big plans for this weekend that don't involve a sewing machine, so I'm determined to get in as much sewing as possible before then.

Happy Monday.  Are your kids done with school yet?  My kids just have a few more days.  If I can't have my own summer vacation, at least I can have a vacation from getting them up in the morning.  Can't wait for that!

Conquered!

This project has been hanging over my head since the summer of 2010.  I didn't realize that it had been quite that long until I went looking for my original blog post about it.  I absolutely loved the City Park quilt pattern when I first saw it.  It was one of those things I couldn't get out of my head - one of those drop-everything-start-right-away kind of projects.  I still love the pattern, but somewhere along the way, after making the quilt top, I completely lost motivation.  

I made plenty of excuses for myself . . . I didn't know what color thread to use to quilt it.  I didn't think stippling would be as nice as the quilting shown in the pattern photo.  It was so darn big.  I spent all my money on other fabric, so I didn't have money to buy the backing fabric or batting.  My floor wasn't clean enough for basting.  I got addicted to sewing clothes - and on and on.  

I think ultimately I was just really nervous about messing up such a beautiful pattern.  And also nervous about it being a gift for someone I didn't know.  (My very patient mother commissioned me to make it for her to give as a gift.)  I give stuff I make as gifts all the time, but usually I make the thing first then decide I'm going to give it as a gift.  Or I give it to family or close friends who will at least pretend not to notice my perceived mistakes.

I don't have much self discipline when it comes to crafting.  I think I've said this before, but I feel like I have so little time to do this hobby that I love that I want to make the most of it by making what I most want to make.  But I had one little rule for myself that I (pretty much) obeyed regarding this quilt.  I wouldn't allow myself to finish any other quilts or make any new quilt tops until I finished this one.  (Don't worry, I didn't start my Summersville one until after this - I 'm just blogging about them in the wrong order.)

My one exception was allowing myself to finish this quilt for three reasons; 1.  I needed a birthday gift for my mom, 2.  I wanted to see if I could use basting spray on a whole quilt, 3.  I wanted to try machine binding.  That was a good trial run that got my confidence up for finally finishing City Park, so that's what I did this past weekend.

The spray basting did turn out to be a bit of a nightmare.  It was everything I feared it would be but wasn't when I basted the last - much smaller quilt.  I thought I could do it in sections - but I guess that's sections as in rows - not rows and columns.  I was stuck to the quilt, the quilt was stuck to me, I was climbing inside the quilt, my pant legs and shoes were stuck to my feet, sweat was dripping off me, there may have even been tears.  It felt like that fabric sandwich was my mortal enemy, but in the end I won.  After I cried and swore and made rules about the size of quilts I'd make in the future and finally taught that quilt to be more cooperative, the quilting and binding was pretty easy.

Here it is on my queen-sized bed.

Even though I swore while basting it that I would never again make a quilt this big, I did find myself thinking that I'd only have to make one slightly bigger to have a proper queen-sized quilt.  (You can't tell from the photo, but it's just reaching the edges of the bed and not hanging over at all - so it would definitely need to be bigger.)

Here's the back.

I ended up finding the perfect backing fabric at Marden's.  It has little squares in a few of the colors from the front, so I thought it went nicely.  I added a strip of some of the leftover colors from the top.

Aaaah.  It feels so good to have that project out of the way.  

Incidentally, this is my 250th post.  Woo hoo.

Happy Friday.  I can't believe it's June.  Have a great weekend.

A Quilt Finally

I've had a bunch of quilt tops ready to be quilted for quite some time.  Most of them have been sitting around for almost a year, and one is almost two years old.  I like the actual quilting - well mostly - and don't really mind the binding, but I hate crawling around on the floor and basting.  

Except for a few pillows, I've always used safety pins, but a friend finally convinced me to try out the basting spray.  I had visions of the quilt, batting, and back bunching up and sticking together all over the place.  I could just imagine all the layers being stuck to me with me going in circles to try to detach it like a dog chasing it's tail.  I even had visions of myself and/or the quilt being hopelessly stuck to the floor.

But I took it easy with the spray, and it actually went pretty well.  I laid everything out on the floor, so there was still a fair bit of crawling around.  My friend recommended laying everything out on a table, but I was too worried about getting sticky stuff all over my table.  I have one of those plastic-y Home Depot ones in my basement.  Maybe I'll dig that out and try it next time.

It wasn't a very fancy quilt or even a very big quilt, but I wanted to make it simple to show off the cute little Aneela Hooey designs.  I had managed to snag a charm pack before the yardage came out of her first collection.

I ended up quilting it simply, too.  I just machine-stitched my sewing machine foot width away from each seam.  I ended up going back and forth between my walking foot and my regular foot.  I've used my walking foot in the past, and it really hasn't done anything for me.  There are a few places where I ended up with a pucker in the fabric (frustration!), and I almost think the walking foot made that worse.  I plan to use the same quilting for my Heather Ross quilt, so I hope I can figure this out before then.

In hindsight, the solid blue binding wasn't the best idea.  There are some squares of the same blue in the quilt which, afterwards, I remembered placing strategically next to the non-blue squares, so it wouldn't clash with the other blues that weren't similar enough or contrast-y enough.  Oh well, it's such a light blue that I think you don't really notice the binding that much and can just focus on the quilt.

This time I did try machine binding.  I used this tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts, and it worked out great.  It takes me forever to hand bind a quilt - even a small one.  This was so much faster and still looks very nice.

I don't know if it was the simple quilting or the all-cotton batting that I used, but I love the softness and drapy-ness of this quilt.  The other ones that I've made and quilted with all-over stippling have seemed much more stiff.

I ended up giving this quilt to my mother for her birthday.  I know the Aneela Hooey fabric is probably considered a juvenile print, and the colors in the quilt are kind of baby-ish, but my mom had said she liked the colors when she saw the quilt top months ago.  She seemed to like it.

Anyway, it was a good quilting experience.  I might just get inspired enough, brave enough to do another one.

Happy 2012!

Many of the blogs I follow have a year-end post with a mosiac of all their creations throughout the year or reflections on 2011 (like these) or resolutions for 2012.  I like (or would like) doing all of those things except that it's been such a wonderful low-key weekend that I haven't even spent any energy on reflecting or planning.

All of us except my oldest went to a nice New Year's Eve party last night.  It was in the neighborhood - sort of - so we walked there and back which was nice, since we didn't have to worry about who was going to drive or about the slippery roads.

This morning, I stayed in bed later than I ever do.  It's torture for me to not get up before everyone else and get some quiet crafting time in, but I thought it would be nice to lollygag around a bit on this committment-free day.  I made popovers and fresh-squeezed o.j. for breakfast (I swear those oranges are reproducing in my kitchen) while my husband sat at our kitchen island and planned out a few mini family trips for the first three months of the year.  By the time we were done with that, it was 11:00 a.m. which I couldn't believe.

After we finally got going on the day, we went to pick up a 2012 date book.  We've tried palm pilots and Google Calendar but decided that what works best for our busy family is simple old pen and paper.  En route to buy the date book, we got a bit distracted at the movie theater.  We saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" which I'd been dying to see.  I loved the book, and I like Daniel Craig.  The movie was really good and true to the book for the most part, but I'm not sure I would have understood it if I hadn't read the book.

Needless to say, we got back much later than intended.  My husband turned on the game while I dragged my sewing sidekick to the fabric store.  I wandered around aimlessly for some time then finally settled on four different garmet fabrics that I've already prewashed and hope to cut into tomorrow.

When we got back with some New Year's Day munchies, the kerosene heater was going in the living room and the wine was flowing.  I decided to NOT hideaway in my craft room for a change and dug through my yarn, knitting needles, and Ravelry to relax in the living room with a project.  I haven't had much luck finishing knitting projects since I started sewing, so I won't go into any details yet.

It would have been nice to spend December finishing some of my 2011 starts (I have at least 5 quilt tops), but with the busy-ness of Christmas that didn't really occur to me until about the 30th.  I decided to spend the 31st doing something that's been hanging over my head for over a year.

I finished the last four quilt blocks for the virtual bees that I joined/started at the beginning of 2009.  Yeah, I don't really expect many kudos for that, since I'm so ridiculously late.  Who knows if the recipients even live at the same address, are still working on the same quilt, even like quilting anymore, but it feels great to have those blocks done.  I'm sure they'll be shocked to receive them in the mail.  It occurred to me that they may not even open them if they don't recognize the return address.  I can't believe these lovely ladies have been so patient with me!

Here are the blocks.

Log cabins for Heather.

I love the colors she picked out.

And I spy blocks for Balinda.

I loved the dark pink solid and getting to work with a little scrap of Heather Ross goldfish which came and went before I got addicted to fabric.

Hope you have a wonderful start to the new year.  Thanks for reading my blog!

Finished Pillows

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I decided to do up a pillow to test some different thread choices for quilting my City Park quilt.

I used this technique recommended by Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson via Sew Mama Sew.  I had so much fun with it that I decided to make a second pillow.  I'm so happy with how they came out.

My husband said they look "digital".  Not really the look I was going for.  He tries hard to pretend he's interested in my crafting, but often picks the wrong word when trying to be complimentary.  I'm way past being insulted by it.  I'm pretty sure my mom would say they look "Amish".  Either way, I really like them.  I've got to get some more solids, so I can make some more.

For the pillow on the left, I used 2" squares and followed Elizabeth's instructions exactly.  For the second pillow, I wanted slightly smaller squares, but instead of cutting them smaller, I used the same 2" squares and a 3/8" seam.  This way, I was able to cut my seam down to 1/4" which was easier to press open than the 1/8" or so that I had left with the first method.  (Sorry, this will really only make sense if you read the tutorial.)

For the left pillow, I tried some variegated thread which I liked.  I almost did the second pillow with the same thread but then thought to myself, "what is the point of experimenting if you don't try different things", so then I grabbed a bunch of thread that I already had - navy, slate blue, royal blue, cornflower blue, gray, black, dark green and held them each up to the pillow to try to figure out what wouldn't look too dark on the lightest color and what wouldn't look to light on the darkest color.  I ended up with the cornflower blue (which is Coats & Clark All Purpose 4120 if anyone cares), and I actually like it better than the variegated.  I'm not sure you can really tell from the above photo or even the close-ups below.

Variegated:

Cornflower: (sorry about the blurriness)

And I almost forgot, another part of my experiment was to try basting spray which I had never done before.  It was WAY easier than the safety pin method I'd been using - much faster to make the quilt sandwich and much faster to quilt without having to stop, take off my gloves, remove a pin, break a fingernail, put back on gloves, remember which direction I was going, etc.  The only thing I don't like is that I'm pretty sure this stuff can't be good for me to breathe and can't be good for the environment.  Hmm, a dilemma.

Decided I may as well enter these in the Blogger's Pillow Party here:

City Park Pillow

Thanks everyone for your advice on what color thread to use for quilting my City Park quilt.  I like the idea of using the darkest blue, but I also like the idea of using variegated thread.  That never would have occurred to me, so I'm glad I asked and glad you answered.  I'm going to check out what they have at JoAnn on my way home today.

It occurred to me yesterday while I was supposed to be paying attention in a meeting that I could experiment first before I committed to (and possibly ruined) the whole quilt.  Duuh!  So I decided to make a pillow.  I'm going to use this tutorial from Oh, Fransson! via Sew Mama Sew and a bunch of squares from my leftover fabric from the quilt.  Now, hopefully I don't ruin the pillow, but how bad could it be with all these great colors?  I cut out the squares this morning.  Now I better start getting ready for work, but I can't wait to get home and get started.

Happy Friday!  Don't you just love the possibility that the weekend brings?

Need Your Quilting Advice

I finished this quilt top back in August.  

I had originally purchased the pattern from Cherry House Quilts because I just loved it.  Then my mom was looking for a quilt to give as a gift.  I was done with all the blocks, so I figured this would be the quickest way to get one done for her.  Enter my new kids clothes sewing addiction and my poor mom has been stuck waiting for over six months.  Ouch.  She's been very patient, but I swear I'm going to at least get this puppy basted over the weekend.

What I'm really hung up on though is what color thread to use for the quilting.  There's a lot of black in the quilt, and I'll probably use mostly black for the back, but I'm afraid if I use black, it will show up way too much on the other colors.  Then I'm worried if I use on of the other colors, it will show up way too much on the black.  What do you guys think?  Gray?  I've tried the transparent thread, and I didn't like it. 

Tree Pillow Tutorial - Finally!

I finally finished the tutorial for this pillow.  The tutorial is here.  I hope you'll give it a try.

Here's the original tree pillow that I made.  More about that in this post.

Getting Stuff Done

I had an extra day off on Monday and a clean craft room on top of that.  I actually had a hard time deciding what to do with such a bounty of good things, but the spirit of being a more disciplined person in the new year won out, and I worked on completing some little tasks.

Speaking of a bounty of good things, check out this awesome loot I got from my mother for Christmas:

A yard of Heather Ross's Macaroni Love Story from Spoonflower, a yard of Eleanor Grosch's Zoo Menagerie, 2 yards of adorable ribbon, and a gorgeous Japanese pattern book.  It's going to be really hard to decide what to make with all this.  I already know it's going to be a struggle to cut into the Heather Ross, since I don't think you can buy it any more.  What would you make with this?  I'm thinking maybe a little spring dress for Addie.

The tasks I completed all had to do with quilt blocks.  For my Fresh Comfort Two bee, Anita requested spider web blocks.  I'd never made one, so I wanted to make one for myself first both to make sure I could do and to also because I liked it.  I used this tutorial from Sew Mama Sew that Anita had pointed us to.

Here's mine:

I did mess up a bit at first on Anita's block, since she's going to have two different sizes of spider webs, but here's hers:

Then I had four little sections of a string block to tear the paper off and sew together to make this:

I added a border to that one and also added a border to two other blocks that I had laying around that will eventually look like this:

Finally, here's one last quilt block that goes with the other two gray and raspberry ones above.  All five will eventually become pillows for my shop (or for me to gift away).

I didn't work on anything crafty at all yesterday, but I did finish up my 365 project which was a HUGE accomplishment.  Now that I think about it, I should have celebrated or something.  It ended up being a 358 project which actually isn't too bad.  (I have to confess that I missed more days than 7, but about halfway through I became totally comfortable with substituting photos from other days for the days I missed.  It was a good chance to use both photos when there were two on a given day that I loved.  And I didn't start until the 5th last year.  I'm happy to be able to start on the first day of the year this year.)