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?

My grandpa had given me a bunch of things that my granny (great grandmother) had left behind when she passed in 2002.  I’ve been using some of her materials (embroidery thread, fabric, pins, etc.) to create some of the things I’ve been making.  I’ve had 10 quilt blocks that I’ve been hoarding that she had made a long time ago.  The fabrics were impossible to match with modern-day or even reproduction fabrics.  The block pattern was too complex for me.  So, I’ve been sitting on them.

Last weekend my mom and I went to Valley Junction and found some really amazing vintage blocks that matched pretty well.  So, I finally got out the blocks and made a quilt top.

Here it is!

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 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 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 made a “hardcore” quilt top out of a bunch of band t-shirts I had lying around. It was sort of practice for piecing since it was one of the first things I pieced.

Anywho, I only used half of the 50 blocks I’d created for it and shoved the rest of them in my closet to be used at a later date. Well, today was that later date.

This quilt top isn’t as cool as the other one, however; I did find one of the blocks I’d started embroidering back when I was all “ooh I should embellish these all with embroidery!” Not so much. Would have been cool, but too time-consuming for the likes of me.

Here’s a closeup of the embroidery.

what I love about these two quilt tops is that any-which-way is up.

Yay!

Now I’m off to Hancock Fabrics to get some batting, some backing (I think I’ll use the backing to bind in this case), some contrasting thread, a walking foot, some artist’s tape and a bunch of safety pins. You guessed it. I’m going to use this guy as my practice quilt to actually QUILT.

Wish me luck!!

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 reserved this afternoon for some crafting. I had a few mugs to make and I had a couple ideas for some bags.

Here’s the first thing I came up with. I totally forgot the closure, but I’ll figure that out later. I will be making 3 more of these. I’ve got 2 done and will be making 2 more of these! I figured out the closure on the 2nd one. Just need to find the perfect button!

I had some fabric scraps given to me from Adria that were leftover from her Park Slope quilt. She’s just so generous, but after quilting, you get sick of looking at the fabrics.  She’d given me 4 of the blocks from that quilt.

And away we goooooo!!!

I’m kind of in love with these fabrics now … I might have to keep one of these to myself AND buy the quilt Adria has for sale!

2nd Clutch:

Here’s an idea I had for closure on this… need to find some cute buttons though.

Not really, but I always feel special when something I do ends up on somebody else’s blog.

A while back I blogged about a block I sent in to the Jolly Jabber Block Lottery.  I sent it in a while back. Today I was catching up on all my blogs in Google Reader after the weekend in Chicago (which I’ll blog about later once I get photos from my girlies).  I got to FatQuarterShop.com’s Jolly Jabber Blog and saw my name was mentioned! They were updating on the block lottery and picked a few blocks that had been sent in so far.  I’m not sure if they only had a few to choose from so mine was chosen or if they just really liked it…either way, I was kind of excited!

(here’s the block for reference)

Okay…so I found the group on flickr. They don’t have a lot just yet, but mine is clearly one of the cooler ones.

Check out the original blog post on FatQuarterShop.

Did I mention I sent in my first official block?  I’ve only made quilt tops out of non-block patterns before. I’m currently working on a quilt for my sister with this block pattern (different fabrics though).