Billboard Quilt Along!!!

Elizabeth Hartman is hosting a new quilt along!  Hooray!  I'm so excited.  We are making billboard quilts.  That is a quilt that has big large letters, go see her post it explains it all.  I'm so excited!

As a gift for my baby's first birthday,  I received the ENTIRE collection of Joel Dewberry's Heirloom Fat quarters!!  So pretty!  Anyone who has a baby knows that first birthday is mostly for the parents, and frankly surviving the first year deserves a gift.

So I had a great idea!  One side of the quilt will have something clever on it, appliqued and patchworked... here is my sketch!

Elizabeth Hartman walks you through creating this chart, I think it would have taken me 2 weeks w/o her instructions, instead it took about 20 min.

The OTHER SIDE will just be a beautiful patchwork of these spectacular fabrics!  I'm going to make the patchwork like the front, and then do the letters as the back, this way I can work both sides at the same time!  Hopefully there will be enough left of my 26 fat quarters to make a scrappy binding.



I was so excited at my plan I got cutting 5.5" squares immediately.  I decided to use the Ruby and Sapphire colorways, saving the Citrine for a lovely throw for my bedroom.

mmmm pretty squares.

This is a conference table from Ikea, it makes a WONDERFUL sewing table :)

Farmer's Wife Week 10 and 11

How much do I love this quilt along.  The blocks are hard enough to be fun, and change constantly.  The one thing I think about whilst making all these blocks is how on EARTH would anyone make an entire quilt of the super fancy blocks?  Making one is fun, but after that, ugh!  There are easier ones interdispersed.

Week 10, I ABSOLUTELY love Churn Dash, I love the colors I used and everything about it.  It wasn't even so hard.

Week 11 - Corn and beans and Contrary Wife, HA.  That's me :)  Corn and Beans gave me much pause it's 42 tiny little triangles.  I'm just not that precise.  But I went slow and it actually turned out beautifully! 

Here are all 22 in their glory.  They are really starting to come together, I am roughly 20% done!

Summer Sampler Blocks DONE!

Week 4 complete!  Hooray!  I accomplished this while on vacation to upstate NY.  This means my Mom who is a very precise sewer was able to help me out so my squares are really good this week.

I'm not sure about the colors on this one... hopefully it will merge with the others



I enjoyed making this block, I wanted to use a bunch of green, I think it looks sharp!


My goal for the final block was to not use any white at all.  I am now offically running out of the fabrics I chose for the sampler so this is what had to happen based on what was left!.



All together now...


I am now going to throw a skinny border (probably pieced) around them before sashing and attaching!!

Thankfully another quilt along starts Monday :)

Finished Swoon!

My Mom and I started this quilt the last week in June (2011).  It was the first quilt she had ever made, and I'm certainly a novice myself.  We both fell in love with the pattern, and she is a big fan of red, white and blue fabrics.   The DS line from Joann fit our needs perfectly.  (I have a ton left for sale in my Etsy Store)


After the top and back were finished, I ordered some super warm Dream in Cotton Batting.  This stuff is so fluffy and WARM.  It's cold here in upstate NY and warm batting is required.  It also gave the quilt a puffier finish which appealed to my Mom.

I drew straight lines in a diagonal grid, and we split the quilting, again her first time....  We then followed the most excellent tutorial on Red Pepper quilts to make the binding.  It is practically like magic, it works perfectly every single time!  My Mom then did the last round of hand sewing and VOILA a beautiful quilt for her bedroom. 

We are both feeling pretty proud of this endeavor.


The back was a collaborative effort, I thought it would be cool to make a "really big" swoon block.  I got out some graph paper to try some color options, I wanted to use more than just two fabrics, in the end we settled on four different colors, and used on additional flying geese unit on each side.  The square measures 4'x4' and almost five feet after the borders around it were put on.  The remainder of the back was my Mom's favorite large print from the DS line.




The plan now is to make some coordinating shams for her bed.  We have a tentative design, and we'll see how it all works out!  This really is a fantastic project!

Summer Sampler Week 3

So far!  The end of Week 3.

This week I decided to use more colors on the blocks.



I'm excited to get this thing finished!  In all honesty I haven't started week 4 yet, which isn't like me, but I'm on vacation and frankly I don't have time :)  It's fine, really.  The blocks are also getting really hard and I don't want to rush.

This for some reason is 12.5" x 11"  It went together perfectly, and I have no idea why it's not square. 

This is really a terrific quilt along, and I hope I can find another fun one after this is over!

My baby turns one

This past Saturday we celebrated the first birthday of our daughter.  In traditional baby style she has completely changed our lives.  Here are some great photos of our wonderful day with her :)

Here she is celebrating her birthday with Daddy (no that isn't a unibrow, it's beets)

What? Gifts?!?!

I love a book! (opening gifts with Daddy)

Posing in the back yard before dinner

what mess? (mmm beets for dinner...)

is that for me?? (all cleaned up)

mmmm... cupcake

 

 

time for bed

Farmer's Wife Week 9

Well.  Here is my first attempt at paper pieced blocks.  I think there was some user error on my part, because they both were 4.5" square... I think files did not print out large enough.  I will do checking against the templates next time I try and do this.

This was also my first attempt at Y-seams.  Ugh.  I am not good at them.

So 18 down, 93 to go!

I need to keep in mind that I just started to learn to quilt.  When I first started to knit my stuff was TERRIBLE.  It never saw the light of day.  Now my knit stuff is fantastic, if I do say so myself.  So I've been knitting for about nine years... and the last three were when stuff was good enough to wear and looked store bought.  So I need to be patient, continue to work on my technique and have fun :)