Serenade for Matilda

I recently finished up another commissioned project - for the same coworker that got the last one! She asked for something girly with butterflies for her granddaughter, Matilda. Kate Spain's Serenade line seemed to fit the bill quite well, so I paired it with one of the gray Konas and went to town! I had a good time with this one - small and quick but very satisfying!

Before I get to photos - Fresh Squeezed Fabrics is having a contest where, if you get enough people to repin your favorite fabric bundle on Pinterest, you can WIN the bundle! I aimed low and went with a $15 bundle of Bella, so I need 15 repins - help! :) Check out my pin here, and repin to help me win! Check out the details to win your own bundle here.

On to photos!

There's my attempts at artsy quilt photography. Except that last one, where my leg got in the way. Whoops.

The pattern for the quilt is from the Moda Bake Shop - very fun/easy way to use charm packs, particularly ones with prints that you'd really like to feature. I think I might use this for a couple more charm packs I have, especially those where I have some yardage from the line too (like Little Apples or Guising, where I got matching solids).

Sold!

I'm a very happy gal right now. I just sold another one of my quilts to a coworker. Now, I'm no fabulous Etsy salesperson, making a ton of money on each quilt or anything like that, but I figure as long as I cover the cost of materials, I'd probably make the quilts anyway for fun, so my time doesn't really need to be paid for at this time.

Anyway, the latest finish that I've sold is this one, which I last blogged about on my big fat WIP post.

Here it is, all finished and on our bed for scale (it's a futon, which is roughly full-size - and sorry they're Instagram photos, it's the only way I can make myself take any these days!):

I called this one my cross-hatch quilt. I started it similar to a jelly-roll-race quilt, but cut it into pieces and used those as "blocks," which I sashed together in alternating directions.

This also marked my first attempt at free-motion quilting! The results weren't fantastic, but the whole thing definitely seems more feasible now, and with practice, I'm sure I could become okay at it. I mostly did straight-line, stitch-in-the-ditch quilting, but used these little swirlies across the big berry-colored, otherwise-plain section in the middle. 

And a close-up of the fabrics. They were mostly Joann red tag or remnant choices. The back is flannel, mostly teal with a stripe of barely-polka-dotted-pink across the center.

Overall I'm really pleased with the result, happy to have another quilt finished and out into the world, and excited to have a little more fabric money in my pocket!

Bon Voyage!

Dianna from Polka Dots and Pastries has expressed some dismay that I don't post more often - hopefully now that she is leaving, off on a great voyage across the country, I will be inspired to post more about my crafting so that she can keep up with my projects. ;)

And even though this is not exactly a great photo of me, it does show off two completed WIPs, at least a little!

The girl smiling is NOT me... but that leg and the skirt ARE mine! Haha! My flowers are now finished,with only a touch-up appointment to go, and the skirt, made out of that lovely chair print, is one I finished!

I managed to cross something off my mental to-do list - getting my machine cleaned! - at Cathy's Sew and Vac here in Chico. They recently moved, and even more recently became home to a local quilt shop, that had a yard of the chairs on sale for something like $4.50! How could I resist!! In fact, it was tough not to get the print in the dark purple, the light purple AND the red!

Anyway...the photo itself is from dear Dianna's going away party, and you can see more photos of me in her photos on this blog post. Good-bye, friend - have a fantastic adventure on the east coast!! :)

All sorts of happenings

I've been sewing, don't worry! As I mentioned a few posts ago, lately I've been in love with all kinds of squares, which I'd been turning into four patches. Well, the day before yesterday, when browsing through one of my books of blocks...I realised granny squares are made of blocks....!

I've been in love with the pattern since it first hit the blogosphere, so I figured it was time to dive in! I've got six done so far. Here are five of them. (Sorry for the Instagram-quality photos, I've been lazy on that front lately!)

 Along the way, I've of course gotten some more shopping done...because I need to expand my stash like I need a hole in the head! Anyway, the FQ bundles from Pink Castle Fabrics are addictive like crazy, because they're so awesome! My favorite two from this bundle - some Hello Pilgrim and my favorite of the Flea Market Fancy prints. How do they know!?!?!? Amazing.

 Anyway, there have been some other events. Unfortunately, I've got a bit of a problem:

I seem to have, at least possibly, chipped a teensy sliver off of my cuboid bone in my right foot. It hurts to walk, though the foot itself doesn't look bad. I'm stuck in this walking boot thing until at least Saturday, at which point I have to go back to the clinic to see what happens next. The physician's assistant said the radiologist will look at it and decide if it is an actual break or just a Little bit of extra bone that's always been there. We will see. All I know is that while it hurts like crazy, I'm perfectly capable of using my sewing machine pedal with my left foot, haha!

This didn't stop me from going to the Eve 6 concert in Sacramento on Sunday night, though, believe me! I saw them in '03 and was SUPER excited to see they were gonna be so close to us so close to my birthday. This is a photo the band took of the crowd at the end of the show - I'm the person behind and to the left of the girl in the black-and-white-striped shirt in the front row. That's right - second row, dead center, for the whole show!! Rock onnnnnn!!!! ;) 

Too busy to photograph?

I was SO productive on Saturday, I'm mega-proud of myself. Of course, I didn't stop to take any photographs with my digital camera, just my iPad through Instagram. If you use it, too, my username is StephMabry. Lots of cute photos of cats, some of my hubby, and plenty of quilts, too. ;)

Now, what was I so busy with? I was busy working on all kinds of things on my Q2 Follow-Along list!

Status of those projects:

1 - K's quilt - no change. Oops.

2 - Crosshatch quilt - top is finished! back is pieced - it will be a yummy teal flannel that I think goes pretty darn well with the front. Sweet.

3 - Giant star - oh, wait, nothing here either. Maybe I wasn't as productive as I thought??

4 - 16 patch quilt - yes! Top is finished being put together, and so is the back (which will be brown flannel. SO creative, right? Not).

5 - baby quilts - Yes, more progress! Backing put together for all three, and two of them are basted - not all three because I was running out of pins and patience.

6 - Half Moon Modern - wait, nothing here, again? I can't decide if the coordinating solid that I have really coordinates as well as I want it to. Further contemplation needed.

7 - Baby clothes quilt - sorry, Rebecca, nothing done on this, but please don't think I've forgotten about it. Because I definitely haven't.

I did work on other things - see, I told you I got stuff done! I worked some more on one of the random squares quilts, so now they're sets of squares sewn into rectangles and then pinned, waiting to be made into 4-patch blocks. I haven't decided if I'm going to make them four patches or 16 patches.

I also have joined up with the My Precious QAL that's running on Flickr. The idea is that you cut into special fabric that you've been saving up and FINALLY make something with it. From the look of the Flickr group, no one's been able to use their precious Heather Ross fabric - there's lots of swapping of Mendocino going on over there! I, however, have hacked up my Outfoxed:

To turn them into squares:

Which I will use for a variation on this quilt, from Moda Bake Shop:

So the weekend tally? Two quilt tops finished, five backs put together, two quilts basted, a bunch of squares sewn into rectangles, and more fabric cut up into squares. Oh, and I finished finding fabric for the Spectrum Charm Swap: BRIGHTS, also on Flickr. There are still spaces available, if you want to join up! :)

Q2 FAL Pre-Quarter Linky Party

Most of my WIPs are on that top shelf. Note my bolts of flannel? I'm pretty ambitious. At least with my wallet, when things are on sale. (This might be the longest caption ever for a blog photo??)

What a complicated title that is if you see it without reading the post, huh? This is my post for Rhonda and Quilter in the Gap's Finish-a-Long - pre-quarter 2 goal list, let's call it. Maybe that's better. Goals. Easy peasy.

Anyway.

This is what I'm hoping to get done!

Project 1: K's quilt: Yes, the same project that was first on the list LAST quarter... but I've at least made SOME progress - all I have to do is bind it. I think I've been putting it off for so long because part of me knows it's not very good at all - it was the first quilt I put together, so the back is horribly bunched, it's not pieced very well... but I think she'll still like it, all the same.

See? Almost there.

Project 2: One of the "crosshatch" quilts: It's currently in three strips, awaiting more of the white to sash the rows together and the solid raspberry color that I can't remember the proper name of in order to add borders. I think this might be for my good friend T's little girl, who's adorable and who I know will enjoy it, if she doesn't drown in it, as she's three and this quilt seems ginormous.

Project 3: Giant star quilt number two: As I posted about previously, I finished Sara's Wedding Quilt but managed to have almost an entire quilt top left over, so I'm hoping to finish it for another friend of mine. I think I'll do similar quilting on it after I add yellow borders at the top and bottom. Note to self, buy a yard of yellow fabric.

My shoe got in the photo? Weird.

Project 4: 16 patch quilt: Made from squares from a not-so-great swap that I joined (it was my first, and I've quickly come to agree that swaps involving Joann-quality fabric aren't the greatest, even though I freely use their fabrics through my own projects). I think I might finish this up for my parents. I've got all the blocks put together, and the fabric that I've chosen for sashing has arrived. Hopefully I've got enough. I'm not entirely sure, because I'm lazy.

Project five: Baby quilts: As I mentioned above, I freely use Joann-quality fabrics, because it's cheap and nearby and there's something satisfying about having things in hand immediately instead of ordering them. Most of these fabrics are from their red tag racks. I just grouped it all together, cut it up into squares...and lo and behold, I had enough for THREE baby quilts out of it. Since this photo I've got them all made into quilt tops. My goal's to finish one this quarter.

Three quilts stacked up here, but my goal's just to finish one. Set my sights nice and low, I will.

Project six: Half Moon Modern quilt: I've got four-patch blocks made out of my two Half Moon Modern charm packs, and I'm hoping to finish it up. I want to sash it with something but I'm not entirely sure which color to use. Any suggestions???

Project 7: This is the big 'u - clothes quilt: My friend Rebecca, who I've only met online but have known that way for years (the internet is pretty awesome, huh?) has commissioned me to make a quilt from her daughter's baby clothes. I've watched Autumn grow up, thanks to the joys of Livejournal and Facebook, so I was definitely interested in taking on the project! Even more fun is that some of the clothes were Rebecca's when SHE was little, so it's a multi-generational thing.

So far I've got all the clothes cut into "cloth," so to speak. I was surprised at how much fabric comes out of a single shirt or dress!

Also, check out Rebecca's photography website or her blog, because she's pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to her move to California so I can have photos taken of Jeff and I. We skipped a pro photographer for our wedding, and it's my one regret about that day. :)

Anyway, here's a sampling of the clothes...

Love these colors!

I plan on using applique for details like the little pockets and belt on this dress, and the other cute embroidery and such on other items. (Another epic comment? Yes).

I was SO nervous to cut into these cute dresses! They weren't handmade, but looked like they could have been.

Alrighty, there we go! Seven projects for three months. Totally can handle this. Or at least half of this. Until all the swap fabrics come in and I get distracted, anyway!

Final FInish for Q1

I don't want to say too much about this one right now, other than it was for the Q1 Finish-a-Long at Quilter in The Gap, I said that I wanted to finish it, I've finished it, and here are photos to show you that I have. ;)

What I can say is that it makes a great lap quilt (as that's what I've been using it for!), the quilting is stitch-in-the-ditch, and it is backed with a very snuggly light blue flannel that matches the medallions in the fabric that runs across the middle of the last photograph.

Hooray for finishes! ;)

Finish Along - Q1 Results!

At the beginning of the year I stumbled across the 2012 Finish-A-Long hosted over at Quilter in the Gap. Like every other quilter, I'm developing quite the mountain of WIPs, so anything that would help motivate me to get them finished is definitely appreciated!

I posted my goals for the quarter here, listing SIX projects that I thought I could complete. Only four "counted" because two weren't actual WIPs but just to-dos - which is fine, because they didn't get done anyway. Of the four that were eligible, I managed to finish three of them! Woohoo!

Of course, I've only blogged about two of them, because I am the worst blogger on the planet (okay, not really)... so I've only got two to link up right now, until I go home and photo the third one. Whoops.

(((PRETEND THAT THERE IS CONTENT ABOUT THAT QUILT HERE!)))

;)

Update on Paper Piecing

English paper piecing, which I have started recently as something to do while wasting away in front of watching television, has been pretty darn successful so far! I've decided that the first thing I'm going to turn my hexies into is a pretty cover for my sewing machine (I currently use the hard shell case it came in).

I've started piecing them together, mostly hoping that I've done it right because I lost interest in reading / following the directions (which really ends up being the problem with most of my sewing projects-gone-awry).

First they turned into this clump. As usual, Molly MUST be involved with every project I take on. (Side note, I'm currently reading Jeanne Walls's Half-Broke Horses and it is just as good as The Glass Castle was!)

And then they turned into this! I've added a bunch more since I took this photo, so imagine it a little bigger, but I'm really enjoying it! I love having something simple to work on while sitting around with hubs, and I look forward to making myself a cute little pouch so that I can take them with me! Hooray!

Have you tried English Paper Piecing? What did you make with yours? It seems like they'd also make good coasters... Hmm....

WIP - A bunch of new projects

If you haven't yet entered my Pezzy Prints giveaway, check it out here! 

Winner will be chosen on 3/23. 

I finished up Sara's Star quilt, so what was the next logical step? Starting a few more projects, of course. At the rate I start projects, I'm going to have 4,302 WIPs by the end of the year but only 12 finishes. Oops.

Anyway, at some point a few weeks ago I put together a bundle of girly prints - flowery things that are all manner of pinks, and some stripes, and that sort of thing - and decided to cut squares from them. It then came to me to make sort-of-4-patch blocks out of them. This is what I've got so far:

There are definitely way more than enough to make two (if not three!) children's sized quilts out of, as I'm planning on putting white sashing between the blocks. I think these would all end up for sale.

I then decided it would be a good idea to do the same thing with my two charm packs of Half Moon Modern and two packs of white Bella Solids:

(Pardon my terrible photography skills! I tend to take photos before work, with the intention of blogging at lunch time...and then I don't. Aww.). Anyway, I think I'm going to pick one of the solid colors (possibly the teal?) from the line to use for sashing, and use all the blocks in the same quilt. Not sure where this one will end up, either.

Then I've started ANOTHER project, out of slightly-smaller-than-charm-square sized squares that I got from a couple of swaps I participated in. It was my first swap, and as much as I appreciate the bargains I can find at Joann for fabrics for myself, I also very much understand why swap mammas say NO to those for their swaps. Anyway, I'm making 16-patches out of them:

 14 out of the 22 blocks have turned out properly, like this (they're still in two sets of eight squares each)

While the other eight have turned out like this! I have no idea where or how they went wrong; I just know I have a bunch of seam ripping to do! Boo! Since my parents are now coming for Christmas, I think these blocks, combined with a cream-colored sashing (tentatively, anyway) will end up being their Christmas present. I think I can handle that sort of schedule!

----

In other news - WOW. I joined up with the St. Patty's day giveaway blog hop and have been amazed at the results. 174 comments SO FAR, *and* I now have 100 followers! Whoa! Thank you, all of you, for all the comments. I've defintely read every one, even though I've been overwhelmed and haven't replied to them all. I'll definitely do another giveaway sometime soon for hitting that milestone, probably at the end of April, for my birthday.

----

Lastly, if you're as addicted to charm swaps as I've become, there's another one going on over at Adventures in obsessive crafting. Deanna's looking for folks interested in swapping rainbow charms, and she (and I!) would love if it you joined up!

Finish - Sara's Wedding Quilt

If you haven't entered my giveaway, please click here - win some Pezzy charms for yourself (ends 3/23). 

Alrightyroo, I finished another quilt! Hooray!? Isn't it a great feeling?

It's a big giant star, with some red borders added on either end to make it a bit less square. Sara, its recipient, got married at the beginning of February and said that she and her hubs like dark colors. I'm terrible with surprises, so she's already seen it on Facebook and likes it. Yay!

 I quilted it on diagonal lines and really like the way it turned out. I look forward to doing pretty much the exact same thing with the other quilt top that came out of the project, except maybe with yellow instead of red. Any thoughts?

 Clearly I'm not the best quilt model...

As my arms get tired quickly. Thanks to hubby, though, for being my photographer!

English Paper What?

Crafting hobbies don't live alone, do they? People aren't "just" quilters, embroiderers, knitters, or whatever. Once you start quilting, well, it's only a matter of time before you do one of those nifty quilts that include bits of embroidery, which gets you to just embroidering things to have something to do in front of the tv, and so forth, right?

I guess my new hobby is sort of quilting, but it feels different so I'm going to say it is. I've recently taken up English paper piecing - fed up with seeing all the OTHER bloggirls make adorable hexagons, I wanted to make some for myself. I combined the beginning of this venture with my attempt to organize/sort scraps, which really has worked out pretty well.

I bought the die-cut papers that I'm using off eBay and they included a handy tutorial (including pictures!), but here's one that I found online that you may find useful: summerfete's the basics of english paper piecing.

I haven't gotten to the point where I'm sewing any together yet - right now, I just have this pile of scrap candy.

 Which includes favorites from projects past - the red from this finish, the purple stars from the quilt on our bed that I never properly posted a "finished!" post for, and the flowers...I think from these placemats? Yup, it's in there.

 There are also ones I just think are pretty - the leaf print from buntings I haven't finished yet; the pink flowers from another WIP; the turtle from a baby quilt I finished for a friend, and those cute birds that ended up just so - both from fat eighth bundles I got at Joann - the brown was in another set of placemats, the pink just left over. :)

Then my cat decided to get involved. Hopefully she doesn't think they're toys and scatter them everywhere by the time I get home from work!

Next on the project list - a pouch to keep my supplies in! All the OTHER girls have one, maaaaaa (Who knew I'd end up saying that about things like this!? Haha!)

In other news - this is my 201st post! Okay, not a big deal, but hitting 200 was, regardless of how sporadic my posting has been. Quilting Gallery is hosting a blog hop / giveaway party this weekend in celebration of Saint Patty's Day, so I figured I'd join up with that to give away something (haven't figured what yet!) in celebration! Check back for it later this week! :)

If you'd like to join in on the hopping, follow that link right up there - you do have to pre-register for the hop...which in a way is really nice, because you get a handy e-mail sent to you so you don't forget the rules and the dates and all that!

Have a great day, readers!

WIP - Crosshatches

So I LOVE the jelly roll race style of quilts - they're super quick and easy, and if you check out my finished projects page, well, you'll see that I've made a jillion of them.

This time, though, I've decided to do something different. I sewed the strips end-to-end, as per usual, and started the "race," so to speak, but stopped after the piece was eight strips wide. I then cut it into (rough) squares, so that they currently look like this:

Wrench helped me lay out bits this time!

 Here's a close-up of one of the blocks.

Because my math is STILL rubbish, having not improved at all from the "Oops I bought enough for two whole quilt tops" debacle, I ended up with eight bits of the one set of squares instead of nine.** Not sure what to do with them, now - maybe a square of another coordinating material in the middle? I really like the way you can make it look by rotating the blocks - the word "Crosshatch" came to mind. So that's what I'm calling them. I have two more color combinations:

Second set - yay, I have nine! :) 

Closeup - love the stripes and butterflies together.

I'm calling this one Raspberries and Cream. LOVE that deep pink color! I've also decided to finish this one up for a good friend's daughter.

See, while I've been gone, I've been at least getting SOMETHING done!

** Note - yes, I totally failed on math on the other quilt...but on these, I just didn't bother doing any at all. ;)