chimesblog

I’ve been reading the Denyse Schmidt Quilts book that Adria let me borrow and saw the heating pad project and just HAD to do it. I hardly make anything for myself, but it annoys me that I have my heating pad out in the middle of my living room and it’s so not cute. It had some weird 90s pattern on the cover.  Not a fan.

Well, now, it’s stylin’!  I used the original cover for insulation and quilted the patchwork piece to it. The original cover had a snap closure on it, so I didn’t have to mess with putting a closure on the new cover.  Pretty smart, eh?

Again, going through my scrap box and found some scraps that Adria had given me from her Hello Betty quilt.  I had enough left to make a large block and I decided to finally cover the 18″x18″ pillow form I’ve had lying around.

I did another wonky log cabin block because those are just too easy and addictive.

Here’s the finished product. It doesn’t go with anything I own other than the chair in which I photographed it.

I’ve been working through my fabric scraps and I came across the Heather Ross Mendocino scraps that Adria had given me a while back.  She had leftovers after making a really cool mendocino quilt.

Here are a few of my favorite ones … They’re 5″x6″

I’m going to add 5-6″ of white fabric around each block to make it look like they’re floating and make a larger quilt out of these.  So excited! 

If you want to see all the blocks, I’ve got them posted on Flickr.

I took today off since I had to take my mancandy to the airport at an obscenely early time and wanted to sleep/clean/catch up on crafting the rest of the day.

Needless to say, I didn’t get a whole lot of cleaning done (I did put the dishes away!), but I got a little sleeping and a LOT of crafting done.  I finished off both sets of wonky log cabin blocks I’ve been working in — one with my repro fabrics, and the other with Wonderland and Amy Butler fabrics that I’ve been hoarding.  I have 17 of the repro block and 24 of the Amy Butler/Wonderland blocks.  I’m going to make a queen-sized quilt with the AB/W blocks, but not sure what I’m going to do with the repro blocks.

Here are some of the more fun blocks from the repro log cabin set (8″x8″).

And here are some cool ones from the Amy Butler set …

Eventually I’ll make these into quilts, but until then, they’re just pretty patchwork pieces.

Since I’m feeling sassy, I’m having a February $5 off sale on all my wallets on etsy!  Also — if you follow me on twitter or if you found this sale through my blog, convo me and I’ll give you free shipping on your wallet.

Check it out!

Oversized Clutch Wallet — $35

Funky Patchwork Wallet — $25

Wonderland Patchwork Wallet — $15

Funky Patchwork Wallet — $15

Funky Patchwork Wallet — $15

Large Park Slope Patchwork Wallet — $20

Large Park Slope Frog Closure Wallet — $20

Medium Echino Wallet — $15

Enjoy!!

I’ve been hoarding fabric for far too long, so before I’m allowed to buy any more, I must start going through and using it.

I’ve had these two pre-cut rolls of 2.5″ strips for about a year now and I’ve been waiting for the perfect project to use these on. These fabrics are dear to me because they’re reproductions of fabrics my great grandmother used when she made this beautiful wedding ring quilt that my mother has (and refuses to give me).

Anyway, I found a tutorial for a fun and easy block on QuiltDad.com.  It’s a Wonky Log Cabin Block.  My friend Adria follows QuiltDad and I’m pretty sure he’s on craftster.org as well and they’ve done lap quilt swaps together (actually, I’m pretty sure my Amy Butler sampler quilt that Adria gave me has one of his blocks).  Anyway, he has some reallllly cool stuff.

I thought I’d try this block with some fabric that was pre-cut so I didn’t spend a ton of time cutting my fabric and then having a block that didn’t work out (just in case the blocks didn’t work out … ).  But I love making this block and I’m definitely going to be making a couple of quilts out of this block.  I’ll be cutting some fabric for this very soon.

I’m planning on using 3-4 inches of white (or oatmeal) sashing between the blocks and possibly a polka-dotted backing. If I can find a white/cream fabric with brown or black mini polka dots, I’d love to use that.  Definitely a red binding strip.

My friend Adria is de-stashing her fabric and she put together a bunch of bundles and is selling them for cheap. All of the bundles are designer-fabric only.

Her store is whoopdedoo5.etsy.com.  If you convo her with the code “chimesdedoo” you will get 20% off your order!  What a deal. She’s got a TON of fabric and she’s really nice, so you might be able to get a better deal if you play your cards right!

Tell her chimes sent you!

I blogged earlier today about the 2nd hardcore quilt top that I made.

Well, I took the plunge ladies and gentlemen.  I officially quilted a full-size quilt.

I took photos of the process. One thing I learned — I desperately need a walking foot. I couldn’t find one for my machine (they were sold out in two places, so I gave up since this was just a practice quilt anyway). Also, quilting on t-shirts is difficult when you come across larger patches of screenprinting, especially when it’s a newer shirt.

Here’s what I did: I got some backing and batting and made a quilt sandwich. I basted it with large safety pins. I took tape (artists tape would work the best but I only had athletic tape at home, so that worked) and created uniform lines to follow with my stitching….and I was off.  I only had to reload the bobbin once, which was awesome because I hate doing that (I’m lazy. if I had a self-loading bobbin or never-ending bobbin that would rule. also — self threading needle).  I trimmed it and sewed the binding on (backwards I believe) and since I’m really lazy, I zig-zag stitched the binding to finish it.

Anyway, here’s photogs of the process.

basting and taping before quilting …

the whole safety-pinned, taped-up mess before I started (note — I taped in one direction at a time because I didn’t want to sew through the tape)

here’s where the bobbin ran out of thread. I took a much-needed walking break and came back an hour later refreshed and ready to conquer the rest of this thing.

ta-da! finished quilt. took me from 1 PM to 9 PM to finish top to bottom (minus 2 hours for supper, walking and errands)

okay… so the back picked up a ton of fuzz from the batting and a bunch of threads that were randomly strewn about my floor. I’m washing this thing tomorrow. Hopefully fix that problem.

And … DONE!

A while back I was going to participate in a charm pack swap on craftster, but didn’t realize that I had to complete a swap before I can do two at a time … and I really wanted to rock the metal swap (which I blogged about earlier in the summer).

Anywho, I bought a buttload of fabric and made a bunch of charm packs to send out.  I decided today to make a quilt top (I have a 2nd one in the works) out of the charm packs I’d put together.

Enjoy!  There’s some Amy Butler, Michael Miller, Kaffe Fassett and MUCH more. 

I think I’m going to do an oatmeal/cream backing and do a pink polkadot border (from the Wonderland fabric set). I’m wanting to do an all-over stitching pattern with either stippling or some sort of floral.

I haven’t mustered up the courage to do the quilting myself, so I’ll be sending this off to a quilting lady to work her magic.

I couldn’t wait to blog about this, so I’m blogging on the 25th, but this won’t go public until the 27th.  :)  That way the surprise isn’t spoiled!

My girlies from high school and I are going to Chicago this weekend and we decided to surprise Adria by turning one of our nights into a bachelorette party — laid back of course.

Adria’s friend, Magan who she knows through craftster.org swaps made stenciled t-shirts and I made a crown and sash (which turned into a lei instead) and “naughty” cookies.  I originally was going to make a patchwork sash but couldn’t decide how long to make it since Adria is a good 5-7 inches taller than me.  I also was going to make “party peters” but couldn’t find the appropriate cookie cutter and was tired of going into porn shops looking for one. I decided to use a cookie cutter I already had and use my imagination to come up with something almost as good.  I came up with “party panties” instead.

Here’s the crown — I made fabric flowers from leftover fabric from this quilt using this tutorial and added rhinestones and used some dimensional fabric paint (aka puff paint for those of you around when it was rampant in the ’90s)

As you well know, I have absolutely no patience for anything. So the above photos have wet paint. The silver swirls will dry as translucent with silver glitter.

And here is the lei. Also made from fabric flowers.

Also note my medal from the Des Moines Marathon and the Capital Pursuit 10-Miler. Not that they’re as pretty or exciting, but I thought I’d point them out because it’s going to be a long while before I get another one of either of those!

AND here are my Party Panties.  :) They totally did NOT turn out the way I wanted them to. Mostly because I, again, have no patience and wanted to make the frosting when I was on my lunch break on Monday and accidentally added too much milk in my haste. Frosting=runny. I didn’t have $ or time to get more powdered sugar from the store, nor did I want a bag of that lying around my cupboards (you’d be amazed at what I can concoct when I want something sweet)…so I froze the frosting and dealt with it. The yellow was some store-bought that I had in the freezer.  If I could do it again (which I’m sure I will) I’d frost all the panties white first then go back and add all the fun colors. There’s just not enough frosting on the cookies. I might even go as far as to frost them all skin-toned first so there’s more frosting coverage. Oh well.

YAY. I’m soooo excited for this weekend. I’m probably having a blast as you’re reading this. I’ve never pre-blogged before.