Current WIPs

CURRENT WORKS IN PROGRESS

 

I have not had a lot of time to sew lately, which makes me pretty sad!  I've started several projects, though, and just haven't had time to post about them.  I'm still figuring this whole blog thing out, and I haven't really found a format yet that 100% works for me.  I'm learning, though.  I think I'll look through some of my favorite blogs and see how they do things, and try to get myself some inspiration.  I want my blog to be unique, and very clearly mine, so I don't want to just borrow a specific style or format.  I have a feeling it's going to take a lot of work to get this looking nice and how I want it, though.  Ha.  Anyway!  Here is what I am working on.  (Most everything, at least.)

 

• Baby Quilt!

My boyfriend's brother and sister-in-law just had a little baby girl about two months ago, and she is the cutest, most precious thing.  I started this before she was born, and after I finished the quilt top I kind of...  fizzled, and never did more.  It still needs to be quilted!  But I don't even have a back for it.  I bought some yardage of a cute yellow floral fabric, but it's not quite the same shade of yellow (my own fault for not bringing the quilt top with me - or, well, that's impractical.  Not bringing some scraps with me!) so I am not sure whether I want to use it.  I have another quilt I'm working on (see: guest room quilt, below) that the fabric would be perfect for, so I may just repurpose it and try to find a better backing fabric for this quilt.  Actually I think that's exactly what I'm going to do. 

 

the quilt top!

 

This quilt was made with a pattern from the book Fat Quarterly Shape Workshop for Quilters, which is a book I really like.  (I actually don't subscribe to the Fat Quarterly e-zine, I just got a copy of this book for Christmas.)  So yes, I used that pattern and I think it turned out pretty good!  The solids are really cheap-o solids that my mom gave me in ~A Mysterious Bag of Fabric~ that she'd had for who knows how long and she got from who knows where.  The prints are all from fat quarters of the line Mother Goose Tales by... someone, for Windham Fabrics.  And they're so cute, aren't they?!  I bought them forever ago, for this very quilt, and I'd just been waiting to use them.  I'm happy with how it turned out, although I have zero ideas how I'm going to quilt it.  Also because it's for someone else I'm worrying about a lot more than I normally would.  Like thread color!  Normally I just pick one coordinating thread color and quilt the whole thing in that, but I don't know what color to use here.  I guess a nice beigey color could work...  Or I could just use different colors, of course.  But I'm super worried about changing colors and having to bury the knots (which I don't really know how to do, though I have several youtube tutorials saved), and and and.  I'm really nervous about quilting this!  Oh wait, that may be the real reason I have put off finishing it...

 

• Guest Room Quilt!

So we have a little twin bed in our guest room, and while I do still have my old bed linens from when I lived in a dorm room in college, I want something new and fresh!  And also something that will better match the decorating scheme I wanna get going in there.  So I decided to make a disappearing 9 patch quilt!  It's still kind of traditional, but can look really modern, and.  Well I had everything cut and it was time to actually make the 9 patch squares "disappear" and I decided that was too much work.  Ahh ha.

All my pretty little squares before they became blocks

During this quilt top process I discovered I am terrible at matching colors - or even finding coordinating colors.  If there is a LQS near me I do not know where it is.  We have a Hancock Fabrics, and a little sewing machine supply shop, and in the next town there's a yarn shop, but I don't really know where to buy fabrics (besides like I said Hancock, and a Hobby Lobby).  So a lot of times I'll just order online, like from Fabric Worm or Fat Quarter Shop or what have you.  Well I only get pictures over the computer so it's a little hard to tell one hundred percent how everything looks together and...  I just bought a lot of yellows, blues, teals, and grays and kind of threw them all together.

 

Ahh, illuminated by the poor light of the dining room.

 

(I will get a picture of the full finished quilt top... soon.)

 

I also have no idea how I'm going to quilt this one!  It's just boring plain vanilla patchwork, so I want really awesome quilting.  But I have no idea how to do that.  I actually think I do not possess the skills to do that.  Maybe Baptist fans?  How would that look, I wonder.  Or my old favorite, cross hatch.  I do like some cross hatching.

 

• Creeper Pillow!

 

 

It's a weird color because it has an instagram filter on it

Now this!  My crowning achievement, perhaps?  Just kidding - I'm just very pleased with my nerdy little pillow.  I probably won't quilt this one, but I haven't decided yet.  I didn't measure my pillow form when I was making this.  I googled "perler bead creepers" to get a good idea of how people had done the colors, then I just whipped up a quick, easy little pattern and went for it!  It's 8x8 squares, for a total of 64, and each square is - before sewing - 2.5 inches.  So 2 inches finished.  The pillow form I have is just a 14" form (I think), so this top is too big.  Ahh well.  It won't be hard to go pick up another pillow form eventually.  I have no idea where I'm going to put this, though, it matches nothing in my apartment.

• Tom Quilt

Now this quilt is in the very, very, very beginning stages.  As in, I have not even finished cutting it yet.  The pattern for this one came from another book: Pillow Pop and I just adapted it for a full size quilt instead of just a pillow top.  The pattern is just a bunch of squares that make up crosses, so it's pretty simple, and I'm hoping it will look good.  The hardest thing so far has been fabric selection.  Here's a picture of a few I was looking at.

 

Another pic I'd taken on instagram

The problem is that it's for a guy, and his favorite color is purple.  He's not terrible picky (other than he doesn't want a whole lot of floral stuff), but I don't want it to be too feminine.  Normally neither one of us care about that kind of stuff, but he just doesn't like too much that's considered traditionally feminine.  And finding fabrics is pretty hard!  I'm sure I am just missing a ton of choices, but I can't find a lot of masculine purple fabrics.  Solids, of course, but I want prints if I can find them.  I decided to mix in teal probably (as you can see above), and gray too I think.  Again, I am not good at color coordination.  I am hoping it is a skill that, with some critical examination and practice, I can attain.  (I'm definitely using the Packmates fabric above, though.  It's llamas!) 

I have one more...  But it is going to get its own post!  It's a little soft case, and dang it has been a beast of a job.