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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

WIP: half square baby quilt

So, some of you have been following my struggles with this on Instagram, but this is the first time the whole thing is being shown off, even if it still is many pieces.

I have three super saturated fabrics (one pink, one orange, one purple) and three light fabrics (one pink, one orange, one purple), and 8 medium tones (one purple, one orange, the rest are pinks and corals.)

The light orange is my favorite, it's Soho solid in Citrus.


 The top four rows have been sewn into a partial top, because I only have room on my design wall for 7 rows. And I am aiming for eleven.


So this is the rest.  The top four are joined into rows, the next two are joined into blocks, and the last is still loose triangles.

And then I have about just as many extra triangles as I have put into the quilt, because I get carried away when I cut fabric with my Big Shot.  In response to this, my sister has helpfully informed me that she likes orange and pink, too.

I'm hoping to finish it up, quilting and binding, too, before the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild meeting next week. We'll see.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Halfway on the Scrappy Plus Quilt

I finished 4 more blocks today, and laid out my progress when I was at the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild Sew In last weekend.

Photo courtesy of Brenda of Just a Bit Frayed

Although I brought my camera, I failed to remember to take a picture, so I am relying on the kindness of my friend Brenda who took a picture with her phone, because it's better than the picture I took with my phone, which is so dark and slightly yellow, that if you compare the pictures side by side they look like two different quilts.

I have the number 54 in my head for the number of blocks I am aiming for. This is 27, so it's exactly half, by some cosmic accident. I just bought two new fabrics today (one coral, one teal) and two yesterday (one coral*, one teal) but I need to stop, because I'm probably going to end up with too many blocks (like always! I am the queen of the orphan block!)

*I can't find a link to it, but it's a super cute Jenean Morrison print from Wishing Well, lots of little birds. It might just be out. I may be the first person on the internet to possess it!

Here is my newest method of piecing, I suspect there is no room for further improvement. My unhappiness with the previous method (even with my improvements) stems from my desire to chain piece everything, and having to go from piecing multiple blocks in the first steps to doing one at a time, prompted me to try a new method. (Faster, and probably less accurate, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice!)

Which I am ironically showing you with a block I pieced all by itself.

Follow the directions up to the point where you "square" the block:


Stitch the first piece of the internal cross on the top:


 Now! Stitch the second piece to a long side:


And if you're clever you'd trim it at this point and save yourself some trouble later.

Cut off 5" of the longer side starting from the edge without the border:


Put the bottom piece on the top:


Pin and sew:


Now, on the short side, cut 4.5" off, measuring from the borderless edge:


Move this piece to the other side of the interior plus:


Pin and sew:


And done!

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Still here and still sewing

I still seem to be up to my ears in secret projects, so here are a few little things I can talk about:

I have the pink feather print, too.
I made this 241 tote for my sister out of Anna Maria Horner Field Study linen parenthetical flight. The lining is this awesome circle print from Modern Whimsy, and some yellow Metro Living circles. The big blue dots are an Echino print from last year that they happened to have some leftovers of at Pink Castle.

I had a couple of issues with this, the most irritating was that the first time around the handle was super long, because my sister wanted a bag that could be worn across the body, and I'm not a person who measures things, and it came out six inches too long, and of course, I'd already sewn it all up. To fix it, I had to rip out three seams, and reposition it, and sew it back up. (This story makes more sense if you know how the bag is constructed.)

Actually, the most irritating thing was the thread I used, because it was heavy cotton thread for denim, and I could not find a suitable tension for it, and after ripping it out three times, I just left it looking imperfect on the underside of the handle. 

lots of polka dots.

I sewed up this mini quilt for the Pink Castle blog, for which I occasionally write for. It will probably be at least two weeks before it is finished and on the blog. And then I will reveal why I made it!

And, inspired by one of my secret projects, where I've been creating and using up a few of my Wasteful Star scraps, I came up with this block:

It needs a name...
And of course the Scrappy Plus Quilt is still ongoing.