Road to Oz

The road to Oz is a bit wobbly, and it took this quilter forever to get there. My mom's quilt is finished, washed and in her possession, and I am happy to report she loves it!

Here it is, thanks to Leland for holding it up for me in the wind this afternoon, and it seems that Penny always makes an appearance when I take photos of my quilts. :) She was a bit hot this afternoon, it got into the 80s today, too hot for the Malamute in her.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my inspiration came from Megan at Lucy & Norman who was inspired by this quilt. I love the way it turned out! My only wish is that I could have finished it sooner than the day before Mother's Day so that I could admire it a bit (this always seems to happen!)

For the quilting I didn't want to do my typical stippling, it wouldn't have looked right with the pattern. I did a bit of browsing on the internet and came across this FABULOUS website full of ideas for free motion quilting. I decided to do a brick pattern for the quilting, which was very fast and work perfectly for the quilt. Since the bricks on the quilt are wonky, my lines could be too. It was really fun to quilt, and my stitches were even for the most part. Here is somewhat of a close up of the brick quilting on the back. It is the best photo I took in the wind, that shows it off.

I have decided to post what I learned from each quilt once I have finished them. Maybe I can help others out that are learning like myself, or maybe they are silly common sense things that someone could prevent me from doing again. :)
What I learned: when doing a wonky cut block, start out with a larger fabric than you originally planned. For my blocks I started with 4.5" by 7" wanting a 4 by 6.5" finish, wonky. I should have started bigger, it would have saved me a lot of headache and time. But this was my first time working with wonky pieces, without a pattern too. I also could have cut my white strips larger to go on just two sides of the block, rather than cutting small ones (1") for all four sides. These were silly things that took up too much time to work out.

Nearly There!

Making progress on my Mom's Quilt:

But I calculated the number of blocks needed wrong and I am 12 short. Math has never been my best subject. :) Back to cutting and piecing the last few blocks. Hopefully by tonight I will have a completed quilt top. My goal was to have it basted by the end of the night. The best laid plans....

Making Some Progress

I haven't been quilting much lately, which is why I haven't been posting either. I really haven't made a lot of progress on my mom's quilt either.... So rather than study right now I am going to quilt at least two rows for my mom's "Yellow Brick Road" quilt. The quilt is going to be like the one mentioned in this post, using Wizard of Oz fabric, one of my mom's favorite movies. Here has been my method so far.

I start with my 4.5" by 7" block. Then I trim it down from there to make it wonky, or I leave it alone and cut it wonky later. I attach 1" strips to the sides, some only on a few of the sides (see below.)

Then I trim them down to 5" by 7.5" with the white boarder grout around them, this is where I make them really wonky.

Then I stitch them together to form a row of 8 or 9. The rows with only 8 I will go back and add on 1/2 a block to each side to make them the same length once I finish all the rows.

Now I tried a different method on my fourth row, to see if it saved time and fabric. I added white to only three sides, thinking I would make one side larger to make up for both sides of the grout not being added. (So I did the top and bottom and right side of each block, making the right side wider than 1"). It did not save any time, it actually took up more time because I wasn't able to make them wonky the easy way, way too much fussy cutting. And the blocks were smaller than 7.5" making this row shorter than I anticipated.

The row closest to the bottom is the experimental row.

So here is what I have done so far:

Not a whole lot! And I need 14 rows of 9 blocks each, pieced, basted, quilted and binded by Mother's Day! I am not sure if I want to leave the experimental row or add on fabric to all sides. I kind of like the idea of having an odd row in the quilt. I think I will leave it until I get the other 10 rows finished. Let's hope I can get a few rows done before studying for my final, and watching Glee. :)

Just In: Freshly Squeezed Blocks

After getting back from class tonight I checked my mailbox...waiting for me was a package filled with 36 very ORANGE crazy nine patch blocks! I was so excited to open the envelope and see all the fabulous work done by the 29 other quilters in our block swap. Here they are:

My plan for the quilt is to make smaller crazy nine-patch blocks out of the fabric I used to make my blocks (because I went crazy and bought like 5 yards of orange fabric!) Then lay them out randomly on a white background.

I can either make one large quilt, a lap quilt using some of the blocks on the back or I could make more than one. I was thinking maybe make a lap quilt and then also a baby quilt to sell, we'll see.

In other quilting news, I have gotten 2 rows of my mom's quilt finished for Mother's Day in the last 2 weeks. Two rows out of 14, with only 3 1/2 weeks to go, at this rate I might have the quilt finished for Father's Day. :)

Strep Throat and Inspiration

As a preschool teacher, I have built up a pretty strong immunity to illnesses. After my first year of teaching I have rarely been sick, in fact, as my doctor informed me Monday, I haven't been to the doctor for an illness for 6 years. Enter, my friend strep throat.... So this past few days I have been resting, doing some studying and planning a few new quilts. (as if my workspace doesn't already have enough going on) I also went back to re-evaluate a quilt I have been planning on for my mom.

I have wanted to make my her a quilt ever since I started quilting last year and asked her for help. I have had every intention, last mother's day I tried to come up with a great pattern and fabric for her, but I couldn't. This past Christmas, again I tried and still nothing. The problem: I love modern quilts, colorful maybe a little wonky, full of spunk. My mom is very "country", loves antiques and the quilts in her home, although beautiful, are not my style: think Little House on the Prairie. I want to make her something she will love, but something with a bit of my personality in it as well.

Then I had an idea, she also loves The Wizard of Oz, and there are some fun fabrics out there, so I bought a bunch, but still had no idea what to do. I came up with a plan....but was not sure enough to actually cut the fabric.

  

Being sick I took some time to check out flickr for inspiration, and I found it! Here is the new inspiration quilt from Lucy & Norman. I love this: the wonky blocks are perfect and Megan even named this quilt "Wonky Yellow Brick Road Quilt." I think this would fit the fabric really well as well as the theme of the movie, the only problem is that nothing about this quilt is traditional like my mom usually goes for. Once I figure out my measurements I really just need to make the first cut and stick with it. Not to mention, I think binding the quilt in the gingham would look great, as well as using it on the backing with some red....
Any thoughts?