Blocks That I've Set Loose Upon the World!

 So here's a post all about blocks I've sewn and given away!  It's kind of the most nerve-wracking thing I've done.  I want to make everything perfect, because the person receiving them is going to see the backside.  They'll know if your scant 1/4 inch is really a true 1/4 inch. Oh, the scandal!

But you do never know if the person who gets it will like your color choices, the layout, or the style.  And once you've put that much work into a block, you don't want them to just cast it aside or have to rework the seams.  Really, the only thing to do is just make sure you like it.

 

This is the last block I made for our Guild's block lottery.  The theme was scrappy stars on a white background.  I thought I was done once I'd made the first two, but then I saw the Mercury star and had to give it a try.  

Surprisingly, I thought this one would be more complicated to paper piece, but I liked it much better than my first.  I think it helped that the block was symmetrical until you got to that last piece.  I think there's a whole quilt of these in my future.  Maybe in all solids!

Here's a shot of all the stars in the lottery.  I really can't wait to see it all finished.  It's going to be a pretty awesome quilt. 

And these are my blocks for the Sew Pieceful swap.  I initially started out wanting to make a Broken Herringbone, but just couldn't get myself excited enough to do all the little pieces of sashing.  Then I found this other block in Jeni Baker's HST Block of the Month quilt.  Once I had all the half square triangles pieced, I played around with them and decided I liked this layout the best.  

I'm not really sold on this block though.  The colors are true to what was requested, but it just doesn't look great.  I might switch out the dotted background with white.  Really not looking forward to that, but it might need to be done.  

And, yeah, couldn't think of a decent title.  When in doubt, go dramatic!

Linking up with Live a Colorful Life for Really Random Thursday and My Quilt Infatuation for Needle and Thread Thursday!

WIP Wednesday!

This week I finally got my butt in gear and started my swap blocks for the Sew Pieceful group.  Half of the colors are out of my comfort zone, but at least in my stash, and there's one that I have to go buy a fabric because I have nothing remotely close to the color requested.

Here's the fabric pull for the third of my four blocks this month.  All the colors match the request, and I like it, but I have no idea how the recipient will feel.  And I'm a sucker for keeping things a surprise, so there's no way I'll ask.  I think it'll work out.  

And here's the stack of fabric to be made into clothes this week.  That denim will easily make two or three pairs of Parsley pants, and light green piping for the little girl, dark green for the dude.   

I'm not sure who's going to end up with the sparkly blue fabric.  I dug it out of a remnant bin thinking I'd make the girl a Bateau Neck Top like this one from No Big Dill, but I like the fabric so much I might keep it.  

This is what I'm working on at this very minute!  Mending a mountain of t-shirts for a friend.  I don't understand how they get so mangled, but they're a quick fix. 

Finally, the world's most patient cat presents the ribbing of the second arm of my Sweatshirt Sweater.  I feel like I'm very near the peak of this sweater and after I join the arms, it will all be an easy downhill slide to the finish.  

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!

Flower Power Parsley Pants

So, that friend with the amazing vintage fabric stash?  She also had this amazing denim.  Yards and yards!  I never actually measured, but it was probably north of twelve yards.  And she could tell by the way my jaw dropped when I saw it that I really wanted to make something from it.

Had to add a cute label.  And I used the same aqua to line the pockets.

Of course, I wanted to make another pair of Parsley Pants!  A pair for Dell and a pair for her daughter.  And it was pretty easy since they're mostly the same size, just do everything twice.  

This was my first time trying piping.  I found a couple packages of this pink piping for next to nothing at our guild trip to Marden's, and it turned out to be the perfect color.

I'd read tutorials (there's this one from MADE, and this one from Made by Rae) and new it wasn't hard to do, but I thought it would be more difficult to make it look good.  Not really, all I used was my zipper foot, and pinned a little extra.  And, I did both pairs with one package, leaving me three more packages of piping to make more pants.

And Dell approves.  She's been collecting treasures lately, especially flowers and tiny My Little Ponies, so she needed some real pockets.  I just have to remember to start checking hers when I do the laundry.

So, next up is making everyone I know a pair of Parsley Pants out of the blue denim I managed to sneak out of the stash.  And I have green and dark green piping to trim out the pockets.   I think this pattern is turning out to be one of my favorites.

The look of a girl who has fun pants and has been bribed to pose with globs of peanut butter.   Very satisfied.

Linking up with I Have To Say for Show and Tell Tuesday, and Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday!

Insta-Monday!

So last week was kind of crazy.  The first few days were spent in denial of the upcoming first day of school.  And the last couple were just trying to readjust all our clocks back to school time.

The biggest change is that the dude is staying longer at school, which means no more nap time for him, or his sister unless I can beg someone to carpool with us.  I love naps because that's when I sew, so I had a mini panic attack about never being able to sew ever again, and then husband just suggested I set up a work space on the porch. Duh.

And since we were already on the road, the little girl and I were able to get out and finally go to playgroups that we've just ignored all summer.  We also managed to meet up with a friend that I've been promising a bag to for a while, but hadn't gotten over to her house to sort through her fabric.  She told me she had a lot of hand-me-down fabric, complete understatement.  There was so much vintage awesomeness.

 

We finally settled on this amazing orange and blue print, probably from the 70s, and a nice lightweight denim for the outer and some Alexander Henry fabric from '95 for the lining.  I can't wait to raid her stash again.

Then I capped off the week with an awesome Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild meeting in Portland, ME at A Gathering of Stitches.  Such a great space, I really hope that I can get up there and use it.  And, as an added bonus, our guild president managed to get us a discount at Marden's and we all went on a fabric spree field trip.  I was trying to be good, so I only got four yards of fabric and a handful of trims.  The whole thing only cost $20!!  The lighter flower fabric is begging to be a dress, and the silverware on blue is going to end up as pj bottoms.

And now, we'll see how this week turns out.  Fingers crossed that we manage to settle into a routine sooner rather than later.

Scrapbuster Quilt Finish!

I'm so glad to finally have this quilt finished.  It's been around so long it practically needs to have chores and an allowance!  I made the top almost two years ago after buying the book Sew to Swap.  I didn't have anyone in mind to swap with, I just really liked the projects inside, and I'd been reading most of the contributors' blogs.

This project was the Scrapbuster quilt (there's a tutorial for the two blocks here and here), which was perfect because, at the time, I thought I had an overabundance of scraps.  Of course, that was when I had a large shoe box of scraps, now I have a 60 quart tub of scraps!

I had this whole thing made, basted, and partially quilted in about a month, but then I started a new project and forgot it existed.  I finally pulled it out over the long weekend and decided to finish it once and for all!  

The quilting design on it was from two years ago, straight lines crossing the points and centers of the corners.  At first I'd been marking the lines all out with a marking pen, but when I restarted, I remembered someone had used blue painters' tape to mark out their lines.  So much better!

Had I not already started the quilting, I might have gone for a more dense free motion pattern and taken advantage of all those frames, but I like how it turned out.  It's drape-y and soft and perfect for cuddling, so I can snuggle and play I Spy with all those scraps.

Linking up with Amanda Jean at for Finish It Up Friday!

My Rainbow Quilt Got Frankenstein-y

So I've been slowly working on my Rainbow Quilt-As-You-Go quilt and it's definitely been having an effect on my scrap situation.  Unfortunately, my fabric scraps are still plentiful, but my batting scraps have started to come up a bit short. (Sorry, had to.)

It's only $3 on Amazon, but still feels like cheating.

The solution is simple, batting tape, available everywhere and made just for the purpose of piecing together batting.  But I really wanted this to be a quilt that was totally from what I already have, and I don't have batting tape.

So I decided to improvise.  Make my own kind of batting tape!  With fabric, pins, and a machine, all the things that I totally have in my sewing room.  Want to learn my sneaky trick?

I found two pieces of batting that would add up to my 12.5" block, and made sure the sides were mostly flat where I wanted to join them.

Then I sewed my strip of fabric to one side, about a half inch in from the join.  (Of course, habit took over and I sewed right sides together and flipped it over, which is why you only see one line of stitching.  Really don't have to do that, I blame muscle memory!)

The only nail bite-y bit was making sure that there was just enough tension on the batting so that when I sewed the second line, there wouldn't be a gap in the batting.

Then I did my quilting perpendicular to the join, so that each line of stitching is kind of like a bandaid holding those two sides together.

Then I added all the rest of my pieces like normal.  I did have to attach them in rows, so I did a little  stitch in the ditch to get some horizontal quilting on that big pieced chunk in the middle.

You can hardly tell where the join is! (Except for that tiny gap at the top, but I'm betting shrinkage will take  care of that bit.)

I still have about six more blocks to make, but I should be able to do that with my scraps.  And I can try different ways to layout the scraps so that I don't have six blocks that are all rows.

Linking up with Live a Colorful Life for Really Random Thursday!

WIP Wednesday

So at last week's WIP update, I had the torso and a sleeve up to the arm, but I decided that the arm was coming out too big.  So I frogged all the way down to the ribbing and started again with smaller needles.  

Luckily, a week in bed sick meant that I had plenty of time to knit, so I'm almost ready to join this sleeve.  Of course, I could have knitted two sweaters by now if I didn't have to keep frogging. 

And I'm pretty keen on finishing up the sweater because I have these pretties waiting for me.  I think the kids need winter hats and mittens.  And I need some soft fuzzy wristlets out of the white alpaca in the middle. 

I almost have this Washi tunic finished. I had plans on trying to add the three-quarter sleeves from Rae's tutorial, but then it got really hot again.  So now it's waiting downstairs for me to make up my mind. 

And my big accomplishment of the week so far is adding some quilts to my Etsy shop.  I'm figuring this is step one on my way to fame, fortune, and rooms full of fabric and glitter, and I'm giving it a big ole checked off!

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!