Sunday's Summary

Another productive week! 

This week I worked on another baby quilt. This one for my DD2's best friend, J. I wasn't able to attend her baby shower in December as I was out of town...so I procrastinated...a little. Actually, I did start on this quilt 

with the intention of giving it but then my daughter sent me fabric for Christmas and 2 of the prints were to be used for J's baby quilt. 

Building Blocks was set aside. 

I had to rethink the pattern I would use and search through my stash for more coordinating fabrics. A perfect opportunity for more procrastination...after all, the baby wasn't due until the 1st week of March and I had UFO's to complete...namely Wings! and This & That. 

Yes, I do have a few more...but that's for another day Ü 

So on Monday night after Knitting Club, I decided to start cutting out the fabric. I had decided on using a pattern by Allison of Cluck, Cluck, Sew called Seville. I changed the size to make it a baby quilt and did my homework on how many of each block I would need. On Tuesday, I started piecing. These blocks went together very quickly. The whole top went together in a day and I pieced the back Wednesday.

On Thursday, I started FMQ and while doing so, my DD2 told me that J had gone to the hospital in labor. With the quilting complete, I made and attached the binding. Baby was born that night!

Yesterday, I finished hand sewing the binding, making the label and washing the quilt. Another finish!

Introducing Giraffe Love

 pictures taken before label and washing

I love the back almost as much as the front!

The 2 fabrics sent by my daughter are the giraffe print and the border stripe. I believe they are prints by Michael Miller...the rest of the fabrics from my stash.

On a techy note...I made my first button all by myself! (My blog button was made by my BIL.) I figured since I have been posting weekly summaries of my progress, I needed wanted a button and was determined to figure out how to do one. Yep, it's on top of this post and on my sidebar! Grab it if you like.

Finally, a friend emailed me this knowing that I'm a coffee/chocolate lover. 

Until next week...Enjoy!

Sunday's Summary

This has been a good week...at least as far as time spent in my sewing room. Today was the baby shower for my niece. The Wings! quilt was well received. Yay! 

I finally finished my Craftsy BOM quilt! I really like how it turned out. I'm calling it This & That...an appropriate name for a sampler quilt...with bits of different  techniques and quilting.

It was a beautiful sunny day when I finished sewing on the binding so I rushed to take these pictures...just in case the weather wouldn't cooperated after I labeled and washed the quilt. 

Here it is with all it's crinkly goodness and label. 

On the back you can see the quilting better and the label. 

Say hello to my DD1's sweet little dog, Ole. I love him to pieces. 

I also finished the 2nd sock I was knitting. There is room for improvement but I am quite pleased with them.

I learned the kitchener stitch for cast off from this video tutorial. It is a great tutorial!

After finishing my This and That quilt, I took a break to do some creating of my March Art Journal Challenge. I contemplated what to do for the theme...green and shamrocks for St. Patty's Day, Easter eggs for Easter? With both in the same month this year, it didn't seem appropriate to highlight either...after all I'm not Irish (except on the 17th Ü) and Easter is on the last day of the month. So I decided on....

Kites!

I found this cute girl on the web while googling kite flying...cut her out, printed her on fabric and then colored her with colored pencils. 

I used the Touchdraw app on my ipad to draw the kites in 2 different sizes...search my scraps for small pieces of lighter colored fabric for the kites, month, year and days of the week and raw edged appliqued them to the sandwiched pages. Kite tails, string, and wind swirls were FMQ. I am really enjoying creating these journal pages. Here is the link to the Flickr group for more Art Challenge pages.

While spending wasting time searching the net, I came across this site to make some really cute, simple paper toys.

(I can't remember how I exactly linked to this site but I did pin it so I could find it again.) 

I was intrigued to try making these Circus Riders using the printable, some poster board and paper clips. Aren't these too cute?

You use the paperclip to make the wheel turn as if riding a unicycle.

Very clever!

 What has kept you busy this week?

Sunday's Summary

It has been a week and it is time for my Sunday Summary of what's been happening here. I got a good amount done this week (at least in my sewing room) but the most exciting is....a finish! The baby airplane quilt is finished...quilting, binding, labeling, and washing. I'm named this quilt Wings!

Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating today...so no pretty outside pictures.

Besides quilting in the ditch around each airplane... I  FMQ in the negative space to resemble isobars or wind currents. The squares formed where the 4 propellers come together, I quilted a twirling circle to give the concept of the propeller movement. In the border, I FMQ the saying..."Give me wings and I will fly." The font is long and wispy to give the feel of a sky writer and I added a little plane. 

Finished in time for next week's baby shower!

Purple is the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Here is my block! To see some inspiration, click on the button on my side bar and it will take you to the challenge and link up. 

February is also the final month in the BOM with Quilt Story. This month the block challenge was 4 patch. I decided to do a disappearing 4 patch. 

Since I made all my blocks 6" instead of 12"...I will be framing each block in Kona Snow to give the quilt a more modern feel...a lot more negative space. 

Next month is the reveal!

I have also almost finished the quilting on my Craftsy BOM quilt. 

All the blocks are now done and I am quilting the border. 

Stay tuned...it should be finished soon!

Progress Report

 My DH was out of town on business all week which gave me time to spend in my sewing room. However, Monday is Knitting Club so there was no stitching done...but I have finally finished my first sock! I have barely started the matching pair.

I did work diligently on completing the Airplane blocks I showed last week. I had a lot of fun paper piecing these blocks! Then I arranged and rearranged the blocks to decide on the layout of the quilt. I tried 4 different layouts...and the winner is...

I really like the fun secondary design shape that emerged with this layout. I  also had to make a decision on the borders. Since the blocks are 6" finished...the quilt was only 24" x 36"...a bit smaller than I wanted. I added a 1" gray inner border, then a 1" scrappy border with small squares of the fabrics used in the planes, and finally a 3" outer border in Kona Snow (the background fabric.) The quilt is now 34" x 40"...a nice size for a baby quilt. I will sandwich and quilt this week! 

And since this week closed out the month of January...here is my completed pages of my Art Journal ~ 365 Challenge.

I am not an artist...my lettering needs a bit of improvement but I did jot down an event from every day...which in itself is an accomplishment. I have tried keeping journals before and have failed so I'm pretty happy with it. 

What have you been working on? 

Soon it will be time to enjoy the Superbowl! Maybe I'll get some knitting done but probably not Ü.

The Weekly Progress Report

Although I feel like I spent a bit of time quilting this week, I am at that stage where there isn't much to show...yet. 

I started quilting my Craftsy BOM quilt and have worked on 10 of the 20 blocks. Since this is a sampler quilt, each block is quilted differently. For the most part, I am straight line quilting using echo quilting 1/4" from the edge. Here are a few of the blocks.

Sorry for the poor lighting but the weather hasn't been cooperating for good photos

 Due to some time issues, I am putting the rest of the quilting on hold for a short while. Even though I have known about this deadline, it is quickly approaching. So on Thursday night, with graph paper and pencil in hand, I started designing a baby quilt. 

Yesterday I made 10 of the paper pieced blocks...14 more to go. I'm loving this block and can't wait to put it together. Aren't they just too cute?

On Friday night I attended a lecture and trunk show by Karen Combs at my LQS. Karen is known for her quilts of illusions as well as being an author, pattern and fabric designer.  Here are some of her illusion quilts using her fabrics. The illusions of 3D are created by the color values used. 

I apologize for the poor quality pictures.

Each quilt took on a different look when you turned it 90° or more. Here is an example of a 180° turn.

This was one of my favorites. I love how this cube is floating. 

Until next time...

Weekly Progress

Life is busy and I don't always find time to post on my blog. Instead I spend my free time actually quilting, knitting or creating in some manner. That is my outlet for busyness/stress. 

With that said, I am going to try to, at least, post a Weekly Progress update. 

This week I worked hard on finishing the top for a baby quilt I have been working on. The pattern is Building Fun by Geta's Grama. 

 It reminds me of these wooden blocks we had for building so I wanted to use similar colors. 

Remember these?

Here is my interpretation using Kona colors:

I did eliminate the borders around each block and made the borders 2 1/2" instead of 3 1/2".

I have a few quilts to work on before this one gets quilted Ü

I also worked on my February Art Journal for the 365 day challenge. 

I am having so much fun creating these calendars with mixed media. Since I am a quilter, for the most part, I am using fabric (from my stash Ü). The hearts in the balloon bouquet and the 2 hanging hearts are scrapbook stickers and the lace bow is from my stash left over from my doll making days. I am stamping the days of the week and the numbers. For writing on each day I have been using micron pens. 

If you want to be inspired, go here to see more.

And finally I sandwiched my Craftsy BOM quilt. Yay! Pictures soon!

What have you been working on?

The week's progress

I have been slowly working my way through my back log of sewing. 

As the new year gets under way, new challenges are always tempting.  There are so many new quilt alongs, BOMs, quilt challenges, etc. to choose from that it takes me a while to decide what I should join this year. 

This week I was able to work a little on some new challenges. I choose to join the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at soscrappy. January's color is Bright Pink. After deciding on a pattern, I dug through my pink scraps and came up with this block. 

This was a fun block to make. I can't wait to get next months color. The block finishes at 12". 

 Another monthly challenge I joined is Art Journaling 2013 ~ 365 Challenge. I was first inspired by Annie from Freezeframe. She is so talented! She makes the most amazing post cards. In one of her recent posts, she linked to The Kathryn Wheel blog where you will find amazing art and the challenge. This struck an accord with me because I have wanted to try art quilting on a small scale (I don't consider myself an artist by any means) and I have tried and failed at journaling, so I thought that I could try this. Not to say that I will have some fantastic, wonderful, exciting things to add each day...but to record one highlight from my day seemed doable. So after sketching out a calendar on paper, one evening I pulled some fabric from my stash and started creating. Here is my January journal. 

I used fabric for everything except the snowflake buttons. The days of the week and the numbers are stamps. My pages are 8 1/2" x 11" and each month will have 2 pages. I have an idea for binding them that I saw on Pinterest. 

Hopefully I will get more creative as I gather scrapbooking supplies, etc. I invested in a set of micron markers in several colors so that I can be more creative in my entries. We will see where I go with this but for now I am really enjoying it. February is already in the planning stage Ü

Easy Street Mystery Quilt is now a flimsy finish! I finished the last 3 blocks after cutting the additional pieces from each step. I am not always keen on adding borders to my quilts but this quilt needed them. There are so many pieces and the colors are bright that your eye needs a place to rest. The borders framed and calmed the quilt. (Sorry the picture is so bad...the colors are not true) Here it is!

It will be on hold a while until I decide on a backing and work on a few other projects Ü

 I also made a few blocks for the Quilting for a Cause flickr group. The I Spy blocks are for Lubbock Ronald McDonald House and the purple Greek Cross is for Domestic Violence. Both are simple to make and for good causes.

Now I really need to work on some baby quilts. One's in process and another in the planning stage.