Baby blocks quilt top

I have had this exact stack of fabric sitting around my sewing room just waiting for a baby boy quilt to be made for some time, so when a friend of mine asked if I'd make a baby quilt for a friend of hers, and mentioned the baby was a boy, I told her I had the perfect idea already.

I would just like to take a moment to send ginormously huge amounts of praise and thank yous to Jeni of In Color Order, who shared this tute for folding fabric of just about any size, to one uniform finished folded piece. Seriously.  She has youtube videos and everything.  I am forever grateful.  

Not quite before and after, but the pic on the left is what I was dealing with before.  {Hangs head in shame} Yes I know, this is a disservice to all that beautiful fabric, BUT, the pic on the right is what I have now!  Eeek, I find myself just going downstairs just to look at it!  Seriously, go check out that tutorial.

Anyways, back to the post at hand.  About that baby quilt.  I had had this quilt pinned for sometime now, and thought these fabrics would lend themselves quite well to this sort of off-center square in square layout.



I altered the dimensions, so that my top measures about 41" square.  This also came together so unbelievable fast.  Like one sewing session fast.  Fabric cut and quilt top pieced in one evening of sewing fast.  Whew!



I cut into my last half yard of this adorable Central Park animal print as the centers for half the squares, and paired it with some Half Moon Modern, a few colors of Crosshatch Sketch and a few other coordinating prints with Kona White and Kona Royal, and what you have is instant boy.



This little guy should be basted and quilted in the next few days, stay tuned.  What did you work on this weekend??

ironing board storage

Ok, so I'm completely embarrassed that I am going to show these pictures of my terribly unorganized mess of a sewing room, but I'm showing them to get my butt in gear to clean and organize everything.  Not to make excuses, but the brunt of this disorganized mess comes from running out of fabric storage space, so my fabric ends up strewn about, wherever I can find space.  Anyways, I think I have found solution #1 to my problem, and I thought I'd share.  

These are the before pictures, ugh.  You can keep scrolling, don't look too closely ;-P  

In my search for storage ideas, I came across this picture, of course on Pinterest of Jacquie's ironing board/shelving solution, and I knew this was part of my answer.  All that unused space under my ironing board?  Turn it into storage space?  Yes please! 

And that is how this contraption was born.  I scoured the internet, and found these wire shelving units at Target, they are about 23" wide, so I bought two, and they were a little low (30" tall) for my liking, so I put them on some bed raisers I had to give some extra height.  I used a piece of plywood that was 48"x 18" and   wrapped it in about 4 layers of batting, and topped it off with some fabric.  I affixed everything to the underside of the plywood with a staple gun, and in a matter of a half an hour, had a solid ironing board top for my shelving unit.  

I am using the new storage space to store all my scraps.  I now have them sorted by each individual color, solid scraps have their own large bin, and my selvedge collection also has its own bin.   Up next is to refold all of my fabric using Jeni's tutorial like Kati just did, and nicely display it where those messy stacks are hanging out now.  Wish me luck!

on my design wall

Just had to share what is occupying my design wall.  Scraptastic love.  Japanese x and + blocks.  Can't wait for their do. Good Stitches friends to join them to make one scrapalicious quilt :-) 

WIP Wednesday {2.29.2012}

Happy Leap Day everyone!  This week has been quite the productive one, with a few finishes to share!  It feels nice to get a few things accomplished, and start to think about fresh new projects to start.  Here's what I've been up to:

Completed Projects

Swoon

Eeek, no words necessary, but its finished!  More on this big guy here.

Sparkle Punch Mini

It will be sad to see this little  guy go, but I think this is right up my partners alley, hopefully she likes!

February Bee Blocks

I have to admit, I had been putting these off all month,  hoping that maybe these triangles would just make themselves, but alas, no such luck.  So I put on my brave "I'm not scared of you" triangle face and got busy. And I have to say these turned out much better than anticipated!  I am usually not a spray starcher, but it helped immensely with keeping those biased edges under control.  These are for Smithiness in the Imagine circle of do. Good Stitches, using this Sew Mama Sew Modern Block of the Month tutorial from Alissa of Handmade by Alissa.

New Projects

Japanese x and + blocks

Speaking of do. Good Stitches, my month to be the quilter is March, and I am requesting these Japanese x and + blocks to make a bright fun scrappy quilt.  I've gotten started making the extra 12 blocks I'll need to finish off the quilt, and these things are so stinkin' addicting to make!  

This Weeks Stats

Completed Projects: 3

New Projects: 1

In Progress: 6

Swoon
HST pillows
Sparkle Punch mini
Ripple Afghan
February Bee Blocks
4x5 Bee Blocks
Farmers Wife QAL (this is getting dangerously close to UFO territory...)
Retro Flowers baby quilt
Japanese x and + blocks

Be sure to head over to Freshly Pieced and add your WIPs!

Mini Sparkle Punch: Complete

My mini sparkle punch is complete!  This little mini will be off to a new home shortly, and is for my partner in the Fab Little Quilt Swap.  This was really fun to work on, as my partner and I seem to have very similar tastes and color preferences, so it was almost like working on something for myself!

I used Oh Fransson's sparkle punch QAL as my guide for this, and shrunk the blocks down, so that each finished block measured 1.5" square.  My partner seemed to like blues and greens, so I had fun digging through my blue and green scraps to put this mini together.

I hand quilted using size 5 pearl cotton thread in coordinating colors just on the inside of each star, and then using the green just along the edge of the white portions to highlight the wonky little pinwheels that developed from piecing the stars.  

As for the binding, I used a royal blue Timeless Treasures crosshatch print that I picked up at my LQS.  I had thought about doing the binding in grey since there was so much blue already, but I'm really glad I went with the blue, I think it sort of ties everything together nicely.  

I just love this pattern so much, I am definitely keeping it in mind for an upcoming baby quilt, possibly in this exact color scheme!  

Quilt Stats:

Name: Sparkle Punch Mini

Pattern:  Sparkle Punch QAL by Oh Fransson

Size:  15" x 18"

Fabrics:  Assorted blue and green prints from my stash and Kona White

Binding:  Timeless Treasures Royal Blue Crosshatch Sketch in Royal

Quilting:  Hand Quilting done by me in blue and green pearl cotton #5 thread

Mama Bee

This is my first round partaking in the do. Good Stitches bee, and March is my month to be the Hive mama.  I am really enjoying giving a little back, I do so much quilting and crafting for myself, friends and family, that it feels good to do a little for charity as well.  Our circle, the Imagine Circle will be making quilts for Threading Hope.  

I have been oogling all the amazing Japanese x and + blocks and quilts that have been popping up all over blog land and flickr land, and thought why not jump in the fun.  I took Megan's approach and upsized the blocks, so that mine will finish at 11.25" square...not exactly 12", but I took the easy way with the math ;-)

These blocks will be made using Amy of Badskirt's tutorial, only with upsized measurements.  In case you were wondering, here are the measurements  I figured out to get the larger block size:

fabric 1: (1) 7.25" x 2.75"

(2) 2.75" x 2.75"

fabric 2: (4) 2.75" x 2.75"

fabric 3: (8) 2.75" x 2.75"

fabrics 4, 5, 6, 7: (1) 5" x 5" of each color

These blocks are so addicting to make that I just couldn't stop at two (and I know I'll need extra blocks anyways...) 

Only 10 more to go, so that when all is said and done I will have a nice size quilt  with 30 blocks.  Not only do I love this block, it's so satisfying making use of some scraps!

I will be linking up to Sew Modern Monday over at Canoe Ridge Creations, head over and link up!

completed swoon

It's finished!  It's finished!  I've never been so excited to finish up a quilt before this one.  Don't get me wrong, I always get that sort of euphoric mad dash while finishing up all of my quilts, and usually I then say "this is my favorite quilt I've made" (the hubby says I say this about all of them, and he may be right), but I can really say 100% this is my most favorite quilt I've made to date!

It's funny, when I decided to drink the kool aid and start a Swoon of my own, I wasn't super sold on the idea that I would love this quilt when all was said and done.  The pattern is just a little more traditional than my typical tastes, but as I'd enjoyed the traditional piecing like in the Farmers Wife QAL, I thought I'd give it a try, and at least use up some stash fabric that needed to be used, and see where this went, and after seeing the amazing swoon-spiration in the group pool, who could resist.  

Well I have to say I'm so incredibly pleased with where this went.  And the fact that it has come entirely from stash fabrics, including the back, is the icing on the cake!

This is the largest quilt I've attempted to date, the Swoon as it is in the pattern finishes at 80" square, but I wanted it to be queen size, so I upped the widths of the sashing, using 3 1/2" in between the blocks, and 5 1/2" around the edges, so that the finished size is 90" square.  

In addition to this being the largest quilt I've ever made, it's also the first truly reversible quilt I've done.  I knew from the start that I wanted to do a mega-scrappy swoon on the back of the quilt, so I upsized the original swoon block, so that the back block measures 48" square, and went scrappy, using alot of my Kate Spain Central Park and Terrain scraps, and used Kona Ash, Kona Coal, and a Kona Aqua as the solids.

  

I won't lie, this wasn't the easiest to wrangle through my machine, but Bertha made light work of it, and I may have built some arm muscles I didn't know I had!  

I did an all over loopy stipple for the quilting of this big guy, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  It was a nice change of pace from my usual meandering stipple and I think works nicely as an all over pattern.

I know this post has been overly photo heavy, but it was so windy outside during my little photo shoot, that I was just snapping a million pictures hoping to get a few that weren't crazy blurry, or where my quilt didn't end up blowing across the driveway.  After all was said and done, I just couldn't pick my favorites!

It seems that Zoey and Bella give 4 paws up in approval...

 

 

At least someone is snuggling with this big guy!

Quilt Stats

Name: Jessica's Swoon

Pattern: Swoon by Camille Roskelley

Size:  90" x 90"

Fabrics:  Quilt top: Assorted fabrics from my stash with Kona White; Quilt Back: Assorted scraps from stash, Kona Ash, Kona Coal and Kona Aqua

Quilting:  All over loopy stippling done by me using Gutterman white thread

Binding:  DS Quilts Collection Aunt Edna Houndstooth Orange

I will be linking this quilt up to Kati's slash the stash linky party.  This quilt has been made entirely from stash...(even the back!) with the exception of extra solid white I needed to purchase and the binding is a new acquisition!  Be sure to stop over and add your latest stash finish!