Skill Builder BOM Finished!

I am spending the first part of the year finishing up loose ends. It is so refreshing to finish off projects! It is also refreshing to walk into the sewing room and ask "what do I want to work on today?" instead of being in the middle of a huge project that I feel I have to complete.

So, one of the first loose ends was last year's Skill Builder BOM from Pile O' Fabric.

I have to say, I was dreading the final assembly, but it was super easy!

This was my first "quilt as you go" quilt. Each block is quilted individually, then joined together with batting and sashing.
It was a little
 nervewracking because everything needs to be stitched with the seam just so in order to fit together properly, but all went smoothly. And I must admit that the finished quilt has far more intricate quilting than it would have had if I had tried to quilt it after fully assembled - it's just too hard and tedious.

Here are some close ups of the blocks:

I probably won't be doing future skill builders...the teaching style and my learning style didn't match up. But I do like the finished quilt. However, I used 80/20 batting (Can't remember the brand at this point) that ended up being super thin. I don't think it would be a very snuggly quilt. My mom suggested hanging it on the wall of my sewing room, which would be perfect, but my sewing room has slanted walls and the quilt won't fit. So I'm sure what to do with it now. (Oh and then my boyfriend said, "why did you make it if you didn't have a plan for it?" Quilters must create, sir!)

Oh, in addition as you might have noticed the batting shrunk like nobody's business! It's really noticeable on the blocks where I left portions unquilted, like the iron and sewing machine. It's funny because I know some people like the shrinkage because it provides that "heirloom" sort of look, but am I the only one who would prefer my batting not to shrink at all? I guess that's the one advantage of the polyester batting, it doesn't shrink.

After this guy was finished, I did a few odd jobs on my list. I hemmed a pair of pants that have been waiting over a year for my attention, and whipped up these cute Yosemite pillow cases for our bed.

We both really love Yosemite and have been many times, and this flannel fabric is so nice and soft! I know they don't match and they aren't particularly attractive, but they're special to us. The top one features lots of Yosemite landmarks, and the bottom one just has so many fun camping items. Do you see the campfire popcorn? Or the ranger hat? Too cute! It's fun to have them.

The next big unfinished project to tackle is the 2013 Celtic Solstice Mystery quilt. This is a biiiig quilt and I am using wool batting, which I am pretty eager to test. Instead of trying to figure out a freehand design, I got some stencils and am using my pounce pad to transfer the designs to the quilt.

Here is the quilt with the stencil laid out:

All marked up: (Not perfect but close enough to follow)

Aaaand stitched!



In general the pounce pad has done a fine job marking up the quilt top. I like the stencils but I must admit, they are less forgiving than your typical free motion filler. With free motion if I make a mistake I can hide it or make it look like part of the flow. Here any wibble wobbles or inconsistencies are really obvious. The design I picked is also leading to little raised areas in the center of each block. I think if I pulled the fabric tighter it wouldn't do that as much. I'm also facing the usual tension issues when trying to quilt.

Now this quilt alternates two blocks to create an overall pattern. I have quilted all of the one type of block, but the stencil I bought for the other block doesn't look quite right:

I can see what I was going for but since the diamonds don't really follow any of the lines in the quilt, I think it's too incongruous. I am thinking of other design ideas and might just make up my own stencil, by printing something out and stitching through the lines with no thread in the needle. I've done this before and these work great with the pounce pad as well.

On a side note, at our guild meeting this month we had a tutorial for how to use instagram, so I finally signed up a quilting-specific account. You can find me @chibibenz. Instagram has a lot of appeal because it's so fast and easy. Writing blog posts usually takes me an hour and getting all of the photos added takes quite some time. With instagram you click one button and you are done! So I will probably start being more active on there than on here, just for time management purposes.

One last note! This month at our guild meeting we also did our pincushion swap. It was a huge hit! This was a relief because I am on the challenge and swap committee, and our last challenge was a flop.

Remember my pincushion? It was a teapot!

And I came home with this super cute "hot toddy" pincushion, which came with actual hot toddy recipes. I just love the detail with which she made the accessories of the lemon peel, cinnamon stick, and star anise. 

Okay that's it for this update! Back to stitching!

Progress

Progress has been slow but steady around here. Today I finally got the top all sewn together for my Grand Illusion mystery quilt. It still needs the borders added, I will work on those next.

The photo is awful because it is dark out and this quilt is really too big for one person to hold, but you get the idea.

I've been taking my time partially to see how everyone else is finishing their quilts. A lot of people (myself included) found the original design too busy and altered it. I've been looking for ideas and I think what I ended up with is pretty good considering I wasn't really willing to do any re-work. A lot of people ditched the checkerboards, but they took my FOREVER so I wasn't about to scrap them. This way I used all of the pieces I had already made and just altered their orientation.

Throughout the process I've been trying pretty hard to keep things nice and straight. I really wanted to push my perfect pieces. But once it came time to put these blocks together, all the perfection went out the window. There are a LOT of wonky seams. At some point you have to decide how much you care, and I decided this quilt wasn't going in any shows, and a lot of the imperfections are the kind of small things that only I would notice, so they stayed in.

Do you see how wonky that navy square is??

Can I just say though, I HATE these checkerboards? They were a total pain to make - this step took me a month alone - and they don't even fit with the quilt. The main block is a nine patch (in thirds) and these are an eight patch (in fourths) so the seams don't match up. That annoys me. And the color in them, purple, isn't in the main block, which means instead of tying the quilt together, they throw in a completely new element. And finally, they really show errors. They are supposed to be little squares and I think 80% of mine are rectangles. Even though I was trimming mine down at each step of the assembly, almost all of these were about a quarter inch to half inch too long. It was frustrating.

It's a rectangle.

In other news, I made this cute pincushion.

It was based off this tutorial. Somehow my lid ended up looking very much like a clown hat, but I still think the overall effect is pretty adorable. (And notice I tried very hard to ensure that all of my hearts were face up!) It is for my guild's pincushion swap. Hopefully nobody will mind that it isn't "modern."

And ALSO! I never shared my Christmas sewing. I made these wine totes from a tutorial here. They came together quickly and I think they look pretty good!

I also made a bee block - did I show this already? Can't remember.

It was supposed to be improv. We all discussed in our bee how much we appreciated it because it turns out we are all super uncomfortable with improv. It was a good learning experience, but I will have to do more with improv before I really feel comfortable with it.

I also wanted to share...last weekend I was in Chicago. We visited the Art Institute and the BEST PART was an exhibit of a bunch of miniature rooms. Here I am next to one for a sense of scale.

Almost of them had itty bitty needlepoint objects inside. I also do needlepoint, so I was pretty much blown away by these things.

Here is one in progress on a frame. And you can see the rug as well. Can you believe how real this room looks?!?!

And the needlepoint chairs! Look at that chair! It's probably 4 inches tall. Totally crazy.

Needless to say, my boyfriend had to drag me out of there I was so in love with all those miniature rooms :)

Grand Illusion Link Up 6

Well hello! I haven't linked up since week two because...well...I'm still stuck on clue 3. I don't know why, but it is going suuuuper slow for me. I've only gotten 90 of the 8 patch units finished.

But the advantage of falling behind is that I get to see whatever everyone else has done with their quilts before I decide what to do with mine! One of the most fun parts of these mysteries is to see how everyone makes the quilt their own.

I spent a loooong time last night arranging and rearranging my blocks in many formations to try to decide what my favorite layout was. I have narrowed it down to two options and would love your help choosing.

Option 1:

I really like how the pinwheels POP with the teal centers and navy edges. I think it makes a a bold, eye-catching statement. And since the pink and teal were my two favorite parts of this color scheme, I had to put the pinks in the cornerstones. But the big disadvantage of this design is that you lose the double diamond impact of Bonnie's original.

Option 2:

I think the pinwheels make less of a wham bang with the pink next to the teal centers instead of the navy, but this way you can see the secondary design of the diamonds formed by the navy lines. This is very similar to Bonnie's layout.

So, what's your vote? You have to squint and stand 20 feet from your computer before you decide! I might have to whip up some mock-ups in photoshop of how each design will look with the full number of repetitions.

And go check out all of the other quilts! There is so much inspiration as many tops are complete! As always, thanks to Bonnie for putting this wonderful design out there for free. I know it can be a big headache for her with SO MANY participants, but it sure is a blast for all of us!

2014 Recap

Well it's that time of year when everybody creates a recap post, and I'm jumping on the bandwagon!

At the very start of this year, I created a list of all the projects I wanted to get done and taped it up right next to my sewing machine.

While I only crossed four items off that list, they were all full-sized quilts, so BIG items to finish up. (okay one wasn't finished, as you will see below...) For me this is great, I'm a one quilt a year kind of gal, so finishing three is awesome. I'm satisfied that I got some of the more pressing items that had been nagging at me off the list, and frankly two more items on the list, the Celtic Solstice mystery quilt and Skill Builder BOM, are both very close to being completed, so I am feeling good about those too.

Here are my four BIG finishes:

Stairway to Cat Heaven 2 (went to a fellow cat lover recuperating from a bad injury)

Veggie Quilt (went to my dad, ignore the fact that the binding isn't on yet here)

Bear Bargello (went to my brother)

Layer Cake Quilt Along (I gave this sucker away! Don't be afraid to toss projects you no longer want. Another quilter was really delighted to take this off my hands and I was delighted that it went to a home where it would be loved and off my plate!)

So whats on my list for next year?

I want to continue to cross items off my WIP list. I really prefer to only have one project in progress at a time. Things that are half done, I want to be DONE.

At the same time, these projects are usually not as fun to work on (they are WIPs for a reason). I want to have at least one "fun" project going on at a time that I can switch to. Right now my fun project, which I may not have posted about yet, is this "In from the Cold" pattern by Kate Spain (it's free!)

It's very easy to sit down, make a single coffee cup, and have a nice little accomplishment under my belt in one evening. It's also very modular so it's easy to pick up and set aside.

Finally, my main goal for 2015 is to create a photo-inspired quilt. I have multiple books on the subject and I really am looking forward to actually making something from them (finally!)

P.S. When I was looking back through my photos from this year, I found about a million cute cat photos. I volunteer with Tenth Life Cat Rescue and this year cats became an increasingly big part of my life. We have had a number of guest kitties in our home this year. So here are some shots!

This little lady is Canasta. She was a total DIVA!


Okay these aren't quilting related, but they are too funny not to share. Canasta insisted on getting into EVERYTHING! I promise, these photos are not staged. Here she is making herself at home in the fridge and in the dishwasher!

This lil dude was one of a litter of four kittens - and mom! - who stayed with us until they were big enough to live in the shelter. At the shelter, they are living in large, free-roaming cat rooms while they wait for their furever homes.

Handsome Garfield was only our guest for a week, but he left an impression! He refused to stay in the bathroom and figured out immediately how to open the sliding door, making it impossible to keep him in. He made himself right at home in my sewing area!

 

Sweet Rosie is our current foster, and she is immersed in sewing as she has been living in the sewing room. She is incredibly well-behaved and hasn't gotten into anything she shouldn't, although my projects are now furrier than usual.

And of course we can't forget our reigning queen quilt inspector, our resident kitty Pepper!

This year we also lost my original quilting companion, Annabelle, at 18 years of age. She was a wonderful kitty and I will miss her greatly!

Okay that's it for cat photos! Thanks for staying tuned if you made it this far and prepare for more kitties in 2015!