Blogger's Quilt Festival 2

For my second entry, I am putting forward my Hounds Tooth quilt. I wanted to make a hounds tooth quilt for my bed even before I finished my first quilt. It's just a pattern that I love and I thought it would make a really cool quilt. I was not wrong.

Bit wrinkly- but it gets used a lot so you'll have to give me a break ;)

This was only my 3rd every quilt. The previous two were pretty small- not larger than 5ft square. So what is the logical next step? A queen sized BEHEMOTH. Naturally. It wasn't quick, but I absolutely love it. This is what lives on my bed now and I couldn't be happier with it. The above picture was taken today. When I originally finished it, I wasn't able to get any decent pictures and was too eager to get it on my bed to wait for better conditions :P

Before the first washing

I learned a lot from making this quilt. I learned about the importance of precise piecing. I learned about randomly shrinking fabrics (ugh). And I learned most importantly that big projects like this are totally doable at home with the limited space and tools I have now if I am willing to be patient.

Closer up. Yay wrinkles!

Basic info:
Pattern: mostly V & Co.'s hounds tooth pattern, but I had no special ruler so I improvised on that part. But I followed all of the cutting and piecing instructions other than that.
Size: about 95"x89'. I left off one row of half blocks because of my little shrinking problem ;)
Fabrics: Moda Bella Solids Aubergine and Moda Bella Solids Natural. The binding is something stripey I can't remember and the backing is a Henry Glass extra wide- Baroque Purple Ivy Swirls
I quilted straight(ish) lines the width of my walking foot on either side of each seam. I wanted it to be soft and simple, which I accomplished. I used Gutermann variegated cotton purple thread for the quilting. In hindsight, I might have liked a straight light purple instead, but oh well. I still love it!

I am entering this bad boy into the Two Color category. Go check out all the pretty entries!!

Finished Hounds Tooth

It's DONE. And I am SO HAPPY. :D I am going to preface these pictures by saying that there is no where in my house to showcase such a large quilt, inside or out! I tried to take it to the park this morning, but the sprinklers were on. I was definitely not willing to risk getting it wet/muddy! I was also not willing to take a picture of it on my bed... because my room is a mess. So you'll have to be happy with these.

Draped over an Ikea chair

On my ironing board

Folded up

Back detail

I did straight line quilting on either side of ever long seam, about a walking foot's width apart. I really love the grid it made! Surprisingly, it wasn't too bad quilting it at home. It made my shoulders hurt some, but for the most part it wasn't much more difficult than smaller quilts I've done. I did have to lower my ironing board and put it behind my craft table so there would be more surface area for the quilt to rest on behind my machine. But that wasn't really a big deal.  I also had to pick out one row of stitches due to severe crookedness (it was done before I thought of adding the ironing board) and tension issues, which were fixed fairly quickly. I don't know that I would try FMQ with this size quilt- at least not yet! But it is good to know I can successfully quilt something this large at home!

I really like how everything came together. I wasn't sure about the binding fabric at first because it is so much lighter than the purple bits. I'm still not completely sold on it, but it is growing on me. I like the little sets of stripes. I machine bound this quilt. I have never tried hand stitching the binding down and I think I will try it on a much smaller quilt first ;) The backing fabric is a 108" from Henry Glass fabrics called Baroque Ivy Swirls. After how long the top took to piece, I really did not want to piece the back, too, so I went the easy route.

I am SO pleased with this quilt! It took quite a while, but I have dreamed of a hounds tooth quilt for my bed since I first started quilting. And now my dream has come true! I feel like I learned so much from this quilt- from accurate piecing to basting technique to quilting more consistent straight lines. It was a lot of work, but definitely worth it in the end! I am going to pop it in the wash now so we can start using it ASAP!

I'll show you some pictures of Vegas soon, promise! There is a delicious Gordon Ramsay burger to talk about and another sewing project I finished yesterday- details soon!

Thanks for stopping by! Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF at Dreaming in Patchwork!

WiP Wednesday: Hounds Tooth

This is what I'm doing today:

Yes, that is my enormous Hounds Tooth quilt- all quilted and ready for binding! I promise there will be a post about Vegas and about quilting this bad boy, but I'm on a roll right now and can't stop! Hopefully I'll have a finish to share with you tomorrow :)

Linking up to WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

Make a List... Tuesday?

Hello!

It was a quiet weekend on my little blog. I took a little break from sewing after the whirlwind of finishing my sister's quilt. I was a tad obsessed with it and pretty much spent every hour I wasn't working or eating or watching a movie with the boyfriend (I couldn't neglect him completely...) with that quilt. No regrets! It turned out great and my sister loved it :) She just got a new job, too, so I decided I was justified in giving it to her 6 weeks before her birthday.

After that I needed a break. I was also scheduled to work Saturday, so that was part of it. But then that afternoon I got a job offer from the place I REALLY wanted to work, so the rest of the weekend was spent celebrating. And, you know, booking a hotel room in Vegas since I won't be working this weekend anymore. It wasn't a total whim! Some of my old coworkers have been planning a reunion in Vegas and I soooo wanted to go. And I thought I would be able to when I finally got a job except then I got scheduled for Saturdays! But now I've left that position and have another couple of weeks off, so I decided to splurge and just GO. I can't tell you how excited I am! I haven't seen most of these people in almost a year... some much longer than that. We all worked together as undergrads. They were like my family. SO EXCITED. It is going to be legendary.

I also did this while on a break from sewing:

Yeah! Painted lamp shades. I was originally planning to cover them in fabric, but then I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to go for it. I love how it turned out :) The other one is not quite finished yet. Hopefully I can get to that this week and show you the finished lamps!

But sewing is what you came for, right? Well. Yesterday I did this:

Oh, man. Basting a queen sized quilt was a HUGE job. My fingers still hurt! I had to move most of the furniture out of the living room to do it. But it's done and basted and I've already started the quilting! YAY! The quilting is definitely going to take a while. That quilt it heavy. My shoulders get tired just thinking about it. But it's going to be so worth it when it's done... Just have to keep my mind on how pretty it will look all laid out on my bed!

Quilting this has already taught me one thing.

Variegated thread makes pretty bobbins :)

Before I get back to quilting, though, I need to organize my thoughts. There are so many things I want to do and make! I feel like I need to write it all down so I can get a handle on all my ideas and plan what to do next.

Things I need to do this month:

March Sister's Ten blocks
Quilt February's Skill Builder blocks
March's bee block (a sawtooth star! Yay!)
March Skill builder blocks

Things I want to do not necessarily this month:

Finish quilting Hounds Tooth
Turn my finished Sister's Ten blocks into pillows
Plan a quilt for Mario's birthday
Make a Velocity Girl bag (I already have the supplies!)
Make another dress
Make another skirt
Start my pinwheel quilt
Make myself some pretty potholders
Start a herringbone quilt using my other FQ bundle of Les Amis (I started designing this with the Quilt Design Tool at Thread Bias)
Learn to make blouses and shorts
Turn some silly flannel I bought at Joann into PJ pants
Make a Kindle case
Make a plastic bag dispenser

WOW. Okay, I want to do more things than I thought. And I will probably think of more. But at least I got them out of my head for now. I don't think I will be able to do all of this list in a month! Maybe they should be more long term goals? Ah, well. We'll see how I do. And now, back to sewing!

Linking up to Show and Tell Tuesday with Randi at i have to say... and WiP Wednesday with Lee at Freshly Pieced, hosted by Claire from Sewing Over Pins this week! :) Have a great week!

I Did It!!

I finished my Hounds Tooth top!!! :D

It is SO hard to get a picture of a top this big! I wanted to take it outside, but it was wet and windy and I didn't want anything horrible to happen to it... I don't have stairs or anything in my house or a big floor space to lay it out (there will have to bee some furniture rearranging when I get to basting it), so I am standing on a chair. Fortunately, it was still relatively bright. Arizona is weird.

This quilt was a lot of work, but I LOVE how it turned out. Just like I imagined it in my head. I actually finished it Saturday night so I was even ahead of schedule! Which was a really good thing because Sunday ended up being super busy and I had no time to sew at all. That was okay, actually, because after my quilt top finishing marathon Saturday, I was tired and my shoulders were protesting a bit from sitting behind my sewing machine all day. But! Don't care! It was worth it!

Here are the cell phone pictures I snapped Saturday night when I finished. You can see the difference in color with the lack of natural light.

I dragged it into my bedroom to see how it would look on my bed. Please excuse the mess! It is more than big enough for my bed, though, which makes me so happy! I am definitely going to have to change the teal curtains. They match my current bedspread really well, but I don't think they're going to work with these colors.

Now I just have to quilt it... Yes, I am going to *try* to quilt it at home. If I find this is too difficult, I might take it somewhere else to be quilted. But I really would like to do it myself! So fingers crossed :)

That's all for today! I have some other important things to do the next couple of days, so the sewing will likely be halted til Wednesday or so. And then I am going to do my bee blocks for my Newbee Quilters bee and finish up the Skill Builder blocks with some FMQ practice. My Sister's Ten blocks are lowest on the list of priorities right now, but I really want to get started on them, too! It is nice to have this beast out of the way so I can start thinking about other piecing projects now :)

Linking up to Let's Get Acquainted, which is being hosted by Bold Goods today! Hope your weekend was as productive as mine!

Hounds Toothing...

I know I have been very terribly quiet. But I have been single mindedly working on my hounds tooth quilt. Well, when I have time to actually sit down and sew. The weekend was busier than I expected and I didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I thought I would. But board games were played and shopping was done and taxes filed, so it was still a successful weekend. It feels so good to have my taxes out of the way! :D And I did them all by myself- no desperate calls to my mother (who works for a company that makes tax preparing software) for explanations of this option and that box. It was a proud moment.

Let me show you my progress...

I don't know how well you can see, but this is the first block I put together... and it was all wrong! Both the purple and light block were cut wrong and I just happened to select those two to use for my first block. UGH. So in one direction they were perfect 11 3/4" and the other they were 11 1/4". BIG difference. It was pretty bad. But, amazingly, there were only maybe 3 other squares cut wrong. Which makes me thing that maybe these were at the end of the strip and weren't meant to be included in the stacks in the first place.. But I found them all and set them aside so no more mistakes would be made.

Once I figured that out and had a sample block that was actually right, I started chain piecing. One light block and one stripey block then one dark block and one stripey block... 2 episodes of Torchwood later and I was done! As you can see, they haven't all been pressed yet. Because I get really sick of it. So I figure I'll go til I run out of rectangle sets and then press some more.

Which brings me to the next problem I had (which I didn't take pictures of..). I had starched all of the stripey blocks because of the bias edges, so thought it might be a good idea to starch the solid half so the whole thing would match in the stiffness department... Well. This was apparently a bad idea because some of my purple squares started SHRINKING. Yeah. It was terrible. And so annoying! Because it was ONLY purple squares, but not ALL of the purple squares. What?? How does that happen? My only guess is that because I didn't buy it all in continuous yardage (I bought a bit of purple when it was on sale because I loved it... then decided it would be great hounds tooth... then decided I wanted it Queen sized. So 3 cuts total) there were differences in the shrinkage? Maybe? I don't know... They only shrunk by about 1/8" but that was enough to throw everything off. I don't really have a solution to this. I stopped starching, but now I'm afraid of what will happen when the top is all sewn together. But I'm pressing on anyway because I MUST.

So now I have a little stack of blocks sewn together.

And I am so proud of how well all my little points are matching up in the center so far :D I am just trying not to worry about it all being ruined by the shrinky problem... I had enough left over purple yardage so that I still have enough squares. So that's good I suppose.

So that's what I've been doing. And that's what I'm going to keep doing so it is all DONE and off of my table. Honestly, I haven't taken a break from it because I'm afraid that if I clear it all away I will lose all motivation and not want to come back to it. And I really, really want this on my bed! So I am soldiering on...

Hopefully the top will be done by the end of the week (and by that I mean SUNDAY) and I can move on to other things and have more exciting pictures to show you. Like this mug.

This is what I drink coffee from every day. Isn't it cute? My sister bought it for me for Christmas because she's awesome and knows me :D The only problem with it is that as I drink, a little bit of coffee collects between the eyes... Maybe not the best design for a mug (I think the handle should have been on the other side... but maybe this is a left hand mug?) but it's so cute, I am letting it slide. Please excuse the mess in the background. My computer desk is usually quite a disaster.

So I will leave you now. I know I still have another award to talk about... but Hounds Tooth is calling my name. I must respond!

Linking up with WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!

WiP Wednesday: In Which Progress is Actually Made

Happy Wednesday!

I have been busy over here in my neck of the desert. My Hounds Tooth quilt is really coming along! Very exciting. I finished sewing strip sets together and now I am cutting out triangles that unfold into beautiful stripey squares! Look!

Quilty Progression

I also made some progress on a blanket I am crocheting for my sister... pics to come soon!

Now that the monotony of sewing strips together is finished, I am starting to feel excited about this quilt once again. And since the boyfriend is stuck at work late and I already have dinner prepped and ready... I am going to get back to it!

Linking up to WiP Wednesday with Lee at Freshly Pieced! Hope your WiPs are seeing progress, too!

Slow and Steady Wins... Right?

Where did the last week go? I feel like it was just last Wednesday like... yesterday. Time is passing too quickly for my taste.

But I have a little bit to show for all the time passed, at least. I have been making slow but steady progress on my Hounds Tooth quilt. I sewed all the 2.5" strips together! Mostly in one very cold day. There was tea and Doctor Who involved, to be sure. And wrist warmers. And a silly poncho. My hands were still freezing, but it was worth it in the end.

Now I am working on turning all my sewn together strips into pretty, crisply starched and pressed strips. The good news? The steam from the iron helps keep my hands warm. The bad news? It takes forever. I don't have a real ironing board, you see, and I can't fit a whole long strip on my little table. So it takes some shifting. But hey, it's a good excuse to throw on Downton Abbey and spend all morning pressing seams, don't you think? :)

Strip Transformation

It is so hard to get a good picture of these colors. I promise the purple isn't really that dark! Oh well.

Yesterday was Tuesday, which meant that I joined a couple of my friends for some crafty shenanigans. Another friend hosted this week, which I was grateful for because I really didn't feel like clearing off the dining room table (it was one of those days, okay?). It was such a huge success! She likes to make things out of duct tape and bits of comic books. So she taught us how to make ADORABLE duct tape bows, which I then attached to a cheap dollar store headband.

Duct Tape Bow Headband!

Isn't it cute?? I opted to just use two kinds of duct tape, but our other friend decoupaged some comic strips to hers before adding the border. I didn't get a picture because I'm dumb, but it turned out really cool, trust me. Here is a cell phone picture of it on my head.

We also made cool pendant things from cut up comics. Mine is this hilarious picture of Sonic making the BEST face. Unfortunately, it takes days for the resin-y stuff we put in the pendant things to dry and harden, so pictures will have to wait til next week. But trust me, it's going to be hilarious. I'm going to give it to the boyfriend to hang in his car because he loves Sonic. I'm also hoping the face Sonic is making will encourage him to slow down... We'll see if that works :P Anyways, it was definitely a good night. After all the crafty goodness I *finally* learned how to play Settlers of Catan! Woo! But now it is back to pressing and starching and pressing and starching.... Weeee!

Linking up to WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced! Hope your week is going well!

Making (Slow) Progress

Anyone else feel like time is accelerating this year? I swear Christmas was only a few days ago, right? It's okay that time has been going by fast, though. I've been keeping busy! I spent most of yesterday cleaning and de-cluttering my house, which felt really good. I didn't finish, though. My bedroom is the place that needs de-cluttering the most. My boyfriend and I both have a problem with holding onto clothes a lot longer than we really need to, so my room is bursting at the seams with old clothes we haven't worn in months. It's a real problem. One that I plan to tackle this weekend.

But between the cleaning and spending time with friends who now happily live in the same town as us, I have been working a bit on my hounds tooth quilt. And by working on it, I mean cutting out all the many, many strips of fabric. Cutting is not one of my favorite parts of quilting, to be honest. I am so clumsy... I often nick my fingers with the rotary blade. I have no idea how this happens. I never notice when I actually get cut. It's only later where there is a smear of blood on my finger that I realize something is amiss. But I have gotten better at cutting. I haven't messed up a single strip (knock on wood!!). My first attempt at cutting strips was pretty disastrous. I could not keep the ruler straight and kept getting crooked, wavy strips. So frustrating! But now that I'm not so hopeless as cutting consistent strips, I can even throw on Dr. Who in the background as I cut without worrying about distractions causing super wavy strips!

Side note- does anyone else love Dr. Who? I only recently started watching it about 4 weeks ago on Netflix and have since fallen in love :) Once I catch up on the current incarnation of the show, I plan to start watching the classic episodes! 

I also got some very exciting packages in the past few days. My wonderful mother bought me a gift card to Fat Quarter Shop for Christmas and I bought this with part of it:

Les Amis by Patty Sloniger

Seriously LOVE this collection! Little animals make me happy. And I especially love owls, turtles, and foxes so this collection is PERFECT. I know I want to make myself a quilt with it. I'm thinking of using Elizabeth Hartman's Kitchen Window pattern from The Practical Guide to Patchwork. I bought this fabulous book in November but all the holiday madness kept me from trying anything out. This might just be the perfect project to start :)

I picked this up from the post office today:

Grecian Waters bundle of Kona Cottons

Isn't it pretty? This is what I'm going to use for my Skill Builder BOM quilt! I sort of wanted to pick out all my fabrics individually... but it was taking SO MUCH time. I was having such trouble making any color decisions and I was just getting frustrated. So I picked out a bundle instead and called it good. I'm super excited for the first block lesson! :D 

I have also been working on some crocheting... but I really prefer to take pictures when there aren't a thousand strings of yarn hanging out. That's probably silly, but oh well! Pictures to come later :)

Linking up to WiP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced! Maybe next week my hounds tooth quilt with actually have some pieces put together :) Hope you're having a great week!