2016 Finish-A-Long

At last count, I have some 14 quilt tops in various degrees of planning and completion. Some of these are old enough to go to high school. Yes, I have a bad habit of starting and then...never finishing. It's high time I should get these finished! So what better motivation than prizes, right? So, here's a list of projects I should *really* try to finish.

Untitled #1: My first quilt for me

Oh, so long ago. This was my first quilt out of "quilt-shop quality" fabrics. It's pretty traditional, except I completely ignored the construction given in the pattern. It's even basted and ready to quilt, so should be an easy finish, right? I just have to decide on the quilting pattern.

do. Good Stitches quilt: Sticks and Stones

I joined the Love Circle last year and somehow felt brave enough to lead a quilt by mid-year. It makes sense, right? I love designing blocks...and then other people sew it for me. It's fantastic. I have the blocks in a big stack and I have a good idea of how to put it together.

Transparent Stars Runner

Something small. Top's done, backing chosen, just need the motivation to put it together. It'll be a cover for my cabinet of interfacing. Very glamorous end destination! I have plans to both machine and hand-quilt this one.

Super Mario baby quilt

Another one that's pieced with a backing made. Just needs basting and quilting. I started this before the baby was born and now he's uh, 1.5.

Hubby's bowtie quilt

And for kicks, I'll toss in should start working on finishing this bow-tie block quilt for the hubby. Who has to use a big piece of fleece to warm up in front of the TV. That's pretty pathetic, right? I have at least 80% of the blocks made, backing fabric earmarked, binding chosen.

Pattern testing for Wise Craft

I'll be testing a pillow-size version a new pattern for Blair!


Good thing there's no penalty for overlisting! This'll pretty much smash any quilt finishing records I have if I manage to complete it! I think I listed some low-hanging fruit, so hopefully there'll be at least 2 finishes!

Crawl faster, snail!

Whoops. I knew I hadn't written a blogpost in awhile, but maybe missing all of 2013 wasn't what I meant to do. I certainly made stuff!

Anyhow, in musing over my current crafting stuffs, I've decided that this will be the Year of Finishing. I want to have a whole new set of WIPs by the end of the year. Everything that's been started, but is not finished now, will be either finished (yay!) or tossed (scrap-binned or repurposed).

My other challenge-goal is to hit 50 finished objects (or BUST!!). I thought about just 25, but that seemed too easy. So, here goes!

Tutorial: Clean and Simple Changing Mat

I thought I'd share some instructions for a simple changing mat (finishes at approximately 18” x 26”). It took me under two hours, including taking pictures along the way. It's a great handmade baby shower gift, as it's not common to find in stores, plus it's quick to make.



I first made this changing mat two years ago before we set out to travel with our then 6 month old boy. He was quite the wriggler, so I wanted something big and simple to separate him from the vagaries of public changing tables. It’s a light load to carry to the bathroom for on-the-go changes, and the size will last from baby to pull-ups!

Time to make: about an hour to two hours

Materials:

fabric:
1/3 yd of quilting cotton
1/4 yd of coordinating solid
1/2 yd of fleece (flannel + or soft material alternates)

notions:
~12" of 1/4” wide elastic in a coordinating color

The Ever Kelly Playmat

So about a month and a half ago, I found this posting on the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild about a new-to-here fabric designer that needed samples made for Spring Quilt Market. She had some really cute prints, so I figured why not? Kelly and I chatted and planned over email. When her fabrics arrived, we finally met up over lunch and she literally loaded me up with fabric. Her pattern in hand, I set off to make her cute playmat (finished at about 50"x60").

(Photo by Kathy Mack, Pink Chalk Fabrics)

It reminds me of sandy beaches and cute island living. You can see her version of it in different fabrics in the patterns at the bottom. Given how adorable everything looks here, there should be no surprise that Kelly won a booth award, right? ;) Actually, no, most of the cuteness is elsewhere in the booth, starting with that green fuzzy thing in the bottom left corner.  You can see more of the Ever Kelly booth on her blog!

So, on my experience with making the thing: it was my first time doing fusible appliqué. I started out following her instructions (adapted from other techniques) and ended up doing my own version*. (I am typing out some notes on that, but unless you're making the pattern, or something very similar, it won't make any sense at all. :) )

And, believe it or not, this is only the third major piece that I have free motion quilted. The one prior was done in Dec 2010, so it had um, been awhile. (I did a lot of straight line, and small swap item "quilting" in 2011.)  But with a deadline looming, I managed to both "remember" FMQ, and try out three new quilting patterns, to boot. In fair disclosure, I had been practicing by doodling new patterns for weeks, so it wasn't entirely a cold-start. Also, I chose thread colors that disappeared into the fabric, so even if I screwed up (and I do have a number of ugly moments), it's not immediately noticeable. There is a long, stretched meander in the water, loopy daisies in the meadows, and square meanders and "loops" around the houses. I am pleased I "learned" how to do loopy meander. I tried and tried to do the casual loops on paper, but I kept getting myself in awkward corners. But on actual fabric, I had no problems at all. So if you can see the pattern, but can't quite draw it, you might try stitching it anyway. It could work!

I bias-connected the binding on this one. It would've been so much easier to do a straight-join at the end, but I thought I should "do it right" this time... it does make for a less bulky join, but oh, so much more finicky to make! The binding is part of the 4-in-1 print

The back I have yet to get pictures of, as the quilt literally left my hands as soon as it came off the machine. But it is backed in the turquoise houses, with a bit of basic piecing to "stretch" the width.

All said and done, this is an adorable line of fabric, with cute little details you don't notice until you sit down and get your hands busy playing. I'm really looking forward to making some of my own projects with all the extras Kelly gave me, so stay tuned!

In progress: the continued allure of solids...

Once you complete a project that's all solids, it's hard to go back. For me, at least. There's a... seduction in "perfectly" executed color blocking. Maybe it's that I can't quite visualize prints playing together before they're sewn together. Not with the same precision that I can "see" with solids. Or maybe, it's the comfort that if you run out of a solid, you can always get more. (It's only annoying to run out mid-project, as the dye lot will be slightly different.) Especially with manufacturers making limited runs for print collections these days, it's liberating to not have to plan for the best use of that piece of print. So yeah. Relationship with solids? Still falling. :)

So, okay, enough with the musing, onwards to two recent unfinished projects.

...a baby quilt-in-progress for a nautical nursery. Said baby L is only a few weeks old, and the quilt top is basted, so I'm actually doing okay!

(Bad camera phone shot)

This is yet-another-failed-attempt at a wholecloth quilt. I can't help it. There's always some little bit of piecing I want to do.  In this case, it was a stylized sailboat and a pair of gulls, because the sky looked a little lonely without them. Of course, I drew up an Illustrator file for the boat and layout, but ended up eyeball-piecing in the end. That said, now I need to make a paper-piecing pattern for it, because it is seriously cute!! The gulls were more improvised; I nearly scrapped my initial attempt, but realized I could salvage it, and I'm glad I did.

Originally, this was going to be a two-sided quilt, with this for the other side:

(Another bad camera phone shot)

...but the hubby pointed out it'd be entirely too busy, so I guess I'm saving the fish for another occasion. These torpedo fish aren't as cute as the sailboat.

I ended up converting the green-blue-white stripe I was going to use as a binding into a backing instead. I found I had just enough of a bold red and white stripe (that emphasizes the nautical idea!) to use for binding. I have this quilt all basted, my beginner FMQ skills are dusted off (more on that soon)... expect Quilt #4 soon!

(Speaking of dye lot differences, there are two different shades of Kona Royal in the above two quilt tops. It's hard to tell, but there if you look for it. Still annoying.)

Fabric used: Kona royal blue, grass green, candy blue, cornflower blue*, corn yellow, bits of some prints

* = only color not available at Joann's.

For the love of solids: the tale of a multitasking mini

For the Love of Solids (round 2) is the latest chapter in my saga of swap-fascination. I think I'm still holding back from being full-on addicted.

Design brief: My partner suggested a sewing machine cover or a mini quilt.  Her inspiration mosaic had greys and a muted yellow, though she also likes yellow-y greens and aqua.  Mostly, limited color schemes. No rainbows here. Got it.

Step 1: Initial design sketch.

In the meantime, I picked out fabric to go with the colors I mocked up. Yes, if you are wondering, those swatches are labelled. Ask me how! :)

My partner was pretty happy with all the designs, but favored the top two: diamonds from one, blocks of color in the second.

Step 2: Back to the drawing table ... i.e. dither needlessly about design.

I got stuck trying to decide which I liked best, and if I'd overworked the diamonds and colors idea, so asked for feedback again. Partner wasn't much help (She was happy with them all. Guess I couldn't lose.), but most of the swappers liked the top two.

Step 3: Order, and receive way more fabric than you needed.

Pile of fabric arrived. Mmm, yummy interlude. Note: Fabric Shack rocks for offering 1/8yd cuts.

So, even though I leaned towards the bottom design, I expanded on the top design to make into an open-style machine cover/wall hanging.  This means it had to look good "right side up", "upside down" and sufficiently interesting one third at a time.

Step 4: Get down to business.

A lot of Illustrator time later, I rounded dimensions to the nearest quarter-inch and started cutting fabric strips.  The positioning was approximate, I figured I'd do some eyeballing and trimming for good placement -- aka designed "block", improvisational construction. Easy peasy, right? Haha.

Step 5: Really get down to business.

For some reason the simple straight line seam matching (i.e. seam ripping and sewing and cursing and resewing) kicked my butt, but I kicked back harder. Barely. There were some interesting seam-sewing sequences, too. In the end, I learned three things to tell my future self:

1. Most important: semi-improvisational construction is totally overrated. Plan some. And then a little bit more. By this I don't mean improv blocks where you have a rough idea. Don't improv construction when you have a complete idea.
2. If you're not going to pin, sew the 2 cm around the seam that has to match first. Don't be lazy and think it will "be okay". Even if you have it matched up and it's nice and freshly ironed. It will shift and then you will have the entire length to rip apart. 
3. Also, if your quilt seems slightly poofy, it might be because you were off by 1/4" in the size of a piece. I tore out a seam in the middle of the entire finished top, and finger pressed to see where the real seam should be. I had to hand-baste before resewing that seam, but it was so worth it. Perfectly flat before the iron even came out.

See? Perfectly flat.

I left the edges raw because if I cropped it, it looks like my mockup drawing. (Also, it looks kinda cool and...edgy!) Which is good (yay, vision accomplished), but bad for showing that you did some actual work in the real world!  It's interesting how your eye looks past all those wobbly lines. For next time, I think I will start drawing the seam line to make sure those long skinny strips are sewn more perpendicular. Too much room for error.

I also decided, while piecing, on a full out transparency effect with all the blocks of color instead of just the narrow strips. And that the diamonds (if they show up) should be appliqued. If you've been keeping tabs, I ended up not using the candy green stack because it clashed so horribly with peridot. Still, I think peridot and aqua with coal is one of my new favorites. And buttercup is so sunny! Yarrow and curry go together amazingly well, too.

I did some consulting about quilting options, and settled on random squares in a medium grey thread with a few lines of colorful handstitching/quilting.  I mapped it out in Illustrator (of course) to make sure the quilting also looked good with the back.  I added some loops into the binding (medium gray) so my partner can loop the included straps (in azure) to dress up her machine, but will stay out of the way if she wants to hang it on the wall or stick it on the table. I know she's well capable of doing a little add-on to do that conversion.

Step 6: Fall over. Done!

And now, through the magic of Internet-sewing, the finish! Hopefully you made it this far. But really, this is more for me than it is for you. ;) There's a few things I know are not perfect, but if you don't see them, I'm not saying where they are!

Fabric used: Kona colors used, in rough order by decreasing amount: coal, medium gray, peridot, aqua, curry, azure, buttercup, bahama blue, cactus, yarrow, pond, ice frappe, snow. (It's a little disturbing that I can remember this without looking it up.)

Basket/Bag Tutorial, part 1

I am finally getting around to writing that darn tutorial. Part 1 of the boxed bottom bag/basket tutorial is up! It includes a handy dandy calculator to figure out what size fabric you need for your project.

Now, you too, can begin creating your own basket army.