chimesblog

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.

Holy hannah, this is awesome!

Fat Quarter Shop (which I frequent and my credit card bill hates me for it) gave P.S. I quilt a $50 gift certificate to give away.  To enter, comment on her post about the giveaway. Additional entries if you blog about the giveaway and if you follow her blog.

I hadn’t heard of P.S. I Quilt’s blog before, but man, I sure have now. She picks lovely fabrics and blogs about them and makes fabulous quilts and patchwork items.

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.

I recently participated in a heavy metal swap on craftster.org. This was the first organized craft swap I’ve done through the site, and I think it turned out pretty well.

For those of you who don’t know, basically in a craft swap you decide that you’re going to make a certain number of items and find out a lot of stuff about what your partner likes. Craftster does a lot of themed swaps like the metal swap (next up, MJ swap).

My partner was really into a lot of the same kind of stuff that I was into…Children of Bodom, In Flames, Pantera…etc.  But she was a HUGE Maiden fan. I took this as an opportunity to get to listen to some Maiden since I never really gave them a chance.  I got really excited about crafting some Maiden stuff since I got kind of into the cheesiness of the music. I decided that I’d only make her maiden stuff so she wouldn’t outgrow it later (like she might have with some of the newer bands).

We decided that it would be fun to make some über-girlie items with a metal theme. She seemed pretty interested in kitchen items, so that’s what I made.

Potholder set (with Eddie and Aces High lyrics on the back)

Grocery Tote Bag

Grocery Bag Dispenser

I tried to make it cute... but it didn't quite work. The inside is a pink floral (the top too) and I quilted the outside with silver...but Eddie's just so fugly.

and…. Breakfast with Lemmy — the one non-maiden item. Mötorhead. Ace of Spades. (what’s with the aces theme??)

I was the first one to send, and my partner was the first one to post her stuff… apparently I rocked the eff out of this craft swap.  :) So hopefully I get a rockin’ package in return (actually my partner is sending late b/c she wants to thoroughly rock the eff out of MY package too).

Sooo I’m switching gears and crafting for my all-time favorite musician… Michael Jackson.  (okay, here’s where I almost went on a “to those of you who are now riding the MJJ train… seriously get off it” rant…but I restrained myself)  You guys all know how I feel about him (or at least you know now…most of you knew before), so yeah, I’m a little bit upset about the whole deal but on the bright side, I’m getting to experience him all over again and am discovering things I never knew existed.

I’ve just been posting quilt tops on my blog so far, but this is the first FULLY completed quilt.  I posted the quilt tops for this one a while back.

I had given the top and the backing/binding to my good friend Adria to get it quilted since my machine wasn’t about to handle it (actually, it broke altogether a week and a half ago).  I met up with her and a bunch of my girlfriends  in Chicago last weekend and she gave me the completed quilt. I’m SOOO excited since I’ve done so many tops and never seen one completed before.

Without further ado…. here it is!

This item is for sale on my etsy shop.

I realized that I’ve kind of taken on a lot of projects this month…

Just to keep myself sane and to have some ppl hold me accountable (ie. my oh-so-loyal blog readers), I’m listing them and will hopefully remember I have this list so I can add to it and cross stuff off as things are completed.

1. INK Tattoo Studios Website: Change out logo, change up colors, add a flickr widget and make some more themes… most importantly — get Mark to add content (it’s naked now, and the website is on the business cards I just had printed for him!)
2. Kim’s Website/Blog: Get a gallery of some sort up and running (flickr is ideal) DONE!
3. Half Hearts Album: Get final files to the band or vendor for printing (waiting to hear back as to where we’re at)
4. Bras For the Cause: Collaborate with Kim to make a very unique and artistic bra for the event in September
5. Craftster.org’s heavy metal swap: not sure what I’m doing yet since I don’t have a partner, but will know tomorrow who my partner is so I can get ideas of what to do. I’m doing 4 crafts.  I got my partner on 6.10.09!  I’m sooo excited. Got lots of ideas!
   • I have 2 of the 4 done as of 6.12.09!
6. Personal swap of a charm pack on craftster.org: cut fabric, waiting to hear from other person..
7. Yellow dish set from @shanereiser: come up with a design for a set and paint it up
8. craft swap with Tim from work — I know exactly what I’m doing, but I’m not going to blog about it just in case he’s reading it — I don’t want to spoil the surprise! It’s going to be super cool! I just have to get the supplies rounded up for it yet.
9. Lava Flowers mug for Adria, as per her request a LONG time ago
10. Jolly Jabber Quilt Block Lottery: create a block and mail it in. DONE!
11. Father’s day mug and/or baked stuff for my dad and grandpa (need to do this very soon)
12. Baby shower gift for my friend Lindsay: I’ve got booties I need to add buttons to and I’d like to make a couple of other things as well as pick her up something to enjoy since she’s been a mommy for about a month now and probably hasn’t had much time for fun non-mommy things.
13. Wedding gift for my friends Ryan and Steph. I think I might do something similar to the Rocketship Mugs (as in a Mr. and Mrs. mug — not the same design!).  I have no idea what their wedding colors were since their invites/save the dates didn’t coordinate at all.  I’ll have to figure that out. I’m going to do a fleur de lis pattern on it for sure since that was on all their materials (probably has nothing to do with their wedding/tastes…I’m sure their “designer” just randomly picked it — either way… I like it and I’ll go with that). I might just pick colors based on the colors that are in their kitchen items they picked in their registry.
14. Several possible alchemy things…I bid on a LOT of stuff today and am hoping to get a couple of things — especially one that has a cute little teacup logo that she’d like elaborated upon.
15. Finish my mom’s quilt top (add a 4-inch cream/oatmeal border to it), get it quilted (September)
16. Emee’s 1st birthday quilt — coin stack pattern — cut blocks, sew, figure out backing/binding (October) — get it quilted!
17. Finish my mermaid bags (I have 2 of them left)

There’s no way that’s the entire list. I’m so swamped with random projects right now!  I can get them all done since a lot of them don’t have deadlines or have far away deadlines…but a lot of them this month are for occasions.  It’s actually good that I have this many projects right now I think because Kasey’s back home and it will give me something to do.

eeeeee. so here I am blogging again!  I did get my Jolly Jabber block done tonight.  I shall blog about that in about 10 minutes (aka 7 minutes past my bedtime).

I’m new to quilting, but for whatever reason, I’ve decided I must learn how to paper piece…now.

It started last weekend when I was looking for a pattern for this block in the Amy Butler quilt that Adria gave me with blocks from her lap quilt swap on craftster.org:

Sooo … after stalking my way through the entire lap quilt post, I found out that it was somebody’s original design. Boo.

So I started googling “X quilt blocks” and came across a post on crazy mom quilts about string quilts… and eventually a few tutorials. Apparently an easy way to paper piece is by using freezer paper — and I happen to have a huge roll of that in my craft supplies from last year’s t-shirt stenciling stint (seen here, here and here).

Now, I’m kind of obsessed.  So, as an excuse to experiment, I’ve decided to enter FatQuarterShop.com’s Jolly Jabber Block Lottery with a few blocks I create using this method.  The only catch is I have to use fabric purchased from FQS…which should be fine since I’ve got some Hello Betty leftover from a Jelly Roll I bought and a Honey Bun that Adria had sent me.

Anyway, here are some gratuitous pictures of string quilts I collected from various places on the interwebs…which make me more excited about doing this!

I’ll be sure to post my progress… I might not get to it for a while — this is a busy week!