December Quilting Bee Round Up

This month was an off month for Snip.Sew.Send, which gave me a little more breathing room.

To keep up with the Sew Kid at Heart bee, I made Ariel's spiderweb block. She sent a great set of fabrics and the tutorial she had us use was really straight forward. I can't wait to see this one done since it's going to be another stunner! Also, if you want some seriously cute fabric and illustrations, you have to see her etsy shop. My favorite is this beautiful illustration of a sewing machine and then has an actual quilt block coming out it.


For Traveling Threads, SweetLibertyGrace sent out fabrics from Michael Miller's Whimsy line (love the blues in this line!!) and asked for block from Quilters Cache. I picked Carol's Star and I loved this pattern. It's paper piecing, which I really like doing, but looking at it after it was done, I realized one of the pieces is reversed! I don't even know how I could've done that... I didn't have enough of the white print to fix it, so I suppose it's just going to be Amish-inspired! (with an "intentional" mistake) sigh.


I'm hoping to sew a bunch of things before I travel for the holidays, but end of the semester teaching stuff keeps getting in the way! My Christmas quilt is just begging to be worked on! Wish me luck!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! Jon and I traveled to Philly to visit with his family and meet his new (6 week old) niece, Zoe. We had a great time and she's such a cutie!

Making improvements

I just did some upgrades to the blog. I beautified the sidebar, my list of How-To's and my list of completed projects. Hopefully it makes it easier to find things. Click on over from your reader and check it out. Let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions.

November Quilting Bee Round-Up

This weekend I also got caught up on my quilting bees. This month, alexdk sent out Christmas fabrics for the Traveling Threads bee and asked for either wonky houses or log cabin style blocks. I've been wanting to do a wonky house and REALLY wanting to do wonky trees (check out the ones I got from RuthieQuilts) so I free-pieced this block (12.5" square):



Gretchen from Snip.Sew.Send is working on a "Jewel Squares" quilt and wanted blocks that are 2”, 3.5”, 6.5” and 9.5”. I love the fabric she sent and these little blocks are really addicting. The pictures don't really do the colors justice (it's been cloudy all weekend), but  I think this quilt will be spectacular! Here are the blocks I made (6.5" and 9.5"):



I'm also plugging along with the Sew Kid at Heart bee. I'm hoping that I can have most (if not all) of the blocks done in January before the next semester starts. This weekend I made these string blocks for a quilt Leslie (aka TwentyEighthStreet) is making for her son. The colors are really great.

Zoe's Jungle Quilt

Jon and I are really excited about how the jungle quilt turned out! We love the faces and there are more great patterns in the book we used (Quilts, Bibs, Blankies...Oh My!) Thank you so much for all of your input on my last post. After much back and forth, we agreed with most of you about the orange binding, but Jon wanted to go with a green thread after we decided to quilt with a leaf pattern (This blog has been inspiring me to quilt different designs).



If I had to pick again, I think I would've gone with a blue or orange thread. The green worked well with the motif, but does clash a little bit with the lighter blue and the pink.



The backing is Alexander Henry's 2D Zoo which is such a great print! The final size is 36"x36" which is the same size as the quilt I made for Little B. It's a little on the small side, but with how much use Little B's parents have been getting from theirs, I think it works!



Jon and I are going to meet Zoe this week when we head down to Philly for Thanksgiving and I can't wait! Her parents don't know we've been working on this and I'm not sure they are even aware that I sew as much as I do.

As I mentioned, we decided to go with a meandering leaf design for the quilting. I also quilted around the outer edges of the animals in the same colors I did the satin stitch applique. After a bunch of doodling, I figured out a fairly straight forward way to do the leaves. I'm still really new to free motion quilting but I didn't find the leaves much harder than a stippling. Since it's hard to see on the quilt, here's what the practice swatch looked like:



Since it took me a little while of doodling to figure out how to make this shape, I figured I'd share how I did it.

As a side note, I did want to mention that I heard concerns about using invisible thread for a baby quilt. Since the nylon thread doesn't break like natural fibers, it could get caught around a small finger. I tried getting more information about this but I couldn't find a good source, but it is something to keep in mind when picking threads.

Team Project

I need some advice.

 

The asking for help part is towards the bottom of the post, but here's some back story. Jon and I have been busy this weekend working together on a quilt for his new niece, Zoe. She was born October 14th, but we're going to meet her for the first time at Thanksgiving. We've been planning this quilt for a while (wow, was that post really in June??) and of course a deadline will get anything finished!

We picked out the fabric together last weekend, which was fun since I don't think we've ever done that before. He's had a lot of fun tracing and cutting the appliques and figuring out the placement of the fabrics.

I also had him sew all the nine-patches since straight lines aren't too bad. He's used the sewing machine once before to make pillows and I think the nine patches came out pretty well considering he's never done it before. I did the appliques, but he cut most of the shapes which was really helpful.

What do I do now?

Orange Da Dot binding (right) or Blue Prints Charming (left)?

What color thread do I use for quilting since there are so many colors? I have no idea how to pick thread colors, so any advice on how you do it is much appreciated.

How should I quilt it? I don't think I want to quilt over the faces (I don't need to, do I?), but I'm pretty open about what to do with the rest of it.

I could stipple, but I was also thinking about swirls and/or leaves or something... any ideas? It's not very big (only about 35" x 35") so I'm willing to be adventurous. Let me know what you think!

Spoiled Rotten!

Blogland and Flickr have really spoiled me recently. I'm always in awe of the generosity of this community.  First, I won a giveaway from Anne at Film and Thread and got this really cute cowboy fabric. Whoever is having a baby next should expect a quilt with this! I can't get over how cute the cowboys are!

As if the giveaway wasn't enough, she also sent this great embroidery pattern and thread! I'm just starting to try out embroidery and these patterns are perfect! I love the colors (could it be because they're so similar to the Neptune fabrics??)

 

I also won a giveaway over at By Small Means! April made coasters and was giving away the winner's favorite. I picked these ones and I'm really excited for them to come in the mail.

For Traveling Threads, I sent out Christmas fabrics and I've received almost all of my blocks! I need to make a couple and there's one set that's coming soon. I'm going to post more about that soon since I want to get some feedback and since I'm committed to finishing it for this Christmas season. I also joined LauraJ's Christmas Quiltalong to encourage me to keep at it.

The set of blocks I received from Leslie had an unexpected and wonderful extra! She made Jon and I ornaments for our tree. I think they're really cute and so thoughtful. I'm excited to put them up!

 

 

Thanks Blogland!! You've really spoiled me rotten!