Bloggers' Quilt Festival ~ spring 2012

Thank you for stopping by my blog!  This is my second time participating in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival, and I look forward to checking out many of the links this time around as well.  Last spring, I jumped into the world of making bed quilts.  First up were quilts for my two boys' beds. After those were finished, I knew I wanted to make a queen size quilt for our bed as well but was having a hard time choosing a design.  That was when Camille Roskelley's "Swoon" quilt pattern came on the scene and I was smitten with it as soon as I saw it popping up on blogs.  

I also fell in love with the Hometown fabric line, by Sweetwater for Moda.  I love the colours in the line, the varied designs - tiny floral, dots, whimsical flowers - and knew that I wanted to use this fabric for our quilt.

The making of this quilt was not without its bumps, including a few cutting mistakes (oops!), sewing machine troubles, and the general awkwardness of quilting a queen size quilt on a home machine, but in the end it all managed to come together.  Phew!

I chose a simple vertical straight line quilting design.  It's subtle, and nothing fancy, but I think it totally works and allows the large blocks and the colours of the fabrics to really shine, and honestly I think it was all I could manage on a queen size quilt!

Using the leftover HSTs from the flying geese units in this quilt, I put together some throw cushions for the bed, and then veeeeeery recently I made new pillowcases for our pillows and finally the ensemble is complete.  

Fresh Sewing Day ~ December

The start of another month, December no less! Let's take a look back at November. When I gather my projects from a single month all in one place I am always amazed at how many I have finished. Many this month were smaller projects, and one was very large (which is why the rest were small! hehe).

The biggest finish this month was my Swoon quilt. It was fun to make, from start to finish, with a few frustrating bumps in between, mostly related to machine quilting a monster! Working on it at the same time that Debbie was working on hers helped motivate me to keep going and to finish! The quilt has been washed (yay, no colours ran!) and has officially made its home on our bed.

Next were a number of pillows finished this month. Two for our bed (one HST design and one wonky stars) to join this one from last month, all out of Swoon leftovers. Also a box style seat cushion for my sewing chair.

And finally, the rest are going to be lumped into the category of "Minis".

1. Little House mini quilt, made for the Mini Quilt Challenge. 2. Little Apples wonky log cabin ~ still in progress. 3. Reversible Modern Table Runner. 4. Circle of Flying Geese mini quilt.

The end of the Swoon adventure

Finished. And I love it. A lot. All of those bits that frustrated me in the process, the parts where I made "mistakes" in the piecing and quilting, as I suspected none of those are evident now that it is complete, it's just a bunch of Hometown Swoonery goodness. Thanks to Camille Roskelley for such an awesome pattern, to the girls at Sweetwater for such lovely fabric to work with, and to all of you for your kind and supportive comments along the way. Without further ado, the photos....

{The test drive.....hehehe}

Linking up with the following:

{Sew} Modern Monday @ Canoe Ridge Creations
Sew Darn Crafty @ Sew Many Ways
Manic Monday @ Sew Happy Geek
Made With Love @ Sew Chatty
Made by You Monday @ Skip to my Lou
Just Something I Whipped Up @ The Girl Creative
Handmade Tuesday @ Ladybug Blessings
Tuesday Time Out @ Reasons To Skip The Housework
Made by ME @ JAQS Studio

The home stretch...

....almost there! It's about 350" around and I probably have about a quarter of it left. I do enjoy the handstitching a lot, especially now that the weather is chilly and I get to sit with a big heavy quilt on my lap, but I think I will enjoy finishing even more!

W.I.P. Wednesday

This is pretty much all I've been working on this week. I had Swoon basted on Saturday and thought it would take a few days to do the plain straight line vertical stitching. Let me just say how glad I am that I chose a very simple quilting design, because working a queen size quilt through the machine is HARD. I started in the center and then worked out to the edge, so naturally as I got closer to the edge, it got easier because of less bulk to work through the machine. The first half went off without a hitch. The second half has been causing me nothing but problems! First thing that happened, and more than once I'll point out, is that I ran out of bobbin thread mid-row. SO frustrating. Then what I noticed was that the basting was probably not as good as it should have been. I use basting spray and I think I just went a little too light on it, plus with all the handling of the quilt during the quilting process I think it had just had enough!! So I had to peel back the fabric carefully and do some re-spraying on more than on occasion. There were also a few incidences of ripping out partial rows of stitches because I had inadvertently sewn some tucks in the backing. I thought that the quilting would be done yesterday....well, still not done. But now I probably have about 10 rows left to do so if it's not done today, it means that something serious has gone wrong!!! I'm not anticipating that though. ;) It does look pretty though, yes?

So needless to say, once this is finished I am going to be looking for some small projects! I saw that AmyLouWho is hosting a mini-quilt challenge so I am going to take her up on that, something along these lines.

The Little Apples fabric I was waiting so impatiently for arrived, and it's adorable, but unfortunately I have done nothing with it except for a wash and iron. Maybe next week I'll have something to report on that.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Fresh Sewing Day ~ November

The start of a new month means Fresh Sewing Day over at Lily's Quilts! Looking back at the month that just passed, as far as sewing goes for me there was a clear theme! It wasn't quite all about the Swoon quilt, but it was pretty much all about the Hometown fabric! I will be finishing the machine quilting on Swoon this morning, so I suppose that means it has taken me almost exactly a month to complete it. Of course it is not yet bound, and that in itself could take a little while even though I actually enjoy the handstitching part of it, but I'd estimate that in a week's time this quilt will be finished!!


It's also small blog meet-up time at Lily's Quilts, so I will participate for the last time since my follower count is somehow up to 49 already! Who are all you people??? :) But seriously, I love it that you have all been enjoying my little blog.

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P.S. A few random blog questions........ 1) does anyone find the font size on my blog to be too small (Mom??) ;) I almost find it too small myself and I don't really have vision problems (Question 1 has been answered....I've just changed the font to one point larger, and changed it to black, much better!)......... 2) does anyone know the answer to this: if I re-organize my photo files/folders on my computer will it affect the photos that I have already loaded onto my blog? Thanks!!!

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!

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

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??

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)

Swoon Block #8

What can I say? Lots of sewing time this weekend! YAY! My sewing machine seems to be hanging in there; I'm still needing to keep a close eye on the tension, it seems to change at will, but still it is mostly doing what it should be doing. Block number 8 . . .


I think this is probably the brightest combination of prints of the blocks so far, and I love it! My new favorite ~ but I think I've said that, at least in my mind, of each one!

Pattern: Swoon by Camille Roskelley of Thimble Blossoms
Fabric: Hometown by Sweetwater for Moda
Prints used in this block: "Flower Shop" in the colour Stop Sign (red floral) and "Barbershop" in the colour Bicycle (yellow dots)

Linked up with Craftastic Monday at Sew Can Do