Hello March!

February sewing:  1 big quilt, 1 small quilt, 1 mini quilt, and a pillow.  

I also started the Woodland Sampler.  This is my first cross stitch project and I've made about a million errors so far but I'm hopeful that my March square will be much improved.

My plan for this month is to start the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt.  Heidi is planning on making this quilt as well and I think it will be lots of fun to be tackling this at the same time.  Anyone else interested in joining us?  

Oh, and I totally missed my 1 year blog anniversary last week - crazy!

Linking up to Fresh Sewing Day.

The So Many Fun Fabrics Quilt

Back in November I shared a small version of a big quilt that I was planning on making slowly throughout 2013 for when my littlest moves into a bed.  Well, I have been slowly working on it since November but decided that my February sewing goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes was to finish half of the quilt top.  And then for some unknown reason last week, motivation struck and I finished not just the top but the entire quilt.

I had already sashed all of the novelty fabrics in both a print and the kona snow so all that was left was putting it all together.   And once I started, I just kept going.  Improv piecing with no specific plan is really my favorite way of piecing.  I just cut several strips of varying widths of kona snow and a handful of bright prints and then just randomly put it all together with the blocks.

Since I don't usually make quilts this large, I didn't have enough basting pins so instead I decided to thread baste and I think I will be doing so from now on.  For me, it didn't take any longer than pin basting and I really liked not having to worry about mistakenly sewing over the pins when quilting.

I decided to stick with FMQ swirly loops for the quilting and quilted the novelty prints a bit less than the rest of the quilt.  I used Aurifil 50wt in color 2600 - it is a light gray thread that I think works well with all the colors in this quilt.

I used the scrappy binding that I showed in this post.

And I used lots of bright, colorful prints for the back.

I really enjoyed having a big project that I could work on in bits and pieces when I had the time.  And now that it is finished, I've been thinking a lot about finding another project that I can slowly work on throughout the year.  Of course, my other daughters want their own version of this quilt but well, I reminded them that they also know how to sew!  Or maybe this could be something we can work on together!

Linking to A Lovely Year of Finishes and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Let's Get Acquainted Link Up

The Link Up today is being hosted today by Janice at Better off Thread.  After you add your link, I definitely recommend browsing around her fantastic blog.  She has so many beautiful projects and tutorials!  Click here for the Let's Get Acquainted Link Up post.

As for me, I just finished a fun quilt that I've been working on for awhile - it is in the wash right now and I'm excited to post about it later this week.  Until then, here is a photo of the extra binding that I made - yes, I said extra - I seriously overestimated - guess that is better than the alternative though.

wednesday

                                                                                      {starting to piece together the puzzle}




(linking to WIP Wednesday)

Low(er) Volume(ish) Pillow

Several months ago, I bought a large pillow form (26inch square.)  I know I bought it with a plan in mind but other things got in the way and now I can't even remember what that plan was.  What I do know is that the huge pillow form - even when rolled up in the package - was taking up a lot of precious room in my tiny sewing space.

I was determined to finally use the pillow form this weekend and get it out of my sewing space.  I kept going back and forth between different fabrics and designs and even considered just using one big piece of fabric - it was really looking like this pillow form would be spending more time in the package.    

So, I went back to my quilting roots - QAYG!  I cut a piece of batting at 28" square and a piece of backing a bit larger than that.  I grabbed a bunch of low(er) volume(ish) fabrics and just started putting it all together.  (Note:  if I was making anything other than a pillow, I wouldn't have added the backing until the end but since the backing would be hidden inside the pillow, I figured it didn't matter if I just added it at this point.)  

I trimmed the top to 25" before adding the envelope back but as you can see I still had lots of extra room despite it being a 26" form.  I even redid the stitching with a larger seam but it still had tons of room.  

Oh, well.  I don't usually topstitch around the edges afterwards but I decided to try it this time to see if it made a difference and while it is still not quite the best fit, I'm leaving it as is (at least for now.)

The pillow is now living on the "floor couch" in the tiny room that my daughters refer to as "the library" - they read so many books set in the olden days that I guess they think all houses have a library!  Of course, they also think I grew up in the olden days so . . .

(linking to Crazy Mom Quilts)

Let's Get Acquainted Monday Link Up

Martha from Weekend Doings is hosting this week's Let's Get Acquainted Monday Link Up.  I have always admired Martha's wondering photography skills and was excited to see that she wrote a post about her photography tips to go along with the link up today.  Click here to see her beautiful photos, read her tips, and add your link!

A Liberty Baby Blanket

I'm not sure if this is a finish or a WIP.  A few weeks ago, I spotted some beautiful fabrics from the Liberty Bloomsbury line on sale so I decided to splurge and bought 1/4 yard cuts of 10 or so designs.  I knew that I wanted to make a simple patchwork baby-size quilt so I started working on it the day after the fabrics arrived.

Since I prefer to work with blocks instead of rows, I took the 4" squares I cut from each of the fabrics and just started randomly chain-piecing together pairs.  Then I took the pairs and chain-pieced 4-patch blocks - making sure to vary the fabrics in each block so that there were no repeats.  I basically just repeated this method of doubling the block size until all the fabrics were pieced together.

I used a bunch of kid-friendly novelty prints to piece the backing.  I thought about putting it together like a regular quilt with binding but the front was so busy, I decided to do a no-binding quilt.  Most of my early quilts used this method (does that make them blankets?) - usually in combination with hand quilting or tying.  However, for this one I used Rita from Red Pepper Quilts' method of first quilting the top and batting together before sewing right sides together with the backing.  

Everything was going well until I was almost done with the quilting and realized that my batting was too short on two sides (near the same corner.)  I knew I would be close because the batting I had wasn't that much bigger than the quilt top but I thought I would be okay - wrong!  Thinking about it now, I'm sure there was a better fix but at the time, I just decided that I would use a larger seam allowance when I attached the backing to make up for it.  Unfortunately, it ended up being a patchwork squares blanket bordered in patchwork rectangles!  

I've thought about chopping off the edges and binding it (using a solid gray fabric) but it has been about two weeks since I finished the quilt and I haven't done anything.  So, like I said, I'm not sure if this is a WIP or a finish but it is very soft and cuddly and I do still really love these fabrics!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts and WIP Wednesday (I think this counts as a WIP???)