playing catch up

Now that I seem to be back in the sewing "groove," and while I was #notgoingtoquiltmarket this weekend, I figured it was good as time as any to catch up on long overdue commitments that I had totally dropped the ball on.  

I fell completely behind with my Stash Bee blocks (to the tune of 6 blocks behind, yikes!) and felt completely guilty working on anything else until these puppies were taken care of.  I can now proudly report that I am 100% caught up, and my blocks will be in the mail this week!  

for Pauline

This block is my absolute favorite of the 6 I had to tackle, and I am typically not a wonky gal, for some reason it just doesn't agree with me, my wonky, ends up just looking messy.  Enter EQ7.  I played around with my new toy and was able to mock up a paper piecing wonky house block that I absolutely love.  I'm slowly but surely getting the hang of how EQ7 works, and am figuring out ways around the quirks I'm not such a fan of.

This block finished at 10" x 10" for the simple fact that that was the size templates I could get to fit on standard computer paper for printing.  I'm in the process of reformatting the templates to print for a 12" block, and will make them available for free download when I do!


for Cecilia

I love not only the colors but how this mod mosaic quilt is going to come together for Cecilia.  The blocks came together very easily and quickly, but when put together for a quilt will make such an impact.  The tutorial used for these can be found here.


for Deb

So right behind my comfort level of wonky, is my comfort level of applique.  I find that most of the applique ideas I think of in my head don't exactly translate to fabric all that well, and it ends up looking like a kindergartners project.  I was pleasantly surprised with how Deb's applique owl block came out though, quite cute if I don't say so myself!  I found a color page online of a cute chunky owl I liked, and free hand drew a tree branch with a few leaves for extra color and applied it to fabric using Steam a Seam.


for Candace

These bright pretty log cabin blocks have me wanting to start a log cabin project like now.  I love how quickly  these blocks come together by using a little portable ironing station that I set up next to my sewing machine to cut down on the constant up and down to my main ironing board.  After each ring is complete, I then trim to make sure each ring is the correct size.  These log cabin blocks were made using Rita's tutorial.





These two ginormous blocks were for Kelsey and Carol.  These monsters finish at 19" square, and will make a great giant size quilt!  The tutorial for these CrackerJack blocks can be found here.

It feels so nice to be all caught up, sorry again these are so late, hopefully they can still be used!! 

BQF: Introducing Ring Toss

I am so excited to not only have a quilt to contribute to the Blogger's Quilt Festival this time around, but also be releasing my second quilt pattern at the same time!  Ring Toss is now available both in my pattern shop and on Craftsy for $6.50 through May 20 (after May 20th price will be $8.00).

And now introducing Ring Toss, my newest quilt pattern!  This quilt is inspired by Denyse Schmidt's Single Girl, but by designing my own pattern and templates, I was able to take the parts I wasn't so crazy about and make it mine, and in turn make it available to you as well, in 5 different sizes!

I chose to make the baby  size, as I obviously have babies on the brain.  While we don't yet know what sex the little bean is, I have an inkling that it's a boy, hence the overwhelming amount of blue themed quilt palettes you'll be seeing in the coming weeks.  Of course I could be completely wrong, and we could be baking ourselves a little lady in there, hopefully we'll be able to find out soon!

Anyways, back to the quilt!  This PDF pattern comes together very quickly and easily for quilters of all experience levels.  The Ring Toss pattern includes detailed step-by-step instructions, complete with pictures of each step detailing both the foundation piecing (paper piecing) process for piecing the arc portions, as well as pictures walking you through the process of piecing curves.  This quilt would serve as a great skill builder for beginner quilters, yet also fit a more advanced quilters skill level as well.

The Ring Toss pattern lends itself very well to using your favorite fabric line, or your most precious scraps from your stash.  The pattern includes instructions for cutting from both yardage or fat quarters (fat eighths for the baby size), as well as supplemental cutting instructions for larger fabric pieces if needed when foundation piecing.

The Ring Toss quilt pattern is now available from my pattern shop (please allow 24 hours for email delivery)  as well as Craftsy (available for instant download) for a discounted price of $6.50 through Monday, May 20 (after May 20th, price will be $8.00).

I can't wait to see your creations, if you do make a Ring Toss quilt I would love to see it in my Flickr pool!



  

Ring Toss quilt top

This past weekend was the hubs weekend to work, and as I had zero going on in the way of plans for myself, that meant uninterrupted hours of sewing!  It was a gorgeous weekend, so I felt guilty spending all my time hunkered down in my sewing room stitching away, so I definitely took advantage and spent some quality time out in the sunshine as well.

It's been feeling a little monotonous lately, sewing away downstairs even when I'm working on something I'm excited about, so my new way to pass the time while stitching (especially when doing things like chain piecing) is to take advantage of our Netflix subscription!  I don't know why  I didn't think of this sooner, but it really helps to pass the time when doing repeated tasks, such as paper piecing those arc portions.  My latest guilty pleasure is Gossip Girl.  Nice and mindless which is perfect for passing the time!



Now back to this quilt.  I've decided to name it Ring Toss, for obvious reasons, and I'm super pleased with how its come together...except for one thing.  Take a good hard look, can you tell what is wrong?  I can even sing that Sesame Street song, "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things is not the same..."  Argh.  Have you spotted it yet?  Yep.  The lower right corner circle is pieced with a different color linen!

When I started working on this quilt, I knew I didn't have nearly enough background linen to finish an entire quilt, but I was a bajillion percent sure it was Essex Linen in Natural.  So I pieced the first block with what I had, and ordered more and waited for it to arrive.  When the postman came with my package, I didn't even think to double check the color against what I had.  I was that sure.  So I went about my merry way, and it wasn't until I pieced the entire quilt top that I spotted my error.  Now I would still swear to you that both of these linens are Essex Linen in Natural, however due to my lack of solids labeling, (and pregnancy brain) I certainly could have been mistaken, or perhaps a dye lot difference?  Can that happen with linen?  Anyways, I'm leaning towards the former, but its frustrating none the less.



On the bright side of my oversight, I've decided that I am going to put together a pattern for this quilt in multiple sizes, so I figure I will need to reconstruct a block anyways to take step by step photos.  At least the out of place block is on a corner, and should be relatively easy to seam rip and replace.

If you follow me on Instagram, you saw I spent a good bit of yesterday morning doing lots of quilty math and fabric calculations, as I have lofty goals to have this pattern ready for the Bloggers Quilt Festival, which begins next Friday and runs through the end of the month!  I realize this would be exceptionally speedy, but we'll see how quickly I can work.  I'm finally getting the hang of EQ7 which is tremendously helpful for template purposes, but I'm finding a few quirks in the software which are proving to be a little bit of a headache.  Once I get a feel for things, I'll be back with a full review.

hexing around

I've been hesitant to join any bees this year, for obvious reasons, but I can never resist joining in with the 4x5  bee gang!  I can't even count how many rounds I've participated in (maybe this is the 6th?) and I can say I have never once been disappointed with the blocks I've received.

This round, I decided to jump in with the hexy hive, meaning just as it sounds, each block must incorporate hexagons in some form.  I had initially planned on machine piecing small hexagons cut with my Accuquilt GO!  but ultimately decided against it.  After some pinterest-ing for inspiration, I started doodling, and came up with this star in a hexagon shape that I was able to turn into a paper piecing pattern.  I finally bit the bullet and ordered EQ 7, so I'm hoping to be able to turn this into a computer generated paper piecing pattern, instead of my chicken scratch on the backs of old pieces of scrapbook paper.  Anyone that has tips for EQ 7, they would be much appreciated!

For Becky

I had to dig deep, as Becky requested navy blue, kelly green and aqua.  The aqua, I have covered.  There is so much aqua in my stash its almost a little ridiculous, the same goes for lime-y greens, but kelly green?  and navy?  Those are few and far between.  I dug out my pearl bracelets though, and found just the colors I was looking for.


for Cathy

I love these colors to pieces, I dug through and pulled out some Oval Elements and Pearl Bracelets for this blue, blue, and more blue block.


for Michelle

Michelle requested purple, black and grey.  The grey I've got covered, but purple and black are also colors I'm lacking in my stash.  I did come up with a black Comma barcode print, and a purple print from Bespoken by Pat Bravo for AGF.


for Caryn

So I don't like to play quilty favorites, but its going to take all my will power to not hoard this block and keep it all for myself.  Caryn asked for rainbow colors in spectrum order and white.  And really, what is better than purdy rainbow prints, and text prints??


for Sarah

Sarah asked for lime green, aqua and grey.  I played with all sorts of prints, but when I saw how well Color Me Retro and Simply Color played together, I was sold.  Paired with some fun paper clips, and I called these blocks finished.

Hopefully my bee mates are as happy as I am with these blocks, and be on the lookout for the paper piecing templates, if I can figure out how to do it!

oh baby!

So, you may have noticed that things have been a little quiet around these parts lately, but while I haven't been sewing, I've been doing alot of this:

       
                  

....and a little of this...



because we expecting a little one of these:



in October!  Our little guy (or lady!) should be making his or her appearance around October 12, just in time for the holidays!  We are beyond excited and looking forward to meeting out newest little family member.  Now that the cat's out of the bag (its about time!  I'm horrible at keeping secrets) you can believe for the next few months this blog will be inundated with all things baby, as my "baby" sewing list is about a mile long!  

easing back into things

My motivation for spending time in my sewing room seems to have evaporated as of late.  Its certainly not for a lack of projects to work on, because those are plenty, but for some reason, the sew-jo seems to have hit the road.  I will say, sometimes when I have so many things in various stages of completion, my brain just can't decide what to work on first, so naturally I just don't work on anything at all.

I've seen some elaborate forms of project tracking here and there, and always thought it was a little bit much, but it may be just what I need to keep things organized and prioritized.  I will admit I get some sort of mini high from checking things off a list!  I'm embarrassed to admit that I still have blocks for a do. Good Stitches quilt tucked away in my cabinet from last March.  Eeek.  Anyways, if anyone has any magic tracking/organization tips for keeping UFOs managed, I'd love to hear them!



Anyways, enough boo-hooing about what I haven't been working on, and onto a little something that does have me excited to huddle down in my sewing room and stitch away!  After seeing Natalie's hand quilted Single Girl quilt, inspiration struck, and I needed to stitch with curves.  Like that instant.  I have never made Denyse Schmidt's famous Single Girl quilt, I definitely missed the boat on that quilt along 2 years ago, and thought no time like the present.

I was thisclose to hitting the purchase button for the pattern, but the more I looked into it, the more I wasn't quite feeling it.  Reason A:  Templates.  Ugh.  When I put together my Double Wedding Ring Quilt a few years back, I specifically found a pattern that paper pieced the arcs.  I knew I definitely did not have the patience for cutting templates, tracing, and cutting fabric by hand with scissors.  Reason B:  I wanted more of a circle circle shape, not a rounded square-circle shape.  Reason C: I wanted more space between my circles, and less blank space in the circle center.

So...whats a gal to do??  Of course the only answer is to bust out her compass and random assorted scrapbooking paper (my personal fav for drafting paper piecing templates, as its nice and big at 12" square) and get to drafting a template that was just what I wanted!



Luckily this was not the headache I had envisioned in my head, and definitely did a happy dance when everything came together perfectly on the first go.  My arc templates are made, and are ready to be paper pieced, and I am just waiting on my order of Essex Linen in Natural for the background, and hopefully this will become a quilt top rather quickly! 

Exciting news

If you keep up with Lindsay at all, this isn't new news, but I wanted to share in the excitement as well!  You see, my friend Lindsay has a new book coming out this fall, and I get to be part of it!

My quilt even made the cover (second one from the top) {squeal!}

I'm honored and thrilled to be part of Lindsay's book writing journey, along with a whole host of super talented quilty ladies for the past year or so.  Lindsay has a great website set up with more info about the book contents and the quilt designers, AND you can already pre-order on Amazon!  You can read more about Modern Bee at Lindsay Sews, and she even has a celebratory giveaway going on that I believe closes at some point today!