WIP update

**Go HERE for the giveaway post.**

It has been a while since I posted anything about Works In Progress. I am not linking up anywhere, this is just for fun.

I haven't made a lot of progress on any of these since February.
 Yesterday I decided to get some stuff moving forward.

The Baby 2 quilt needed to get off the back of the chair in my bedroom and get done so I could put it away. The baby turned out to be a girl and this quilt leaned heavily in the male direction. So I wanted to finish the top and pack it up so I can focus on doing a girl quilt. I have fabric chosen, just need to click the purchase button. :)

Dots 'n Tots Quilt Pattern by Debbie Taylor (It's Sew Emma Little P). Print fabric is Going Coastal and Shore Thing, both by Emily Herrick for Michael Miller fabrics. I added the extra little stripe in the center corners.

 

 

Beginners Quilt Along sampler quilt.

I have more sashing and borders to add to these blocks before I can quilt it. It is pieced in four rows of three blocks at the moment. I haven't ever sewn blocks together in rows and then added the cornerstone-ed sashing. I usually do it block by block. I hope it lines up okay.

My current WIP/UFO list

To Start:
Beach Blanket
Come What May
Coins
Crayons Box
FQS BOM
Halloween
Sewing Machine Cover
Teal and Brown Sleepytime
T-Shirt gift quilt


Finish Piecing:
Lavender Sampler
Alford BOM
Doll Quilts
Hot Wheels
MOTP QA
Supernova
Tree Skirt quilt


To Quilt:
Baby Quilt
Baby 2
Bliss
Candy Land
Log Cabin Topper
Neutral Mediterranean
Sliced Coins
Spools Table Runner
Very Hungry Caterpillar



In other sewing news, my husband surprised me with a tablet for my birthday last month and I needed a stand for it to rest on while I was cooking and sewing. I found a tutorial here, that looked simple enough. I made it even simpler by not cutting out her pattern pieces, but instead used my sour cream pouch tutorial and just added the extra stitching across the bottom and filled it in the same places as she showed in her photos. It works great!

 

Trivet time

These blocks turned out too big to be a hot pad/potholder so I went with a trivet. :) I used 3 batting layers, regular, Insulbrite and regular. I quilted each block individually to a layer of regular batting, then quilted the Insulbrite to the back of the scrappy block. I put them right sides together, sewed the sides, leaving a gap for turning. Turned, pressed, topstitched to close the hole. Then did a little more quilting to secure the layers together.

 Block tutorial here: http://www.diaryofaquilter.com/2012/10/be-good-to-your-heart-quilt-block.html

This is a scrappy block using the scraps from the heart block. I made HSTs at the same time as sewing the corners on the heart. Then used some of them here.

 

March Along: Week 3

This week was hit and miss more than last week. And I have done 0-nada-zilch work on UFOs. I technically made my minutes goal, but did not sew or do something sewing related every day. It was  a busy week. Friday was my only appointment free day.

Sunday 17th - No sewing time
Monday 18th - 45 min Sketching quilt blocks, 2 hours testing quilt blocks

One of my testers. It is very pretty in person. Phone photo coloring is not fabulous!

Tuesday 19th - Made Easter Basket

http://sewlux.blogspot.com/2012/04/easter-basket-tutorial.html

Wednesday 20th - No sewing time. Time? What time?

Thursday 21st - No sewing time.

Friday 22nd - Toddler Tea Towel Apron gift for a party Saturday morning. I would have liked to fancy it up a little but I was stumped. No fabric I had on hand went with it. I did have a brainstorm after I gave it to her, to use the top that gets cut off for a pocket. Next time!

http://harriethomemakerstrikesagain.blogspot.com/2013/03/toddler-tea-towel-apron-tutorial.html

 
Saturday 23rd - Cleaned and organized sewing area. Ahhhh. So much better!


March Along Podcast link: http://scientificquilter.com/2013/03/23/30-3-sneak-attack-marching-in-the-march-a-long/

More Paper Piecing

My Facebook quilting group is doing the paper piecing block from Crafty Gemini, the same one I tried a while back.
After doing it again, I remembered I wanted to try a different order in the piecing to see if it would be easier to line up. The bottom part has different seams when pieced in the order on the tutorial video.

Block #1: The right side goes on first then the bottom (yellow) then the left side.

 I made the blocks again, and sure enough, the seams now looked the same and were easier to match up. I like to think it made a difference in my accuracy. :)

 Block #2: The bottom (green) goes on first, then the right side and last the left side. 

 

These blocks will become hot pads/trivets with some Insulbrite batting.


 They are still not as accurate as I keep hearing paper piecing is supposed to be. It must be me. Or maybe my foot is not accurate anymore. The individual blocks are fine, but when I put them together, not so much.
Someday I will try a different block and see how that goes. For now I still have a to-do list too long for much play and experiment quilting. I think March will be play time.

 

5 Little Pumpkins block

Melissa at Happy Quilting  designed a really fun block for the Glorious Autumn Block Party hosted by Quilting Gallery last week. Of course I had to make one for Littlest Miss.

Here is Melissa's block:

http://happyquiltingmelissa.blogspot.ca/2012/10/5-little-pumpkins-glorious-autumn-block.html. Melissa's block and the book that inspired it.

 Here is my block:

I changed this block to use the fabrics I had on hand. I did not have enough "sky" fabric so I took the "ground" up behind the fence to fill in. I also only had black so I did a night version and added a moon with applique. I attached mine with hook and loop tape since my machine is a bear to make buttonholes with. I also added elastic loops (too short though) for rolling up for storage. I didn't bind, but sewed right sides together then turned. I used fusible fleece rather than batting for the quilting and for the pumpkins to make it a little easier.

Quilt Along Blocks and goodies

I actually got my blocks done for the Beginner's Quilt Along done before the new block was posted this week! Yay! Miss K is potty training which for now means we stay home all day for at least a week. She watched Finding Nemo today so I worked on my blocks. I am terrible at quarter square triangles. They were fine until I had to square them up. You can tell, especially in the bright block, bottom right, that at most of them are squared wrong. But this is about learning so I am okay with it. I will need to practice these though.

BQA 11

BQA 11B

In other news, I got to meet Julie Herman on Saturday at her book signing at Quilt In A Day quilt shop in San Marcos. I completely forgot to take a photo with her. She is very nice and I wish I had not been so distracted by my little one running around the store so I could have taken more time to chat. There were not a lot of people there to attend the signing, but plenty of people shopping. They had a back room where you could buy fabric by the pound! I got a little less than a pound and spent about $10.00 on it. The yellow is about 1/2 a yard (it has a seam in it), the blue with red dots (Michael Miller is about 3/4 yard, the white with blue and red dots (also Michael Miller) is just a bit over a yard and the batik is a little bigger than a fat quarter. The alphabet fat quarter is the one Miss K chose for me to make something for her.

I am really excited about the book. It has great patterns in it and the instructions seem really well written. We shall see when I have to actually use them, but it looks promising.
I also signed up to do the Fat Quarter Shop's Designer Mystery Block of the Month. I got 3 blocks at once since it started in June, which hit my "Mad Money" rather hard, especially with my quilt shop visit this weekend. Now I have some number crunching to do. :)

I hope you all have a creative and great day!

 

A little of this and that...

One of the alternate activities to sewing in the last week.

I have had a little bit of sewing time that wasn't brain frying and although I missed the deadline to enter for a prize, I did get my 2 blocks done for the Beginner's Quilt along yesterday.

Block 9 BQA

Block 9B BQA

 Also, the other night, while I was showing my husband the iterations of the crayon folder, he mentioned that it was similar to how he would like his Kindle case to be, sans the fastener. So, since I was in folder mode, I had him choose a fabric (I have no clue how I got this fabric, by the way) and while he was delivering his brother to the airport, I made him a Kindle cover. I added some test blocks from the Hot Wheels quilt that didn't make the cut to add some pizazz.  The pocket is just a hair too snug, (it was fine until I did the top-stitching) but at least we know it won't fall out. ;)

And I finally finished 30  Polaroid blocks to swap in Debbie's Picture Perfect Polaroid block swap. Well, 35 got sent, but I am only swapping 30.
Here is a sampling. I adore the little cowboy.

 

Work in Progress Wednesday: 07-25-12

Check out the inspiration at the Freshly Pieced link up!

It is Wednesday, and I had fully intended to take stock of my WIPs/UFOs and get a nice little chart up.

That didn't happen.

But, I did get quite a bit of sewing time over the last week, most of it Monday and Tuesday during nap time.

I still have not touched the Hot Wheels mess quilt.
Instead I let my creative juices flow in a softer, gentler direction using 1 1/2 mini Aviary honey buns (by 3 Sisters for Moda) in a little quilty experiment.

Here is the progress as of about 4:30 Tuesday afternoon.

 I spent most of Monday afternoon sewing all the strips together and then ripping out all the seams later that evening, as I had sewn every gosh darn one of them the wrong direction. :) I also seam ripped a nice hole into my foot. That was fun. :P I also had to rip a seam in block 6 re-do (shown below) because it did not line up well at all.
 A side note:
     Have you seen Endgame? Oh I love that show. That is what kept me and my husband entertained while I ripped seams.

On Monday I also I made 3 blocks for the Beginner's Quilt Along. I was getting tired of the purple fabric so I decided to cut into my cute new fat quarters to create block 7. 7B actually, as I also made block 7 in the purple. I can't bring myself to wholly abandon the purple quilt yet. :) I also re-made block 6 without the yellow fabric. I accidentally reversed the fabrics when I cut, but it turned out, I think, better than the planned arrangement.

Block 7B

Block 7

Block 6 with yellow

Block 6 re-do

I am also continuing to work on my blocks for the Picture Perfect Polaroid block swap. I have 2 sides sewn on all the centers. I think I have about 40 to send in.



My other major Work In Progress is my effort to complete the Ease into 5K program. I have made it 5 weeks and lost between 5-6 pounds. We (my daughter and I) did our longest run Tuesday which was a 9 minute stretch. I never thought I would be able to run for 1 minute so 9 seems HUGE! :)


Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

 

Work in Progress Wednesday: 07-18-12

I still haven't been able to bring myself to look at the Hot Wheels Quilt to rip out seams, so it remains a W.I.P.

 

I believe the one about the Hot Wheels Quilt top being done was the last WIP Wed. report I gave. So I have a little catching up to do.

I was at scout camp all last week from 8am until 3 pm, except for Wednesday, with my son,  which was awesome but exhausting. I was only signed up for 2 days but there were several people who dropped out of volunteer staff at the last minute and I was fairly free so I helped out 2 extra days.
Because of that, and the birthday the last few weeks have been more or less just working on the blocks for the Beginner’s Quilt Along.

I have made 3 blocks since the last WIP post making 6 total.














This is last week's block. I am going to do it again without the yellow. For one thing, I had some stretching issues with the center block after I sewed both the top and bottom rows upside down and had to take out the seams. The point on my HSTs are sloppy, and while I love the yellow in this block, there is no other yellow in any other block.

 


 I have also been cutting fussy cut pieces for the Picture Perfect Polaroid block swap hosted by Debbie of A Quilter's Table. I am still unsure about how many blocks I will be sending but, it looks like at least 20.



Tuesday I got some good solid sewing time in and finished the promised scripture tote for my son. His scripture bag broke a few weeks ago and since he has the large print version of the scriptures I needed to make him a "custom" bag.  He has the large print because when he was first learning to read, he would get easily lost in the tiny print when it was his turn to read during family scripture study. So we got him the large print version and he had a much easier time of it after that. When he turns 8 and is baptized he will get to choose new scriptures and a case, but in the meantime he needed a bag to carry his scriptures to church.

 

I found some fabric that I liked and he liked it too. I also got some nylon webbing for the handles. I used the basic instructions from the Poochie Bag to make it, just changing the dimensions. The webbing is a little bulky at the bottom but, oh well. It will be sturdy!  :)


 Visit Lee at Freshly Pieced to see other Works In Progress on this fine Wednesday!