I finished all of the blocks! Now I just need to sew all of them together. lol. This was a super fun and easy project using a panel that I cut apart and used for the centers of the log cabin blocks.
I used almost exclusively Ruby Star Society fabric and I love it!!! I decided to go out of my comfort zone and make a big quilt as it actually gets cold here and we’d like big snuggly couch quilts. Stay tuned to see if I still think this size was a good idea when I’m trying to wrestle it through the sewing machine to quilt it!
Oh my gosh, I am so close to having these stabilized! And to be clear, that means that I’ll have at least one line of hand quilting through each hexagon so that I can bind it, not that I’ll be done with the quilting. We’re leaving for Texas in just a few weeks and I want so badly to be able to bring this with me to show my grandmother!
I took this pic on December 31st and then I went in and colored it yellow where I still had to stabilize it. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think there was any chance I was going to succeed, but check it out!
This one is from this weekend and I’m so close I can taste it! I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…
My quilt guild is doing a program this month about sewing room organization and asked if we would send in pictures of our sewing spaces. Since I had to clean it up for pictures anyway, I thought I would give y’all a little tour. 🙂
Here’s the wall with the closet. We took the closet doors off and it was honestly the best decision ever! I do plan to make a curtain that will hang down about 20 inches to hide the mess at the top of the closet. One day! I am obsessed with the cubbies from Kallax Ikea. The top 2 rows hold my fabric stash, then the little white bins hold random craft supplies. Bottom row is books and albums.
Then if you turn to the right, you have the wall with the window. I have another Kallax here, this one holding my quilting projects. I assign each quilt a bin and it’s so easy to keep everything organized. We keep the laser in here as well. We took 2 Alex carts from Ikea and put them back to back to hold the laser. We then screwed in a sheet of chalk board on both sides to keep it together. One Alex hold supplies for the laser and the other hold scrapbooking supplies.
Turn right again and you have the general crafting zone. The desks are butcher block counter tops from Ikea that we got a million years ago. Left to right you have- silhouette, diamond painting, project life/ scrap supplies, pens and markers, papers, and journals/ notebooks.
Turn right again and you have the sewing zone. I love having the design wall up! Don’t mind the million cases of cookies under the desk.
It should go without saying that my room is never this clean. In fact, I was literally moving piles from one spot to another so I could take the pictures. lol. But I love my room! I am so glad that we switched the twins’ room and the art room if for no other reason that it forced me to look at everything and decide if I wanted to keep it or not. Plus, is there anything better than a fresh coat of paint???
It’s December and that always makes me want to reevaluate my projects from the last year and set some goals for the upcoming year. 🙂 So I thought I’d do a little check-in with my in progress quilts.
Hexagons. Y’all. I’m actually quilting this! The progress is slooooooooow, but at least I’m making progress. I’m really wanting to finish this so I’ve been quilting on it almost every evening.
2. Bee Yourself. I made a good amount of progress on this one this year! I’d really love to finish the top in 2023, but who knows. I actually have a few more blocks done, but this is the most up to date picture I could find. lol.
3. Windchime. I love this quilt so much. I currently have 12 blocks done. I’m trying to decide if I should go for 16 total blocks or 25…
4. Low Volume Log Cabin. I pulled out all of the quilting. Now I just need to give it a good pressing and then rebaste it. So probably it will still be folded up on the shelf next year when I do this check in. lol. Although, I just dug out this picture and I had forgotten how much I like it. Maybe I’ll finish it after all. lol.
5. Ice Cream Soda. I put this one back up on the design wall this week in the hopes that looking at it will motivate me to work on it. lol.
6. Smitten. Top is done! I’m planning to hand quilt this one, so it’s going to have to wait until I’m done hand quilting the hexagons.
7. Hearts. This is another one where the top is done and it just needs quilting. I *think* my plan is to machine quilt it (just stitch in the ditch) and then to hand quilt around the hearts.
8. Color Wheel. This one has been fun! I’ve now gotten all of the applique done. Just need to trim the blocks and assemble. Oh, and decide if it needs another border or not. lol. And I actually can’t find a picture of it. Shocker, right? lol. Honestly, I’m impressed that I found pictures for the other 7.
How is it July already?!? And speaking of, how is my beautiful firstborn a teenager!?! That’s right, the OG Raptor turns 13 today. Unfortunately, birthday plans had to be revamped because she’s been sick these past fews days, but she’s negative for COVID, strep, and flu A/B and she’s fever free as of last night so we’re having a fun, low key, morning with donuts and minecraft. All in all a good day.
But how about some goals! lol. Let’s see how I did in June…
Bee Yourself. I didn’t finish the lyric block because I forgot it at my grandmother’s last week when I took it over to show it off. lol. But it’s very close to done and I’m delighted with it. I didn’t get the London flag done, but I got all of the others done and I got all of the country name embroidery done so I’m quite pleased with that. And I got the Sunshine block designed and finished! All in all, I am delighted with the progress I’ve made and I’m actually finally convinced that I might finish this quilt one day. lol.
Smitten Quilt. Done! At least the top. 🙂 Now I just need to decide how to quilt it.
Scrap. I didn’t get July 2019 done, but I did get October 2021 done! So that’s something. 🙂
Advent Calendar. Not a thing.
Passport. I’m sensing a theme. :/
Purge Art Room. Done! Oh my gosh, I got rid of so much stuff and my new room is amazing!!!
Toy/ Clothes Purge. I still need to get rid of more toys, but this was also a huge success! And the twins love their new room.
Current Scrap. Nada. We still need to finish hooking up the computer/ photo printer.
Semi-Current Scrap. See above. lol.
Project Life. hahahahahaha.
So I didn’t get a ton done with on the scrapping front, but we did manage the room swap which was a Herculean task. Especially since it also included repainting both rooms and assembling new beds for the twins. 🙂 All in all, I’m super happy. 🙂 And check out my progress on Bee Yourself!
July Goals.
Advent Calendar. Yikes. I’m planning to do a little Christmas in July action with the kids so maybe that will motivate me? OK. Gold trim. Must finish gold trim.
Bee Yourself. I decided to do 2 more hexagon flowers for the upper right hand corner and I got them prepped yesterday. I’d like to finish those, finish the lyric block, and finish the London flag. The end is near!
Speaking of quilts, I’ve decided to enter my Caterpillar quilt in the Austin Quilt Show! I’m super nervous, but I’m also really proud of that quilt. 🙂 I wanted to enter both the butterfly and caterpillar quilts as a set, but then I learned that it’s $45 to enter a quilt. ::yikes:: So one it is. lol.
Hexagons. I want to rebaste my hexagons so that I can start hand quilting it again. 🙂
Project Life. Um… How about trying to wrap up 2021. hahahahahaha. Or at least make some progress on it.
Scrap Prep Ancient Stuff. Um… Maybe scrap list/ edit/ print July, August, September of 2019? If I can get organized, maybe I’ll be motivated to work on it.
Scrap February 2021. According to my notes, these pics are already printed. So theoretically, I could scrap them now while I’m waiting for us to put the new computer station together… Possibilities…
Current Scrap Pages. Hmm… Maybe 10 current pages? It would be awesome to get June 2022 knocked out.
Ice Cream Soda. We meet again old friend. lol. I’d like to make some progress on the bottom chunk. Hopefully seeing a bit of it assembled will give me the motivation to keep making progress.
Labels. We got these awesome resealable jars for baking good and I want to make some cute vinyl labels for them. 🙂
I finished my Smitten quilt top!!! I am absolutely delighted with how it turned out. It was originally a Block of the Month offered by PinkDoorFabrics, but they were sold out before I could order it. No worries, I just ordered the pattern and a 1/2 yard bundle of fabric and decided to have a go at it myself. And I am delighted with the results!
Most of the fabric is from the Heather Ross Malibu line, but I threw in some solids and a few other fabrics to round it out. It’s 100% stitched by hand- no sewing machine. Now I just need to figure out how to quilt it! I’m thinking I’ll hand quilt it? Not sure… Any suggestions?
After 2 years of working on them, I am delighted to say that Mia’s Butterfly Quilt and Xander’s Caterpillar Quilt are done! Well, the tops are done. lol. They still need to be quilted, but this still feels like amazing progress.
I came up with the design for Mia’s first. She loves butterflies so it seemed like a natural choice. And for years whenever she saw me working on anything else she would sign “butterfly” in a disapproving way. lol. I showed her the finished quilt top and she just stared at it delightedly.
Since Mia and Xander share a room, I wanted to come up with a coordinating design for Xander. Thus the caterpillar quilt was born! Of course, then I needed additional blocks to make the pattern work, so I decided to add fruit blocks. I don’t know if you can tell, but the number of pieces of fruit matches the number of the row it’s on so there’s 1 apple, 2 cherries, 3 oranges, etc. all the way down to 11 navy blueberries. My friends were endlessly patient as I agonized over blue fruit. lol.
Now I just need to figure out how I want to quilt them and then get that done!
Last April, I decided to try a new English Paper Piecing shape: 60 degree diamonds! They are trickier than hexies, but still so much fun. 🙂 I got the idea for the overall layout from The New Hexagon, but other than that I pretty much made it up as I went along. It’s 100% stitched by hand aside from the binding. I even hand quilted it. It’s far from perfect, but it’s finished. 🙂
And what prompted me to finally finish it? I’m starting a new quilt! <3
You know which quilt was nowhere on my goals list for this month? My Bee Yourself Quilt. You know which quilt I’ve been working on? My Bee Yourself Quilt. lol.
I decided I wanted to try to make a Zelda block. First I tried applique, then I tried EPP plus applique. Both looked like garbage. I finally decided that if I was going to have strong points, I was going to have to suck it up and try to machine piece it.
It turned out way better than I had ever hoped! Especially since I was making up the pattern as I went along.
Then I decided to go nuts and sew together the whole bottom corner! I was resisting sewing any blocks together in case I wanted to rearrange any of them, but this little corner gave the boost I needed to tackle the next big obstacle. The flags.
I decided it would be fun to have a little 2×3 inch flag from each country I’ve been to. Then I sketched out all of the flags, looked at Greece, and panicked. lol. I’ve been kicking it around in my mind for a few months now and it finally came to me yesterday: bias tape! So I made some teeny tiny bias tape and appliqued it down. Success!
Then I did a bunch more! No lie, I was feeling pretty cocky after Peru. Ireland, and Italy. Then I looked at Mexico. Now that is a complicated flag. lol. I almost threw in the towel at that point, but then I figured I could try to simplify it and use embroidery.
It’s not perfect, but I’m really pleased with the way it turned out! I’ve got a bunch more to do, but I’m feeling good about these first 5. 🙂 Next up: Scotland!
My goal was to get 6 more blocks done for this quilt this month, but then I found the perfect backing so I decided just to finish it!
My resident quilt holder decided it was so windy that she’d hold it up like a flag instead. lol.
I adore low volume prints. And you know what? I now adore log cabin blocks! There’s zero seam matching until you sew the blocks together. My kind of quilt! I’m super happy with this top and I can’t wait to get it quilted! Quilting suggestions? I’ll be doing it on my domestic machine and I could generously be described as a newborn quilter. lol.
