ziggity zag

I have had this quilt top in pieces on my design wall for what feels like eons, and it feels great to finally turn it into a quilt top, and not just any quilt top, but one for Baby Girl!  Aside from a few receiving blankets and burp clothes, and my granny square quilt I've had tucked away for this "hopefully sometime" baby, this is the first quilty sewing I've done for our little lady, and it just makes me smile thinking of all that baby girl cuteness playing on quilts that mama made for her :-)




As soon as we found out we were having a girl, I knew I wanted to make her a quilt using this Joel Dewberry Notting Hill fabric in the magenta color way.  All of those pinks and oranges just scream girly girl to me.  I went with a half square triangle layout using print on print HSTs and print paired with white HSTs for this fun zig zag quilt.  I love that the print zig zags are wider than the white, and these prints play so well together that they all sort of blend together into one when looking from afar.



I am thinking I want to back this in fleece, as I love how soft and cuddly my Scrappy Trip Along quilt is.   I may put this aside for a little while though, as the thought of doing anything with fleece while we are having temperatures in the 90s every day this week makes me cringe (and sweat) just a little, although perhaps I should get to basting while I can!

voile.

Oh I'm in love.  It's official.  My first time stitching with voile and I don't want to stitch with anything else.  It's silky smooth and feels like butter, and I can't imagine wrapping baby in anything more soft or luxurious feeling.  I have no idea if using voile is a good idea or not for whipping up a few burp cloths (using chenille as the underside) with the left overs, but I'm doing it anyways, as baby girl can't have enough hand made goods made of this stuff.

I picked up the voile fabric from Hawthorne Threads:  AMH Little Honey in berry, Valori Wells Shine in aqua, AMH Little Honey in gold and Joel Dewberry Tile Flourish in amber.  The flannel I picked up at Joann's on sale, I just love that grey bike print!  The pops of aqua and red are perfect.  I used the same self binding receiving blanket tutorial and backed these in flannel in the same way I made these flannel receiving blankets a few weeks back.



I love that these aren't quite as heavy as the flannel on flannel versions, and that the snuggle quotient is through the roof.  I just grabbed this AMH voile fat eighth bundle from Westwood Acres to make baby girl a voile quilt, as I already know she can't have enough of this silky goodness in her life.



I was a little nervous to start sewing with this stuff, as its quite slippery, but with many pins and using my walking foot, I had zero problems.  I can feel baby girl kicking away as I'm typing this, so I'm assuming that's her seal of approval!  Good taste even from inside the womb :-)

more kool aid drinking

I'm now 24 blocks in with the Tula Pink City Sampler Sew Along and I just can't seem to stop making blocks.  It's something about turning the page and seeing just one more itty bitty 6" block, and I say to myself, oh I can whip up just one more block...and this cycle continues until the three blocks I was initially planning on making turns into 12.  It seems to be working for me, I think I'm a little ahead of the sew along now, but I'll set aside these little guys with the first 12 blocks, and come back for 12 more blocks in another few weeks...or sooner.



These three little guys were the last of the cross blocks.  I'm loving how this sew along is really making me use the entire rainbow of colors.  It's very easy to fall into using colors in your "comfort zone" repeatedly and for me that's blues, and anything I can match with blue.  That green block in the middle almost made me cringe, with those muddy greens and yellows, but  turns out its one of my favorite blocks!



I'm also a fan of the quickest and easiest way to piecing these blocks, and look for short cuts when I can.  I took a deep breath when I saw block #17, all those teeny tiny 1/2" strips, but strip piecing was my friend, and in no time block 17 was complete.



I will say these blocks are trying my purple and pink stash and scrap bins.  Purple is by far the color I have the least of, and it seems that every other block has some sort of purple to be included.  I may be exaggerating, but it really is alot of purple. I'm really trying not to repeat fabrics, so hopefully I can hold out without having to buy more!



It would not have taken much convincing to make "just 3 more" but I reigned myself in and stopped at 12.



I pulled up last weeks TouchDraw drawing and inserted the newest 12 blocks into the layout, and this has me giddy enough to want to run home from work and make 12 more blocks to see them in the layout.  I'm becoming incredibly tempted to really push to get this done for our beach trip next month...that's not crazy, right??

baby stitches

This pregnancy seems to just be flying by, I'm about 6 months along now, and can't believe that in 4 short months we'll be meeting out little one for the first time!  Things have been relatively easy so far (knock on wood!!), and as we found out that our little pumpkin is indeed a little LADY, I decided it was high time to dig into that Baby DIY Pinterest board I've been pinning away to for the past 6 months, and get sewing.



I started by stitching up a few self binding receiving blankets using this tutorial by Sew Much Ado, but altered the cutting directions to cutting my backing at 40" square and the front fabric at 34" square.  The only reason I did this, was after pre-washing my flannel I snagged at Joann's there was major shrinkage.  The WOF shrunk to about 40ish inches, so a 42" square wasn't happening.

I found there to be a little bit of a learning curve with these, and that accurate cutting is so so important!  The first blanket I made (the light pink on the bottom) turned out horribly, and I figured out it was because my squares were off and slightly rectangle-ish instead of square.  Once I figured out how to use my big 20.5" cutting ruler to square up the fabrics, it was much smoother sailing, and I was cranking out one of these blankets in about 45 minutes (pressing and cutting fabric included)



I plan on making more of these guys (when I can get flannel on sale again!), they feel so cozy and will make great swaddle blankets.



With the leftover flannel from my smaller cutting measurements,  I was also able to cut the fronts for 2 burp clothes from each background fabric.  For the backing, I searched high and low for cotton chenille, that I ultimately ended up purchasing off of Ebay, as Joann's no longer carries this fabric.  I used Made's Burp Cloth Tutorial and could not be happier with the result.  I love how soft the flannel side is, and how absorbent the cotton chenille will be for those baby spit up moments.



While I love the chenille, it was a little pricier (read: alot pricier) than I had planned on spending, as its not readily available at any fabric shop near me.  I'd love to know if any of you moms out there would recommend another sort of fabric that would be equally absorbent for the backing?  I'd love to make some of these for a few friends that are having babies soon also.  I was thinking of using terry cloth but thought I'd consult you wise readers before making any rash decisions :-)



While I'm picking your brains about absorbent backing fabrics, I'd love to know what your favorite DIY baby projects were!  I have a list about a mile long, and would love to know of tutorials or baby items you found super helpful, so I can prioritize my list.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bloglovin

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Sucked In

I'm a sucker for a quilt along.  Plain and simple.  I was really doing well trying to tame the massive amount of unfinished projects that are lurking in the depths of my sewing room, and resisting brand new projects, but I couldn't resist the Tula Pink City Sampler QAL any longer.  Seeing all that rainbow goodness popping up in blog land for the past three weeks was breaking me down bit by bit, until I found myself perusing the 100 Modern Quilt Blocks book last week on Amazon and then magically it was in my cart and I was hitting the purchase button.

My book arrived on Saturday, and I immediately got to stitching.  Honestly, I have no idea why I resisted Tula for so long, has she ever led me astray??  Every project I've ever made either using a Tula Pink pattern or fabric line (like here, and here) ends up being a favorite, and I can already tell this quilt will be no exception.  Over the past two days I've whipped up the first 12 blocks and they are like quilty crack incredibly addictive.  

These are blocks 1-3.  I'm following along with the color palate featured in the book, to hopefully end up with a rainbow Gridlock layout as featured on the cover.  I'm not exclusively using Tula fabrics, but working from my stash and incorporating assorted Tula prints when I can.



As I dug into this project, the little rational voice in the back of my head was saying "this project sounds awfully like another sampler quilt featuring 6.5" blocks that's stashed away in the darkness of abandoned projects...ahem...Farmers Wife QAL" and while yes, that voice is absolutely correct, those Farmers Wife blocks will likely never see the light of day again, this QAL has a completely different vibe...and no templates!  So I say to you nay-sayer voice of reason, I will finish this sampler quilt!



These blocks really do have such a fresh modern vibe, and are so easy to put together.  I seem to spend more time planning the fabrics for each block than I do cutting and sewing.  It's going to be hard to stick to only making 3 a week!



As I'm not using the exact fabrics featured in the book, I was getting a little nervous that my quilt would look like rainbow throw-up instead organized color transitions, so I planned the quilt out in the Touch Draw app for iPad, and plan on dropping in each block as I finish them to get an idea of how the final layout will look, sort of a virtual design wall if you will.



Right now it just looks like a lot of empty white squares, but not only will it let me monitor my color selections, but also will be a motivator to keep making blocks, as I can instantly see how my quilt is going to look when its finished!

Looking forward to my next date with Tula to whip up more blocks!

   

Wonky House Tutorial and EQ7 Review

After much fiddling with my new EQ7 software, I finally have templates for my Wonky House block that are ready to share and download! You may remember this block from my massive Stash Bee block catch up from last month.  Pauline requested wonky houses for her month back in February and I definitely hesitated as I've mentioned before that I don't do wonky very well.  A lightbulb went off and I thought to design a paper piecing "wonky" pattern with EQ7.  This way I could have my cake and eat it too...the block would be perfectly wonky...with the bonus of crisp template lines to follow along with.

I'm not going to share a tutorial for paper piecing in general, as there are several awesome ones out there in blog land, and why reinvent the wheel.  If you have never paper pieced before, or need a refresher, check out Faith of Fresh Lemon's Quilts Paper Piecing Tutorial her's is my favorite!

The Wonky House Paper Piecing Templates can be found here. Block size is 12.5" unfinished, or 12" finished.  Please download the file to your computer before printing the templates, as I've found the block sizing to be off when printing directly from Google documents.



Cut out all template pieces and paper piece using the numbered sections on each template.  Once all your sections are pieced, use the above diagram to assemble your block.  Please note sections A, H and I are single fabric sections.  Due to the size constrictions of fitting the template pieces onto standard 8.5" x 11" paper for printing, this was the only option.

Also, please note that the above finished block is a mirror image (read: backward) of the template pieces.

Once your block is pieced, admire your work!  Also be sure to add it to the SewCraftyJess Flickr group, as I'd love to see your interpretation!

If you are interested in the ramblings of my EQ7 experiences so far, check out the review below:

I had been in the market for quilt design software for some time now, and had deliberated between several options.  I have used the TouchDraw app for my iPad thus far for quilt patterns and tutorial illustrations, which has worked great, but I really wanted something to help design paper piecing templates.  I checked out jumping in with Adobe Illustrator, but ultimately thought that might be a little more than I really needed (and pricier too!), as well as checked out a few online quilt design options including Thread Bias' Quilt Design Tool, but decided that I wanted something that would be downloaded to my computer and not require a monthly subscription fee.  After ruling out these options, I settled on Electric Quilt's EQ7.

After receiving my software in the mail (I ordered from Fat Quarter Shop) I spent quite a bit of time reviewing the users manual for EQ7, learning the ins and outs of the software, as well as watching the demo videos and tips that are built right into the software.

I also purchased the book EQ With Me: Pieced Drawing, as I was still a little unsure of the best way to use the software to design blocks that I had in mind.  I can't say enough good things about this book.  It takes each of the modes available in the EQ7 software and teaches you how to use them via a multitude of step by step tutorials (lessons) detailing how to construct various blocks of assorted difficulty.  If I had known about this book from the beginning, I would have skipped the users manual and dove right into the lessons, as I'm a hands-on learner.

So far, there hasn't been a quilt block I've come up with that EQ7 couldn't design, or a quilt layout that didn't easily come together.  I'm also a huge fan of the ability to import fabric swatches to get an actual image of what a quilt will look like with certain fabrics.

As for the cons, my main dislike is the lack of instruction within the software and users manual itself for using each function to actually construct quilt blocks.  Maybe its just me, but I find its one thing to understand how a tool works and another to apply that tool in a string of 9 other tools to make a finished product.  Now as mentioned before, the EQ With Me book completely did this for me, but after spending all that money on the software, its understandable to not want to spend another $30 on a book to learn how to use the software.

One of the main reasons I wanted this software was to design paper piecing templates not only for myself, but to share with all you lovely readers.  While EQ7 makes the designing aspect of this incredibly easy (once getting the hang of things), it doesn't make the sharing part easy at all.  I found (and confirmed) that there is no way to save the resulting pages of paper piecing templates as an image document or PDF in the software.  While this is no big deal if only making templates for yourself, but it poses a huge problem if planning on sharing the templates as a download with others.

  There is a way around this, I used Shape Moth's suggestion of installing a free PDF creator (I downloaded this one for free and it works like a charm) that lists itself among your printer options, so instead of printing the final copy of paper piecing templates via a printer, you can "print" them by selecting the PDF creator from the drop down printer selector which then results in PDF pages to save to your computer that are ready to download, instead of printed pages.

Let me make myself clear, most of my gripes I have have nothing to do with the actual function of how the software works to design quilts and quilt blocks, but instead are with the little extras that would help with the finishing stages of publishing and sharing paper piecing templates.  Perhaps this is where I should have considered Adobe Illustrator (and its heftier price tag) for publishing purposes, but in case you perhaps are considering EQ7 for the same reasons, I thought I'd share my experiences.

On the whole, I can't say enough good things about this software and its ease of use, and only a minuscule amount of gripes, which for the most part I have been able to navigate around.  I definitely give it a two thumbs up, which if I had to purchase again, would do so in a heartbeat!  Disclaimer:  I have not been paid in any way for this review.  It is simply an unbiased review of my thoughts and impressions to share with others who may be in the market for quilt design software.