Showing posts with label Fat Quarter Shop. Show all posts

August OMG Complete!

This past week has been full of hurry up and wait moments.  We've had many appointments.  Driving to and from the appointments has taken longer than the appointments themselves, but collectively I've  spent quite a few hours in transit.  I am thankful that the majority of the long waiting room waits have been eliminated during this pandemic.  I hope that change continues when we are finally past this.

 We are still getting into our new school routine.  Both kids are online right now.  There have been a few technology hiccups.  My daughter's first college class ever was unable to meet due to Zoom being down Monday morning.  It looks like the local school district is changing things again after Labor Day.  We want our son safe at home for the first semester, so I hope that will still be an option. Masks are so necessary, but I also feel like asking kids to wear them all day is asking a lot.  Mask breaks defeat the purpose of wearing the masks. As a trained teacher, I know that the best place for them is in the classroom, but I also feel that we are experimenting with our teachers and kids.  I don't want my children to be experiments. This has just been such an exhausting year.  

 I have managed to get the central portion of my For the love of geese quilt finished.  I ran a few inches short of fabric and luckily found some more--the line I am using is an older one and most of the fabrics are no longer available.  In hindsight, I wish I would have used one of the teal shades for this round instead, but I did not have enough fabric left and haven't seen more in my hunt for more of this line.  The color I did use is various shades of deep purple and pink, kind of into the maroon shades.  It is reading more brown to me after piecing.  Maybe I can quilt over it with bright pink to lighten it up.
I have just the outer ring left to piece.  I am looking forward to seeing the quilt in its entirety, but most definitely not looking forward to removing all the papers!!!!  Any tips for that?
Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - August Finish Link-up

Progress is being made in my Water Drop quilt (pattern by Maeberry Square).  I have all of the half-square triangles pieced and trimmed.  I wish I could get a nice picture of my colors.  They are so much more rich and vivid in person.
My daughter is sewing along in the Water Drop QAL as well.  She tried to work ahead a little since she knew she'd have classes and homework.  Here is her progress so far.
I'm still waiting for my IntelliQuilter to show up.  I'm trying to be patient, but it is so hard.  I have quilts piling up again.  Don't get me wrong, I'm totally thankful for the work and the ability to purchase the system. Just the waiting on top of everything else is really starting to wear.  I'm in week eight of waiting.  My last estimated delivery date was changed to the second week of September, about a month after the best case scenario wait.  I know it will be worth the wait, but still.

 Now that all my fabric is organized, it is time to use it!  I'm seriously considering sewing with Fat Quarter Shop's Sewcialites program that starts in a few weeks.  I will probably make the blocks but make my own setting.  I think I want to mix the block sizes.  Here is what I've pulled so far.  I feel like it needs a little something, but I don't know what.  And I need a background fabric to pull it all together.  Suggestions are completely welcome and encouraged.
My garden is still producing like crazy.  I made hamburger dills at my husband's request.  We are running out of small jars (because I have canned so much this year), lids, and mustard seed.  I found reasonably priced mustard seed on Amazon, but the lid prices are ridiculous online and I refuse to pay that much.  Not sure what I'm going to do with the remaining produce.  I might start forcing the extra produce on my neighbors!
I'm having a hard time being positive this week (I have a serious case of the grumpies), so I'm trying to look for things to be positive about.  One big one is that all our defective windows have now been replaced.  We finished the last two over the weekend.  I'm looking forward to the day when all the inside trim is replaced on them.  Another thing to be thankful for is that the new washing machine is functioning well so far.  No more endless loop in the rebalance/refill cycle.  Maybe my water bill will be lower next month.

 I am looking forward to the next clue in the Morewood Mystery.  It will release next Thursday I believe.  I think it's time to sew some of this!
I also finished a huge, not very pleasant, behind the scenes task last night.  Woo hoo!

What things are bringing you joy this week?

Linking with For the love of geese and My Quilt Infatuation.




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FQS Mystery BOM 2013 Finished!

Here's one for the finally finished category.  This is the Fat Quarter Shop's Designer Mystery Block of the Month from 2013.  Yes, 2013.  I made all the blocks that year, but then dragged my feet on piecing the borders.  I pieced them at a retreat in 2016, then put the thing away until I felt like quilting it.

 I pulled it out this summer to quilt after I added the robotics to my long arm.  At that point in time, I paid my son to rip off the borders because the top was really wavy.  After redoing the borders, I quilted it.  It was one of my first robotics projects so it's not the greatest quilting job.  I recall that I was thinking I could have quilted the thing by hand a lot faster than it went on the robotics.  It took hours and hours. On the plus side, just a few months later, I can totally see what I should have done to make it turn out better.

 So, anyway.  I quilted it and sewed on the binding in June and didn't start sewing down the binding until October.  I got the binding done pretty quickly and finished it up late on November 1.

 Fabrics are Avalon by Fig Tree Quilts.  Blocks are by lots of people, courtesy of Fat Quarter Shop.  The quilting is called Garland.  The finished size is 70" x 84.5".





This is #2 on my 2019 FAL Q4 list.  I have 2 of my 15 projects (13.3%) finished.

 Linking with For the love of geese.
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Finally Figured Out

I've had a Sunburst/Gracie Girl quilt kit from Fat Quarter Shop for a long time--like four or five years.  I've had it cut out for a long time too.  The problem was, I couldn't figure out a way to piece together the angled cuts accurately.  I had a lightbulb moment on it last week.  Why on earth this took me so long to figure out may forever remain a mystery.  I'll write it off as middle age mental fog!
I remembered that back when cutting shapes with templates was a common technique, a lot of acrylic templates would be shaped so that the dog ears would already be nipped off prior to sewing.  Plus, the nips in the templates would help you align the pieces properly.  Marti Michell was a big promoter of this technique back in the day.  I was considering going digging in my things to find some old template shapes.  Then I remembered that I had a set of Triangle Trimmers, unused, at the ready, and pulled them out.  These are a set by Fons & Porter that is readily available at JoAnn.  The Folded Corner Clipper by Prairie Sky Quilting will also work.  I'm sure there are other, similar tools available as well; these are two that I own that I know work for this technique.

 Anyway, for these strips, I used the pink triangle in the Fons & Porter set.  Just line up your edges to the template and trim off the dog ear point.
For the opposite angle, rotate the template around and repeat.
When you are ready to sew, your pieces will nicely fit together every time and you will not need to trim any dog ears off either.

Here is what the sewn unit looks like.  I do want to mention that this quilt had you cut templates from paper.  My templates weren't especially accurate since they were print outs, nor was my cutting from said templates.  Still, with the method I ended up using, the pieces were all close enough that I could still get a pretty accurate top.  Don't be afraid to use pins or gently stretch your fabric to make points line up.

 Speaking of working to get your points lined up, I came across a 2013 blog post by Ebony Love of LoveBug studios that I definitely think is worth a read, including the comments.  You can also follow up with her follow up, down at the bottom of her post.
Anyway, back to quilting. Here is half of my pieced top.  I'm still working on the sewing.  Luckily, you can still find Gracie Girl (by Kassidy and Lori Holt for Riley Blake) yardage available on Etsy, so I was able to purchase matching backing yardage. I chose the aqua clock pattern.  :)  I'm hoping to finish off the top this week and quilt it next week.  I have my guild retreat this weekend, so I'll be working on other things then.
We easily finished our National Parks puzzle last week.  Once we figured out that the posters were in alphabetical order it was even easier.  We did start a new puzzle, but realized once we built the border that it won't fit on our table.  So it's in limbo for now until we decide what we want to do.
Have a great week!

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Some Bonnie and Camille Stars

I finished up the scrappy string block I was working on last week.  It's less controlled than I would normally do, but I like the results.  I'm trying hard to stretch my creativity into things I usually wouldn't do.  This is a 12" finished block loosely based on a template I found at Coriander Quilts via Pinterest.
I bought a kit from McCall's a while back (a year, two years??).  It's a lone star made with Bonnie & Camille's Miss Kate and a solid blue print--not really a solid because the it has a definite front and back.  I had made it to the point of sewing and cutting all the strips and then put it away.  This week I've been working on assembling all the strips, which is a lot of pinning, sewing, ripping, and resewing.  Now I just have to join up the chunks and sew the corner triangles on.  I do have a coordinating backing saved for this project, and I think I have an idea of how I want to quilt it.

Something I was thinking about while sewing this yesterday is how I pretty much never read all the way through the directions before starting.  I glance at all the pictures, but that's about it.  I had been sewing along, pressing the seams to one side.  I got to the point of needing to flip the page to the next set of directions and noticed that there were actually directions on how to line up the angled strips.  The VERY LAST direction given in the pattern is to press the seams open.  Well, too late for that!

 I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make here.  I always put a little disclaimer at the beginning of my doll clothes patterns to read all the way through first.  Many patterns give that direction. 99.9% of the time I do not follow that.  I try to give all directions in a logical sewing order.  If you need to know a special technique, I'm going to either direct you where to find that technique when you are at the step that is required or put it right at that step where it's needed.

Do you read all the way through before you start?  Let me know!

 I did send out two "Get your Quilty Wishes Granted" packages.  One of the ladies was so gracious and thanked me publicly and privately and offered to send me something, which I declined.  The other lady thanked me when she sent her address and then sent me a written thank you. I was trying to put out good karma and I guess it worked.  Keep reading.

 I'm planning to make a snapshots quilt that Fat Quarter Shop did a few years ago.  It called for a FQ bundle, but I could only find fat eighths, so I bought two of those.  And I found all the extra yardage except for the backing print.  Then I read through the pattern and realized I needed some pieces bigger than a fat eighth could yield.  Luckily I either have or was able to find the few prints I needed, which is outstanding since the fabric's been out of print a few years.  Well, all except one.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  I decided to take to Instagram yesterday pleading for a 3 x 16.5" piece and within an hour, someone said they'd send it, at no cost to me.  I feel so thankful!  Karma in action.

 I didn't have to make any Halloween costumes this year since my younger decided he didn't want to trick or treat this year.  My older was quite disappointed, but she is really too old for it now.  At the last minute they decided to go to two neighbors' houses, but only one was home.  We actually had a fairly light turnout this year.

 In other news, the drywall in the basement is mostly finished.  I don't understand why they won't fix the bad spots without me begging.  He tells me to put one coat of paint on and then they will come back and fix anything that shows.  I find this incredibly frustrating.  I'm paying them not just big, but HUGE bucks for this job.  I have previously painted five houses.  I know what will show and not show.  Fix the darn stuff now so that I don't have to repaint.  Why do people not take pride in a job well done, but just try to coast by with the minimum?  Don't accept poor craftsmanship, people.
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FLL & a Few Quilt Updates

Our FLL qualifying tournament was over the weekend.  Both of our teams did well enough to qualify for the state tournament in January.  We're taking a few much-needed weeks off, and then it's back to weekly practices.  

 I went to a quilt guild retreat over the weekend too.  It was my first one.  While I enjoy being with my friends, I think I'm more of an at-home sewing person.  I did finally finish my Fat Quarter Shop 2013 Mystery Block of the Month top while I was there.  This was the only thing I worked on.  It took me much longer than I expected.  Sorry for the lousy photo.  I don't have enough open floor space at the moment to get a decent shot.
It's almost time to mail my #bcchristmasbarnquiltmini.  I was struggling on what binding to use. My original thought was it needed to be green, but my green Bonnie & Camille stash is pretty limited.  So I pulled four different fabrics and asked Instagram.  Luckily the correct person chimed in!  I now know which fabric to use, but I'm keeping it a secret until it is received.  

 Here is the quilted top.  The pattern is a free paper pieced block I found at Wombat Quilts.  It is called Which Way North and I printed it at 50% in order to have a 6" finished block.
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Block Twelve

Here is the last block of the month from the 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month.
Block Twelve--"Ruby Primrose"
Designed by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobson
www.MeAndMySisterDesigns.com
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Block Eleven

Wow!  Hard to believe there's only one block left in this series.  Without further ado, here is block 11:
Block Eleven--"Perennial Petals"
Designed by Sweetwater
www.Sweetwater.Typepad.com

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Block Ten

Here is block ten!
Block Ten - "New Bloom"
Designed by Anne Sutton
www.BunnyHillDesigns.com




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Block Nine

Here is block nine from the Fat Quarter Shop's 2013 Designer Mystery quilt.

Block Nine - "Prairie Town"
Designed by Kansas Troubles Quilters
www.KTQuilts.com

And here is a photo of all my spare fabric from blocks one through nine.




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Block Eight

Here is block eight for the Fat Quarter Shop's 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month program.
Block Eight--"Heartfelt Home"
Designed by Polly Minick & Laurie Simpson
www.MinickAndSimpson.com

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Block Seven

Here is block seven for the Fat Quarter Shop's 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month program.
Block Seven - "Lemon Lodge"
Designed by Lisa Bongean
www.PrimitiveGatherings.us/Shop
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Blocks Five and Six

Here are blocks five and six for the Fat Quarter Shop's 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month program.
Block Five--"Stargazing"
Designed by Vanessa Christenson
www.VanessaChristenson.com

Block Six--"Sparklers"
Designed by Kate Spain
www.KateSpain.com
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2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month--September

Here is block 4.  I love the colors in this block!
Block Four--"Radiance"
Designed by Bonnie Olaveson and Camille Roskelley

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2013 Designer Mystery Block of Month--August

Here's block 3, August's block, actually finished in August.
Block Three--"Wildflower Bouquet"
Designed by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts
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2013 Fat Quarter Shop Designer Mystery Block of the Month

I am participating in the Fat Quarter Shop's 2013 Designer Mystery Block of the Month quilt program.  I cannot find the current program on their website, but I did find the finishing kit here.  They do have last year's program on sale right now and the fabric line for that one is fabulous!  The current program started in June and runs for a year.  The fabric line is Avalon by Fig Tree Quilts for Moda.  Here are my first two blocks.
Block One--"Strawberry Picking"
Designed by Joanna Figueroa of Fig Tree Quilts

Block Two--"Bows & Baskets"
Designed by Sandy Gervais of Pieces From My Heart
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