Fireworks Quilt: Work in Progress

A Completed Quilt Top

Squee! It's finally done. Well the top is done. All 880 pieces. It is pretty glorious and I am very proud that I stuck with it. This project started a very long while ago, you can read a bit more about it here. I definitely got better at flying geese as I went and I learned the value of ironing without steam, which as a steam-a-holic, was a big deal for me.

As you can see, my points turned out pretty good.

I took the last few days before Tate was born off from work. I was scheduled to be induced on a Tuesday evening and decided the Friday prior would be my last day. If I was going to have to be induced, which I totally didn't want, I was at least going to take some time to myself before it happened.

It was totally worth it because I nearly finished all my in progress quilt tops! Meaning that I have six quilts waiting to be quilted. Oh boy.

Yesterday I made my first trip to Fabric Depot since Tate was born. They were having a good sale which I wanted to take advantage of since I needed a lot of fabric for quilt backings and bindings! Here is what I came up with for the Fireworks quilt:

Since I feel like the quilt is a little dark overall, I wanted something lighter is value for the backing.
The plum chevron print will be great on the back and I am going crazy with the
bright citron for the binding!

Now to decide how to quilt it. I hope it doesn't take me months and months but realistically, I will quilt my smaller quilts first so it may be a bit before I get to count this one completely done. For now, I will just bask in the glory that I no longer have any little pieces hanging around waiting to make their way into quilt tops!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday and Let's Bee Social!

Curio Hourglass Quilt: A Finish

The Beginning

I went out to Holly Hill Quilt Shoppe with mom for the first time quite a while ago and they had a collection from BasicGrey that I had not seen before, Curio. I loved the yellows in it and definitely wanted to add this collection to my stash.

There wasn't a lot left yardage wise, so I decided to pick up a layer cake. When I was browsing around on Pinterest, I cam across this quilt complete with video tutorial. Perfect! Over at Fabric Depot, I picked up some white from the Moda Grunge line for my neutral because I liked the way it complimented the collection.

The process didn't go as fast as I thought it would but all in all wasn't too bad.  Before long I had a completed quilt top.

The backing went together easily and I am quite pleased with the print I ended up with the main part. It has a tiny script on it but reads mostly solid without being boring. I also used up the rest of the layer cake squares to add some interest. And let's face it, what do you do with random left over pre-cuts? I mean, throw them in the scrap box for sure, but I always struggle with how to use them. Though, I am getting better at this thanks to all the scrappy inspiration out there in blogland.

Crappy photo trying to get a feel for how the back would look.

Let the Madness Begin

I knew that I wanted to keep the quilting simple and planned to just outline each of the hourglass shapes on either side. I picked out a medium colored brown Aurafil thread and set to work. This is where things got crazy and this quilt started it's journey to the long wait in the UFO pile.

As I was quilting, I felt like my stitches were bunching up strangely, but there weren't any wrinkles or puckers in the fabric, so I forged on. The quilting was going quite quickly so it was when I was OVER half done that I got the bright idea to give the stitches a little tug. I instantly heard, SNAP! POP! and thought, NoNoNoNoNo!  Yep, the thread broke, in many places. I kept tugging. It kept popping. It was painful, but I knew the quilt wasn't viable as it was. I still have no idea what caused it. The thread, the machine tension, the batting (which was a new kind for me)?

To the UFO pile it goes. I needed to pull out nearly ALL the stitches and start over. I had no idea when I would get around that unpleasant task.

One day when I was thinking I wanted to do nothing but watch TV and feeling guilty about it, I decided the pull the quilt out and rip stitches while keeping an eye on what Castle and Beckett where up to. It wasn't quite as painful as I had imagined, though it did take a good long while.

Back at It

After another good long wait in the UFO pile, I was ready to give the quilting another shot. I hadn't done any re-pinning or anything after the pulling the stitches out. I loaded the same thread into the same machine and set about my business. It all went beautifully. Before I knew it, I was done and the quilt was ready for binding!

Without procrastination, I went and cut out my binding, sewed it together, pressed it and got it sewn onto the quilt. I am on a roll!

To continue my progress, I made the gutsy decision to take the quilt with me to the agility trial that weekend. There is a fair amount of down time, but it isn't the cleanest place to take a not-yet-finished quilt. I managed to get half the binding hand sewn over the weekend without incident.

I was on a roll! It didn't take very to finish the sewing the binding and just like that, I had a finished quilt that I was darn pleased with! So far, I managed to keep it from mother's clutches and have it listed in my Etsy shop. SOLD!

Low Volume Loveliness: A Start

Oh inspiration!

One of the quilting trends that I love, love, love is all of the low-volume fabrics being combined and used as backgrounds.  You can see my favorite examples, here, here and here.  Now part of what I love is how scrappy these quilts are without being overwhelming.  I really wanted to make something like this but since I haven't been quilting for all that long in the grand scheme of things, I don't have a scrap bin full of wonderful, whimsical low-volume fabrics.  So, I did what any fabric loving girl with a vision would do, I went to the fabric store!

A Boat Load of Fabric.

This particular adventure involved pretty much every fabric store in town.  I had so much fun hunting down all those fabrics that I would normally shy away from because they wouldn't pop against a white background, my heart was filled with joy as I filled the cart.  The husband even got in on the act and pulled me over to the novelty prints section at Fabric Depot (how had I not been over there before!) and I found fun letters and little ants!  I also picked up a big 'ole scrap bag at Cool Cottons and found several more treasures in there.

After several weeks of collecting whilst purchasing for other projects, and throwing in things from my stash, I ended up with a pretty impressive pile of fabrics.

Now to cut it all out.

Wait, you say, what happened to those other projects you teased us with?  I thought you were going to work on one of those?  Well so did I.  However, I was having a positively awful time choosing between the three and really nothing was really jumping up and down saying, "Make ME!", so I ended up going with this because I feel confident that I am going to love how it turns out!

Fabric and Football

This time of year there are two things that tend to consume most of my time, fabric and football.  I have been a season ticket holder for Duck Football pretty much ever since I left school and couldn't get the free student tickets anymore.  But when the Ducks are away the day is spent in front of the TV soaking up ever bit of college football we can.  The husband has been know to take the TV from my craft room and move it to the living room so that we can enjoy with additional sports bar effect.  These days are also perfect for cutting fabric.  So that's what I did and guess what?  I finished :D

I am hoping to get in a few finishes before I start piecing this, but who knows!

Unfinished Business

A Confession of Sorts

The idea of starting a super awesome and fun brand new quilt for me is very tantalizing.  However, fresh off the finish of my second Lisa Lam Diaper Bag, I have found myself wanting to continue the high of finishing things.  As a result I have been eyeballing my pile of unfinished quilts.  I have quite a large pile of unfinished quilt tops and blocks.  For hopes that public declaration will spur me to action here is a complete list with photos of the current state of progress:

Mom quilt

I started this for my mom well over a year ago.

Excuse:
I don't have the skills to finish it the way I want

I really want to learn how to do free motion quilting and am close to working up the nerve to try.  I want to work on something small first, so I may take some of my Jitterbug blocks and practice on those.  They would make cute pillows, even with sub-par quilting, they themselves are sub par afterall :)

Pinwheel quilt

My mom won a stack of fat quarters of Denyse Schmidt's Hope Valley
when we saw her at a book signing. I stared these blocks the next day!

Excuse:
I'm mad at the blocks

I definitely need some work on my flying geese construction and my poor execution is one of the reasons I got mad at the pinwheels.  The other reason is that I just could NOT decide on a layout, so I put them down and never went back.

Chevron quilt

For my shop.

Excuse:
Just plain not excited

Honestly, I have never been excited about this quilt.  I made it only because I thought it would sell and I quickly learned that is not a good reason for me to make a quilt.  I am just not as motivated by money as I thought I was when I opened my Etsy shop.

Elephant quilt

Also for my shop.

Excuse:
I don't know how I want to quilt it

Originally I thought I wanted to do something loopy to add some softness and girliness, now I'm just not sure.  Again, I really want to do FMQ but in the interest of finishing in this millenia, I may do a tight grid pattern like this.

Choices choices.

Star quilt

A gift that is now well overdue, but the intended recipient do not know this.

Excuse:
It got too darn hot to quilt!

It just so happens that my craft room is the hottest room in the house and after the brother moved out, I relocated my machine out of the dining room back to its rightful home.  I had no interest in having a quilt draped over my shoulder in a hundred degree room.  But Fall is coming . . . and the husband gave me a new fancy fan . . .

Reed quilt

There are still two rows of blocks on the ground!

Excuse:
It's so big that I am totally intimidated by the prospect of quilting this thing!

Um, its. just. so. big.  I did take a class on using a quilt frame that is available to rent by the hour, clearly the best option for this monstrosity.  I just need to get motivated and make it happen.

Hopscotch

For me.

Excuse:
I'm mad at the blocks

When I laid out Hopscotch I realized that I was missing blocks, and managed to tackle that hurdle.  However, I also realized that this quilt is going to be LOUD, which normally I love . . . but, not loving it here.  I do generally go through a phase of not liking a quilt and thinking it won't turn out, typically when I get all the blocks done, so I should probably just forge ahead so I can get over it.

Phew.

Wow, I am full of excuses.  Some more lame than others.  Now that's over with, let's get on with some finishing!  What to tackle first?