Huge SALE in my Etsy shop! Check it out!!

The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made - Part 7 - Basted!

Smooth sailing today. Phew! I got the backing sewn together, and then my most amazing and wonderful husband spent an hour out on the driveway spray basting with me. I don't know how I could have done it on my own. 

And you may think I'm odd for doing it on the driveway, but I've learned a messy lesson in overspray, so I avoid spraying it in the house.

All done and glorious!!

 In case you are wondering, I use June Tailor Quilt Basting Spray from Joanne's. I like that I can use coupons and it doesn't end up that $$$.

 And now it is rolled up, waiting in my studio, begging me to get started. But it shall wait til Monday. I met my goal of getting it done by the 28th. *Pats self on back*
My new goal is to have it quilted and bound by August 8th. I'll keep y'all updated with my progress.

The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made - In Which I Unpick A LOT

Remember Wednesday? How much progress I made, how smoothly things were finally going with this quilt? 

I woke up so excited yesterday, sure that I would have the quilt top pieced together and maybe even have a border added on before dinner time. 

I jumped right in to sewing. Maybe before I wasn't all the way awake . Or I was distracted by my cute children. Or I could blame the fact that I am still getting used to my new machine and the fact that it is smarter than I am. 

Either way, I started sewing. And I sewed all of my rows together for the second half of the quilt. Then I started sewing the rows onto the body of the quilt. I was about 1/4" through sewing the second row onto the quilt when I noticed my seam allowance looked a little bit. It was. And had been for the past 3 hours of sewing. 

My new machine has this lovely little feature where I just have to push 2 buttons and it sets the needle 1/4" from the edge of my foot. A very perfect 1/4" (unlike my old machine's 1/4" foot attachment that apparently is too generous and has already caused me problems with this quilt). 

So after getting super upset at the quilt for the umpteenth time, I walked away. Instead I spent the day moving all of my girls toys into the far side of my studio and tiding up their rooms. I think it was a good move considering all of their toys would migrate out of their rooms anyway as they came to be with me. Maybe our house will be a little less chaotic now - or at least the chaos will be confined to the basement. =) 

And yesterday evening I tucked in and started unpicked - well ripping, cutting, tearing would be more like it. My wonderful husband sat with me and helped pull off all the stray threads. We both ended up covered. And what took about 3 hours to sew took almost as long to undo. =( 

Do you think I can still meet my goal of getting it done by the 28th? I sure hope so.

The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made - Part 5

First, some photos from last week further illustrating all the trimming I was doing.

It started with some basic trimming I knew I'd need to do after piecing the squares. See all those bits of extra width? So I squared those up, and thought 'Yay! I'm good to go! Let's start piecing blocks!'

 WRONG! I found that after squaring all of those up that they were 1/4"-ish smaller than their non-pieced counterparts, which meant all of those other squares needed to be trimmed down to match. Grrr.

 So last week I got through that mess, and happily left the project at home while I had a weekend away with my husband in Park City. It was fabulous.
And Monday I jumped right back in full force. As of last night I had ALL of my blocks pieced. There are 6 different blocks, 4 square and 2 rectangle to offset the squares when piecing the top. This morning I had to do a bit of squaring up, but thankfully they all came out about the same size. Not perfect, but definitely workable.

 And so I started laying the quilt out. Last night I shoved a ton of stuff into the corner, stacking it up, giving myself as much floor space as possible. It is nowhere near enough. That is about half of the quilt laying out on the floor. So I'm working in segments and am glad it is such a scrappy quilt and I don't have to worry about what blocks go where as long as it ends up the right size, which so far it will with the help of a simple border from some of my leftover squares.

 And here is a peek of some of it all sewn together. =)

Antique Double Wedding Ring Quilt

My mom recently took a trip out to visit her mother, and to help her get her house in order for a big move. My grandma was getting rid of a lot of things, and one of the things she decided not to keep was this beautiful, antique double wedding ring quilt made by my great-grandmother (shock!! why in the world would you not keep it?!). Thankfully my mom did not let that thing go and brought it back home with her instead. (I'm jealous. So very jealous. I've voiced very loudly, and probably a bit whiny, that I want it and I demand to inherit it.)

 And boy is it beautiful! It is hand pieced and hand quilted, by a skilled quilter. Unfortunately time has not been kind to it. There are spots where seams have come undone, a few stains, and most heartbreaking of all a hole that was chewed through it by some sort of critter. =*(

 So while I am partly just showing it off in this post - I am also wondering if anybody out there knows how to find an antique quilt restorer or about getting quilts appraised. We'd love some help! Just leave a comment or send me an email (I am in Utah if that helps).

 And now you can all hope with me, that one day this gorgeous quilt will be in my home. =)

The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made - Part....oh who cares?

I've been working round the clock on this thing. It has become the boon of my existence.

Should be 6 1/2"

First - ALL of the squares are coming out smaller than they should. ALL of them. Which means that  I am doing A LOT of trimming off of scraps.

Small Joann's bag STUFFED with scraps.

Not only am I trimming off of my actual squares, I've had to trim down the non-pieced squares to work with the pieced squares. Remember 333 4 1/2" squares and 945 2 1/2" squares? Yeah, that is A LOT of trimming!
Now, I now that part of this problem is my own. I did not do what the pattern writer suggested and make a trial block first to make sure my seem allowance was just right. But I know seam allowance was not that off. I've used the same 1/4" guide foot for the last oh 40 quilts and they've all turned out quite accurate. I also double checked all my cutting measurements, those were good too. So what in the world is the problem?! Oh well.

So after far more trimming that I expected I started piecing. But before I started piecing I decided I better figure out how many of each block I need and set aside the squares for each block.

*Enter new bang head on brick wall moment here.*

As my blocks have been shrinking I have been PANICING thinking I would need to figure out a way to make this thing bigger. Do I need to add a border somewhere? Do I need to order more (more than 29 yards?! gasp) fabric?
The answer is no. I actually seem to have way too much. Like I will easily be making a baby/throw quilt from the extra squares I have been slaving over. How, how did this happen?! I don't know. I am not going to worry about it now. But I sure have learned my lesson - completely deconstruct a pattern, and work it out to your desired size before ordering fabric, and follow the pattern writer's advice at making a sample block and then go to town on the rest. It would be so much better for my health.

And so, after all of this drama, I am finally piecing blocks. And they are coming together qickly and beautifully. And if I somehow messed up on figuring it out again, at least I have a big ol' stack of spares to pick from and make more blocks. 

That's right folks, that is all EXTRA. Sigh

But look - progress!!

My goal is to have the top completely pieced by July 28th, so my husband can help me spray baste it before he heads out on a business trip. Pray it is going to be smooth sailing from here on out.

Hopscotch!

Katy's Hopscotch Quilt

It finished around 64" x 90", so kind of a skinny twin. It was made with Modern Workshop by Oliver + S for Moda, backed with a Moda flannel that was a perfect shade of blue, which you can see in the last photo.

The numbers are properly appliqued with my typical freezer paper technique, but all of the applique outside the hopscotch are raw edge, stitched on with perle cotton (which I should have though about more, after washing some of the fraying went to far and I had to do some more stitching to secure them down, but it's cute). 

I was inspired by a few quilts I saw on pinterest, but when it came down to it, I just made it up as I went, and figured it would end up a fun throw Katy could toss out on the floor and play on. Now she can play hopscotch on her bed instead. =) She LOVES it by the way.

Katy's 4 year old handprints, below them, though hard to see is our family...

Our stick figure family 

The "label" She loves that her name is on it.

Drunk Zebra (pattern available!)

I finally took some time and finished up my very first pattern. =) (Pattern can be purchased at Craftsy or in my Etsy shop)

I've been putting off finishing this for weeks. Ok, so I've been distracted by some pretty big projects, and hexies, what can I say? Playing with fabric is much more fun than writing about it.

The quilt finished at about 56" x 64" and was made with Kona Cotton black, Free Spirit Designs Winter White, and backed in the lime green big polka dot from the line Half Moon Modern by Momo for Moda. The binding was a random zebra print I found at a local shop and forgot to note.

Before my husband dubbed this "Drunk Zebra", I referred to it as the rug quilt. Why? Because it was inspired by a rug! Thanks to my amazing cousin, Annie (of Spiffing Jewelry), who pinned a photo of the rug for her studio, and I was just crazy enough to think "Hey, I could make that into a quilt."

I hope you all enjoy this quilt as much as I enjoyed making it. 

The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made - Part 3

It was another day with a lot of cutting. A lot of cutting that made me realize just how much piecing this quilt is going to take.

My day's efforts don't look like much...

45 - 8 1/2" squares cut into 9 pieces

95 - 7 1/2" squares cut into 5 pieces

196 - 5 1/2" squares cut into 5 pieces

and thankfully only about 40 - 4 1/2" squares cut into 5 pieces.

So as it stands right now, I have 3296 pieces to sew together. My head hurts.
How horrific would it be to get to the end and discover I calculated too big, or worse, too short? Let's pray I calculated correctly!

The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made - Part 2

I made some great progress yesterday cutting out fabric.

I started with this - that is a Large Flat-Rate shipping box full to the brim with fabric, that large blue piece is 10 yards of backing!

And turned it into this

45 - 8 1/2" squares

95 - 7 1/2" squares

196 - 5 1/2" squares

333 - 4 1/2" squares

55 - 3 1/2" squares

945 - 2 1/2" squares (which is why they are in that box) 

And now I am taking a break for a day or 2 while I work on my Bowls with Borders mini quilt.

Happy 4th of July! (and an awesome finish)

First off Happy 4th of July to my fellow Americans. We love the 4th of July around here, all the patriotism and red white and blue and fireworks.
But 4 years ago our first child came into the world with a bang on the 4th of July (unexpected, she wasn't due for another month), and she's been keeping us on our toes ever since. Also, she thinks the fireworks are all for her, though we are trying to explain Independence Day to her as well.
This is just a quick phone pic, but I wanted to share what I've been slaving away at for her for the past few weeks, really cutting it close finishing up the last bit of hand quilting (hard to see in the photo but there are doodles done in perle cotton) late last night.

More pictures to come soon.

Just 3 For July

I'm joining in with TraceyJay's Just Three for July. I've failed beautifully at this in the past, but hopefully I can do better this month. =)

1- Finish Katy's hopscotch quilt (this one will absolutely happen.) Done July 3rd
2- Make tons of progress on The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made.
      -get it cut out by July 11 Inital cutting Done July 5th
      - achieve 50% pieced by the end of the month
3- Complete 4 Farmer's Wife blocks.

The Largest Quilt She's Ever Made - Part 1

I just received 11 lbs (aka 29 yards!!!!!) of fabric in the mail. And if 11 lbs of fabric was not enough, I'll be adding a few coordinating solids as well.

It will be turned into this. Only king size.

Seeing Squares from the Empty Bobbin

Because of the sheer size of this project, I think I'll chronicle my way to the end.

Bowls with Borders

I'm super excited about an upcoming project I have. I'll be participating in the Bowls with Borders Blog Hop being hosted by Just Let me Quilt and Sew We Quilt. I'll be posting on August 15th, but make sure you check out all the amazing bloggers that will be participating (links to all the blogs found here). Check out a sample of the quilt in this post.