Birthday Fabric

It was my birthday this week, not a bad birthday either, considering a few of my preschoolers made a few "bad choices" and my three week summer class has started (so I will be a little M.I.A. until after Memorial Day.)
I was spoiled rotten by my wonderful husband (as usual) with some fabric as well as season 3 of True Blood (I just love this show, not sure why.) He also took me out to dinner at a local Indian restaurant, although he was a little reserved. He did state halfway through our dinner, "OK, I guess I like curry." Which means he will eat with me there again. :)

As I said, I got some fabric,Christmas fabric to be exact. These two pieces are from the Holiday Hoot line from Alexander Henry:

There was some miscommunication between Lee and his parents, and they both got me a 1/2 yard of each, so I have twice the fabric I planned on. I am pretty excited though because I love owls, and it sure is cute! I plan to work on this quilt, after my Halloween quilt, sometime this summer.



I also bought myself a little birthday gift, another vintage star wars sheet from ebay to make another star wars quilt. I am going to fussy cut this guy and do some sort of scrappy block with the images for my new star wars quilt. I am quite the nerd. :)

So there is my birthday loot. I am one happy girl, now if only these papers for my Multicultural Ed. class would write themselves....

Spring Showers

We had a few thunder showers the past few days....or maybe they were more like storms since I had one of my preschoolers tell me, "Ms. Candace my dad showed me ice that fell from the sky last night!" I love rain, it is so peaceful. I especially love the sound of rain on the roof as you sleep. :)
I also attended my aunt's bridal shower this evening as well.  I am so excited for her, she has been dating a wonderful man the past 4 1/2 years and they are finally getting married this summer, now that my cousin is graduating high school. I have had the pattern and material for this quilt:

from Rachel Griffith at p.s. i quilt for nearly a year now, and I love it, but I have so many other quilts I want to make, I feel selfish keeping it. So it is going to be a wedding gift for my aunt and new uncle. However, I have just cut into the fabric, so it won't be done for awhile. For her bridal shower I decided to make her some coordinating small gifts for two. This wine koozie and my first mug rugs:

I followed the "recipe" for the wine koozie from Moda Bake Shop.  and I threw in some hot cocoa and a bottle of my favorite wine from a local vineyard. In the card I mentioned these little gifts would be great with something to snuggle with on a chilly day or lay out for a picnic, she loved these and is excited to see the quilt.
The pattern for this quilt uses 3 1/2" squares cut from charm packs, so I have these lovely scraps:

I think they will have to be used for some sort of stacked coins quilt, that may or may not stay in my home. I just love the colors (not necessarily the prints) of the Botany line! I am very excited to work on this quilt, it will be the first time I use a half square triangle in a quilt, hopefully it goes well.

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. :)

Flickr Fun

I took the day off today as a mental health day, and to study and quilt for Mom's Day. As I have been lounging on the couch with my husband (whom gets pretty much every holiday off such as Winter Solstice), trying to will myself to study, I decided to browse Flickr (so addictive!). I came across this fun Flickr Group full of creativity: {BrainStorming} and a Quilt. It is dedicated to the brainstorming process of quilting. People post their ideas, fabrics etc. and then later share the finished quilt.
I think this is my favorite thing when it comes to checking out other people's blogs, seeing how their brains work. It is so fun to get an idea for a quilt, draw it out and find fabrics and then see, and share, as your plan unfolds into a piece of art that is so cuddly! I have a few quilt ideas floating around in my head that I will be sharing soon.

Square in a square in a square

I just finished my first set of blocks for my quilting bee: Bee There or Bee Squares.

Sandi choose Jenean Morrison’s California Dreamin' fabric, which is beautiful! This was a super easy block to make too, using Sandi's tutorial found here. My only problem was getting the finished block to be 9.5". For some reason my super great 1/4" inseam was not so super today. (I had to take apart my first block and redo it.) Maybe it is because I wanted to stay in bed and read all day on this gloomy and chilly day. I am reading my guilty pleasure: the Sookie Stackhouse novels because the newest one comes out May 3rd and I wanted to re-read the first 10 before I buy my copy. I am also really excited for the new season of True Blood this July. :)