Monday, February 23, 2009

Stashbuster Idea

I received a newsletter from the New England Quilt Museum the other day with a request for fabric and patterns.

"Are you getting cabin fever with all this snow and ice?? Do you need a reason to sort your stash of quilting fabrics, patterns and books?? Consider doing so and donate your extras and leftovers to the museum for the upcoming TEXT and TEXTILE EXTRAVAGANZA. Donations will be accepted for the event through April 15. Please contact Rhonda Galpern at 978-452-4207, ext 17 or at outreach@nequiltmuseum.org."

The event allows people, for a $25 donation, to fill a shopping back with assorted books, magazines, and fabrics. The money will help the quilt museum. If you're looking to get rid of some old fabric, this might be a great way to help the NEQM continue to preserve and exhibit some amazing quilts. The NEQM is located in downtown Lowell, MA, a city with extremly deep roots in textiles and quilts.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Mark Lipinski Visit

I've been quiet the past few days because I've been dealing with an overflowing toilet in my apartment. It turned into this big ordeal because it ended up being the central line in my building... ugg I hate plumbing issues.  

This morning a local quilt shop won a competition to have Mark Lipinski visit and personally introduce his new line of fabric.  Emma's Quilt Cupboard in Franklin, MA created an adorable display using his previous line of fabrics.  Here are some pictures of their display.

Mark started, in his notoriously humorous way, talking about how he designed his line of fabrics based off of his collection of Polish pottery.  He made them in two colorways, the traditional blue and green colors of polish pottery and a black, red, and white line.
 To introduce the line to us, he made everyone close their eyes even though I'm sure a lot of people already saw the line online like I did.  He then pulled in the fabric in a red wagon.
Here I am with Mark getting my "banned" copy of his magazine signed.  
What a fun day.  After the event I went into Boston to watch my sister dive at her conference championships.  She won the 1 meter diving event last night and is currently in 1st going into tomorrow's 3 meter finals while celebrating her 22nd birthday today.  I'll be spending my day tomorrow watching her in the final two diving sessions in the predicted snow.  More on my quilting endeavors shortly.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Autumn Quilt Progress

I made some progress on the autumn quilt tonight.  I didn't get as much done as I would have liked because I had some issues with my sewing table and then ran out of bobbin.  I figured that meant it was time to take a break for the night.  Up next is to finish the remaining 6 blocks that need the green frame and then it's on to adding a gold frame.  

Here's the border fabric for the quilt.  You can get a sense of where the colors in this kit came from and that it truly is an autumn quilt.

So here's the broken sewing table. My pedal usually goes on this platform, but as you can see by these pictures, the platform that usually lies a few inches from the ground broke off from the rest of the sewing table.  :(  I'm going to have the hubby take a look at this weekend to see if he can do something.  I really liked how this table had this platform because I'm so short and it allowed me to sit taller so that I'm at a better height to the table.


Monday, February 16, 2009

Autumn Quilt Kit

A few years ago I bought this quilt kit at an after Christmas sale at 50% off.  It looked like a pretty easy quilt, and the colors were really nice.  I decided that it was too cute and too good a deal to pass up.  Believe it or not, it was the first quilt kit I had ever purchased.  I much prefer to pick out my own fabric and deign the colors. That's half the fun of quilting anyway.  

When I got home, I realized I grabbed the wrong kit. :(  It was the same pattern, but had some slightly different fabrics.  I thought it was the same one, but it wasn't.  I had picked the package that was in better shape.  Because I wasn't too keen on the fabrics/colors in this quilt, it went into my pile of fabric and was forgotten for a while.  

Well, yesterday I pulled out the kit and decided that it was time to put this thing together.  There's one fabric in there that I would NEVER have picked.  It's a really burnt or rust colored orange. (seen below)  I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but orange has to be my least favorite color.  I like it with some other color combinations, but it just doesn't do much for me.  I thought about replacing the fabric with another one from my stash, but I realized that I would never use it in anything else, so why not use it now.

Here are a few pictures of my progress.  It calls for two more frames around the diamond and some sashing in between the 20 blocks.  It's definitely going to be an autumn quilt.


The next color to go on is a green, followed by a gold, then some deep gray sashing.  More on that later.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Border & Binding

Tonight I got the inner and outer border put on one of my UFOs.  You might recognize it from the pic in my profile.  At the time I made my profile this was one of the few quilts I had a picture of.  I've been trying to get some of my UFOs done so that I can begin to work on some new stuff.  It has been bothering me lately to see a stack of unfinished tops.  

I made this quilt entirely out of my stash, and out of a lot of small scraps.  All of the flowers were made from scraps (well, not the green, but the "petals" in each flower were scraps). I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this quilt, whether or not I'm going to keep it or give it away.  It was one of those quilts that I had everything for and could use up some scraps.  


I'm going to work on sewing the binding on the back of the "box of roses" quilt.  I haven't sewn it on over the past two days because I finally found the thread that I was sewing with.  My silly cat found it (he always seems to find any thread spool that's not in some place extremely secure.  I had wrapped the thread up in the quilt to shield it from him, yet he still found it.  I discovered it tonight as I was cooking dinner tucked in deep next to the fridge.  Silly cat.  

Monday, February 9, 2009

Feb Tisket a Tasket BOM

So I've been seeing all of these Tisket a Tasket block of the months over the past month+ and kept saying that I thought all of the different versions were so adorable.  I finally broke down  and had to make one.  Here it is.


Now I just have to make the January one to be all caught up.  I think I'm going to like doing this BOM because I really don't do applique at all.  I enjoy the look of applique but I've never really do it.  It's all self taught, so I look at this as a way to practice my applique skills.  I've already cut out all of the background blocks, so I'm good to go for the next ones.  

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Binding "Boxes of Roses"

Yesterday my husband and I went cross country skiing with my aunt KK.  After, we swung by a quilt store so I could try to find a fabric to bind the "box of roses" quilt.  Here we are taking a break from skiing.

Here are the goodies that I ended up getting.  The upper right fabric is for the binding.  It was in the 30% off rack!  I just loved the black and white fabric too!  I thought it would go so well with the white bright-dotted fabric that I got the other day that I showed you.  And the other fat quarter I just had to have and threw it into my pile as I was checking out.  You know what that's like.


So today I decided to put the binding on the quilt.  I prepared the binding and began to sew it onto the quilt when Bentley decided to join me.  When I say join me, I mean he decided to lie on top of the quilt.  I just had to get up and take a picture.  

He eventually got bored and decided to play with a spool of thread that he found (he somehow finds every spool of thread I have if it's not in something or hidden.  

I'm hand sewing the binding to the back right now.  I hope to have it done in the next day or two.  Yay, yay, yay!

Friday, February 6, 2009

Went Shopping

So I swung by my local quilt store on my way home from work looking for a good binding for the "Box of Roses" quilt.  No luck finding a binding for it, but I did come home with some goodies.  

Bentley really wanted to see what I brought home.  He loves quilting with me and was excited to see what goodies I came home with.  Here they are!


Don't you just LOVE that fabric in the bottom of the picture?  That was in the "just arrived" shelf and I had to have it.  Here are the coordinating fabrics that I got to go with it. 

The green one actually goes well with it even though I got it to see if it would go with the "Happy Hour" quilt, knowing that it would go with this one or another one because it is so versatile.  

I also LOVE the white fabric with the dotted lines on it.  I ended up getting 3 yards of it because I love it so much.  YAY!

Time to make dinner and do some laundry.  I'll probably do some quilting a little later on too.  

Thursday, February 5, 2009

YAY!!! Finished the "Bright Bold Blocks" quilt!!!

I finally finished the "Bright Bold Block" quilt today.  Well, piecing the top that is.  Here it is!


Here's another picture of the border.  This is what took me so long to finish this top.  I used fabric that I had in my stash for this quilt, and I didn't quite have enough of one color, which meant that I was a row short height wise.  The quilt felt "stumpy" to me.  I "hum-ed and ha-ed" over how to make it longer.  This was my solution.  I like it.  It's something different that I haven't done before.


I still need to machine quilt it, but that will probably come a little later as with all of my pieced tops.  I have a feeling that as I get better at machine quilting I'll probably be more likely to jump right into the machine quilting. 

I'm so glad I got to finish this tonight.  Its been a long week at work.  The past few days I've had to take work home with me and have had a few late nights.  I'm really looking forward to this weekend.  I'm exhausted and need some quilt therapy to relax.  One more day of work...  

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Finished Quilting "Box of Roses" YAY!!!

I finally finished all of the quilting on the "Box of Roses" quilt.  THANK GOODNESS!!!  This was, hands down, the most difficulty I've had with machine quilting.  

 This one is a little darker, but it shows the quilting a little better.

I plan on using different thread next time.  I've always used Gutterman thread, but I think I'm trying something different.  I'm hoping that will solve my issues because I know it's not my machine.  I've been doing little projects in between quilting this one to keep my sanity.

Now it's on to the binding and creating a label. :)

I also added a floating, pieced border to the top and bottom of the bright quilt that's still nameless.  I think it's helping with the dimensions.  Before it was too stubby and needed to be a little bit longer to make the proportions work.  
I still need to add the orange swirl fabric on top of the floating squares to finish the top and bottom borders.  To finish it off, I'm going to put probably a 5 inch strip of the orange swirl fabric to the sides.