Quilting

Last November I was involved in a quilt square swap for an I Spy themed quilt. As soon as my stack of squares came in the mail I thumbed through them, then put them away knowing I would have absolutely no chance to do anything with them until after this pregnancy was over. I knew it would do me no good to get started on something like a quilt considering the nearly 3 dozen diapers I need to sew up before July and the host of other projects already on my plate.




Well apparently I dared myself and the other part of me thumbed her nose at the to do list. Behold, the beginning of an I Spy quilt for the kiddie comfort corner. The comfort corner our home is the corner made by the two couches in our living room and serves as a getaway for overwhelmed children or just as a hideout lately. The kids love hanging out on the mishmash of beanbags, cushions and covers in the corner but it seems we never have enough covers for when the "I don't want him sitting next to me"s kick in. This quilt, once finished, will pad our stash nicely.




Since I've got 100 unique, 4" squares I knew I wanted to bulk up the overall size of the quilt with some solids. After a good bit of time wasting on google image searches and the rabbit hole that is flickr, I finally decided to go with a disappearing nine patch block. The swap squares are pretty varied in colors so I chose two solids from the kona-type offerings at Joann's. A beautiful tahitian blue (much more saturated than the picture) and a nice bright grass green.




Since time will be of the essence I'm going to use the birthing method like the last quilt I made for my nephew which involves no binding and then stippling the quilt all over. For the backing I've chosen this plush cuddle cloth in a matching green which might allow me to get away without using any batting. We'll see.




I also recently received this Oz Layer Cake in the mail that I'd ordered last fall. Love layer cakes - just a stack of 42 unique 10" squares all from the same coordinating line.




I'm really excited about making a throw for the living room couch that might be used by the grownups instead of being appropriated by the children. Not sure just yet what design but I've got time since this is definitely one project I'll leave for next fall.

Phew! Finally, my mother's birthday gift.

I'm horrible at surprises. I can't contain myself so I usually like to give gifts the minute I buy or make them. I stink at Christmas when it comes to adults because I've given everything away way too early. So it's a small miracle that I was able to keep this pillow for my mom under wraps without giving away much more than I did by way of sneak peaks.

A while back I'd seen this beautiful embroidered handprint wallhanging on Plumpudding. I remember showing it to my mom when she visited and I believe she swooned, being the sentimental type she is. My mom is sentimental in a weird sort of way. She has a small jewelry box full of baby teeth from the sibs and I. Throughout our childhood she kept saying she wanted a bracelet made from our baby teeth except that we'd gone and mixed them all up. I don't know why she wanted them categorized but sis and I would giggle at the thought of our mom lookng like some sort of cannibal with a wristful of sharp little teeth. As if that weren't enough, when I *gasp* dared to throw out my oldest's umbilical stump out she dove for it and wondered why I wasn't keeping it for memories. No offense to those who keep them, I'm just not big into storing too many memories being the reformed packrat that I am. However, when she saw that I wasn't keeping it she promptly tucked it into her pocket and in a fit of grandmotherly duty decided to do the curating herself. More power to her. I know it kills her OCD twitchy side that I've not passed on the other two stumps.

So back to her swooning. Thanks to her reaction I mentally bookmarked the page and vowed to tweak it some way. I decided on a pillow and that's where I got stumped. See I'm kind of a newbie when it comes to this quilting thing and I've never really been very good at choosing and coordinating fabrics. Throwing me for another loop is that I had to make sure to not clash with my mom's peachy/mahogany wood, traditional living room that I had only seen in pictures. Oy. So I grilled some buddies of mine for approval on some of these orange and brown toned fabrics.




Once I'd settled on the fabrics I moved onto the embroidery. Yay, keeping three little hands still enough for me to trace. So. Not. Fun. The older two were a bit easier. The baby? Let's just say it's inspired by her hand. It took many tries to even get a shadow of her chubby little hand while keeping the other one from ripping the paper away. Once I'd traced their hands on paper I used the cutouts to trace onto the fabric. Then I settled in for some relaxing evening hand embroidery.




With the embroidery down I began to piece the log cabin portion of the pillow. I briefly considered doing a wonky log cabin but then I figured this being one of my first pillows, I'd like to eliminate all doubt that I went wonky by mistake and not on purpose. Straight it is.




See my pretty little seams? I love pressing them open. It speaks to my little OCD side. Plus it eliminates having to argue with myself about which side to press the seam allowance. Yes, there would be an argument over that. Yes I'm sane.




Finally sandwiched with batting and muslin, I basted the pillow top and quilted around the log cabin squares in concentric lines. Which would have been perfectly straight had I not started with a linen center square. How did I not remember from my last project that linen likes to shift so much? That first row of topstitching around the center square threw off every other row and my lines while semi-straight weren't falling correctly on the log cabin strips. I worried, but then a little google search showed me that it's quite common and apparently the charm of log cabin piecing. And if someone knows that's not the case, then la-la-la I'm not listening.




It didn't feel right to leave the center unquilted but I didn't want to go over the embroidery so I just did a little free motion quilting over the middle.




With the pillow front done I had to tackle, bum, bum, bum - the zipper. Thankfully Erin from House on Hill Road has a beautifully executed lapped zipper tutorial for pillows that was a dream to follow.




After putting in the zipper I sewed up the front and back, finished the inside seams with my serger and called it a day. Here's the front.




The back which I had to piece because I didn't have a large enough piece of the linen. I sewed the two pieces with the seam facing the outside of the pillow then appliqued this row of pieced scraps on top. No exposed seam on the inside and a little interest on the back. Perfect. Oh and there's that first zipper of mine. With one tiny little pucker that still bugs the snot out of me.




With the pillow form inside. My mother definitely loved it, says she has it already displayed and that she loves the cushy down like feel of the pillow form. Moms, gotta love their attention to detail.

Freemotion Quilting

Recently I've been seeing more and more artistic freemotion quilting that tremendously enhances a quilt design. First Amanda Jean with her pebble quilting and then Cheryl with that beautiful grass quilt.

It's amazing what someone can do with thread painting. Today I stumbled across this freemotion tutorial on youtube. Tree bark! Be sure to check out her other freemotion videos for more inspiration.

Puckery quilty goodness

Didn't mean to gag you with the superlatives but that's what was running through my head as I pulled the quilt out of the dryer. Puckery quilty goodness. Like I mentioned in previous posts I bought this quilt kit from Joann's several years ago intending to finally give quilting a try and trying to save myself the step of having to pick out the fabrics as well as figure out yardage. Not necessarily my type of color scheme or fabric choices but at the time I figured it would make a great baby gift.




I put it away then as usual, got distracted with other things including a pregnancy or two. I always thought it would take too much concentration to make a quilt and feared I would lack the follow through for a quilt. But then I started following a few quilting blogs in my reader. Crazy Mom Quilts, Oh Fransson, A Quilt Is Nice and other blogs that featured plenty of modern looking patchwork. Suddenly I actually had the desire to make a quilt. I pulled out the kit and dove in figuring with no deadline I had no pressure.




The kit included four prints for the top, a cuddly flannel for the back and a plush orange fabric for the final border on the top. The wovens sewed up very well using the quarter inch foot since I suffer from poor spacial skills - let's not even talk about my inability to paralell park.




That plush fabric was a bear to sew. Despite lining up everything and keeping all the seams tidy, the orange plush wanted to slide all over the place. It wasn't until the last two strips that I finally figured out to pin the heck out of the two fabrics before sewing. I'd love to have a little chat with the person responsible for throwing a slippery knit fabric into a quilt kit designed for a beginner.







Once the top was sewn on the kit's instructions specified this was to be a birthed quilt. Don't worry, no birthing photos in this post. Birthing means the backing and front are sewn right sides together, leaving an opening, then turned right side out and topstitched. Luckily I had some Warm and Natural batting kicking around because I felt the backing was a bit thin and needed something between the two layers. I layered the backing on the bottom, then the quilt top right side up, and finally the backing, wrong side up. I pinned the heck out of that.




Then I sewed around the edge using the walking foot, leaving a 6" opening. I then turned the quilt right side out, and handstitched the opening closed. Next, I smoothed the quilt out on the floor and pinbasted it. Then I began to fret.




I'd done some free motion quilting a few years ago on a small project similar to a placemat but this quilt was bigger and I now had a different machine than my beginner version. So I did what any self respecting type A personality would do, I made a test quilt sandwich. Then I messed around with stitching just to find a speed/hand movement combination that would produce an even stitch. With free motion quilting the feed dogs on the machine are down and the person pushing the fabric under the darning foot is what determines the stitch length. Too fast and you end up with loops of thread, too slow and you get a perforated quilt. Oh Fransson's free motion quilting tutorial is great for walking you through the basics.

Not pleased with my results the first time around I made another quilt sandwich. After the second try I found my sweet spot on the speed selector. With the third attempt I tried to get a feel for the squiggles of free motion quilting.




Even after my attempts at practicing on scraps the first quarter of the quilting was a little jerky and tight. However, I claim the galloping horse rule.




What's that? If you can't see an error from three feet away on a galloping horse then no one else can either. Ha! I kept furtively quilting and finally figured out why people are so easily addicted to quilting. I couldn't put it away. Finally it was quilted but the transformation isn't complete until you wash and pucker.




Tada! Even if the galloping horse rule didn't exist, the puckers of a good wash and dry hide any imperfections as well as softening the batting. The kids kept trying to walk off with the quilt and were only slightly satisfied with promises to make them their own larger quilts in firefighter themes.




I'll wrap it up and send it to a little baby that I hope will use it to pieces.




Now, the hard part. Narrowing down what kind of quilt to tackle next and finally to attempt a proper bound quilt.

I came, I saw, I quilted

Well, so much for waiting on a relaxing evening. Not more than a few hours after I posted about being scared to quilt this, I was getting antsy to start the free motion quilting.




Then I couldn't stop, and finished the quilting over the span of several hours. As a beginner, I found the tutorial on Oh Fransson a wonderful resource for getting the hang of moving the quilt and finding my rhythm. Still made a ton of mistakes but nothing that a hot wash to pucker the quilt won't fix. I can't wait to tackle something with my own fabric choices. When I post the final pictures I'll tell you all about the fight that the orange plush fabric gave me throughout the project.

A little more progress

You might have guessed already that it's a quilt.




A kit I bought several years ago.




Oh and this is how I manage to get a bit of sewing time in the day.




She rearranges my pressing and embroidery supplies in both baskets. Then I get the joy of putting them back.




Now the quilt is pinbasted (this is a birthed one, not a traditional one per kit instructions, more on that later). What's the deal? I'm askeered to quilt it. So I've set it up, and will wait for an evening involving relaxed shoulders, a relaxing beverage and just me plus the machine.

For someone who said she wasn't a quilter . . .

I sure am building up a stash.

These beauties arrived on Tuesday from fabric.com. But wait! There's more! My lovely mother in law N. sent me a 20lb box of fabric a few months ago. Thud. From a quilting store that was going out of business. Uh huh. Just out of the blue for no reason whatsoever except that she's picked up quilting and wanted to enable me. Yes, she rocks.

I'm a prewasher because I tend to use the fabrics in garments as well, so after washing all the fabric that N. sent me I've been ironing all the little precut squares plus larger pieces of yardage and fell in love with every.single.piece. all over again. I always said I wasn't a quilter because it requires a level of precision I don't think I have but there's no way I'm letting these beautiful prints sit around unused. Isn't sewing merely an excuse to touch beautiful fabric?

I remember visiting my friend T. and admiring a lovely wall hanging she had quilted and exclaiming to her that quilting was too hard for me. That I likely would never tackle it while I had children under my roof. ADD and focus filled projects with kids underfoot don't mix well and all that. But here I go.

If you pay close attention I managed to sneak in at least one firefighter print and the boys honed in on it like bloodhounds. I'm hoping one day to tackle something like these quilts by Amanda Jean at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Oh and check out the first harvest from the kids' garden. I went out one evening to dust some more diatomaceous earth after a heavy rain and saw something green peeking from under the mountain of green bean plants. There were tons of green beans! I still can't believe they just threw these seeds in willy nilly. I told Mr. Maricucu that creation is amazing. Indeed it is.

The cucumbers are a gift from my wonderful neighbors P. and R. This couple has been generous with their time and attention and now we're getting veggies from their garden. I can only hope to return the gesture. Hmmm, maybe something blueberry . . .

I'm pretty lucky

I love my sister in law and she loves me. No really, I'm not kidding. Don't tell anyone but I'm pretty sure she loves me more than her brother (sorry Mr. Maricucu!). All kidding aside she's a great woman, has raised an amazing teenage girl (and that's a feat in itself, I bow to you A!), loves my kids, and just spoils us to death in her presence and from afar. Between her and my mom I have no need to celebrate my birthday. So, A's birthday was last fall and I was soooooo late. I promise that I won't ever bring it up again but I was due with my daughter right around that time and had pretty much given up on going anywhere or doing anything. Oh sure, I started her present I just hadn't gotten around to mailing it ohhhhh, for another five months.

Shush!

Anyway, A moved into a pretty amazing house a few years ago and when I last visited she had the most beautiful red chenille couch mixed in with some swanky craftstman decor that I knew would go well with this American Primer coaster set. The coasters were dead easy, follow the Martha Stewart tute right here just don't go all Martha on the turning part. Sew the two fabric squares and the batting inside out, leave an inch or two for turning, turn and THEN sew the opening shut. Much better than trying to wiggle in a piece of batting after sewing. Remember class, done is better than perfect.

I used part of the American Primer charm pack from moda and in a move filled with self sacrifice used some of the most gorgeous red and blue patterns. Then I thought I'd whip up a crocheted box in cotton worsted yarn. Famous last words. The box took longer than the whole set of coasters because of my knitpicking perfectionism. Finally sewed it up, added a lining and sent it off to her. Good thing too or the boys were going to wrestle me for the set to use as firefighter coasters (around here it's all firefighter, all the time).


Here are the various fabrics (ignore the hideous amounts of dust on my sewing table). I just love those large floral prints at each end. I might have to get my hands on some yardage of those:

All tied up and ready to go. Why yes, of course I must put my name on everything I make like some temperamental fashion designer. And no, I don't even sell for a living :