Crafting and kids.
I’m making progress! I just finished the 3rd of 4 parts to my king size hexagon quilt.
And my beautiful first born held it up for a pic!
In case you missed the earlier post, here’s the full first half which I currently have up as my design wall.
Then I sorted all of the remaining hexies into 12 piles so I can hopefully finish this bad boy up! When I first started this project, it seemed like I would never finish, but now I think there’s hope!
I am a woman on a mission. I am determined to finish the center of the hexies this year. At that point, I’m going to have to make some decisions about borders, applique, etc., but I can’t let that keep me from making progress. And on that front, I finally finished the 3rd round of blocks! Now I am a busy bee stitching those 12 blocks together at which point I will sort the remaining hexagons into the 4th (and final!) round of blocks.
Here’s my pretty pile right before I started sewing them together! Once I get that done, I plan to switch my attention to Xander’s caterpillar quilt. I really want to get it to the same stage as Mia’s butterfly quilt. I got 2 fruit blocks done for it this month, and I only have 3 to go. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. And yes, I know that plums aren’t teal, but there no teal fruit we do what we’ve got to do. lol.
And! I just committed to (and purchased!) some navy fabric for an inner border between the center of the quilt and the pinwheels.
It’s going to require some math (not my favorite thing!) but I think it’s going to look awesome.
Then! I think I’m going to reward myself and spend some quality time with my ice cream soda blocks. 🙂
I was determined to finish my Christmas quilt before the new year so I spent New Year’s Eve sewing on the binding. 🙂 I’m usually such a scrappy quilter, but I just loved this Christmas line from Bonnie and Camille so much that I couldn’t resist making the whole quilt out of it. 🙂
I am just delighted with how it turned out. I started this quilt March 30, 2019 and finished the top in November of 2019. Then I packed it away for about a year to let it marinate. lol. My grandmother (who is a saint) sent it out to be quilted for me and then made and stitched on my binding. I got it back just in time to hand stitch the backside of the binding before the new year.
Which brings the grand total for 2020 to 3 quilts started and 2 quilts finished. I now have 8 quilts in progress and I’d like to keep it to roughly that number. Looks like I need to finish a few quilts!
I had the best intentions of finishing a quilt before I started a new one, but then I caved and started on the Ice Cream Soda quilt. Y’all, no regrets. lol.
This is the fabric that started it all! I got a mini charm pack and it was so stinking cute that I went back and got a layer cake. I decided I just had to cut into it.
I thought about making a whole Halloween themed Ice Cream Soda quilt, but then I saw these crabs in my stash and they just had to be turned into a block!
This pattern is so much fun for fussy cutting. And since the outer pieces are bigger, you can feature fussy cuts that are usually too big. 🙂
I cant’ believe I got these stripes to match up!
This is one of my favorites! Bees, honeycomb, then honey bears!
Current plan is to have each block be largely monochromatic with alternating high and low volume fabric. And of course to follow a theme! This was was balloons. 🙂
So much fun! I have a ton of ideas for more blocks, just need to set aside time to prep some more fabric. 🙂 I imagine this will be a long term project as I gradually acquire more fabric. And I’m good with that.
You guys! I finished a quilt! I kept seeing this amazing pixilated heart quilt on Instagram and I figured, how hard can it be?
So I printed off some graph paper and sketched out a plan. To make it manageable, I drew lines to show where the 4 patches would be. That told me how many low volume squares I needed and where each of the different color squares went.
Here’s a big pile of low volume deliciousness. I love low volume prints! Especially ones that I can fussy cut!
I was starting to think that I had this machine sewing thing down, but then my bobbin put me in my place. lol.
I had to make use of my “design floor” to keep track of it. Seeing as how this is also my living room floor, I was motivated to finish it quickly!
Once I had all of the 4 patches together, I laid them all out and sewed them into 16 patches.
Then into rows and finally an actual quilt top!
This is quite a long post already, so check back in a few days and I’ll try to put up a separate post about quilting it. 🙂
You guys! I did a thing!
Well, I did half of a thing. lol. Still! I’m super impressed with myself! This represents 1/2 of the final king size quilt, or 1962 7/8 inch hexagons. All thread basted and hand sewn. Plus, I have almost all of the hexies basted! All of them are cut out, but I ran out of papers so I have about 150 more to baste.
I’m setting this aside for a while to work on some other projects, but I am so glad that I did a big push on it this month! Now I’m going to reward myself and have some quality time with my windchime quilt. Then who knows? 🙂
Despite it being nowhere on my goals for the month, I decided to work on my windchime quilt. Lol. What can I say, I’m a rebel. I just love it so much!
I’m really pleased with my progress on this quilt! I have a long way to go, but I am starting to see how it will look which is really exciting. 🙂 The final quilt will have 25 windchime blocks. (Unless I go with the idea I literally just had of doing 16 windchime blocks and adding a border of hexagons… Something to ponder!)
Here’s all 4 together! There’s a smaller flower that goes in the center; maybe I’ll figure that out this week. 🙂 I think it’s meant to be glue basted like a regular EPP piece, but I’m going to use freezer paper and do prepared edge applique instead.
Thus far, every piece of fabric is unique aside from the center circles. I’m trying to decide if I should wait to acquire more fabric so that I can keep each piece unique, or if I should just go ahead and start reusing fabric. Thoughts?
You guys! I think I’m finally making friends with my sewing machine. At the very least we are no longer enemies. lol. I was playing around on instagram the day after Christmas and I came across some pixelated heart quilts. Oh my goodness, y’all! They were gorgeous in all their rainbow fabulousness. I figured, how hard could it be? lol. So I ignored my massive to do list and printed off some graph paper.
I’ve been wanting to play around with a low volume background and this seemed like the perfect project! I grided it into 4 patches just so I could stay organized and came up with a plan for ironing the seams.
Then I started making a bunch of low volume 4 patches! I made myself do all of the backgrounds before I started in on the 4 patches with the hearts. I had a bit of a hard time keeping the 4 patches that made up the heart organized, but in the end I labeled them all with a frixion pen and it worked.
The sewing machine tried to give me some flack when I had to refill the bobbin, but I persevered and came out on top.
My biggest stumbling block came when I laid them all out on the floor only to realize that there was no way I could leave them out like that. lol. I was definitely seeing the appeal of a design wall! My design floor works great when my twins are asleep, but I was feeling the pressure to get this together so I could clean it up before I went to bed.
I ended up getting most of it sewn together into 16 patches before I went to bed and was able to finish it up the next night- New Year’s Eve! Do I know how to party or what. lol.
In the end, I love it! I wish I had had more variety of low volume prints, but I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out. Now I just need to figure out how I want to quilt it!
Remember my secret sewing back during NaNoCraftMo? I finished it!
Well, I mostly finished it. lol. I wanted to make it as a surprise for my grandmother and I nearly succeeded. I got all of the hexagons EPP’d and appliqued onto the background. I even managed to baste it and hand quilt it! But then I was stuck when it came to the binding. In my defense, I just haven’t learned how to do it properly! So I wrapped up the (nearly finished) quilt along with the fabric for the binding and gave it to my grandmother like that. You guys, she was so excited! I meant for us to bind it together, but she was so excited that the next time I saw her she’d already finished. lol. It finished at about 15 inches square and I’m really pleased at how it turned out. 🙂
Considering how far behind I am on my Christmas to do list, I probably shouldn’t admit that I spent last week working on my third windchime block instead, but you know what?!? I regret nothing!
I am having so much fun with this Sue Daley pattern! It is perfect for showcasing all the little little fussy cuts that I’ve collected. Have I mentioned that I’m obsessed with fussy cutting? lol.
As much as I want to rush on and start on the next block right now, I’m going to try to hold off for a bit while I collect some more fabric. I’m not sure if I will end up succeeding, but for now I have zero repeats.
Who am I kidding… I will probably start cutting out more fabric tonight! lol.