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!
(more on this later)
Yesterday was the half-way point for the Spring to Finish Challenge. So far, I've checked four things off my list... six to go — yipes. I think I may modify my list... I don't want to rush through the quilting on the Pinwheel Sampler, so my new goal is to have the top assembled by May 31. That's not cheating too much, right?
My family came to Austin on Sunday for Mother's Day since I had to work that night (oh the joys of working in a 24/7/365 business). My brother came a little early so we could get the garden tote all filled with goodies:
Our mom loved it! We went to the park to see a play by a local theater group called Austin Shakespeare. They put on a play in the park each year, and they had a special Mother's Day matinee. When you're part of a huge group of people picnicing, you're going to see quite a few quilts:
I really liked how these two huge quilts matched. I couldn't get close enough to see if they were "real" quilts or the mass-manufactured ones you can buy at a home decor place. My family used a quilt that my mom's step-grandmother had given her for her high-school graduation. We've used this thing for picnics my entire life. It has definitely seen better days.
I realized this weekend that it's entirely hand-pieced and hand-quilted. Wow. The reason I could tell it was hand-pieced is that some of the stitches are coming open. My mom said she wants me to take it apart and fix it someday. The key word there is someday... :)
I'm loving this nautical print. I wish I knew more about the fabrics. I wonder if they were leftover scraps, or if they were meant for the quilt. I'm leaning toward leftover scraps, but I guess I'll never really know.
Do you have any heirloom quilts in your family?
First, I get to check another finish off my list! I finished the Garden Tote Mother's Day gift. I'm going to wait until next week to post pictures, though.
I spent the majority of my afternoon at two local quilt shops — the one place in Austin I'm guaranteed to be the youngest person in the room by 10 or 20 years. Both had a fairly limited supply of modern fabrics, but I found some gems:
This stack will become a plethora of little goodies for my best friend Jimmie's birthday. This will probably be the last you see of these before I finish the goodies and they make their way to Taiwan.
These beauties are going to become an Amy Butler Frenchy Bag, because I am in desperate need of a new purse.
And these lovelies are just for me. The bottom two (and the large geometric for the Frenchy Bag) are from the new love of my life, Alexander Henry. Mmmm... fabricy goodness.
I finished these potholders yesterday for Malka's 2010 Great Potholder Swap. I pieced both sides...
...and then I couldn't decide what should be the front and what should be the back! I ended up making this the back:
I used every single scrap I had so far from Julie's Hexagon Quilt-Along and followed Elizabeth's tutorial on Sew, Mama, Sew. I ripped out seams in my jelly roll strips and cut them in half lengthwise, to end with ¾" finished strips.
Since I don't yet have a Kona color card, it was immensely helpful that coordinating solids were already picked out for me on the Robert Kaufman website. I bought a yard each of Pomegranate, Peridot, Lagoon and Tangerine for a steal from Handcock's of Paducah, leaving me plenty left over for the Hexagon Quilt-Along.
To make the "back" of the potholders, I had to make a spiderweb block ½" bigger than on the front, then cut it into quarters and sew it back together. I traced out shapes on paper and cut and taped them together to double-check my measurements so I wouldn't waste the fabric — but boy did I end up recycling a lot of paper!
With four days left before the half-way check in on Spring to Finish, I'm feeling pretty good about it!
What are you working on this week?
I got to take some good naturally lit photos of Happy Campers after I gave it to my dad this weekend. He was pretty thrilled with the theme, he kept showing my relatives at the reunion how "every print is camping-related" :)
Doesn't everything look better in natural light?
I think the back looks great without the applique. I'm going to use my leftover charm squares for potholders for Father's Day (my dad loves cooking), my mom even said over the weekend that they need some new ones.
My mother also not-so-subtly hinted at wanting a king sized quilt for their 40th wedding anniversary. (Let me make a quick aside here... how many 24-year-olds do you know whose parents have been married almost 38 years? And I'm the oldest child.) Lucky for me she mentioned this when she did, because their big anniversary is in August 2012. I instantly decided to make a double wedding ring, but I want to make a more modern one. So I have some time to hoard fabric, learn how to sew curves and learn how to hand-quilt before I start this monster project. Unless I win the lottery and get a long-arm machine in that time, this baby will be hand-quilted. I want to do every part of it myself, and no machine I could ever afford would be able to handle quilting a king sized quilt. Plus, this is the type of thing that becomes an heirloom, so why not spend the extra time?
Those are my parents. My mom is holding a quilt I made for her five years ago. She'll need another one soon, because I didn't know about getting high-quality fabrics and using 100% cotton thread back then. It's looking a bit ratty.
