Baby Quilt!

A dear friend of mine is having a baby soon - a little girl! So of course I had to make her a quilt. Their nursery theme is Disney, but I didn't have any fabrics so I did my own theme of "enchanted forest" which I think works well. The only request was no pink! As you can see, though, I cheated a little and used a coral.

This little quilt worked up really fast and I didn't need a pattern. I just cut out 5-inch squares and arranged them in diagonal lines. (Maybe 5 and a half? They were 5 inches, but I can't remember if that's finished or unfinished. 

Above is an in-progress picture while I quilted it! I did very simple straight lines about a generous quarter inch away from each seam.

And here is the finished quilt! Or at least a corner of it. As you can see, I bound it in a pretty green print from the Miss Kate line by Bonnie and Camille (which is my favorite). I actually used a lot of very-special or favorite fabrics for this quilt! It adds a little bit extra love!

My Last Post Was a Lie!

New Year Quilty Resolutions:

• Don't sign-up for 9,000 swaps
• Finish all swaps you do sign up for EARLY
• Finish things in general
• especially the hand-quilted twin nine patch you've been working on forever
• YOU KNOW WHICH ONE I MEAN
• also maybe get better at FMQ?
• And try to post here more!

RETURNING, NEW POST SOON!

I have been very, very busy, so please excuse the hiatus! I will be back with a slew of new posts soon, probably starting tonight!

I'm Addicted, Oh No! The Swap Syndrome

So I don't know about you, but I love Instagram (I'm audacious_squid over there).  And I have recently discovered the beauty, the marvelousness, the absolute fun and hopefully friend-making spirit of Instagram swaps.  I may have gone a taaaaaad bit overboard.  I think I signed up for... four so far?  Only one has sent out partners, so I'm only adding one project (and making very little progress on everything else!  Gosh) right now, but soon I'll probably be swamped with sewing!  (I also just indulged in a huge fabric order so I'm sure that will keep me inspired as well.)  So far, we have:

3DS CASE... OF DOOM!

First off, I would like to say that I again - against all common sense, I think - chose not to use a pattern.  I had a sort of pattern to work from, in that I had a case I bought that I wanted to replicate.  And almost replicate it I did!

 

...sort of.

The problem with this project is that 1.) I have very little experience sewing bags and such and there seems to be a lot I don't know, so I mess up.  Or could mess up.  Or probably mess up.  I know so little I have no idea why I even decided to do this.  (I wanted a case, mostly.  A cute one!  Handmade!)  And 2.) My sewing machine apparently hates this project, and hates sewing through layers and I'm probably doing something wrong again but I do not know what.

It's just a little soft case meant for a 3DS (it can fit an xl), which I love because I am a big video game nerd.  Also I love, love, love this fabric and I wanted to make myself something cute that I'd actually use.  Below is a photo of what I have right now.

This is the almost finished product! (Don't be fooled, though, the only seams that are finished are on the zippers.)

Q2 Finish-a-Long Post!

So I have the bad habit of getting really excited about something for a little while, then putting it away and starting something else instead of finishing.  I also get distracted very easily.  As you can see from my WIP post a few days ago, I don't have too, too much going on, but it's still enough that with my schedule - I have two jobs so it's 12 hour days Mon-Thurs - I'm having trouble getting to it all!  But I want to try to get something done!  So here is my "to-do list" for Q2!

1. Guest Room Quilt -
I need to cut the backing fabric, get it quilted and bound, but then I'll be done!  This one should be pretty simple and probably won't take too long.  (Except for the binding...)

2. Baby Quilt -
Same as above.  I found a cute fabric for the back, so hopefully this one will be a pretty quick finish, too.  Again, except for the binding.  That always takes me forever.

3. THAT DANG MISS KATE DS CASE -
I want to finish this.  I want so badly to finish this.  But oh it has been a beast.  I seriously need to do a lot of research or something because my sewing machine just does not want to sew this.  What am I doing wrong?!  And my stitches by hand just aren't going to be strong enough, because I plan for this to get a lot of wear.  Arrgh.  I'm hoping I'll get this worked out some way.  I probably should have used a pattern, shouldn't I?  Ha ha ha.

4. Brand New EPP Hexie Mini -
This is a self-indulgent little mini quilt using hexies and some of my favorite fabric (a whole lot of it featuring cats, ahh ha ha).  I have done very, very little on this one, so I'm not terribly confident that I can get it done - but because it's so little and I can take the little hexies with me, I'll probably be able to work on it during my lunch breaks, and while I'm watching TV.  Yay!

5. Reverse Snowball Quilt -
I don't know if this one counts (all I've done is a fabric pull and pick out a pattern), but I am excited!  I'm using a lot of the fabric line Acorn Trail because it is adorable, and I don't know the correct name for the block, but I'm doing snowball, except white sashing and patterned, erm, balls.

6. Tom Quilt -
So many squares!  I'm a little scared of this one because I'm going to have a lot to keep track of with the layout.  But!  We are moving soon-ish and if at all possible I would like to get this done around that time.

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.