Category Archives: Inspiration

Hot Bobbins

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My bobbin was literally hot last night after a marathon of quilting. Good thing Berninas use metal and not plastic. I managed to stipple quilt a 45″ square quilt in a little over an hour. Notice the Polka Squares quilt has moved from my “completed tops” list to “quilting & binding.” I’m so proud.

I set aside the red and aqua string quilt I showed last time. That quilting method is taking me a long time. I can’t get into a fluid movement and I struggle with the scale. I should probably have attempted it on a much smaller quilt than that one to start with. We’re going on a long road trip and I wanted to take it to bind in the car, but until we get back it will just have to be a glorified dog bed:

Summer Quilting

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Summer is definitely not made for quilting – especially not a summer as hot as this one  has been. As I’m writing this, it’s nearly midnight and still 97 degrees outside:

And we’ve got another hot week coming up. I am thankful that almost 28 weeks into my pregnancy I still don’t have any swelling or major aches and pains because this would be a tough summer to be feeling unwell. Thank you, baby, for letting me feel almost normal [the growing belly is undeniably a bit awkward, but having a temporary beer belly is kind of fun. I definitely notice people giving me those sidelong "is she pregnant or fat" glances. Like tonight at dinner when my husband ordered a Cobb salad and I had a bleu cheese bacon burger with fries.:)]

Even though it is not quilting weather, I’m desperately trying to get some of my WIPs done in the 12 or so weeks I have until my life is no longer my own. While prettifying this new blog layout, I decided to rebuild my WIP list in the side bar and whoa, Nelly, it’s a big one. This is probably the first real WIP list I’ve ever made because it was not done from memory, but by actually pulling things out of boxes and drawers. There are 29 items on the list (not counting my embarrassingly overdue bee blocks). How did I get to this point? And knowing just how many things I have unfinished, I can still think of a half  a dozen more quilts that I would like to start. Never mind de-stashing and purging to make room for baby -  I’m going to need my own quilting house before the year is out at this rate.

For those of you who only work on one or two projects at a time, how do you do it? Is it self-control? Lack of hiding space? Other hobbies that keep you busy? Do I need to take up tennis or bridge so that I have less time to think about quilting? I know I’ll never be a one-project-at-a-time girl, but 29 WIPs is about 20 too many. It probably doesn’t help that my method for getting things done is to list all of my to-dos, prioritize them, and then never look at that list again.

I was at a retreat last weekend and that helped me jump start the process. I am making some progress. I have two bee blocks ready to mail, I basted two tops, quilted one last weekend, and I have another big one on my machine right this minute. I’m even trying a new technique:

It’s not as fast as stippling but I think I’ll speed up as I get more comfortable with the motion. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

It’s Been One of Those Weeks

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This week my website was hacked (again!) and my car was damaged in a hit and run.  The hacking details are tedious and boring, but I am now blogging on a wordpress.com interface (instead of my own hosted site) so that I don’t have to worry about security anymore. Blogging is supposed to be fun, and dealing with a hack is not fun. Google had my URL blacklisted for most of the week, but now everything is up and running and okay. Many links are broken and photos are missing, but I should have all of that fixed in a week or two. If you visited my site in the last week, please run a virus and spyware check on your computer. You can download a free one from Microsoft.

So after dealing with that mess for 5 days, I was awakened at 5:00 am Friday morning by the police knocking on our door. Apparently someone hit our car and abandoned their car a few houses up the block. One of our neighbors called the police when they saw the abandoned car and the police were conscientious enough to check all cars parked on the street for damage. Police often get a bad rap but I have to say that my experience with them (though minimal) has always been positive. They had an accident investigator at our house making a report before they even woke us up. Sadly, my car is not drivable and had to be towed to the dealer for repairs. I am driving a rental for a couple of weeks, and my wonderful husband is dealing with all of the insurance and car repair issues. He literally spent all day Friday on the phone. The people that hit our car did end up coming by the house and giving us their info. They were a couple of college kids who were driving down to the lake near our house and got lost. They were genuinely shaken up by the accident, but thankfully not hurt. Everything will be fine in the end and I am not a superstitious person that believes bad things happen in threes so I am expecting only good things for a while. :)

I’ve been mired down in purging and organizing my sewing room because in a few short months it will be a sewing + baby room. I’ve gotta make some room for our little guy so a bit of de-stash is in order. Hopefully I can get some things listed in my Etsy shop this week. Meanwhile, I’ve started a new just-for-fun project because I needed some cheering up.

I am taking some of my Moda mini charm packs (charmlets?) and pairing them with a vivid pink to make 9-patch blocks. Then I’m going to quarter them and sew it all back together for a super scrappy quilt. (this one was my inspiration) I’ve got a combination of It’s a Hoot, Hullabaloo, Summer in the City, Central Park, and Buttercup. All of the colors are so happy together and it’s definitely cheering me up.

Courthouse Steps

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5

tutorial: courthouse steps

The Courthouse Steps block is a variation of a log cabin block. It traditionally has red center squares and a variety of light and dark fabrics that give you a chessboard effect on your finished quilt top (example here). This is the block I’ve chosen for my turn in the Twice Around the Block Bee. This tutorial is mainly a how-to for my bee members but will be useful for anyone else who wants to try this block. I’ve chosen fabrics in four colors (red, green, blue, and white) for a Christmas-y quilt.

To make one block like my sample block, you will need:
5 green strips, measuring 1 1/2″ wide by varying lengths (the longest strip you will need is 12.5″)
5 white strips, measuring 1 1/2″ wide by varying lengths
5 red strips, measuring 1 1/2″ wide by varying lengths
5 blue strips, measuring 1 1/2″ wide by varying lengths
1 pink center square, measuring 2 1/2″ square

*A note about cutting*
This block is very scrap friendly. Scraps will need to be at least 1 1/2″ wide. I used fat quarters for my fabrics and was able to get 12 strips from each. I highly recommend using a Shape Cutter from June Tailor to cut your strips. It is fast and makes the cuts more accurate. (fabric needs for an entire quilt are given at the end of this post)

Piecing the Block

Take your center square and choose two strips in different colors. One strip gets sewn to the top of the block; the other strip gets sewn on the opposite side. I’ve chosen red and white strips in the example below.

Press your seams to one side (I pressed all of mine away from the center square) and trim the excess fabric. You can be a lazy quilter like me and trip the edges carefully scissors at your machine:

or you can trim them with your rotary cutter:

I used both methods for my blocks and they all came out to 12.5″ in the end. Do whichever method works for you. Add your next two color strips on the opposite sides of the block. After a few rows you will have something that looks like this:

Continue to add strips to each side until you have a total of 5 strips in each color. This is what your finished block will look like:

When you put two blocks together, you can see the secondary pattern start to emerge:

courthouse steps pattern

Pretty, huh? The cutting part is tedious, but the piecing is fast and easy and the finished look is definitely worth the time. I hope you all try it! And I hope my bee members enjoy making these.

*For a 96″ x 96″ quilt, you will need to make 64 blocks. Fabric requirements are 22 dark fat quarters, 19 light fat quarters, and 3/8 yard of your center square fabric.

Baltimore Album Quilt

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I signed up for a year-long Baltimore Album quilt class at a local shop called Happiness is Quilting. This is actually the first quilting class I’ve ever taken, and I’m very excited about it. Our first class was a couple of weeks ago and I’m already feeling very inspired and full of ideas. If you’re not familiar with the style, this is a Baltimore Album Quilt:

It’s all needle-turn applique and each block has a lot of symbolism for the woman who made the quilt. I think traditional Baltimore Album quilts are lovely, but I was really inspired to make one after seeing the wide variety of traditional and contemporary ones on display at Quilt Festival in Houston last November. I really like the idea of personalizing the traditional blocks to tell the history of my family.

Our homework from week one was to choose our background fabric and our focus fabric, and to create a papercut block.  I’m still stuck on the fabric choosing part. Background fabric is traditionally white or cream on BAQs, but for a truly modern quilt, a colored background would be gorgeous and unexpected. The focus fabric sets the color palette for the whole quilt so it’s important to choose a fabric that you truly love. Here are the options I’m considering:

BAQ - option 1

Option 1 is a Jo Morton 1850s reproduction print that is very traditional, with that rich poison green color I love so, so much. My background options are Kona Ice Frappe and Sage. I think the Sage is probably the one I’d choose. I can imagine myself always loving this fabric and the colors really are timeless so this option is very tempting.

BAQ - option 3

Option 2 is an Anna Griffin print from her Darcey collection paired with Kona’s Nightfall solid. The colors in that floral print are pretty timeless as well and not that different from the Jo Morton print above. The print is a whole different story, though. It’s not a traditional floral, but it reminds me of a 1950s dress. The dark blue background fabric would make for a pretty dramatic quilt.

BAQ - option 2

Option 3 is one of the wallpaper prints from Amy Butler’s Belle collection paired with Kona Bone. I’m already working on a quilt featuring Belle, and this fabric is impossible to find so that’s a vote against it. The colors in this fabric are just divine, though. Kona Bone looks really good with the rusty orange color in the Belle fabric. The whole palette is just spot on. On the other hand, the fabric is a large scale so most of the pattern would be lost on a 12″ to 14″ block.

It’s going to be hard to choose!

spring sewing

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A few weeks ago my friend Jamie lent me her copy of Amy Butler’s new book, Style Stitches. This book is full of cute bag patterns, and I’ve been dying to make one since I saw them in Amy’s booth at  Quilt Market in the fall.  Several of the bags resemble her awesome but pricey Sweet Life bags (my favorite was the Hampton bag) but the patterns are simpler with fewer pockets and zippers.

Since one of my goals for this year was to do more non-quilting sewing, I decided to make the Cosmo bag:

Don’t ask me why  I didn’t pick fabrics from my ridiculously large fabric stash. I saw these prints from Dwell Studio on fabric.com and they just made me buy them:

spring sewing

The yellow bird print will be the main body fabric and the maze print will be the straps. The prints (especially the yellow) are large scale so I’m crossing my fingers that the bag will be large enough to do them justice. I can’t wait for the mailman to deliver this fabric!

If you are making or want to make any of the projects from this book, there is a sew-along  on Flickr.

fabric overload

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I’ve spent many hours over the last couple of weeks organizing my fabric stash.

stash (mini bolts)

I’ve put my one yard plus pieces on mini bolts (really just pieces of acid free cardboard).  They look better and it’s definitely easier to see what I have (before pics here). But the mini bolts are flimsy and I find it hard to make the fabric stay straight and neat without using pins. It also takes up A LOT more space. All in all, I’m not sure I would recommend organizing your fabric like this. It definitely doesn’t work well for pieces that are under 3/4 of a yard. If I hadn’t invested so much time into all of this folding and color coding, I might just put it back the way it was.

There is an upside to all of this reorganizing, though.  I’ve finally started to see that I’m mere yards away from true hoarder** status. My husband was right!

pre-cuts

[pre-cuts]

fat quarters

[fat quarters]

I gave up fabric buying for Lent, but I think I could easily give it up for the next couple of years.  And probably should. The pressure of all of that unused fabric is kind of cramping my creative mojo.

**I know some of you are rolling your eyes about the hoarders reference. True, there are no mountains of garbage here, but it’s not all hospital corners.

hoarders

Excuse my dog’s…ummm, grooming. He didn’t realize he was being photographed. ;)

Even though I’m not thrilled with the results, I am glad to be finished with that time-consuming project so I can get back to actual sewing. I predict lots of pre-cut friendly quilts in my near future.

katie jump what?!?!

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Last Friday I went to the Dallas Quilt Show with several good girlfriends. We met for a delicious diner breakfast and made it to the show just after it opened. I had a short wish list of goodies that I wanted to buy: a market tote basket and a curve master presser foot. I’m really trying to take a break from fabric buying but five booths into the show, I bought a fat quarter bundle of Amy Butler solids. Those pretty colors weakened my resolve. I was pretty proud of resisting the vintage quilty stuff at the next booth. Several of my girlfriends took home some really amazing stuff (Melanie’s quilt scraps, Monica’s vintage quilts) but I tried not to even look at the booth, knowing that I have four unfinished vintage quilt tops awaiting some TLC at my house already.

I did find my market basket, which was very exciting. These handmade baskets are from Ghana and a portion of the profits goes back to the community of weavers that makes them. They’re called bolga baskets and you can find them easily online (most of them are dyed bright colors). They’re ideal for your sewing room – I bought my first bolga basket at another quilt show in the fall and I use it to store pre-cuts and fabric stacks for future quilts. It holds a lot of stuff and looks pretty.

And it’s a good thing I bought that big old basket because there were even more fat quarter bundles that I could not resist.

quilt show goodies

Denyse Schmidt’s Katie Jump Rope and American Jane’s Peas and Carrots! Both of these bundles were priced at normal retail, not Etsy-OMG-are-you-for-real prices. If you’re searching for some hard to find fabrics, you must check out your local quilt shows. A lot of small shops don’t turn over inventory very fast and if they don’t have an online shop, the odds are very good that you’ll find some out of print goodies. (This quilt shop does have an online store with some Katie Jump Rope in stock.)

I was feeling so pleased with myself that I even did some sewing this weekend (I’ve lost my mojo recently so like Ron Burgundy it was kind of a big deal.). It’s a Union Jack block for Erica in the Ringo Pie bee.

union jack - Ringo Pie (Feb)

Can you tell that the blue fabric is 1930s bunnies? And the white fabric has tiny strawberries on it? I just wanted to point that out. ;)

sunday stash {2.20.11}

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sunday stash {2.20.11}

Aqua, teal, and pink = pretty, pretty, pretty!

I’ve sewn a lot this week, but I don’t have much to show for it (literally – no photos!). I finished the Popsicles Posies quilt that I thought I’d never finish because of the hand quilting. This quilt is so sweet and I can’t wait to show it you guys. I’ll definitely get some photos this week.

Here’s a sneak peek:

binding

(really, it’s just a gratuitous dog photo)