I need to work on my sewing/cutting posture...

(Would you believe it took me more than an hour to make that stack of trimmings?)

So for a little while now I've been annoying all my friends about how my birthday is coming up "soon." It's actually 30 days away, but it's a milestone birthday so I guess it's been on my mind. What didn't occur to me until this week, though, is that if my birthday is soon, my mom's birthday is sooner! You'd think after almost 25 years I'd have that down... Anyway, I was really struck by the design of this quilt featured (with full pattern/tutorial) on the Burgundy Buttons blog last week. I had a layer cake of Glam Garden by Josephine Kimberling (purchased, of course, from Burgundy Buttons!) and some yardage of Kona Hibiscus just waiting to be made into a quilt. Of course, my mom's hobby of choice is gardening, and her favorite color is purple. I think you know where I'm going with this...

(ninety-nine 4½" blocks!)

For the Friday Night Sew-In, I decided I'd better get cracking on my mom's birthday quilt, which I'm thinking will be called "Garden Windows." I love the way the sashing looks like windowpanes, and the bright colors in the fabric line remind me of stained glass. I was a little upset to find out that my set of forty 10" squares wasn't exactly made of 10" squares... They were a little wonky, and some edges only measured 9½"! Luckily, this pattern calls for creating a bunch of triangles, sewing them to a diagonal sashing strip, and then trimming them to 4½". This was lucky in the sense that my not-quite-10"-squares worked well for the project, but unlucky in the sense that I spent something like five hours sewing, pressing, sewing again, and trimming all ninety-nine blocks. Don't they look pretty all neatly stacked up there?

I realized two things after the sewing and trimming marathon: First, I tend to hunch over a bit at my machine... I think I was trying to get a better perspective on the fabric going under my ¼" presser foot, because with ½" finished sashing, you have to be painfully exact. Second, all that trimming is hard on your back, too. Spending that much time hunched over my machine and then hunched over my cutting table has left me very sore today!

(first three rows)

But as I started laying out the rows, I decided it was all worth it. Also, it seems the worst is behind me. It only took me a few hours this afternoon to assemble seven of the eleven rows. I'm hoping to have the top done by the end of the week. I'm pretty excited about this quilt... the one I gave my mom for her birthday back in 2005 is getting a bit ratty.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Whirlygigs!

I'm back after a long (almost two weeks!) absence. I've been trucking away on my Whirlygigs. I finished the quilting during the Friday Night Sew-In but didn't post Saturday, because I wanted to show the finished product, so here it is!

This is my quilt for Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival. This quilt is special to me because I made it just for me! It's the perfect sitting on the couch quilt, and it's a fun design I had been wanting to try out. I started this quilt about two months ago, and it sat on a shelf for a long time while I was distracted with other projects. One of the main reason this project was shelved for so long is that I was rather frustrated when I failed to include the seam allowance in the width of the strips I cut for the sashing. Rather than toss the strips and start over, I decided to run with it, and I'm so happy with how it turned out! I think "fudging it" is part of the beauty of quilting, you can break the so-called rules and still wind up with a fantastic finished product!

I especially like the back of this quilt. I used my few remaining charm squares to make some 4" square whirlygigs (the ones on the front are 8" square) and bordered them in ½" of the pink Minny Miu border print. All it needs now is a label...

I also learned that straight-line quilting is sooooo much quicker and less stressful! I used a programmed stitch on my machine through the center of the sashing. Then I just stitched straight lines a quarter inch away from the outlines of my whirlygigs to make them pop a little.

The biggest achievement for me, though, was the binding. I've been wanting to do a striped bias binding for a while, so I found some pretty yellow 100% seersucker at Jo-Ann. The achievement is that this is my first quilt with hand-stitched binding! I finally broke down and gave it a shot. I used Amy's fabulous tutorial, and it didn't take nearly as long as I thought. My favorite part about hand-stitching the binding is that I can include some extra batting in there (I trimmed a half inch away from the stitching instead of a quarter), so the binding is nice and puffy, not flat.

I've really enjoyed reading the posts so far in the Blogger's Quilt Festival, and can't wait to read more. As I write this, there are more than 500 participants! Please click the button up top and check them out!

National Quilting Day and Friday Night Sew-In results

Happy National Quilting Day! Today is also my the first day of Spring and my half-birthday, which means I'm six months away from the big 2-5. I'm still getting used to being 24. Weird.

I got a ton of stuff done yesterday! It was the Friday Night Sew-In, but I sewed pretty much all day. I think I spent about 8 or 9 hours cutting and sewing.

I got all caught up on the pinwheel sampler quilt along. (Of course, Rachel posted a new block today!)

block three


block four

After that, I switched to whirlygigs:

I managed to cut fabric and piece all twenty of my whirlygig blocks! I'm incredibly pleased with how they turned out. They were remarkably simple to put together, which was surprising because not only had I never made one before, I wasn't following a tutorial. They will be about 8" finished.

For the second block of the Pinwheel Sampler Quilt-Along, Rachel included an amazing tutorial on taming the bulky seams in the center of the blocks. I honestly think I'm addicted to it. The way you press the seams gives the blocks a pretty cool effect. I used it for all my whirlygig blocks.

If you participated in the Friday Night Sew-In, what did you get done? How are you celebrating National Quilting Day and/or the first day of Spring?

In sale news: Natalia at Piece N Quilt is giving you 25% off your purchase using coupon code "Nationalquiltingday" through midnight tonight.

Leah at Burgundy Buttons is offering 10% off with the code "NQD" all weekend.

it's Friday!

I had every intention of posting yesterday, but I had a surprise houseguest. Spring break in Austin means South by Southwest, which means there are a million extra people here. For those of you who don't know, SXSW is a festival of festivals. There's a film festival, a music festival, and an interactive portion. So a friend decided at the last minute to come enjoy some of the music festivities Wednesday night and — surprise! — I had a houseguest to entertain Thursday afternoon. No complaints here, it's always fun when people come to visit. Just sayin', it threw off my schedule a bit. Luckily I managed to get everything all washed and ready Wednesday afternoon, so when my friend left yesterday I busted out the rotary cutter and dug in.

I'm really excited about Rachel's pinwheel sampler quilt-along. They've already made four blocks (actually eight, since we're making two of each block design). My grand idea was to cut the fabric for all eight blocks at once. That may have been a silly plan, because I needed different quantities of squares in three or four different sizes. My brain started to hurt a bit, and I cut pieces the wrong size more than once. The good news is I'm half-way to being caught up:

block one

block two

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, in spite of my tired, mushy brain. I had to take the orange and yellow version of block two apart and put it back together because the points were so very off. It's still not perfect, but after looking at the picture I feel better about it.

I'm really excited to finish catching up tonight — it's the Friday Night Sew-In! I'm going to get started now!