Hometown Throw Pillow

We had a very rainy morning here today, but slowly things started to improve and when I noticed a moment when it had stopped raining I grabbed my first finished leftover HSTs throw pillow and took it outside for a photo. Oh, also a towel to dry off the bench beforehand!


I used a 16x16 pillow insert, and followed this awesome pillow tutorial from Sew Mama Sew and it turned out so well! The fit could be a little snugger but all of the fabrics are yet to be washed for the first time, so once all 3 pillow covers are finished I will throw them all in the wash together, hope for a tiny bit of shrinkage, and I think the fit will be much nicer.



Linked up with the following.....

Off to the races....

Swoon is basted.....

....walking foot installed...(looks like I still have some dust to clean off!).....

...the view from my sewing machine...

Let the quilting begin! First time quilting a queen size quilt on this average machine. Wish me luck!

Blogger's Quilt Festival ~ Fall 2011

I only learned about Blogger's Quilt Festival yesterday, literally. I didn't know such a thing existed, but I am glad I was told because I think it's great! One place for any quilt bloggers who feel so inclined to show off one of their finished quilts, and get to see everyone else's best/favorite/cutest/modern/traditional/etc. quilts. Awesome.

I've decided to show the quilt that I made for my son, Owen, completed summer 2011.


I have posted about it before, but will post it again! This is the quilt, of the few I have made so far, that I struggled with the most, because it wasn't "perfect" (whatever that means in quilting!), but I pushed through and in the end, love how it turned out. And so does Owen, so that in itself makes the effort worth it!

Owen had told me the colours that he wanted (red, green, blue & orange! Wow!) and together we chose the Shoo Fly Quilt by Malka Dubrawsky after looking at many many options that he didn't like! I chose all of the fabrics from the clearance section of Connecting Threads, picking out 2 different prints from each of the colours that Owen had selected. He was disappointed when the fabric arrived because apparently he was expecting solid colours. Oops. But I got to work and turns out that all of the fabrics met with his approval by the end.

I struggled with getting my points to line up when joining the blocks, to the point of putting it all aside for quite a few months. But eventually I decided to just get the blocks together whether or not the points matched up and probably no one but me would notice, and you know, I was right. It felt so good to get this one finished!


The last touch was the pieced back (first time for that too) and a bright green binding, again at Owen's request, and finally he had a new cozy quilt for his bed. It's bright and colourful, just like he is!


Make sure you head over to the Blogger's Quilt Festival web page and check out everyone else's beautiful work!

Shopping!!

I'll be honest. I don't like shopping. I don't even particularly like going to the fabric store because I get so easily overwhelmed by all of the options. Plus, at the fabric store that I shop at most often (the choices are very slim here!) they have all of their fabric arranged by colour and not in groups of fabric lines or anything like that, and I'm finding that I have a very difficult time coordinating fabrics from all different areas of the store. But...I did come out successful today (I won't tell you how long I spent in the store before deciding!). Pillow inserts were 50% off so that was a score. I also bought 108" wide fabric for the Swoon backing at 60% off. Woohoo! Last but not least I found some really fun small-scale print houndstooth fabric which will be the quilt binding as well as the backing for the cushions that I am making. What do you think?


And how about a sneak peek of the first of the cushion covers that I have been working on.....

W.I.P. Wednesday ~ And giveaway winner!

First off, I used www.random.org to choose a winner for the mug rug giveaway. We had 22 entries and the winner is comment #7.....Debbie!!! Debbie has a wonderful blog, A Quilter's Table, where she frequently posts about her projects, swaps, and also some yummy recipes. You should check it out! Congrats, Debbie, I have enjoyed getting to know you a bit! :) Send me your mailing address when you read this. :) (P.S. If anyone can tell me how to embed an image of the random.org results into a blog post, I'd appreciate it!!)

Ongoing projects:

- Swoon !! This quilt top is getting to be so huge and unwieldy! It's beautiful, and I need to keep on, but I'm just at the stage that every additional piece of fabric that is seamed onto it takes forever and is difficult on the ironing board, etc. I have done a fair bit of other small scale sewing this week (see below!) so I am ready to get going on Swoon again. Since last week I have added 2.5" sashing pieces between all of the blocks and 4" sashing on the two sides so far. This is not what the pattern calls for but I am making it a bit bigger (gasp! What was I thinking, and how am I going to quilt this??) to fit on our queen size bed. Still need to add sashing to top and bottom.


~ I posted earlier this week the four blocks that I constructed out of leftover HSTs from the Swoon. I love them!! They will eventually become cushion covers to match the quilt.


But I guess four wasn't enough because yesterday when I spotted this tutorial, I knew I had to make just one more block!! This one was fun, my first time doing wonky stars and I will revisit this, but not on such a small scale. To give you an idea, this entire block is only 12.5". Each of those tiny squares, for instance the center of each star, is 1" finished. Needless to say it was a bit fiddly, but still the results are fun and something I can truly say I've never done before! (Forgive the fairly poor photo, I am struggling lately with enough light for pictures inside because it is not always feasible these days to take stuff outside!)


Projects up and coming:

- Still waiting for the Little Apples fabric. Apparently lost somewhere in the abyss of the Canadian postal system. Been just about 3 weeks since ordering, though I think I should just expect that things will take this long.

'Little Apples' by Aneela Hoey for Moda Fabrics

HST love ~ part 2

So yesterday I posted the first two blocks made from my leftover HSTs from the Swoon quilt. Last night, I made two more and believe it or not, except for 2 lonely HSTs, I used them all up!! The first block shown below was inspired by this mini quilt from 'The Purl Bee' website on a much smaller scale. The second block below started out as an ordinary zig zag block, but I played around with the layout and I like the results much better. A bit more interesting than a zig zag, what do you think?




Linking up with the following...

HST love

{The giveaway is still open for another 2 days or so, still time to enter!}

Won't it be surprising when you come here and see something that is NOT made from Hometown fabric? Hopefully soon, but not quite yet! I've started making a dent in my stack of leftover HSTs from the Swoon blocks, this time actually sewing them together! These are constructed out of 2.5" HSTs, so the finished blocks at this point are 12.5" square. I am planning on turning these into cushion covers and will probably add sashing around the sides before proceeding but for now I am so pleased with how these are coming together!




Linked up with the following.....

This one's for you, Mom!

After my mom left a comment on the giveaway post (please click the link and enter a comment to win my little prize, don't be shy, the more the merrier!!) I emailed her to say that she indeed did not need to win anything from me, that I'd make a mug rug especially for her! So here you go, Mom, hope you like it and that it works on your little table!!

Tutorial used: Scrappy Stack Mug Rug by Jeni from In Color Order
Fabric: mostly scraps of Hometown by Sweetwater, and assorted other scraps from my collection for the cream border and backing (not shown)

Linking up with 'Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday', 'Sew & Tell Fridays', and 'Finished it Fridays' (buttons below)

A Giveaway!

Thanks to everyone who participated, this giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to Debbie!


Just for fun, I want to do a little giveaway! I participate in so many (only won once so far...) so I figured why not do one myself? I've had so much fun writing this little blog for the last month or so and have enjoyed "getting to know" many of you through it, you've all been so encouraging and the interaction makes it even more fun!

So I made this little mug rug out of some of my Hometown scraps to give away to one of you to say thanks for reading. Nothing special to enter, just leave a comment and next Wednesday I'll do a drawing. Make sure you have an email address attached to your profile, or leave it in your comment. Good luck!

P.S. I used this Flickr photo for the design, and followed verykerryberry's tutorial for single fold binding. The binding method was a tad fussy (I'd pre-press the folds next time) but the results were great, especially good for these small projects I think.

W.I.P. Wednesday

Ongoing projects:

- my Swoon quilt, 9 out of 9 blocks finished!!!! Next I need to make sure my blocks are square (enough...) and get to work on the sashing, which is not my fave thing to do. I had a little freak out moment today when I hung the blocks all up on the line for the photo, only to notice when I took them down that some blocks had dirty spots in the corners where the clothespins were! Eek! I don't know if the line is dirty or if the clothespins were dirty, but I managed to wipe most of it off and think that with the first wash, whatever isn't already taken in by the seam allowances will wash out. At least that's what I'm telling myself!


- a little something I whipped up today, of course with some of my Swoon scraps. More to come on that later.....


Projects up and coming:

- about this???.....

'Little Apples' by Aneela Hoey for Moda Fabrics

....still waiting. I'll also need a long-ish zipper, cotton cording, and a few other things! Any guesses??

Blog header tutorial link

I totally meant to include this in my last post but forgot, and now several people have asked...

To create my new header collage I used a tutorial by 'The Barefoot Seamstress'; you can find it by clicking here. It was super easy and I will definitely use it again.

Swoon Block #9

So, the template....what do you think? It is so different and I'm not used to all the white, but I wanted something somewhat simple and it is growing on me. I like using my own photos for the header!

In other news, Swoon block 9 is finished!!!


Pattern: Swoon by Camille Roskelley of Thimble Blossoms
Fabric: Hometown by Sweetwater for Moda
Prints used in this block: "Barbershop" in the colour Sky (blue dots) and "Cross Town" in the colour Cream (red/cream)