Two Point Seven Five[ish] Quilts!

Since I have last really blogged (way back in May), I have finished two complete quilts and two fronts. This is technically 3 quilts, but I thought the title was more fun this way. Here goes!

First off we have a sample I made up for The Quilt Cottage. Making samples is rad. They give you all the fabric and tools, you assemble the front, they long-arm quilt it (which I can never afford!), you bind it, it sits in the store for a few months, and then you keep it! Here it is! 

From another angle with the backing showing. Also the pattern is the Big Blocks pattern.

And this final one shows the quilting which was done by Kenneth Butler.

The second quilt is a "Yay! Y'all bought a house!"quilt for my boyfriend's best friend and his wife. It started ages ago with the original intent of being for me. It is a twister quilt, so you start with something like this:

Then cut it up and sew it back together again to make this:

Turns out it was way too big so I trimmed it down when I decided to give it to them. Here is the final one!

Here is the binding and backing combo for the twister quilt.

As for the front I finished, it is a Super Swoon! I am writing a tutorial to make one giant Swoon block that fills a whole quilt. This is the fabric I picked. 

Here they all are together, looking awesome. Cthulhu! Woot!

And here is the overall picture of the front, with my shadow for scale. I am absolutely keeping this one for myself. It is off getting professionally quilted. I like it so much to pay for the quilting. If you know me [and how cheap I am], you know how amazing that is.

I also have some bee blocks to show off. Both of the bees I am in had us using Oh Deer! Here are the two blocks I made. The first is for Color Bee Shocked, the second for Quilting newBEES.

I have lots of samples in my future. Some of them I am excited about, others not so much. But I will find homes for it all, and it is wonderful practice, even if I don't love the fabric! 

Here is one I am super excited about! I picked up all the fabric along with the pattern and tool to make the Science Fair quilt in Honey, Honey! I absolutely love this fabric line! There is also some white on white fabric, but it wouldn't photograph well.

I am also making a whole bunch of sample Snoopy stuff. First there is a pillowcase.

There is also a quasi-coordinating quilt. I apologize for the horrible picture, but it was taken on my bed at night, and the lighting is horrible! You can find the pattern for this over here. This one will be dropped off for quilting tomorrow. 

Now for a bit of Christmas in June. Here is this elongated churn dash block in horribly traditional X-Mas fabric. 

Luckily I am also researching patterns for a much better line of X-Mas fabric, Aspen Frost. I just have to find something the owner of the quilt shop and I agree on. Shouldn't be too difficult! 

Okay, so I have had a lot going on and will continue to stay that way. This is a great feeling because I have been feeling neglectful of my sewing. 

Grading Mania!

I love the end of the semester because it is the end of the semester which means I get a break from teaching. I hate the end of the semester because it means I have such an insanely large pile of stuff to grade.

This semester, I stumbled upon papers from two students who obviously cheated since whole paragraphs are IDENTICAL. I have a warning in my syllabus about academic dishonesty and plagiarism, so I know I should report them, especially since they are college students who need to learn about the real world. 

I have no idea if I should report them or not. This is the first time this has happened to me, and the paperwork seems daunting. Ugh. Any opinion?

Anyways, now for happy crafting stuff!

I finished the April and May blocks for Color Bee Shocked.

This is the April block for Caryn. It is a GIANT block, 24.5" unfinished!

Here is the May block for Karrie. This one is also large and ends up being 17.5" unfinished. (The group used this tutorial over here.)

I also mailed out my pouch for the Pretty Little Pouches Swap. Here are the two sides, with some goodies.

Lastly, I was able to eat some Brussels sprouts from my garden! Yipppeee!

Now I have to go back to work at grading. I should really try to have everything graded by Thursday afternoon since I am going on an amazing road trip to Texas Star Party, the best Astronomy viewing party in the world this weekend! I will try to bring pictures. :)

Better late than...

Never?

Pregnant? (As Blanche Deveroux from Golden Girls would say)

While both are important, this particular post will focus on the only relevant topic: Better late than never.

I am incredibly late for WIP Wednesday. Wait. It is only Wednesday. I'm not actually late. Woohoo! I just feel so rushed this week.

The only non-new project I worked on this week was sewing space/bedroom (same room, people!) organization. It is still incredibly cluttered, but it is starting to feel more usable. On the cube shelf to the left of the photo I have my yardages of fabric folded into tiny bolts so that they are easily accessible. In the plastic drawers under the concrete skull, I have fat quarter storage. (See this post for more info on the amazing and perfectly sized drawers!) They fit perfectly in these drawers! Finally in the lime green Ikea drawers, I have notions, interfacing, giant yardages for backing, tops, blocks, more fat quarters, BOMs I am horribly behind on, and yarn.

Aside from the colossal and seemingly endless monster that is organization, I really only worked on new projects this week. I finished the March block for Color Bee Shocked. Mallory wanted different stars (unfinished @ 8.5"). I used the galaxy star paper pieced pattern by Moira McSpadden.

I also made two commissioned pouches for a coworker. The first one is a pencil pouch and the second one is a big carry-all bag for her GoPro and GoPro accessories.

As far as new projects go, I started working on the front and back for a pillowcase I am making. One side will be in cool colors, one side will be in warm colors.

The cool color side is nearly done!

I also started working on something secret. They looked so cute and garlandy after chain piecing that I had to snap a photo!

What could it be?! Oh, alright, I'll tell! It's a Dresden plate! Well, half of one. This is my first time playing with them and I am loving it! Sometimes handwork makes me very happy. :) As for what I'm using these for, you will have to stay tuned.

I am leaving you with an adorable picture I took at my favorite German restaurant. They drew my mustard into hearts! Aww!

Scuba & Sewing

If you are just passing by and find yourself short on time, please scroll to the bottom of this post and give me some advice on how to finish a quilt. It would be most appreciated!

I got a lot of work done this week. I finished three more of the blocks for the 3x6 bee (First two found here). I am in Hive C, the pinwheels hive. I am making the flying geese in a circle paper pieced blocks, even though they aren't really pinwheels. My hive-mates were okay with the idea. To make these, I am using charms from charm swaps. Now I only have one more of these to make which means I might be done early!

This first one is for Michelle:

This second one is for Nell:

And this third one is for Allison:

I also finished the February block for Quilting newBEES. I really enjoyed the fabric she sent out for us to use.

I also bought a new toy: A GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition. Spweee! So naturally, I had to make a bag to store it and the accompanying accessories. This might very well be the only GoPro in the whole wide world with a quilted zippered pouch. My hobbies are fairly eclectic: Quilting and Scuba! What is ridiculously exciting is that I made this zippered pouch without muttering a single curse word! Take that, zippers! Muahahaa!

I used Frolic by Wendy Slotboom which might very well be my favorite fabric line ever (there is even a second project in this post that was able to utilize it). I am practically hoarding it, but actually using it, which cancels out the hoarding...

Speaking of scuba diving, my boyfriend and I drove up to Mammoth Lake (3ish hours away, outside of Houston) for some frigid diving. The water was only 60 degrees, which felt warm compared to the 50 degree air temperature which was coupled with insanely ferocious wind that made exposed skin feel like it was burning. Because of this, we opted to stay in the water and do one long dive instead of multiple shorter dives. Really, I just wanted to play with my GoPro. So here are a few pictures. This first one showcases one of the best features of the GoPro, the lens flare generator. I kid, I kid. So artsy, though.

This is what I look like when I'm freezing to death.

On one of the sunken boats, there was a whole colony of tiny little fish! Also, these pictures are green because they were taken at the bottom of a murky lake.

Here is my boyfriend doing and underwater upside-down happy dance. He has skills.

One of the things I love most about Mammoth Lake is how much stuff there is to see. The owners understand what divers want, which is tons of crap to look at. They are always sinking new stuff. Take this car. To me, it looks like the sort of vehicle you could expect to see Cruella DeVille racing around the country in as she, Horace, & Jasper attempt to track down a pack of dalmatian puppies.

There are many sunken boats, cars, motorcycles, statues (King Kong, a mammoth, a giant bug, etc.) and even an old C130 that has been chopped up so you can swim through it. This next photo is of the inside of boat where someone left the fridge door open!

I also spent some time this weekend making cupcakes for an early St. Patrick's Day party that my cousin hosted on Friday. I made margarita cupcakes because they are green and boozey albeit not Irish. Yumm. I used my old standby recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and made it a little not vegan because sometimes I get rebellious.

Lastly. I started working on my Down the Rabbit Hole quilt (Pattern by Cut to Pieces & found here). I used 30's repro fabric for the twisting arms and more Frolic from Wendy Slotboom for the middle hexagon. I was eager to try this because it reminds me of the Portal logo, and that is the quilt I was thinking about making my TA (if he ever shows up to labs,that is!). Hopefully I can transfer these new skills into that quilt.

So here is my epic dilemma with this. The pattern prescribes it to be a picnic quilt, which is great. I could finish it off now with home dec backing and be done with it. But I hardly picnic. I live in South Texas. It is over 100 degrees for most of the year. Picnicking is frowned upon, unless you enjoy heat stroke and sunburns. I could make it and sell it, I suppose.

Or I could use it as the front of a baby quilt, but no one I know is pregnant. C'mon! Someone get preggo!

Or I could add a little more Frolic around the edges to make it bigger and have an oddly shaped throw blanket.

I have no idea what to do. Any input or helpful suggestions?

Picnic quilt? Baby quilt? Throw quilt? Ahhh!

Wow, apparently I did a horrible job of flattening out the ripples in this quilt before photographing. I took the picture inside because the wind was too bad outside. But then I left the front door open in order to optimize natural light, so it was still blowing around like crazy.

Anyways, that would be all my WIPs that I actually made progress on. My goals for the month are to decide what needs to be done with the hexagon quilt and to finish the eye quilt. What have you been up to?

Sashiko & More/WIP

Most of this week has been spend cleaning and getting my sewing "studio" back in order. I have to use the quotes because I am trying to fit and entire apartment of stuff into one bedroom, which is extremely difficult. Luckily, I am back to having an actual desk to sew on instead of sitting on the floor with my sewing machine on a chair. Woohoo! Here's hoping for fewer knots in my neck and shoulders!

I have also been working on a bit of hand sewing, especially sashiko. Mostly because I love sashiko, but also because I can sit in my comfy chair and admire my new sewing desk. 

If anyone knows the proper way to transfer designs to dark embroidery fabric, please let me know, because I know I am doing it wrong. I purchased some of the iron on transfer pencils, but the markings do not go away, which works great for standard embroidery where you cover the whole line, but not so great for sashiko. I tried tracing patterns in a dotted pattern and it was just incredibly infuriating. What I ended up doing was printing the pattern on iron on transfer paper and ironing it onto the wrong side of fabric. FYI: Linen was used for these sashiko bunny coasters.

This shows what it looks like from the back when the pattern is ironed on. Obviously this is too hideous for the front, but for the back... who cares?!

So this means that I am stitching from the back, which looks like this:

And it looks like this from the front:

Unfortunately, stitching from the back means that some of the stitches end up crooked and wonky. So if you know a better way, please tell me! I implore you!

Although it isn't too terrible. The bunny still makes me happy. 

I also worked on one in reverse colors. Eventually I plan on making one more in each color.

And I figured this fabric would make the most perfect backing for the sashiko coasters since bunnies were the focal point on the front. Mmm, this fabric really needed a good use. 

Now that my new sewing machine is setup, I also started messing with machine quilting and decided to dig these mustache coasters out of my UFO pile. These coasters crack me up because the background fabric is a beautiful yellow batik, and the foreground fabric is bright pink and flowery. These fabrics are not so mustachey, but to me, it makes sense. Each one is quilted in a different way. Now I just need to find cheater needles that actually work so I can hide threads. I found the kind with the notch in the top, and have purchased two different brands of these and NEITHER WORKS. It just shreds the thread. I swear, there isn't even an opening in the top! I need side threading needles, but am not able to find them for a reasonable price. Any suggestions?

On a completely unrelated note, my Brussels sprouts and broccoli are slowly but surely making a comeback from their near death experience with the horrid cabbage worms. Woohoo!

Speaking of plants, another ear plant was purchased this week. I know, I know, there are already too many of these on my front porch, but this one has a branch that is all white! I have never seen such a thing! It needed a good home. Honest.

Oh, yeah, back to sewing. Somehow, I have been sewing and quilting for almost 3 years now, but never had a pincushion. That was remedied this week when I decided to try my hand at a cathedral window for the first time. The fabric is all from different charm swaps.

I also made a few blocks for the Japanese X-Block quilt. So this is 5 out of 30 and 11 are being made by Color Bee Shocked, which leaves me with 14 more to make. That is easy peasy.

So those are all of my WIPs for the week. I am leaving y'all with a pretty sunset picture from my drive out to my cousin's house.

What projects have you been working on this week?