Towards the end of yesterday while I was feeling better I managed to finished binding my “Spools and Dreams” mini quilt.
It looks a little off kilter because of the positioning when I took the picture, but it turned out real nice. All of the edges are straight and that can’t be said for some of the spools in the quilt! I also finished my new Sage Garden quilt and it goes off to the Long Arm today.
My new work in progress has been delayed, as I was lucky enough to get the flu over the past two days… yea me!! The pattern is called Arcadia, by Mountainpeak Creations and will be reviewed once the quilt is completely together. I love the whimsical nature of these fabrics. I have to say that I found it difficult determining what pattern to use with these fabrics… they are not your ordinary run-of-the-mill patterns.
After three days of searching, I found one that I thought would work and have made the first panel. Now, I did end up created three squares roughly 11 1/2″ X 11 1/2″ as test squares to find that I needed to sew my seams a little different. The strips needed to be sewn with a scant 1/4″ seam, while the block needed to be sewn with a full 1/4″ seam. That to me is very frustrating to have to remember while sewing. Sewing it any other way and I ended with rectangles instead of squares.
Rather than wasting the fabric I have planned to of course make a throw or a mini with the strips that have already been sewn and just throw in a border to compensate. The queen size pattern I tested, was tested with the first complete panel. As I put it on my bed and looked at it, it is definitely large enough to be used as a queen sized quilt and gave me a preview of the completed quilt. WOW! is what I was thinking as I imaged what it will look like when finished.
Have you ever picked a fabric without regard to actually having a pattern for it? I’ve done this before, but never had such a difficult time as with this one. My biggest issue was that I liked all of the fabrics and didn’t want them to “disappear” into the quilt, but stand out individually. Speak out and let me know struggles that you’ve had!
Have you ever started and stopped so often on a project that you felt like for every step forward, you took two steps back? That is how my weekend felt while trying to get some of my work finished. It didn’t help that I was also doing some IT work from home as well this weekend.
I did accomplish a lot of what I set out to do, but as I was struggling to finish everything on my unfinished list, I lost my way (became disinterested) in them. This isn’t because they weren’t interesting projects, they just went wrong and at the time I didn’t have the energy to correct them.
Last night I started again with a full head of steam on some fabric that I wanted to do something special with. Wouldn’t you know it, I (once again!!) failed to set the stitch to ¼” and the square came out all wonky. I LOVED the look that I will get once I get it worked out, but fell into a funk and had to put everything away for the night.
The highlight of the weekend though was that I’ve finished the Amish mini quilt, the spool of dreams is quilted and just needs the binding now, and the nursery quilt is ready for the long arm. Hopefully this week will be better for getting things done right the first time and keeping up with my writing. Happy Quilting everyone!!
And the winner is…
Seapunk2!!! If this is you, then you are the lucky winner of the black and white give-a-way!! Please email me at txmlawrence@bistroquilts.com
And for the rest of you, I’ll be having another giveaway in two weeks. Stay tuned and as always keep quilting!!
Work has been very tough on my schedule lately, but I’m back to writing again and have accomplished a lot in the last few days. I’ve wanted to start… okay, I’ve been dying to start a couple of new queen size quilts that I’ve already bought the fabric for. After telling Kay about this, she not so politely said that I really needed to finish my other projects before starting on new ones.
Let’s take stock… I finished my Arbor Lane quilt and even washed it! I needed to deconstruct my “Spools and Dreams” mini and then sew it all back together. I needed to start and finish the hand quilting on the Amish mini quilt and then bind it. I have another Sage Garden quilt that needs to go out to the long arm quilter after I sew the sashing on it and get the backing sewn together. But what I really wanted to do was to start the two new quilts that I had in mind.
My wife’s response was a little like “Eat your vegetables and then you can have desert”. Well, as much as I hated to admit it, she is right. With all of those unfinished projects hanging over my head, I really needed to finish them before I started my new projects. I’m eating my veggies now in anticipation of desert.
Here’s the “Spools and Dreams” mini with the backing fabric I chose…
Okay, so I took the night off… sort of. I have a couple unfinished projects, or more correctly projects that were started and went horribly wrong so I stopped where I was at. I had finished the nursery blanket but havent cut the batting for it yet. I cut out all the white squares for a beautiful blue and white quilt and they are languishing in the closet right now while we talked about our next weekender quilt.
So last night I watched television while doing nothing. I actually felt a little out-of-place and guilty knowing I could have been hand quilting my Amish mini. Have you ever felt guilty for taking a break? I must admit my mind has been on work a lot lately with quite a few projects on my plate. We also have the 4th of July holiday coming up which I have off and my wife is working.
Send me your encouragement and let me know which project I should finish first:
Re-sew the messed up mini, hand quilt the Amish mini, piece the blue quilt, or start a new “quick quilt”. I’d be really interested to have your opinions.
I did everything I promised myself I would do this weekend. Yes!!! The Arbor Lane quilt is finished and I’ll post a pic of that one tomorrow along with the nursery quilt that I also finished. I even had time to start the week out right by finishing and being able to post this morning the Joann Fabrics Persian Plum block of the month quilt block #6.
This was an interesting block of flying geese. I will mention right now that no matter how I sew this together I’ve never quite go the hang of having the finished size come out good. The length is always correct, but the height is off by 1/4″ almost every time. We persevere though, don’t we?
It came complete as has all the blocks to this point. The measurements were correct and the instructions clear. The colors I will still say are the most striking aspect of this quilt and flying geese is the motif.
Then we just sew them in the correct configuration for the block
Le me know how yours turned out. Mine ended up being about a 1/4″ off, but I’ll fix that when I go to put them all together. Here’s the comparison to the way it’s supposed to turn out.
Wanted to remind everyone there are only five days until we pull the name for the free black and white fabric to be given away. We’ll be pulling the name this Friday July 7th, so hurry and follow this blog and get your comment down!
I set out last night to slay another dragon. I’ve always love the handkerchief, though I haven’t always carried one with me. I’ve thought about making them for some time. When I had gone to the Dallas quilt show I picked up some civil war era fabric. I must have only purchased five fat quarters which really isn’t enough to make into anything, but I really liked the look and feel of it.
After work I headed to the sewing room with a purpose… Kay was as usual embroiled in one of her wonderful craft projects but saw I had a head of steam going and asked what I was planning to do. Out came the implements of destruction: iron, ironing board, cutting mat, rotary cutter, and fabric… actually it was some test fabric that although it’s nice, I wasn’t worried about how it came out.
It turned out to be a good thing I did use the “test” fabric. I cut the fabric 12″ X 12″ and ended up with a too small 10″ X 10″ hanky when done. I had also sewn a couple up for Kay and measured that fabric 8″ X 8″, which turns out to be big enough for a coaster not a handkerchief. It wasn’t a total loss however, as I was able to perfect (in my humble opinion) my technique and get the stitches to look exactly how I wanted.
Out came the civil war era fabric and I stitched it all up. On a side note, the 10″ X 10″ fabric turned out to be the perfect size for Kay’s handkerchiefs and she’s going to use the 8″ X 8″ fabric for another of her projects. I’ve determined since they came out looking so well of monogramming them with hand embroidery, or finding someone to machine embroider a monogram to them! Happy Quilting!!
I have purchased fabric for my next six large quilts over the past couple of months. I’m also thinking about which projects that I would like to make for Autumn and after that for Christmas. So, why did I find myself at a fabric store yesterday afternoon on my way home from work??? I normally do not buy my backing fabric for any of my quilts until before I drop it off to the long arm.
I don’t know if this is common throughout the quilting community, to buy the backing while buying the rest of the fabric to ensure color coordination, but I like to live on the edge! There have been a couple of times where I was stressed for not finding the “right” material to go with the rest of colors that I had in the quilt, but it’s always worked out for me.
My wife and I like a lot of the same color schemes, but when it comes to what colors work well in our quilts it becomes vastly different. We’ve learned to accept our differences of opinion when it comes to each others’ quilt material selection. At times we jokingly try to steal a piece of fabric from one another.
So, back to the store where I’m standing there looking for a reason to buy more fabric… I come across one that would be perfect for the persian plum block of the month quilt I’m in the process of making. It wasn’t on sale and I almost bought it any way… that’s when you know you have a problem issue and probably need to just… walk… away. I feel very good about myself because I did walk away and will wait until at least the 1st before I shop again!
Books quilts and sewing 