Wow, it's been a month since I posted anything over here. Things have been a bit hectic — starting a new job weeks before Christmas leaves little time for blogging. I haven't checked my Google Reader in a couple of weeks, but I wanted to pop in and share a mug rug I made last month.
What's a mug rug? It's "an oversized coaster for your mug or glass or cup and has room for a cookie on the side!" according to the moderators of the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap on Flickr.
OK, well it's not my mug rug. It's a gift for the lovely Julie of Sew Jewely (formerly Jewel's Arm Candy). Julie and I "met" when participating in the JaybirdQuilts/ORB Hexagon Quilt-Along. We both used Glam Garden by Josephine Kimberling. (On a side note, I think it's kind of awesome how two quilts in the same quilt-along and using the same fabric line can turn out so different. Here's my hexagon quilt, and here's Julie's.)
Julie's mug rug measures about 5¾"x8½".
Julie had a giveaway back in October to celebrate her 100th post. I entered, and even though I didn't win, Julie sent me some fat quarters of Innocent Crush, just 'cause she's awesome like that. Since we bonded over mutual love of the Glam Garden line, I decided to use my last bits of Glam Garden to make this little mug rug as a thank-you to Julie.
For the back and binding, I used this coordinating Mingle dot that was included in the pre-cut bundles (a jelly roll strip for the binding and a layer cake piece for the back).
Anyone wondering how I pieced this baby? I did it entirely by hand, using the English paper piecing method. I was inspired by Malka Dubrawsky's Modern Baby Quilt, which is featured in her new book, Fresh Quilting. Though I own the book, I decided to assemble this tiny homage my own way.
I made this mock-up using Adobe inDesign and printed it on card stock. Then all I had to do was cut out the shapes, baste my fabric around them and stitch them together. I put the petals together into hexagons, pieced the hexagons into rows and then pieced the rows together. I hope that made sense to all. If not, I'm glad to post a tutorial. Just let me know in the comments!
I have about 10 days to finish up gifts before I head to my parents' house for Christmas, so I don't expect to have any updates on the blog until 2011. I'll keep updating Flickr in the mean time. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Solstice, what have you. See you in the new year!
... I love handiwork! I love how portable it is, and I love the fact that I can both be productive and spend the day on the couch watching TV.
To make my handiwork a bit more portable, I made this little needle book. I'd been wanting to make one for a while. At the November Austin Modern Quilt Guild meeting, I saw one that our secretary, Mitzi, had made, and I knew I had to make one for myself!
How cute is that? I seriously couldn't stop looking at it after I finished it. I can't take credit for the design, though. I adapted it from an embroidery design I found after searching "free embroidery pattern" on Flickr. I got some super-cheap pieces of felt, some coordinating embroidery floss and black perle cotton from Jo-Ann's and went to town.
It holds a bunch of needles as well as some embroidery floss, and my needle grabber sticks in there pretty well, too.
I'm linking this post up with Fabric Tuesday. Hop on over to the Quilt Story blog to check out some other fabric crafty goodness.
I'm just popping in with a sneak peek of a little gift I'm working on.
I completely missed the Blogger's Quilt Festival, but sometimes life happens. (I didn't even have time to write up a post about an already gifted, photographed quilt!)
I'll be back with more crafty goodness (and hopefully some good non-crafty news) later this week!
I have been procrastinating lately. I haven't touched the Geese and Coins quilt since my last post. I've just about given up on having it done for the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I would have to have it done, photographed, and posted by Friday.
To distract myself by the lack of things I've accomplished lately, I have a lovely assortment of bee blocks coming my way! October was my month the Bee in my Bonnet virtual quilting bee. I sent out some jummy Robert Kaufman Christmas-themed fabric, and pretty much asked my fellow bee members to go to town. Here's what I've seen so far:
Amazing, right? My bee members graciously allowed me to post their photos, please click the links above to see each photo in its full glory on Flickr.
I'm going to add a 2" red or green border to each block. Here's a sketch I made last month before I shipped off my fabric:
Just as I was about to publish this post, Julie H. posted this beauty to Flickr:
I haven't made my own block for this quilt yet. Actually, I haven't decided if I'm going to or not. Julie F. made two blocks, so I may make one myself for the front and work the extra block into the back, or I may not make a block.
I'm thinking of doing fairly simple, sparse quilting on this one so I can have it ready to snuggle under after Thanksgiving, and so I still have time to work on Christmas gifts.
I finally got the body of the quilt top assembled. Now I just have to make the borders. This thing is huge! So huge, in fact, that I couldn't take a picture of the whole thing. It's going to finish at about 64" x 80" (that's more than 5 feet wide and 6½ feet tall).
Now those are some teeny geese! I'm thinking of replacing some of the 2" squares in the border with these little two-geese units I made with some of my "waste" from the big geese. I have a bunch of these half-square triangles (two for every goose... 340!) that I'm hoping to make into some quilted throw pillows.
ps: If you have any advice on how I should quilt this thing, please share :)
Are y'all getting tired of hearing about my adventures in flying geese blocks yet? I hope not, cause I've got some more for ya. At least this time I have something other than stacks of fabric to show!
I was up early this morning and got some sewing done. Actually, I was up late. To be even more precise, I'm still up late. Insomnia won last night, and I didn't sleep a wink — not for lack of trying. So please forgive this overly perky, stream-of-consciousness sporadic post. I'm running on Red Bull fumes at this point.
Since I just happened to be taking photos while the sun was still up (doesn't happen often!), I tried taking them outside. But they tried to fly away. So here's a picture from my ironing board, shoddy point-and-shoot flash and all:
I wish I had more to show for my all-nighter, but I ran out of thread! I sewed up three columns of geese, each one measuring about 68 inches. (They're taller than I am!) I probably could have gotten part of another column pieced, but I'm completely addicted to chain-piecing and I can't stop mid-chain to run out and buy thread. So three it is.
The good news is the columns are coming together rather quickly. I have two more columns of geese and four columns of coins. Oh, and the ridiculous border I decided to make out of 2-inch squares. I was pressing seams thinking "I can totally have this ready for the Bloggers Quilt Festival," when I remembered the border. Then I burned my wrist on the iron. I'm hoping the border comes together surprisingly quickly like the columns have been so far.
This is totally unrelated, but few people I know in real life would truly appreciate this awesome table. I was out having a beer with my roommate and just had to take a picture of this. (By the way, Don Draper drinks High Life. I finally watched the season finale during my sleepless night.) I can't wait to sketch something on graph paper! I think this needs to become something Christmasy...
ps: This post is linked up with Fabric Tuesday at the Quilt Story blog. If you like fabric, check it out!
This weekend was insane. For those of you who aren't familiar with Austin, it is a city that runs on festivals. In March, we have South by Southwest. In October, we have the Austin City Limits Music Festival (or ACL for short). ACL was this weekend, and boy did we have house guests — not just people, but dogs, too!
Needless to say, not a whole lot of sewing got done. The flying geese are coming together pretty quickly, but they've only been coming together in short spurts when I have time and space to work on them.
While I'm making flying geese, I figured I might as well make some teeny half-square triangles. I have no idea what I'm going to do with 340 1" finished HSTs, but I'm sure I'll figure something out... Maybe a matching throw pillow or two?
I'm about 80% through the geese-making process, then I can start piecing my columns. It's times like these I wish I had a design wall...
I spent what seemed like forever cutting up my Fandango jelly roll for the Geese and Coins quilt. This is what I've got so far:
About 300 4½"x2½" rectangles and about 140 2½" squares.
It was nice getting to use my new big workspace, though! My parents got me this table that adjusts to three heights and folds down nice and small when not in use. The lovely large cutting mat was a birthday gift.
This cute trash basket/pincushion was a birthday gift from the Austin Quilt Show. I know I could have made one myself, but this one was precious, and now I have time for other crafty adventures!
Next up: cutting almost 500 2½" squares and a bunch of 2½" sashing strips from my Kona Khaki yardage.
I'm finding myself easily distracted from this project, by things like a Halloween wall hanging and bee blocks...
My friend Erika told me about it a while back. It's a free personal wiki. Here's a screen shot of my home page:
Let me first say that this is not a sponsored post, and I haven't tried any other sites that offer this feature. This is just something I personally find useful.
I use PBworks to organize notes to myself about different projects I have going on, and different ideas I'm mulling over or tutorials I want to try.
You can see in the image how I have my home page organized by WIPs, UFOs, and projects or techniques I need to work on soon. Several things on the list link to pages for the project, or a page with links to tutorials or inspirational images.
In my sidebar, I have links to pages with general tutorials, free purse patterns I've found online, hexagon pictures and tutorials, photos of Amish quilts, etc.
I love it because I can add to it from anywhere, and it's easy to re-organize (which I did today, actually). It's pretty easy to navigate, and they have a lot of tutorials, though I've never worked through one. I pretty much just figure it out as I go.
How do you organize your notes, links, images, ideas?
I have been on a bento box kick lately, first with bee blocks...
Not sure what a virtual quilting bee is? Check out this post from Oh, Fransson! and the ever-fabulous Quilting Bee Blocks site.
These are for Julie from the bee in my bonnet. Julie asked for a 13" and a 5" square-in-a-square block. She sent a ton of fabric, so I made an extra big block. Julie was inspired by this Film in the Fridge quilt, but asked us to make the rings whatever sizes we wanted.
It was so much fun, I decided to whip up a quick Halloween wall hanging with some fat quarters I got at my LQS while out looking for fabric to send out for my month of the bee.
I got to use my walking foot for the first time quilting the straight lines on this baby. It's loud, but I don't know how I ever lived without it!
I also used my free-motion/darning foot to create a spiderweb pattern with the quilting. It shows up better in the close-up photo. I'm getting a bit better at free-motion quilting, but I'm still struggling to keep the stitch length consistent. I'm really liking the gray thread, too. It looks like a real spiderweb, sometimes it looks invisible and sometimes it smacks you in the face.
Do you have any holiday projects going on?
I actually finished the Garden Windows quilt a few weeks ago, but there was a delay in uploading photos. So let's just get to it:
I followed this tutorial on the Burgundy Buttons blog. I used a layer cake of Glam Garden by Josephine Kimberling and yardage of Kona Hibiscus.
I really like the look of the purple sashing, but I wish I had gone a shade or two darker to make the prints pop a bit more.
For the back, I used the leftover layer cake pieces, placing them on point down the center:
The quilting is a little easier to see from the back. I just did straight lines down all of the sashing, extending the lines into the border. I got a few puckers, because (irony of ironies) I didn't get my walking foot until the weekend I had to have this completed. This quilt was a birthday gift for my mom, and we celebrated our birthdays in Austin the same weekend (since they're less than two weeks apart). I'll update later this week and show you some goodies I got for my birthday, and a few pictures and goodies from the Austin Quilt Show.
I was naughty toward the end of August. I had already overspent on fabric, but when a Botany jelly roll showed up as the Quilter's Daily Deal for only $22 plus $5 flat-rate shipping, I really just had to have it. I couldn't really afford it, but it was a really good deal!
Anyway, while sitting on my couch Friday drinking coffee after waking up a good four hours earlier than usual, I decided to be as impulsive in using the jelly roll as I was in buying it.
I took inspiration (and some basic construction info) from this Moda Bake Shop tutorial and this doll quilt on Flickr.
I originally wanted to lay out my blocks like this:
But I didn't like it as much after laying it all out. The decision was made for me when I realized that the way I squared up my blocks meant that some of the seams would be impossible to line up using this layout.
So I played some more and wound up with this:
I'm much happier with this layout. I think the values work way better, and it's easier to see the effect. My roommate helped me brainstorm the top and bottom border.
One of my favorite parts about this quilt top is that it cost less than $30! That's pretty incredible. I think I'm going to bind it in the brown print I used for the ¾" mini-border between the blocks and the piano keys. Thoughts?
ps: Sorry for the less-than-stellar pictures. My camera has been acting funky, so I'm using my cell phone for the time being.
So for some reason it seems that when I commit to Amy's One Thing, One Week Challenge, I tend to flake out. I know Amy isn't trying to make anyone feel guilty for not meeting their goal, and I don't really feel guilty. I had an awesome week — I just didn't get any sewing done. (To quote Jaybird's last post: "as often happens... plans end up just plans.. and life happens."
My goal was to finish the top of the Garden Windows quilt and my August bee blocks. Well, all that's left on Garden Windows is the border, but in truth I had reached that point a week ago. I did knock out a bee block though!
(Sorry for the less-than-stellar quality. My camera was dead and I was running out the door to work, so I snapped this with my phone.)
Last night a switch flipped in my brain, and I went into productivity mode. I stayed up late and read half of a 300-page book that's been sitting on my nightstand for months. That felt amazing, and gave me some good stuff to think about. This morning (I use that term to loosely define the few hours after I wake up, though it's technically afternoon), my roommate, our friend Alex and I did a yoga dvd in our living room. It wasn't quite my kind of thing, but after doing that it was impossible to sit around and just hang out. (I think I'm going to try going to a local yoga studio tomorrow afternoon!)
So I busted out the graph paper, made a quick sketch, did some math, and whipped out Julie's first block for the Bee in my Bonnet. It felt good! Julie asked for interesting squares inspired by these two quilts. I had been putting these off, waiting for inspiration to strike, and this one just came to me today. I think we create better things using that process, so I'm trying not to force myself too much. If I don't feel motivated to work on something, I know I won't put as much care and attention to detail into it.
ETA: Speaking of bee blocks, pop over to Deanna's blog and see the first finished Bee in my Bonnet quilt!
I'm going to leave you with a somewhat-depressing (sorry!) quote from the book I'm reading, because it really resonated with me. That's all I'll say on the matter. here ya' go:Many people want desperately to believe, but just can't. They may feel tortured that their faith has evaporated, but they can't will it back into existence. If an autopsy could be done on their spiritual life, the cause of death wouldn't be murder or suicide. It would be natural causes — the organic death of a belief system that collapsed under the weight of experience and reason.
When I finished quilting my Hexagon Quilt-Along quilt, I was determined to have cool funky edges across the top and bottom. This, of course, meant some awkward corners on the binding. I did a few searches online and found this tutorial. That helped me sew the binding on to the front of the quilt easily enough. My big problem came when I went to attach the binding down to the back. Try as I might, I couldn't get a nice-looking miter on those inside corners.
So in this post I would like to show you my technique to get from this...
... to this:
NOTE: If you don't yet have binding attached to the front of your quilt, first make sure you're using bias binding (cut on the bias to allow some stretch) and follow the first part of this tutorial. Then come back here for more details on getting the binding attached to the back!
The first thing you want to do when attaching binding to the back of your quilt is press the binding from the front. The "outside" corners miter nicely, but the inside corners stick straight up and sort of curve (see the picture above). Going from right to left, I used one hand to hold the binding down flat on the right side of the corner, and pressed that side flat:
Next, I aligned a ruler to the mid-point of the inside angle. With this quilt, it lined up with the seam between my hexagons. I used this as a guide and finger-pressed the left side of the binding up, like this:
Then I pressed that fold with my iron to set it and get it nice and flat. Notice how the fold starts just a bit away from where the binding meets the quilt top:
Once you've pressed your corners from the front, it's time to flip over to the back. It will look something like this:
I use pins rather than binding clips simply because I don't have binding clips. I think for these purposes, pins would be beneficial at least on the corners. This time, we'll move from left to right, first pinning down the left side of the binding, a bit away from the corner:
Now, pin the right side down, again just a bit away from the corner. You should have something like this:
See how the middle wants to stand up a bit? Fold your quilt over some so you can get to the front. I found it helpful (especially since I clipped the corner a bit to sew the binding to the front) to sort of squeeze the corner together a bit, to get the miter to fold properly. Then you'll put a pin from the top down through the front miter:
Fold your quilt back over and put another pin in the back miter. Keep in mind that your miter will start a bit above where the binding is sewn to the quilt.
Once you have your corners pinned, you can start sewing the binding down. I learned this technique from this tutorial on Amy's Creative Side. Amy has some great tutorials on attaching the binding to the front and mitering your typical right-angle corner, too.
This is where I differ a bit from the tutorial I linked to above. Once I got to the "point" of my corner, I made a stitch that came out along the crease of the miter, then sewed a few stitches up along that fold, using the same technique as you would to attach the binding to the back of your quilt:
When I got to the top, I took a couple stitches that I can best describe as a sort-of whipstitch, coming out at the fold, down through the lower layer, then up again at the fold:
Those stitches are only that visible because the thread isn't pulled taught. If you do it right, they'll hardly show at all. After a few of those stitches at the top, I continued to sew down the miter on the front of the quilt:
When you get to the end of the fold (which will be a bit before the binding meets the quilt top) insert your needle in through the binding and into the batting, then flip to the back. Maneuver your needle so it comes out the quilt back just barely below the binding:
Give your needle a gentle tug, making sure all the stitches in your corner are pulled taught (they should all but disappear when you do this), then continue along the binding as you were before.
And that's it! I recently washed my Hexagon Quilt-Along quilt, and was very happy to see that the miters stayed in place using this technique.
This is my first real tutorial here at Thrifty Quilter, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. I'm always available to answer any questions — just leave me a comment and make sure you aren't a "no-reply" blogger so that I can get back to you.
Happy quilting!
