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!

Nursery Reveal!

A Room for Tatum Noah Taylor

After a brief tussle over the idea of a dual purpose nursery/craft room, we set about re-arranging the house to accommodate my hobby AND our growing family.

We decided early on the bright green walls. Before we  knew if we were having a boy or a girl. From there I added colors, lots of bright colors: deep blue, orange-red, sunny yellow. Grey accents would calm things down.

Originally, the theme was hot air balloons and elephants. Mostly, because I had seen these amazing hot air balloons in Dundee, OR when we were out there on one of our wine tasting adventures with my dad. They were my reward for participating in the annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage despite not being able to partake in the festivities.

After this great start, I did a little more shopping and decided that my theme was too disjointed and narrow. I decided the remedy was to broaden the theme around the balloons to be an overall travel theme. This would also allow us to incorporate Buddy's love of airplanes. I don't know why I was surprised when he told me that he had a set of painted, steel airplanes in the attic from when he was a kid. I loved them and I loved the idea of incorporating them into the nursery. The new theme was winner!

Worried that the planes would get lost on the bright green walls, we mounted them on burlap and framed them in bright white.

With the planes and the hot air balloons in place, it was time for the fun stuff!

The Handmade Bits

When visiting the amazing Holly of Marshmueller at a craft show at Laurelhaurst school, I found this great print with the raccoon by Marika Paz. Since it wasn't a big print, I knew I wanted to do a mini collage. We added the wooden "T" but more was needed to complete the look.

I found the quote in a stamp pack that I had and knew I wanted to use that. I went looking for things to complement it. I ended up with this cute little windblown bunny from one of Cricut cartridges and am very pleased with how it came out.

The last piece to come about was the "EXPLORE" sign. Ingredients were: online inspiration, a Martha Stewart tutorial, scrap wood, Mod Podge, Cricut cut letters and a perfect map print paper.

The changing pad cover was made using this tutorial. Something went awry with my math/cutting and there is less fabric around the bottom than ideal but it is certainly functional. I adore this print and the fact that it isn't overly matchy with the rest of the nursery fabrics.

The overall look = LOVE

I was inspired by this pin to do the airplane, banner and clouds over the crib. I was very thankful for the applique foot my mom bought me last year for Christmas for my Bernina. It made creating the banner a breeze and gave it a very polished look.

The clouds are felt stuffed with polyfil and hand sewn with red embroidery floss.

I wasn't originally going to make a crib skirt, but after looking at buying one and discovering what a plain grey one was going to cost, I figured taking the time to do it was worth it. It also meant that I could customize it with Tatum's nursery fabrics.

Bizzy Kid Quilt

Last but not least, of course there had to be a quilt! Not out of the norm for me, I had purchased a large stack of fabrics prior to settling on a pattern. I was on the hunt for something simple and not too fussy, but also a little more than just squares and rectangles. The Bizzy Kid pattern from Cluck Cluck Sew, hit the nail on the head. It required a few additional store trips to secure all the necessary fabric but overall the quilt went together easily and most importantly, turned out exactly like I wanted.

The back on this one tripped me up a bit. I changed my mind a few times and ended up needing to stretch my yardage. Incorporating the squares to create the cross pattern allowed me to add some super fun prints and stretch my yardage. Win!

I know it on the big side for a baby, but I am looking forward to snuggling under it and reading Tate a story very soon!

Now all we need is a baby! With my due date looming, I know we won't be waiting too much longer :) :) :)

Testing, Testing

Practice makes perfect right? Well, I figured at least it couldn't hurt. Before launching into the challenge of FMQ my Penny Patch quilt, I decided to do a little test project.

I was browsing around on Pinterest and came across this little cutie: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/238831586462998727/

I decided this was exactly the project I needed to tackle to practice my FMQ. Bigger than a coaster, but not to the level of making another quilt.

It always amazes me how much patchwork "shrinks" as you sew it!

I will admit that I did not buy this pattern. I know right. I feel guilty about it, but that is one of those things about quilting. You get good at looking at a pattern and being able to see what it took to put it together. Especially if it is something classic like squares or half square triangles. Also, there are a lot of free tutorials out there on quilted drawstring bags. . . so, yeah. How do you decide if you should purchase a pattern or not? I would love to hear others thoughts on this one.

Here are the tools I used to come up with my "pattern."

• Looked at the finished dimensions listed on the pattern. I decided that seemed like a good size and figured up how many finished 1.5" squares I would need to get close. It was important to me to do the quilting on the EXACT same scale that I would be doing for the Penny Patch quilt. So, even if I had purchased the pattern, I likely would have needed to adjust it anyway, but I rationalize.
• Used a free tutorial from Pink Penguin on how to create the casing on the top. I ended up needing to make the strip bigger to accommodate my larger cording, but otherwise was able to follow the directions in their entirety.
• Went to my go-to bag book: The Bag Making Bible for the instructions on installing the flush zipper. I have used these instructions quite a few times but never seem to be able to remember all the steps without looking them up.
• Followed the directions that came with my grommets.
• Looked at a similar drawstring bag I have in the house to figure out the amount of cording I needed. In the end, it as mostly a guess so I hedged my bets and over bought. Many thanks to the Husband who helped me figure out how I needed to insert the cording so the bag would actually cinch. I was nowhere on that one.

And TA DA! A cutie patootie little bag!

Now don't get me wrong, there are some downright ugly flowers on this bag. The FMQ definitely took practice and getting used to, but by end, I was pretty happy with how my little flowers were turning out.

I intended for this to double as a scrap busting project so I went to work digging through my enormous scrap bin. BUT I was so inspired by the color palette of three little scraps, that I ended up at Fabric Depot. I was able to use scraps for the lining of both the inside of the bag and the pocket, so it wasn't a complete scrap failure. I am glad that I went for it though. I absolutely love how it turned out! And to top it all off, it really was great practice before diving into my Penny Patch.

After careful consideration of the "ugly" flowers on the back of the bag, I decided this bag was just too cute to languish around my house so I have listed it for sale in my Etsy shop. Check it out!

Tackling the BEAST

The Biggest of them All

Remember this UFO?

A twin size quilt for Brother. I have been pretty intimidated by idea of quilting this at home. I toyed with the idea of renting time on a local long arm machine, but decided I am too cheap and too busy to make that work.

After a lot of the usual hymning and hawing, I decided to keep it simple just do straight line quilting.

I pin based half of the quilt and spray basted the other half. I figured that if the spray worked out well, after I quilted that half, I could take the pins and out and spray the other half. That way at least half of the beast would be fully secured at any given time.

I'm not going to lie, this is A LOT of quilt to wrangle. I moved my machine as far over and as far forward on the desk as I could to allow for maximum work space.

The first bit in the very middle was the hardest. After that, it got quite a bit easier and I hardly noticed the giantness of the quilt. I did a full 3.5 hours and finished half of the quilting!!!

The rest didn't go quite as quickly, but I was excited to get this done and managed to find time here and there to get it all finished up. All that is left now, binding the beast. I have the fabric and plan to machine stitch and finish with a zig zag as opposed to hand stitching. I know that this quilt will need to endure a lot of washing so I want it to be extra durable.

The quilty goodness.

Hopefully this will be a finish very soon, but there are a few other projects out there distracting me. . .