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.

One of my favorite blogs, a la mode fabric, just turned one. She’s having a fabric giveaway of absolutely adorable fabrics (what else would you expect?).

My favorite, of course, being the blush mendocino set.

Anyway, go here for details! Contest ends February 28.

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.

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.

Not the kind of lottery that involves money, unfortunately, but still awesome all the same!

I recently participated in FatQuarterShop.com’s Jolly Jabber Block Lottery (see my entry here)… and I won!  I get 1/3 of the blocks sent in.

Here’s my bounty of blocks (you can only see the top one):

Not sure what I’m going to do with them but I’m sure I’ll come up with something crafty (probably not something approved by the makers of the blocks, but still).

ALSO — on the same day I won Iowa Girl Eats’s Pure Bar Giveaway.  That means I get to try 4 flavors of Pure bars for free. How cool is that?  I think it’s pretty cool.

Wow. Lucky day, eh?

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.