Posies, finished

In my last update, I had managed to piece the background fabrics and pin down the EPP flowers where I wanted them. From there it was "just" a matter of basting, quilting, and binding to end up with a beautiful finished quilt for Jasmine. I really like the combination of colors and prints. Many of the prints are actually from a package of precut hexagons I picked up at Joann's quite some time ago. (Long enough ago that I don't remember!) There are also a few bird and owl prints in there that are precious leftovers from other projects that I hope she enjoys discovering.

In addition to pinning the flowers in place, I also used some lightweight fusible interfacing. I cut out rectangles 2 x 3 inches or so and steamed them under each point and each 'v' along the edge between diamonds. Doing so helped keep everything in place a little bit better during quilting than I think pins alone would have. It kind of reminds me of the little photo squares you use for scrapbooking to stick pictures to the page. 

I quilted somewhat 'organic' horizontal lines. I say organic because I was neither measuring spacing nor parallel-ness along the way, though in the end they were all approximately spaced evenly about 4 inches apart. Because the edges of the flowers were still somewhat free to roam between quilting lines, each one was hand quilted around the perimeter with pearl cotton. I had an aqua left over from my Modern Medallion quilt that was just right.

The backing I used was actually a flat sheet from a set I had in Sacramento. When I sold the bed, the sheets went with it but I kept the unused flat sheets because I liked the patterns and figured they would be great for quilts. The curlicue medallions in soft neutrals on this particular fabric suit this one very well. Mom found me this great geometric fabric for binding. The bright peach and pink diamonds and hexagons are perfect. I used 2.5" strips, as is typical, and sewed the binding down by machine with a zig zag stitch. 

I participated in two Flickr-based quilting bees a couple of years ago, and this is the first quilt to be finished from those adventures. While it ended up being quite different than the original idea I had, I quite like it! Dare I say I'm 'tickled pink'? Thank you to the ladies from the Get Your Hex On bee who spent their time stitching little hexagons into diamonds for me. All told, the quilt is 70" x 65".

It's gone from an intended Christmas gift to a birthday gift back to a Christmas gift in terms of timing the finish, but now it's done and gifted and my niece has a new, girly, bright blanket for her bed (modeled here in my parents' guest room, all pictures courtesy of Dave photographer extraordinare). 

posie progress

Another project that filled up some November evenings was finishing up these EPP flowers. Recall, they are from a paper piecing bee a couple years back and are destined to adorn my youngest neice's quilt. Jasmine is a pretty girly girl so I think she will enjoy all the sweet prints and the rather central focus on pink.

Another part of my day long sewing extravaganza on Monday was figuring this quilt out. I somewhat amorphously had in my head that I'd put these flowers on a background of one of my favorite peachy pink prints and that would be that. Well, I don't have enough of that print, but it is big enough to serve as a foundational piece for a larger effort. I improvised the rest of the background with a strip from a coordinating Amy Butler print and a couple pieces of linen. I actually really like the way that little detail balances out the flowers, and that second flower with the pink petals was totally lost on the background print so the linen is a big improvement there. The best laid plans are often improved upon by sheer luck!

I'm still figuring out how I am going to attach the flowers. They are safety pinned into place for now while I consider my options. Most likely I'll fight with the sewing machine and all those little angles, though recently Mom suggested I fuse them then do my quilting which sounds quite appealing. I could put the machine into FMQ mode and get around the flowers relatively easily though likely with very uneven stitches as I'm not very good at that yet. We'll see!

paper pieced posies

Well. Here's a project I haven't shared in quite some time. I intend to finish at least 3 quilts before Christmas. Typing it here it makes it kind of real and feels like I've committed a little more concretely to the idea. Take that, self. This is one of the three, for my youngest niece. I had a few blocks to finish the last time this appeared, and it turned out having a little EPP pouch of supplies and basted hexagons handy by the couch really helped with that. Any evening we were relaxing in front of the TV also involved stitching.

I started out thinking I'd add another round to these diamonds before stitching them together in rows to form a center panel, but after playing around with them for a while I decided that I could make a couple of flowers with them by combining them into groups of six. Mom, who was visiting at the time, agreed so I took that as a stamp of approval and started sewing. Once the flowers are done I'll take a big background pieced from linen and one of my favorite pink fabrics and artfully sew them down to finish the top. Avanti!

groovin

Despite what the frequency of posts may indicate, February and March were not months without crafting. On the contrary, I just was not inspired to write because I didn't think I was doing much. Now that it's April and I've had a short bout of Spring cleaning, I have a few of these projects gathered together and I realized that I have been creating, just in a slow and steady way rather than my past flurries of making. I'm still getting back into my groove, I suppose. I got out of the habit of sewing while I was working in Sacramento and it's taking some time to shift back from the long bouts of knitting despite the fact that I want to play with fabric. Isn't that odd? Since we redid the office, I have to find a new way of navigating my fabric play time. I can't have my card table and sewing machine out in the middle of the room anymore because this is actually a place where Dave needs to come and accomplish things.

So in the spirit of transitions, I have a couple of knitting projects and a small foray back into sewing to share. This first project I started shortly after Valentine's Day because I'd been craving a maroon *something* to wear around my neck. I hope I'll still be craving maroon next winter because it is now well into Spring.  

It will be a triangle-shaped shawl that I'm sure will look great wrapped as a scarf. The pattern is meant to look like repeated hearts, which I'm sure will take shape when the lace is all blocked out. It's fun to work on, though hard to talk to others when doing so. I made a lot of progress during downtime at a work retreat last week when I could sit quietly on my balcony to recharge my social batteries during longer breaks. Quite a ways to go though!

This next piece is exciting … it's the back to my Aidez sweater that I've been working on for a long time. I'm a little bit afraid it will be too long (my gauge must have increased since I swatched) but I'm going to power through and see how it turns out. Even if it doesn't fit quite how I imagined, I'm sure it will still be a cozy sweater and I will learn a lot from finishing all of the pieces and assembling them. If it turns out it's way too big for me, I'll be happy to donate it because it's going to be epic and awesome and someone should get to enjoy it. Just look at all those cables.

These little lovelies are for my niece's quilt. I ambitiously decided to make an EPP quilt and enlisted the help of an online quilting bee last January. I've lost track of one of the blocks, which annoyed me enough that I haven't wanted to work on this for quite some time. I've decided I'm over it (sort of) and am going to get on with my quilt-y life so I can finish both this and my Lonestar Hexagon quilt for Christmas presents this year. There I said it. This year! It's going to happen. At any rate, I found my hand stitching kit and put it next to a particularly comfy chair, which has motivated me to baste a few hexagons here and there. 

There are, as always, a few more things in the works but these are the latest things I've had my hands on. It's good to take stock every so often, and I'm glad I remembered WIP Wednesdays exist so I could link up and share!

flip a coin

Which of these color combinations do I like the best? It's hard to say! I think for sure the bright pink wins but with which color? Green or teal? Like they say, let's flip a coin. Both colors set off the pink and maroon beautifully. I enjoyed finishing these blocks up on the couch Sunday evening while Dave had some much-deserved video game relaxation and Newton purred on my feet. 

I didn't end up having any trouble with the pieces not being basted to the paper templates. The paper stayed put and behaved rather nicely. I didn't even need to press the hexagons at all before piecing; the fabric took a finger crease quite well. I will remember this next time I do any EPP for myself, because the templates were really easy to just pop out when I took a row out to fold for mailing. I wonder if you leave the basting threads in? 

At any rate, this bee is all wrapped up now, February is the last month, so far as I am aware. It was really fun and cool to realize that I do have time for a little bit of hand sewing at least once a month. Makes the whole idea of working on future hand sewn projects that much more approachable. I'll sign off tonight with a pair of 'lucky pennies': 

basted.

Bam. A lovely stack of basted hexagons for my piecing pleasure. 

I just started working on my block for the last month of the Get Your Hex On bee. The queen bee this month chose Lucky Penny fabric which has a wonderful combination of teal, mossy green, and fuchsia.  I love these colors!

The hexagons are nice and big, which counterintuitively makes them really fast for me to work on. I like the bigger pieces because the blocks grow so fast! There is such motivation to add 'just one more' piece to the project so despite the extra length for stitches I end up spending more time stitching. 

The instructions for this suggested using an alternative basting method that did not include stitching through the paper templates. I had to look up how exactly this worked; basically when the corners are folded over you take a backstitch over the fold to tack it down as you baste around. Upon reading this, I was totally unconvinced it would be sturdy enough to hold. I was wrong. Using coated hand quilting thread, the thread has enough 'stick' to keep everything nice and together as I stitch. I'm not sure this method would be as successful with smaller pieces without pressing, but I didn't find pressing necessary here. Yet another thing bees are good for… I learned something! 

finally up to date

I finally finished my November block from the Get Your Hex On bee. Sorry, Celine! It'll be on the way across the pond at long last. I'm ashamed it took me so long, really! The logistics of me and fabric meeting up to realize any sewing has become somewhat of a barrier since Sacramento came into my life in November. I brought up Christmasy colored fabrics (i.e. red and green) the last time I was down with my stash, basted hexagons last Thursday night, then packed them up in my hand stitching kit to take with me on the train Friday night.

Oh how lovely that train ride was. It finally rained here in California, we need it (!), and so I was especially thankful that I decided to try out the train down to the Bay Area for the weekend instead of driving in it. The ride was about two and a half hours long, which was plenty of time for me to stitch up this block as the wet miles zipped by outside the window. The thought has occurred to me that I could likely finish quite a few EPP blocks on the train over the course of the next year and get a quilt together. Hmmmm…. As if I needed a reminder of this year! I think I'll remember it just fine. I digress.

Luckily I finished December's block and January was my month to send out packages so I got a respite.  I have received several of my blocks back and they are looking great. It will likely take me longer than the time I have until my nieces' birthdays to finish that quilt up and get another one done ("one for you, one for your sister") but I'm sure they will make fine Christmas presents at the end of this year. I haven't done my own block for January, but if we don't think about that, I'm all up to date! It's a good feeling.

back to bees

Playing a bit of catch up with bees… this little block is for December's Get Your Hex on queen bee. It was really fun to work on because the pieces are so small! Each hexagon is a little bit bigger than my thumb. It went pretty quick, and I love the vintage feel of the fabrics she sent.

I still owe November's queen her block -- I need to get a chance to actually touch my fabrics for that, though. It hasn't been possible in the brief times I've been in the same city with my stash, but I have high hopes for this weekend. Thankfully she has been very understanding about it. 

On bees:

Last year I joined two more bees in addition to one I was already in to give myself some more social contact with folks and also because I was enjoying the small potato-chip-like project of making a block or two for someone else. Part of the drawback was that a lot of my sewing time was taken up with just bee commitments and I didn't get to work much on some big projects of my own that I had planned. However I got to try a lot of new block designs and meet new people so I'd say it was totally worth it. I'd highly recommend it. That said….

Given the new job/living situation it is a bit much to continue to keep up with. I can't just pop into the sewing room anymore. It was a tough decision, but I left the Love circle of do.Good Stitches, my first bee and the group that inspired me to get even more involved. Given that we stitch from our stash and my stash is … well… 120 miles away, it seemed like a logistical stressor to make sure I got a block done every month. I wasn't gonna like it, and they weren't gonna like me if I was sporadically late. I shall miss them so. The Bee Sew Modern bee ended in September so that's off my plate, and the Get Your Hex On bee has just a couple months left. It's tempting to stick with a hand stitching bee where folks send out fabric because it fits better with my available time and resources. I'll have to see what opportunities come up once GYHO is over, but I'm trying to be responsible here :)

Get your hex on January

Happy New Year! January is my month in the Get Your Hex On bee, so I've written up a little post to outline the details for my fellow stitchers. We are going to be indulging ourselves in 'girly' and 'bright' this month. 

Each of the stacks above contains 12 hexagons and 4 squares (with the exception of two which have all squares). I've had this pack of pre-cut hexagons for a while now and I decided to augment them with fabrics from my stash to get started on what I hope will turn out to be large enough to be a twin sized quilt when I'm finished. 

We will be stitching these into concentric diamonds, with 4 hexies of one color in the middle outlined with 12 of the second color. When I get all of the blocks back, I'll add another round of 20 hexies to each block and see what I have and how much bigger I'll need to get. The blocks will end up looking rather similar to these I found on Flickr. Thank you, ladies, for helping me get started on what would otherwise be quite an intimidating hand stitched project! That's a lot of hexies.... 

Each of you will receive a set of fabric and 16 hexagon paper pieces 1.25" on a side. These should allow plenty of wiggle room on the 1.875" pre-cut hexagons for seam allowance. Please leave the pieces in when sending them back since I'll be adding to them. It will make things so much easier.

I enjoy the colors and patterns in these fabrics, I hope you do as well! I figured it would be a good way to brighten up the winter days. Happy stitching!

studio beautification part un

This week I've been hatching plans for pillows to use on my daybed in the Sac studio. I started in on a bright and colorful pillow to brighten up the otherwise pretty neutral-looking side of the room where the bed is. Using navy/orange/purple in one pillow looks a little Halloween-y right now, but I'm sure I'll like it when all is said and done. 

I'm using a free paper pieced kaleidoscope pattern from Red Pepper Quilts. I hope by using primarily navy in the blocks that I can bring a bit more of that color into my living space --- I'm pretty good on purple ;) When the pieces are all assembled I have the fabric arranged so that the secondary star pattern is all navy and the scrappy purple and orange fabrics dance around the block in no particular order. 

So far the block is 16.5" square. I want it to snugly fit on a 24" pillow form --- I'm always bad at remembering how to size pillow covers to get the fluff that I want. I think maybe 22" finished? I hope I have notes on my dogwood pillows somewhere...  I think I will add a plain navy border around this rather than more kaleidoscope blocks. I'm liking 16 and keeping the center as a navy star rather than 25 which would make the center a purple and orange cross. That might be getting a bit obsessive. 

I also want to put a zipper in the middle of the back instead of using an envelope closure. We'll see how well that goes! After this is finished I have plans for one or two more large pillow covers. Of course, I can't decide what I want to do. Typical. 

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. I'll be looking for inspiration in the rest of the links, for sure. 

snowflakes in October

It's a little bit early to think about the holidays if you aren't a crafty person, but if you are, then it's about time. I'm still stuck on thinking about birthday gifts, but one of the gals in my hive of the Get Your Hex On bee is planning her holiday tree skirt. Good on her!

She sent us packages with holiday themed fabrics to baste up and stitch into snowflakes. Late last week I took advantage of a quiet afternoon, curled up in the sewing room, and got to work. A couple of hours later I had the first two snowflakes of the year! (in my zip code, anyway)

Pretty posy

This little lovely is a bee block for the Get Your Hex On bee. It's a simple grandmother's garden block, but was oh so fun to stitch up. The fabrics we received in the package look like retro reproduction prints and they are in bright, bold colors. I especially like how the pop of solid yellow in the center sets it all off. 

I will say, after having participated in this bee for the last several months, hand piecing a quilt top no longer seems so intimidating to me. I can see the appeal of having a little travel pouch full of shapes to sew together and seeing the project grow block by block over time. When it's done there must be such a sense of accomplishment being able to say it was all done by hand. 

I also see the wisdom of having a bee full of members help out. ;)

Striking solid stripes

The Love circle blocks this month are kind of cool, and huge! Rachel wrote up a tutorial for these striking stripey blocks made using foundation paper piecing that end up a whopping 15" x 24". She asked for all solids in a mixture of grays, dusty blues, a variety of aquas, citron yellow, and medium pink. 

I don't have much in the way of solids in my stash. I have a good chunk of white and linen, but other than that it's sort of whatever little scraps I have left from previous projects. Soooo I went out and bought a few quarter yards to combine with those scraps. The colors here are Kona candy blue, pomegranate, and gray, a tone-on-tone white I had strips of already, and that interesting yellow/green from Mom's sewing machine cover I've been using the remainders of lately. 

To get a big enough piece of paper to chop up, I figured rather than piece together printer paper I'd be clever. I pulled out my roll of freezer paper. Hilariously as soon as I started ironing I realized why Rachel hadn't come out and suggested it -- it sticks to the ironing board! Duh. It actually wasn't at all bad. It peeled off easily and left no stickiness behind. As a bonus it stabilized the pieces and prevented wonkiness of the template paper while I was pressing. (Thankfully I was pressing on the 'paper side' so I didn't gunk up my iron.) The only thing was it was a little bit tacky on the sewing machine when feeding it through, but barely. Silly me, though. 

It has been a while since I've had the mental space to want to turn on music and sew. Sewing had become my time to quietly let my mind wander and decompress. Feeling particularly relaxed today after a morning of riding and afternoon coffee with 'the girls', I turned on some older music I haven't listened to in a while (ahem, R.E.M Automatic for the People) and went to town. I'm taking advantage of these next couple months before I start my new position to relax, ride, and enjoy myself. Check! This was an enjoyable block to make.

It feels a little bit nautical to me, probably because it's basically primary colors with their fancy clothes on. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole quilt top with all the other colors. Of course, I always look forward to that part.

Little house on the prairie

Love circle blocks this month are pretty free-form. Natalie requested "happy houses and trees" while giving us free reign to do what we would like as long as we were bright and scrappy. She also posted some suggested house blocks to get us started, and I chose to use the suggested pattern from verykerryberry.

I blew it up a little bit to make things easier on myself and set to freezer paper piecing. I've only used freezer paper once before to make a reverse applique panel. This was quite different, and a bit more fiddly. I'm glad I tried it. I might have more respect for foundation paper piecing now. It's possible things would have gone more smoothly for me if I had trimmed around each piece with the same allowance all around, then I could have lined up fabric edges instead of feeling my way through the fabric for the pieces of paper. Lesson learned.

I did end up with quite a cute house in the end. Some cupcake-loving couple lives here, apparently. That might be me and Dave. Though he would never go for a pink roof. You can see some of my points aren't exact (cough chimney cough) but for a first time with this technique I'm pretty happy. If there is anything I've learned after making a few large quilts, it's that the small mistakes disappear in the final product. 

After trimming up my little house I needed to set it in a larger block, Natalie didn't ask for a particular size or shape but requested the blocks be close in area to a 12.5" square or larger. I decided to improvise myself a bit of a scene. It was straightforward to sew some green and blue together to fit the sides of the house and I set it just off center because I liked it better that way. Add some blue sky to the top and green grass to the bottom and voila! An approximately 12.5" square quilt block.

I like the space in this block -- it made me think of the houses near the barn back home, set it in huge lots of grass, grass, and more grass. Plus, there's that oh so cute cupcake waiting to be eaten.

Linking to Finish it up Friday! 

Simple blossoms

With my sewing machine stowed away so much this summer, I actually got into a nice rhythm of getting my hand stitching projects done pretty readily. I've got a little pouch with my scissors, templates, needles, and thread tucked away in the side table on "my" side of the couch. It has been convenient to sit and unwind with JJ Abrams' Fringe on Netflix while piecing hexagons together. 

These latest two bee blocks are star blossoms, and were quite fast and enjoyable. I really like the colors in these. As an interesting aside, this same pattern was the topic of the second post I wrote about my first time with EPP. I've learned so much since then! 

The long drought is over

After I finished writing my thesis on Monday I finally picked up needle and thread again. It felt good! Unfortunately after two straight evenings of EPP my fingers don't feel so good now ;o)

This panel is headed out to a fellow hexagon bee member in the morning. 

testing, testing

Back March I had decided what pattern I was going to use for a 'me quilt' with my precious stash of Indie fabrics. Needless to say, despite my plans, I haven't started it yet. Besides the Crazy Spring of 2013 that I've just experienced, I have to say I've been putting it off because I'm feeling intimidated. It's my favorite fabric and a pretty complicated block - paper pieced even! Maybe I've been waiting for that elusive large chunk of time to appear so I can start. Regardless. Intimidated.

So I decided to test it. Sara requested paper pieced stars to add to her quilt-in-progress in the Bee Sew Modern bee this month. I perused her current blocks to check that no one has already made a Schoenrock Cross for her and decided that surely ONE block can't be that bad to make. Now that it's finished, I agree with myself. It wasn't really all that bad. Yay!

Sara requested a black background and a rainbow of colors. Yep, back to the scrap jars! I'm continually amazed at the things I can come up with out of those jars. I printed out four of the foundation paper piecing templates from Where the Orchids Grow, my original inspiration for this quilting adventure. After some cursing and ripping out of several seams I finished all the paper pieced sections. I may try using the freezer paper piecing method for my quilt -- I might go batty if I did a whole quilt using foundation paper piecing. 

The strips for the center cross were quick and easy, and now the whole rainbow is complete. 

The pattern is for 10 inch blocks, and I needed a 12.5 inch block for the bee. I added on borders in black to make up the difference; they are much wider than they need to be because my brain went on vacation, but she can trim it up when adding it to her collection. Better too big than too small. 

During the making I kept thinking to myself "Self, pick a simpler block!" but now that I've finished this one I'm pretty convinced the payoff is worth the effort. Am I crazy? Maybe. 

Check out what others are up to at Finish it up Friday

Barbie's got style

Back in December, my nieces got a pretty awesome dollhouse from Santa. This year for their birthdays I thought I would make little bed sets for the beds in the dollhouse. I made each of the girls a quilt and a couple of little pillows and pillowcases that should hopefully fit nicely.

The pillows look small, but they are actually the size of the mattress when put together. The quilts will overhang, I hope. I imagine with play they'll get softer and drape better. Right now they're a wee bit on the stiff side.

I took the opportunity of making small quilts to try out some new-to-me things. Quilt #1 is my first foray into the lovely world of cathedral windows. I've always been fascinated by this pattern and I had a lot of fun with this. My points aren't great, but I know where to improve the next time so a lesson learned makes up for the imperfections. I hope Barbie doesn't mind.

I enjoyed using the purple fabric with the little dolls on it... the queen in particular just cracks me up. Rather than leaving the background white, I filled the squares in with a cute pink owl print. I do believe that pink, purple, and green cover all the bases of favorite colors between me and my nieces. The curves were actually not difficult at all to sew; the hardest part was actually doing all the fabric origami necessary to start out and sewing all the background pieces together making sure all the pieces were aligned correctly. I still think it turned out pretty wickedly cute, though.

Quilt #2 is simpler in construction but challenged me to try out free motion quilting for the first time. I got the hang of it about 1/4 of the way through... it's important to actually get the needle moving fast enough so everything looks smooth and not jerky with big stitches. Thinking and going slow is actually counterproductive. Go figure. Below is a picture of one of the better spots on the little quilt. I just did a random loopy pattern that I actually think turned out looking rather nice and was quite forgiving of small mistakes on my part.

I had fun picking out each scrap for the hexagons from the rainbow of jars on my desk. The piecing went really fast (I basted and pieced all while standing at the ironing board, I was done before I knew it) and I had the perfect-sized pieces of blue linen to use for the background and a colorful piece of fabric for the back -- no cutting! Sewing serendipity at it's best.

I like how this one turned out quite a lot. The rainbow on the sky blue linen really pops and I like the pink binding fabric I ended up choosing, after much hemming and hawing, I might add. Both quilts are nice but if I had to pick one to put on my bed I'd probably go with the hexagon rainbow.

There are several things I really like about these projects: 1) they were darn fast to finish 2) the pillows are super cute, being so tiny and all 3) I stretched my skill set working on them 4) they are bright and colorful and 5) they were made completely from scraps. I'm continually amazed at the neat things I can come up with out of my scrap jars.

I think Barbie and Skipper are going to have some pretty awesome quilts in their house. Best on the dollhouse block, I imagine.

Linking up a new place today... Sew Cute Tuesday at Better off Thread.