WIP: ABC quilt...almost done!

I have been making good progress on my ABC quilt!  I have all of the letters done, except for one "R" and one "G", and a friend is making those for me.  Woohoot!  Here are all the letters I have made recently...

"Y" is for yarn, yaks, yachts, yin and yang, yo-yo, yogurt, yoga, and yield or yeld.:)  Look at the yield sign closely...

 

 "Q" is for quilt and queen.  "Q" is hard to find!

"V" is for Volkswagon, vans, valentines, vampires, vulture, victrola, venn diagram, violins, and vegetables!

"Z" is for my daughter Zerah and Zebras!  I think this is my favorite because it has my favorite person on it!  It was fun finding pictures and printing it on this printable fabric for her.

 "X" is for x-rays and xylophone.

"H" is for hedgehogs, hippos, helicopters, horses and hands.  I love the little handprint I included; she did not enjoy having paint all over her hands though, and she immediately started yelling, "off, off, off!"

I have started on the backing, and I need to add a couple of borders to it.  I will share pictures of that soon.  I would not have been able to make a bunch of these letters if it weren't for the generosity of several quilting blogger friends who sent me some novelty fabric!

Thank you, Stephanie of Scraps, Cheryl of jovaliquilts, Melinda of quirkygranolagirl, Michelle of Michellesews, and Avivia_hadas on flickr!  These would not have come to fruition without your help! 

Decisions...

As I continue to work on my ABC quilt, I have come to a dilemma.  I am not sure if I want to add sashing between the letters or not.  I am at a standstill on making letters while I wait for some friends to send me a few other pieces and for fabric I ordered to arrive, so I thought I would go ahead and start adding the sashing between the letters for those that I have.

Once I did, I am not sure I like it this way.  I think the extra white may detract from the letters themselves, which is what I want to stand out.  Plus, it is 75" across without the sashing.  With the sashing at 2.5", it will be almost 90" wide and crazy long, which will be harder to quilt on my own machine.  Without the sashing, it will be 75" x 90", which is a good full size quilt.

Any opinions?

I have decided on how I am going to make the back, so I spent yesterday during nap time cutting around 40 2 1/4" x 5 3/4" blocks of some of my favorite fabrics.  I am really excited about the back!

WIP: ABC I-spy quilt

I didn't mean to be gone from this space for so long, but I have been working on a few things including my ABC quilt!  I am so excited about how it is coming together, and I am now in the home stretch.

"K" is for kites, kisses, kangaroos, keys, king, and koala.

"O" is for oranges, owls, and octopus.

"J" is for jellybeans, jigsaw puzzle, jacks, jewelry,  jack-o-lanterns, and "jump, puff. jump, jump, jump."

"I" is for ice cream, iguanas, ice cream shop, India, Italy, and Ironing board.

"L" is for lions, lemons, lettuce, leaves, lobster, ladybugs, letters (mail), other letters, and lawnmower.  I love the lawnmower! 

"N" is for nurse, numbers, and nest.

I still have g, q, v, x, and z left to go.  Plus, I am going to write out my daughter's name, so I need another e,r,a, and h.

I wish I had some of the Heather Ross volkswagon bus print for "V".  I am going to try some of the printable fabric to draw out some designs for v, q, x, and z.  All I have for y is a little bit of yarn fabric, and I can't think of anything else except including some yellow fabric.  For Z, I am using zebras and pictures of my daughter.  I have a little x-ray fabric and a xylophone, but it isn't enough for the entire square.  I did find something that may work for q, but it is in progress as well.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Yo-Yo Quilt is finished!

I sewed the last two yo-yos together this morning, and it feels so good to have it be finished! My daughter thinks the yo-yo's look like flowers, and she points at it and says, "flowers" which led me to take the quilt to the park and rose garden this morning to snap some pictures of it.

I first started this quilt in 2003, and it is the first quilt I ever started. I really didn't realize what I was getting myself into when I started making it; I just knew I wanted to make a quilt, I didn't have a machine, so it would have to be all done by hand. I am so proud that it is completely pieced together by hand without using a machine at all.



I could also call this my "traveling quilt" because it has definitely traveled. When I started the quilt, I was living in Birmingham, AL, then I got married and moved to Ft. Payne, AL where we lived for about a year. We then moved to Denver, CO, which is where we live now. It has traveled across the country with us as we have moved several times. I have worked on it while driving from Denver to Hobbs, NM to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and new niece, and it has been to Destin, FL several times over the summer to visit with my family. It traveled up to Newport, VA one New Year's Eve to go to a concert, and it has also been to San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans. I even worked on it on the ten hour drive from Denver to Yellowstone National Park several years ago. Many of my friends have seen me working on this from time to time over the last eight(!) years, which is so different than the quilts I have worked on with the machine. I like that it has traveled so much, and it was easy to take with me since it was hand sewing.

It is fun to look at and see how my fabric choices have changed over the last eight years. When I first started it, I was working at the Birmingham Children's Theatre as the charge scenic artist, and I would use scraps from the costume shop. This led to realizing that corduroy isn't the best choice to use for yo-yos! I have several 4x4 sections that are made that didn't make it into the final quilt from these early days due to the material I used; I didn't know that wool, silk, and cotton might not be the best mixture of fabrics if you wanted to wash it at home. I plan on using those yo-yos for a doll quilt for my daughter, so they can still be used and loved.



The final quilt is 56 yo-yos across by 56 yo-yos down with the yo-yos being approximately 1-5/8 inches across. It is 90" square, which I think makes it a queen size quilt. It has 3, 156 yo-yos!


Honestly, if I had known eight years ago that it would take so long, I don't know that I would have started it, but I am so glad that I did!

Fancy Block #1-Gnome and Mushroom

I attended a quilt retreat in Ft. Collins back in April taught by Penny of sewtakeahike on paper piecing.  I left confident that I would be able to conquer paper piecing (which is due to Penny's awesome teaching), but then I didn't really practice my skills and started forgetting what I had learned, which is never good!  Amanda and Melinda came up with the idea of making a fancy block each week to practice the skills we learned over the weekend.  They have been showcasing their beautiful blocks over the past two weeks, but I had not had the chance to make one yet.  This week I was determined that I would be able to play along, so I made this gnome and mushroom block!

The pattern is a free one from Sonja at Artisiana; isn't it so cute?  If you aren't familiar with her patterns, you should definitely stop by and check her out. She has such cute ones! It took me a little while to get back into the swing of thinking the way paper piecing goes together, and I did pull out my seam ripper several times to fix a piece sewn on backwards.  Overall, I like my little gnome, and now I need to decide what to do with him.  Pillow?  Mugrug?  Placemat?  Hmmm.....

Go check out Amanda's block at crazymomquilts and Melinda's at quirkygranolagirl!

I made this yesterday, and it is so good!  I have never used Mt. Dew in a recipe before now, and I would never have thought of that!

WIP: Yo-Yo Quilt

 I pulled out my yo-yo quilt this weekend to see how much I had left before it would be finished.  Penny, of sewtakeahike, is doing a yo-yo quilt along this summer, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to finish up this quilt.  Plus, as I have been slowly working on my 60 degree diamond stars, I kept thinking I should really finish my previous hand sewn quilt before I start another one.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that I really don't have a lot left to do!  I have huge sections that are already pieced together that just need to be joined together.

My goal has always been for it to fit a full-size bed, so with a little help, I laid it out to see how big it is on our guest bed.  I think it is big enough!  So my focus this week is going to be to see how far I can get with this quilt over the course of the week.  I spent some time yesterday while Z was napping sitting on the back porch, swinging, and piecing parts of this together.  It was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon!

This is the very first quilt that I ever started when I didn't know anything about quilting and I didn't own a machine back in 2003 (which is way too long ago!).  I had no idea what I was getting myself into; I just knew I wanted to make a quilt, and I knew I could make yo-yos so I jumped right in! 3,236 yo-yos that finish at 1 5/8" inches across later, and I am close to finishing!

If you want to make one of your own, you should join Penny's quilt-a-long!  If I finish this one soon, I might have to hop in to make another one; did I really just admit that out loud?:)

Back from the Beach!

Hi, everyone! I have been visiting family in Mobile and Destin for the last two weeks. I returned home early this week, but I couldn't get Blogger to upload my pictures! I finally switched to the old editor under settings-basic, and it finally worked.  I spent almost a week with my mother and father-in-law in Mobile and in Panama City Beach.  I then went to Destin, where I met my mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, and my niece.

We went to the beach several times over the week, and it was so nice to sit out on the warm sand.


 
We went very late in the afternoon since we had a 20 month old, my daughter, and a three year old, my niece with us.  It was perfect!  No sunburns occurred over the week!

We also drove over to Seaside, FL one afternoon.  It is so beautiful there!  It is where they filmed the Truman Show if you ever saw that movie.

I took over a thousand pictures over the week and a half, but I thought that might be a little much to share here.:)  I was determined to get a good photo of my daughter on the dress that we could have printed on a 16 X 20 canvas.  I had one printed of her last year, and it is so beautiful.  I want to do one every year to make a big display on the wall. 

 This is the view from the pool we went to everyday.  We stay on the bayside of Sandestin, and it is so nice.  It is a short drive or bike ride to the beach, but it is much quieter.  The girls were able to ride my niece's tricycle around  on the neighborhood street.

We also went for several bike rides over the week.  I enjoyed it so much that I have pulled my bike out of the shed, and we got a cart that hooks on the back to pull Z around in.  I am going to have to work up to long distances.  I try to walk three miles every day during the summer, but biking uses different muscles!

I loved these little beach signs.  I don't think they would look quite right hanging on the wall in Colorado, but I loved that they were quotes from Emerson and Thoreau.  I am a big fan of the Transcendentalists, and I love Walden by Thoreau.

We really  had a wonderful time!  I am happy to be home, but I miss everyone so much.  I brought all kinds of projects to get done while I was gone, but I really had very little time to work on them.  I am hoping to pull my sewing machine out this weekend; we have showing of our house tomorrow and an open house on Saturday, so it won't be until Sunday.

I have done a little hand piecing this week working on my stars, but most of my free time (late at night and while Z naps) has been spent devouring a Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson Series.  I have read five of the six books that are out this past week, and the last one is on hold at the library.  They are great if you enjoy urban fantasy books with vampires, werewolves, fae that are also mysteries.   I went to a book signing by Charlaine Harris, who writes the Sookie Stackhouse books that the tv series True Blood is based on, and she recommended them to me while I was getting my book signed this past May.  I have stayed up way too late this week reading!  Does anybody else like these type books?

I am glad to be back, and I hope to have a few sewing related projects to share soon.  I am slowly wading through my Google Reader, which accumulated over 1000 posts during a week and a half!  Have a great weekend!

My luck continues!

I won another giveaway recently that I just received in the mail from Gen X Quilters on SewMamaSew's big giveaway day a couple of weeks ago.  The fat quarters are so lovely, and I love those buttons!  She also made a business card holder, which I am going to put to use soon.  It is such a lovely package, and I love it.  I had to go pick up lottery tickets for my dad recently, and I am hoping my luck continues on those-very doubtful.:)

Farmdale Apron Dress

I finished a new dress this past week using Alexander Henry Farmdale and DS dots, which I love together!  I used the Portabella Pixie Claire Pattern with a few variations.  The skirt, apron, and straps are from the Petal Knot Dress and the bodice is from the Apron Dress in an 18 month. 

I was going to use the Petal Knot Bodice, but it was already too small for her.  I cut out the pieces, sewed them together, and made the buttonholes; I then proceeded to try it on her before attaching the skirt, and it didn't fit! I was so happy that I hadn't finished the whole thing before putting it on her!  So, I ripped out the straps and started over with the bodice.  I also shortened the skirt by three inches, so she wouldn't step on the hem of it as she climbing around.  We tried it out at a local farm this past weekend.  It matches her bucket hat!

Terrain that I won!

My luck continues!  A couple of weeks ago Kate Spain had a giveaway for scraps from her newest collection of fabric, Terrain.  I won one of the envelopes full of strips of fabric! 

Isn't it all beautiful?  I received a large envelope stuffed to the brim with strip ranging from 2-4" in size.  I laid them all out to admire them and start dreaming of all the fun things I could do with these.

I think I will use these to make a strip quilt because I have been wanting one of those for a while.  It is going on my list of things to make this summer!    I may make a quilt like this one or this one.  I have a few quilts that I must finish before I start another one, but I so want to play with these strips!

I know that I am going to have to buy some yardage of some of these prints because they would make such cute skirts or tunics, like the three prints together above that go from light blue with  navy and orange stars to the tone on tone soft blue!