A little non-quilty sewing

Yesterday and today I've had several glorious hours of alone time.  My husband's at work, and my daughter is off with grandma, who is in town visiting, at my sister's house.  I decided to put my time to good use and make a few things I've been wanting to make, but haven't had enough time to set aside to make them.

Both patterns I made are from Keyka Lou Patterns.  She has some amazing, super cute patterns, and I finally bought a few this past week while she was having an anniversary sale.

The first one I tried was the Ditty Bag pattern.  I made the medium size.  The pattern was very well written.  It turned out very cute, although I did mess up a little.  When I attached the back of the bag to the front pieces, I put it together upside down.  You'll see that the hanging tag should be at the same end of the bag as the zipper pull, when the zipper is closed.  Instead, it's the opposite.  Oops.  And that's why the flowers are upside down, they should be facing the other way.  But that's okay.  It's still cute and functional, and so I'm going to leave it as is.  A good reason to make a few more in the other sizes!







The next pattern I made was the Laptop Sleeve.  I made this with the intention of modifying its size to make it smaller to fit my new iPad.  I used the instructions referenced for how to modify the size, but again, I screwed up somewhere! :)  But I was able to eventually make it work.  Although in these pictures, the velcro is in the wrong spot. I need to move the bottom pieces down a few inches so the flap attaches lower (in the spot it's in in the pictures where it's closed).  But that should be fairly easy and then it should fit fairly well.  Just a hair too big, but that's okay.  Again, the pattern itself was awesome, it was just my lack of spatial understanding that prevented me from being able to change the dimensions.  Overall, it turned out great, and I am super happy to have a cute new bag for my iPad.  Plus, it uses some of my most favorite fabrics, especially the Alexander Henry Farmdale blossom, so I am really happy with it.









I have to say that I would highly, highly recommend these patterns.  Very thorough and easy to follow.  I have one more I'm going to try today (the Inset Zipper clutch and pouch) and I will most definitely try others in the future.

Hello bandwagon, room for one more?

Holy cow, a month and a half since my last post?  What the heck happened?  I have no idea.  I'm sorry!

Anyway, last week, I, along with half of the online quilt blogging/Flickr community, had a collective freakout when we realized fabric designer extraordinaire Denyse Schmidt had released a new line of fabric at Joann Fabrics, of all places.

I gathered up my coupons like a good little shopper and hightailed it over there on Friday, after some of my lovely modern quilt guild buddies let me know that the fabric had arrived.

On my first go around, I picked up this lovely stack of my favorite prints out of the bunch.

Aren't they pretty?

Then I gathered up some more coupons and headed back over today to pick up a few more of the prints.

I still don't have all the prints, but at this point I think I have all the ones I like.

And while I was there today, what else did I find?  Some lovely Alexander Henry Farmdale prints!  The aqua blossom print is one of my absolute favorite fabrics of all time, so I splurged and bought a whole bunch.  I don't ever want to run out of this fabric!

So, yes, I have been stashing fabric, but not doing a whole heck of a lot of sewing.  I do have one more finished quilt to show, plus another quilt top and back ready for basting and quilting, but I need to get some pictures.  Soon!

And this time, I promise it won't be another month and a half before I update again! :)

No progress.

That's what I've got to show you.  Nothing.  No progress on any projects.  Why?  Because I haven't been sewing.  I have been absolutely overwhelmed by work.  I can't remember ever having this much work to do before at one time.  It's exhausting, and by the time I get home (on the days when I actually do get home, and am not out of town) I am too tired to do anything.

I am hoping this will all let up in the next few weeks.  I'm almost through it all.  The biggest stressor of all will be over with and done next week, then a few other things to finish up in the week or so after that, and then hopefully things will be back to normal.

In the meantime, what do I do when I am stressed and busy and can't sew?  I buy fabric to make me feel better. :P

Last week, Purl Soho had a huge sale.  They had tons of great prints for just over $5/yard, some lovely flannels (Anna Maria Horner!) for just over $6/yard, Echino for $10/yard...it was great.  So of course I couldn't pass it up.  Look at the lovely stack that came to live with me.



One yard each of the Modern Meadow prints (the top four), five yards of the Folksy Flannel on the bottom of the stack, and then 2 yards and 3 yards of the other two flannels.  The Modern Meadow prints are great stash builders and I cannot wait to use the flannels as some very cozy quilt backs for all the quilts I plan to make with my overflowing AMH stash.

Ahh, fabric.  It's amazing how it lifts the spirits!

My next project

I have made tons of progress this week on different projects, and now I want to move onto something new!

First, to recap, I finally pieced a back for my Hunky Dory 9-patch quilt.  No picture right now, but hopefully soon once I get it basted and get to work on quilting.  It's the first time I've done a pieced back and it was so fun!

I also finished the back for this purple 9-patch baby quilt I've been working on. I think I've mentioned this quilt here before but haven't shown any pictures.





Now I've got to get to quilting on that one too!

The only backing I have yet to get ready is for my Bliss quilt.  I have some flannel for the backing and I honestly only need to cut the length of the yardage in two and then sew them together to make the backing, but I haven't done it yet.  Maybe later today I can get to that.

But in the meantime I've decided to start another quilt! I think I'm putting off all the basting and quilting for the others, to be honest, those parts are my least favorite of the whole process!

For this quilt, I decided to work with my Dream On charm packs that I've had in my stash for a while.  I've seen a few quilts on Flickr that paired up Dream On with Kona Ash, and I loved how it looked.  I'm not really into sashings in non-neutral colors (like pinks or yellows) for some reason, so the only other option I was considering for this line was white.  But I feel like these fabrics would fade into the white background too much, and you'd lose some of the definition of the prints.  So Ash it is!



Given that I have charm packs, I thought it would be fun and easy to just do a ton of half-square triangles, and then see what kind of pattern I can come up with.  Maybe a diamond radiating out from the center of the quilt?  I don't know yet, we'll see what they look like once I get them all made.

Right now I'm in the midst of marking all my squares.  Once that's done, I'm going to settle in for some serious chain-piecing!  I'm hoping to maybe get them all done today. Is that possible?  We'll see!

February Blogger's Pillow Party

Stitched in Color is hosting the very awesome Blogger's Pillow Party.

Every month is a new contest, with super cool judges and fun prizes that you can win if your pillow is chosen! This month, the super-talented Rita from Red Pepper Quilts, one of my absolutely favorite blogs, is the judge.

I finally decided that I was going to go ahead and enter! You've all seen this pillow before, but I just love it so much I think it's worth entering in this contest.

So for the second time--my Christmas wreath pillow!

This pillow is based off of a Moda Bake Shop tutorial for a wall hanging that I modified to make into a pillow. I made this in December, and I really wanted to do some Christmas sewing, but I wanted something smaller than a quilt and more realistically finish-able for me (as I am so slow sometimes!). I was looking around for inspiration and happened upon the tutorial and immediately popped into my mind the idea of doing it pillow size in bright, modern fabrics. I scaled it down to result in a 20" pillow, and I absolutely love how it turned out! It is so bright and fun, just what I was looking for. I used some of my favorite fabrics--I have quite the stash of green fabrics as it's one of my favorite colors, and I was able to use quite a selection of those!--and it felt good to make something for me that was exactly what I wanted. It was also my first time installing a hidden zip, and I think I'm a convert now, I want to put them in everything I make! This is also some of the smallest piecing I've done--I think I started with 1.75" squares, resulting in 1.25" finished squares. It was quite a feat trying to get all those corners to match up! I also attempted free-motion quilting again, and am reasonably satisfied with how it turned out. :) I think every time I attempt it, I get a little bit better!   This is only the second pillow I've made, and I think this one has really convinced me to make more. They are relatively quick (faster than a quilt for me, for sure!) and you can try out new techniques or fabrics that you might not want to commit to in a whole quilt. I'm thinking of all the different blocks or ideas I want to try out, how fun would it be to have a series of pillows documenting my stitching adventures? :)

The pillow is now waiting very patiently in my sewing room for Christmas time to roll around again and I am dreaming of the Christmas quilts I can make to go with it. I am imagining maybe a full size quilt with small pieced squares in a similar minimalist, modern-type design, but perhaps making a Christmas tree? :) That might be fun!

Thanks for stopping by! Now I am off to check out all the other lovely pillows entered for this month..

Patchwork and Quilting Blog List

Do you love reading quilting blogs as much as I do?  If you do, head on over to Red Pepper Quilts!  She has a very cool new page on her blog with a linky feature for quilting bloggers to share their blogs!  I've added mine to the list, and plan to go back and click through all the rest in hopes of finding some new blogs to add to my already crazy list!

In other news -- apologies again for the long break!  I've been super busy with work and life!  I did get a very awesome day of sewing with my modern quilt guild ladies, and that was fun! I finished the purple baby quilt top, I just need to get the quilt finished up as the baby it's for was born last week -- eek!

Also in exciting news, at the last modern quilt guild meeting I was selected as the new vice-president, and some very cool ladies were selected as our new president and secretary, and I think the three of us will plan some awesome things for this next year of the guild.  First on the list is a meet and greet for new members this Saturday.  I'm also going to start making a little newsletter after each meeting to send to our members to sum up what's been going on and what's coming up.  So that's fun!

I also have been buying fabric.  I know, when do I NOT buy fabric?  Fabric.com is having a very good sale right now, through the 14th, and I scored some awesome Robert Kaufman Metro Living Circles for a STEAL.  Less than $6/yard.  Plus some other fun stuff!  I'll come back with some pictures soon, I promise!

All right, time to get to quilting...I've got a bee block I've got to get done!

Stashing of a different sort

Editing to add some photos--

Yesterday my family decided to go on a little day trip.  Although we live only a few hours drive from Asheville, North Carolina, we've never been in the 5 years we've lived in this area.  So we decided to head out for the day.

When we take these kinds of trips, we usually have two objectives.  My husband's--to eat at yummy local restaurants we can't find around our house.  Mine--to visit as many yarn and quilt shops as possible! ;)

So yesterday we stayed true to form and did exactly that.  We managed to cram in a lot of shops in one quick visit of just a couple of hours. 

First, we traveled straight through Asheville to the eastern edge of town, to Black Mountain, NC.  There we visited Black Mountain Yarn Shop.  The yarn store was FABULOUS, and I picked up some Spud & Chloe Sweater yarn I've been wanting to try.  My daughter picked out a beautiful teal blue color and I plan on knitting her a sweater.  (Did you know I used to be as obsessive a knitter as I am a quilter? It's slowed down considerably but I still love yarn and love to knit!)  I also picked up a skein of Malabrigo Rios in a beautiful blue-green colorway Aguas to make myself some fingerless mitts.





The next stop was Marti's Patchwork Cottage.  This was a small shop, with mostly traditional fabrics. I did a quick look around, and bought one cute bird print that my daughter picked out for me to make her a pillowcase.  Even though they didn't have much that was my style, the staff was super friendly and they did have a big sale rack of prints, including a few Authentic prints, at a big discount. 

Next we traveled back to Asheville and stopped at the Asheville Cotton Co.  This store was quite large and had a great selection!  They actually had quite a few modern prints, including lots of Heather Bailey and Amy Bulter, and even some of Anna Maria Horner's new Innocent Crush.  They also had tons of great basics and many traditional fabrics as well.  This was a great shop and I will definitely be back if we travel to Asheville again.  They had a sale table with lots of fabrics marked between 30 and 70 percent off! I got a cute Kitty Yoshida print for 50% off (the Orange/Magenta Brocade & Circles)!  They had 3 1/2 yards and I bought it all with the intention of using it as backing for a raspberry quilt I'm dreaming up for the future.  I also bought a cute flowered print with ladybugs for daughter that she picked out for another pillowcase.  She has been wanting a ladybug pillowcase for a while and so we finally found something cute!

After that we were off to downtown Asheville to eat at the Tupelo Honey Cafe.  Oh. my. gosh.  This place was awesome!  It was packed with people and had lots of character, and the food was just delicious.  I think this is a must-visit if you're in Asheville.  They have great biscuits they give you while you wait for your food, with blackberry jelly.  We had delicious pimento cheese dip with tortilla chips for an appetizer.  My husband had a crab meat omelet (yum!) and I had grilled cheese with fried okra.  Yum yum yum.  Highly recommend it!

While walking to the restaurant from our car we stumbled across another yarn shop that I didn't even know was there!  It was called Purl's Yarn Emporium and it was great.  A small shop but packed full of good stuff.  I picked up a skein of local yarn, a nice tweedy brown alpaca that I plan to use for a hat. I also got a skein of O-Wool Legacy Bulky in a natural color to make a hat for my daughter.  Highly recommend this shop and will definitely return on the next trip to Asheville.





We did a little bit of walking around downtown Asheville (we definitely need to go back so we can have time to explore all the stuff we missed) and then headed out of town.  On the way out of town we made one last stop at Yarn Paradise.  This stop was in a cute old house and was filled to the brim with yarn.  Lots of great stuff.  While there I found some Louisa Harding Grace Hand-Dyed on the sale table for 35% off.  I had seen a swatch of it knit up while at Purls and loved it, but couldn't find any on their shelves, so I passed it up.  And then, lucky me, I stumble across it on the sale table at the next store.  It was serendipitous! :)  So I got all the skeins they had in a lovely green color (I think it's Kiwi) to make a shawl, as well as a beautiful ice blue to make who-knows-what.




So that was our day. I have to thank my husband, when we go on these trips he is usually happy to follow along to any stores I want to visit, so long as we get to visit a fun restaurant or two.  That's the kind of trip I like!

Hopefully soon I'll have some finished projects (knitting or sewing!) to share.  I'm off to start knitting my daughter's hat, I've already rolled the yarn into a ball... Until later!

Friday Flickr Inspiration

Lately I've been thinking a lot about aqua and yellow. I've seen this color combo popping up a lot lately, and I love it!

I gathered today a bunch of aqua and yellow inspiration over at Flickr. I'm feeling the need to start a new quilt! But I need to finish all the others first!



1. Vintage Contemporary Feedsack, 2. aqua & yellow mini quilt, 3. 4 - bedding and sunshine quilt, 4. mini quilt sparkle binding, 5. Aqua Daisies Quilting Weight, 6. Baby Mish Mash, 7. 3x6 Mini Bee Block, 8. Pincushion - Yellow Aqua, 9. Nursery Chair, 10. Boycotting Snow ~, 11. nicey jane by heather bailey for free spirit fabrics, 12. aqua + yellow, 13. Patchwork Rose in Yellow & Aqua, 14. Colorscheme--aqua,yellow, 15. yellow roses, 16. Summer Flowers*Aqua

Speaking of my other projects, I still haven't basted the Hunky Dory or Bliss quilts. I'm nearly finished piecing the purple and gray quilt that I mentioned recently. We're having a sew-in with the modern quilt guild next weekend so I'm hoping to get a bunch of stuff done then!

Finally!

Today I received in the mail my new O2 quarter inch foot from Janome for my new Horizon 7700. As some of you may have heard, there's been some problems with some Horizons sewing over thick seams with the quarter inch foot. I was super sad when I had these problems from the get-go with my new machine.

Janome was said to be working on the problem and was designing a new quarter inch foot to alleviate the issue. I waited patiently to receive mine, nervously wondering all the while whether it would fix my problems. I tested out all the other features of the machine, and there were no other issues.

So today, the foot arrived! I immediately wanted to try it out, and luckily had some 9-patch blocks in progress that would be the perfect test. So I got the machine set up, and gave it a whirl.

And guess what? It worked PERFECTLY! I swear I nearly wept in gratitude! It was so smooth. Like buttah! It went right over the seams, no hitches, no veering, no slowing down, no clunking. I'm so happy! Yay! Now I can actually use the new machine. Relief!

A few finished quilt tops and some future quilts!

Today my daughter is sick and couldn't go to daycare, and it's been snowing outside and the roads out of my neighborhood are essentially impassable, so I am at home and have time to post!

My first news is that I finally got around to taking pictures of a quilt top I finished months ago, mentioned here.  It's the Hunky Dory crazy 9-patch made from the Oh Fransson! tutorial.  I used a Hunky Dory layer cake and Essex linen/cotton in Putty.



I'm not sure of the exact size, I think it's around 56" square.  I love it so much! I just need to get the backing ready so I can quilt it.  I'm thinking of a pieced backing with the couple of leftover layer cake squares and some of my Hunky Dory yardage.

I also got my behind in gear this last week and finished the quilt top I gave a little sneak peek of last week.  It's made from Moda's Bliss and I love.love.love it.  I used the patchwork print for a border, along with some Kona premium bleached muslin.  It is so bright and cheery and happy.



You'll have to pardon my pictures, I was doing the best I could without an assistant to hold them up for me, the ironing board had to do....

Again, I just need to get the backing ready so I can get it quilted.  For this one I have some Bliss flannel that just needs one long seam sewn to join the two halves of the backing.  Maybe I can get to that today.

I have also been planning my next quilt!  A good friend of mine, one I have known since the first grade(!) is expecting her first baby, a little girl, in the next couple of months.  She and her husband are huge Lakers fans, so I thought a baby girl quilt in purple might be nice.  I didn't have any Lakers purple fabrics, but I did have some other very nice options, and so I pulled together this stack to make a quilt shamelessly copied from heavily inspired by this one that I just love.



Aren't those lovely? I am going to pair it with Kona Ash for the background, along with a gray print that I'll be using for each of the 9-patch centers.  I can't wait! I think I'm going to start cutting fabric as soon as I finish this post.

And the last item I'll leave you with is some fabricy goodness that came into my home recently!  I was lucky enough to find one lone fat quarter bundle of Sherbet Pips at an online store recently, and snatched it up!  Now I just have to decide what to do with it!



Until next time!