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.
