Actual quilting in progress!

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been MIA yet again.  I just get so darn busy, that whole going to work, having a small child thing is definitely getting in the way of sewing and blogging. :)

But there has been a little bit of sewing going on!

First, I want to show the pictures of my swap item that I teased you all with last time.

For the last meeting of the Knoxville Modern Quilt Guild, we decided to swap a friendship bag.  We decided we'd use this tutorial from P.S. I Quilt for the basic idea and dimensions.  I decided to tweak the tutorial a little and add a band of solid fabric around the top and change the size of the fabric strips on the side.  I think it came out super cute!





Unfortunately I haven't yet taken any pictures of the bag I received, but trust me, it's super cute! I'll try to get some pictures soon.

I also finally decided on how I wanted to quilt my Perfect 10 quilt.  I had picked out a backing a while back (from Hobby Lobby), got it all basted a few weeks ago, but have been procrastinating because I couldn't decide what kind of quilting to do or what color thread to use given all the different colors in the top.

I finally this last weekend, after some trial and error, to use a clear thread for the top.  I tried white, and brown, and they both just stuck out too much on some of the fabric colors in the top.  The clear, while a pain in the butt to work with, looks the best.  I'm using a dark brown on the back.  In the pictures below you can see what I chose for backing, the dark brown with the simple floral in white.  I also decided to just do straight vertical lines for quilting.  I'm not confident enough yet in my stippling, especially to do a quilt this large (it's about 60"x70"), and I couldn't think of any other pattern that wouldn't fight with the design of the top.  As soon as I started quilting, I knew this was the perfect choice, as I LOVE how it's turning out! I can't wait until it's done.  Right now I'm a little over a quarter of the way through, and it's taking a while with that many lines close together.  But hopefully I can finish it up over the next week or two.





Now I've got to get back to it!

Perfect 10 quilt top

I finally got a picture of the fully finished Perfect 10 quilt top!

I really love the way this turned out.  Now I just need to figure out how I want to quilt it.  It's pretty large, so I'm not sure how that's going to go!



I'll be back soon with another post about something super fun that I did today -- I attended the very first meeting of the Knoxville Chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild! It was so much fun, I'll be back with more details in a separate post.

Perfect 10 quilt top - done!

I finally finished my Perfect 10 quilt top! I'm not 100% thrilled with the border fabric, but I couldn't decide on anything else, so it will have to do. I'm hoping to get some pictures of the whole top when I baste it in hopefully the next few days, but for now I only have this photo of it folded up. I apologize for the quality, it's from my cell phone. Back soon with more pics and other exciting things!

Officially part of the club

I think as of today I am officially part of the serious sewers/quilters club.  Why, you ask?  Because I did something that I imagine every sewer or quilter does at least once in their lifetime.  It's like an initiation rite, I think.

What did I do?

I sewed through my finger.

Yes, I sewed through my finger.  I was happily sewing away during the baby's nap, so grateful to see what my sewing room looks like in the daytime hours, when all of a sudden, my finger got sucked in somehow. I think I was reaching to pull out a pin right before it went under the needle and my finger just got in too close.  It went right through, luckily just beyond the tip of my nail. I think it would have been much worse had I sewn through the nail. Ew.  In my state of shock I started yanking on my finger and in doing so the needle just ripped through my finger.  Kind of like when you get an earring torn out of your ear?  Yeah.  Gross.

But it must have actually punctured me twice.  Because in addition to the puncture that tore out of the end of my finger when I yanked it away, there was another entrance and exit wound with THREAD SEWN THROUGH IT.  So nasty. I sat there staring at it, thinking to myself, how the hell do I pull this thread out without killing myself with pain?  Luckily my wits returned quite quickly and so I picked up my scissors, clipped the threads close to my skin, and then closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then yanked them out.  By this time my finger was throbbing, there was blood...I ran and rinsed it off, cleaned it with some peroxide, then bandaged it up.  While I was doing that I was literally shaking and felt like I was going to pass out.  Usually the sight of blood and stuff like that doesn't bother me but it usually isn't my blood!  But it did reaffirm my decision to go to law school instead of medical school, as I thought I might be a bit too squeamish for that, and it looks like I may have been right. :)

I'll spare you any gory pictures.  Just know that it was majorly gross.

So what was I working on when I did this?  Well, I'm piecing together the Perfect 10 quilt.  I finally got all the fabrics cut during several evenings this past week, and started piecing it together.  I think it looks awesome!

Here's where it's at now:







Please pardon the messiness of the room peeking out from the edges, especially my huge pile of trimmings from the pinwheel quilt and the christmas pajamas.

I love how this looks! It's hard to tell from the photo, but the quilt divides into three sections that you piece separately, each comprised of three mini-sections within it.  I have the top third done (it includes the top three white-sashed squares). I also have a portion of the second third done (the pinkish square on the left above two green squares above a brown square with big pink dots, as well as the white sashed turquoise square to the right of it and the three little squares atop and bottom).  Those two pieces will be sewn together and then pieced with the sections to the right of them.

It's going fairly quickly and I'm hoping to have the top finished this week.  Then it will be on to quilting!

I do have a question for anyone that cares to opine--do you all use starch when you're piecing? I'm pressing very carefully as I go but even then sometimes everything doesn't stay as flat as I'd like and I'm wondering if others use starch at this stage. I have no idea.  Let me know!

Okay, back to the piecing, being VERY careful to keep my finger out of the way!

My next project!

I've decided on my next quilt project, now that the Pinwheel Baby Quilt is done.

In my last post, I showed some of the cute fabrics I picked up in Atlanta.  One of the purchases I made was a cute fat quarter bundle of six Michael Miller prints from Little Quilts.  These fabrics were just calling to me and so I decided I wanted to work with these fabrics next.

Lucky for me, while out shopping this past weekend (I just had to check out a few more of the local shops) I found this cute pattern.

It's called Perfect 10, by Swirly Girls Design.

Another crappy photo. My apologies for my recent atrocious photography.

The pattern calls for 10 fat quarters, plus a neutral accent fabric, plus a border fabric.  I fished around in my stash, and managed to come up with several other fabrics that matched with the fat quarter bundle perfectly.

The six fat quarters at the top are the bundle I purchased. The four fabrics on the bottom are the ones I pulled from my stash to coordinate.

I love these colors, and I just can't wait to get started! I think I'm going to use white as my accent (see the white square outlines in the pattern above?) and I haven't decided yet on what will be the border. I don't have any other fabrics in the stash in large enough quantities that coordinate to use for the border, so I may have to buy something, or use a solid, either one I've already got or one I'll buy.  Haven't decided yet.

I didn't get around to cutting yet, so I'm hoping that I can do that tomorrow and get to piecing!  Can't wait, I think it's going to be super cute.