I’ve been catching up on my Hulu queue (New Girl, shown below) and doing some quilting on the Carpenter Star quilt.
I’d like to get one of my 3-quilt pile-up complete before the weekend so I can focus on putting together the raffle quilt for the guild before the deadline to hand it over next week to the quilter!
There’s nothing like laying out a king size Christmas quilt in the front yard (in April no less) to really bring a neighborhood together. Got some funny looks by the dogwalkers this evening as I was photographing this one.
This is Jingle Stars, and original design using Kate Spain’s Jingle line of fabric. I designed the star blocks to make use of a jelly roll, and complemented it with a layer cake to round out the yardage. Because this particular line also had a lot of very light prints, I used those in a piano key border, which is my favorite part, I think.
The outermost border is a complementary print from a later Kate Spain line, I think, and I even threw in a Basic Grey fat quarter for the aqua squares in each of the stars.
This is one of two king-size Christmas quilts I made this year; the other is out at the longarmers still, but I did this one myself. Lynn pushed me to be more adventurous in my design, but I fully confess that my quilting skills on my domestic machine still outpace my longarm skills. But, it’s done and ready for Christmas, and I love it, so there!
This week I had a couple sew-ins, and finished my Birds in the Air block for the Twilter swap. Not counting them towards the final yet, though, since they’ll end up in a quilt eventually.
I also worked on a couple donation projects - finished the center of one and blocks for another - the dreaded mystery units, with the mystery solved.
I also needed to stock up on some solid yardage and the final finishing kit for Sparking Gems, so quite a bit of intake this week with just a small finish.
See more stash reports at Patchwork Times!
This week, I talk about the mega unofficial Soft Pant Sew-In I held for myself last week and the various projects I finished (many documented on Instagram), and give a pattern review of the Carry All Caddy from Annie Unrein.
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This is what the Brain Cloud from Joe vs The Volcano must be like. I packaged up these bit into 6 groups of similar pieces, obviously to make 6 different quilt blocks of the same design. Except, in looking at these pieces, there enough for 28 “units” to go into a block.
Following my logic, I’d end up with 24 HSTs and 4 white 3.5″ squares. 28 units does not a square block make.
Then I looked at one of the other 5 sets and saw there was another set of 4-3.5″ squares in the colorway, which means A) my brown set got skimped on and B) I still can’t make a square block with 32 units.
BUT WAIT! I vaguely remembered being inspired by Jaye’s Carpenter’s Wheel blocks and thinking that design would be good for HSTs. But according to that block design, I’m short 4 background HSTs for each block in my kit, which means my run of being #BadAtMath is still going. Hmm.
This weekend I had a whole day and then some of just straight up sewing and progress on various projects. On top of the finish of Lovebirds earlier this week, I’ve got quite the yardage booked in the “out” column. I did also bring in some fabric; I couldn’t resist a FQ bundle of “Cat Lady” from Cotton & Steel, some of which will be used to make a quilt for the Good Mews auction this year.
One of the finishes was this mini out of my sample Glow Stick block from my class with Cristy Fincher. I’m still making a bigger version with some different color placements, but could let this one flounder about unused.
I also finally made the “Carry All Caddy” from ByAnnie.com. Like most of her patterns, it’s not hard sewing until you get to the final binding, and then there’s lots of opportunity for it to get all kinds of jacked up. Mine’s not too bad, I don’t think.
See more stash reports at Patchwork Times!
I talk about longarming a king size quilt, finishing the Lovebirds quilt, and prepping for our next episode of The Stitch!
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Well, I finished this quilt over a month ago, but because it’s such hard work to drag the camera upstairs after taking photos and then to plug the cord into the computer, clearly it’s taken a month for me to gather the strength to make all those connections.
HA! Nope. Just forgot about it. Oh well. But we have had two picnics on it in the backyard since I finished it.
Neither of these involved chicken, however, despite the name and the poultry ledger background fabric. I believe one was pizza and the other was hamburgers. Fred got in on the hamburger picnic after getting the short end of the stick for pizza (pork isn’t good for dogs, so no pepperoni for pups around here).
I did get a comment on Instagram that people love that I use my quilts. There are some that I hold precious and don’t fling out into the yard (*ahem* Harry Potter Bookshelf), but for the most part, I know I can always make more quilts, so why not use them? And they make me happy to look at, whereas I find quilts in my house that I loved and finished and put up and they aren’t making anyone happy that way.
Getting back on track, this was a Bonnie Hunter pattern, the Allietare! Mystery Quilt. The beauty of scrap quilts is that all sorts of fun fabrics make their way in, and you end up with a Smug Giraffe next to Star Wars.
I did my border a tad different than the pattern. I used 6 1/2″ wide strips of the back fabrics from the center to make a scrappy border, and I didn’t scallop the edge.
I think you can see my quilting here - each big square got a swirl in the middle of it, and I meandered to travel from center to center. The borders got straight line quilting in either orange or teal thread to make it more interesting.
We’ve got this one queued up to got to family movie night at the school next week, along with a couple other quilts since it usually ends up colder than we think for an April evening!
Here we are on Sunday night again! I’ve just put the final stitches on the binding for one of the king-sized Christmas quilts I’ve been working on. It’s 111″ square, and hoo boy. It’s big.
I’ve got the wedding quilt basted and ready to quilt (seen in progress in this photo), but took the opportunity to quilt the king size one this morning instead, so will work my way through the wedding quilt this week. I’m still in pile-up mode - two quilts ready to quilt, and blocks to make another donation quilt - but it feels good to make some progress on big projects.
See more stash reports at Patchwork Times!