Another mini update

Still playing tons of video games here! But sneaking in a little quilting here and there too. :)

I am back to being caught up on my skill builder BOM. Yay! I would like to keep it that way!

Here is the quilted machine stitches block. Like a chump, I used the wrong shade of purple thread for the quilting. I have another purple that I bought specifically to match perfectly with this fabric, and I forgot about it. Also my boyfriend pointed out to me that I didn't assemble the stitches consistently...sometimes the X is right over left and sometimes it's left over right! Oh well.  

And here is our next block. I also assembled this one a little wrong (the background strips are supposed to all go in the same direction) but I bet (hope) that once it's quilted, no one will notice.

The other quilt I am really working to complete is my bear and salmon bargello. Here are all the salmon laid out.

I was originally going to crowd them a bit more, like in the upper photo. I would make a few more salmon for that upper right corner. Then I thought, "you know, I worked really hard on this bargello and I don't want to hide the whole thing under fish!" So now they are all spaced out as in the photo below. I think it looks a little less realistic though, a little too perfectly spaced out. So what do you think? Top photo or bottom photo?

The cute grizzly bears have been made and I have figured out where each will go. I am hoping to get them all attached today or tomorrow.

Well hey there!

Eek..it's been over a month!! Not a ton of sewing has been going on here. I was studying for a big exam, then started a new job, then got madly obsessed with a new video game. I'm still obsessed, but I've gotten it down to about two hours per night of play instead of much, much more.

So...what's been going on down here?  I finished up the first two blocks for the Skill Builder BOM.

And yes, these are iphone photos. Otherwise nothing would have ever gotten posted.

I'm not loving the fact that I used veriegated thread for the lime parts, but I committed not because I bought three spools. I think it makes random parts of the quilting design stand out way more than others. For the ruler I tried out Leah Day's Super Circuit Board design. I had fun with it, but wavy or flowing lines are definitely easier than straight lines and sharp edges.

Just recently I finished up piecing block 3 for the BOM. I am now only one block behind, almost caught up.

Okay pet peeve time here. I don't like how much we are trimming things down in this BOM. Everybody needs a good trim once in a while, but I feel like the extent we are doing it here is pretty wasteful of fabric.

Check out this guy. Is he wonky? Heck yes! But I could have squared him up with maybe 1/8" per side.  Instead we shrunk a 4.5" block to a 3.5" block! In terms of total block area, that's a 40% reduction in the size of the block (20 square inches to 12 square inches).  That means 40% of the fabric I used to make this block was thrown away! 

Here's the other one. Needs squaring? Certainly. Needs 1/2" per side taken off? Nope.

 We are supposed to be trimming down our blocks after we quilt them, but I'm going to wait. If I am clever enough with the math, maybe I can get away with not trimming them down and just having a bigger quilt.

Anyways, that's all the photos I have. I have been making baby steps on a few other projects and also meant to show you photos of my newly restored needlepoint chair, but that would require getting off my lazy butt and taking some photos. Instead, I think I will go play video games. :P