Leah Day Block Party #2

I shared with you the piecing of my second block, here is the quilting.  First up- a video that shows how I quilted it. It's sped up, so it's mostly to get an idea of how I moved around the block:



Here is my finished block. I have a hard time quilting so big. It is so much quicker, but man, small is easier!  I wish I hadn't decided to use red thread last month, because this design doesn't look so great.

And the back:

 

This has been a fun project to do. So often I just stipple on quilts, so it is fun to practice other skills too.

President's Day Quilt Block

Yesterday I completed this month's Block Party square from Leah Day's block of the month sew along. It involved making flying geese and then sewing them to a rectangle to create a block. I thought "why wouldn't you just sew them to a square and not have a seam in the middle of your block  So then I made this block to see what that would look like.  (I also made up a new design so I wouldn't have two of the same block in my quilt!) Leah's quilt a long has 12 blocks already, so I will either replace one with this block or make a few extra blocks and make the quilt larger.

Today I took a different approach to the video- I recorded pressing instead of sewing! 

I wanted to make this one really quick- it was about 45 minutes total in the sewing room and edited together really quick.  I hope you enjoy this insight into my sewing room!



You'll note that my piecing isn't perfect. I'm still practicing!  When sewing the 3 block rows together I pinned the first one, and it was a little off. So I didn't pin the second- and it was a little off.  SIGH!

Four more postcards

My Christmas Eve goal was to get some cleaning done in my sewing room. I guess I still have time to do that, but I have my doubts it will get done.

Instead, I made 4 more postcards. These are fun and addictive.

I made one very similar to yesterday's:

I made one with some of my favorite batiks. I really like this one:

I tried something different, not my favorite:

And I made one that looks quilted. Not sure what I think. I do know it's a really bad picture!

What am I working on?

Here's a peak of what I am working on right now.  I've never done a pieced scrap quilt before. Wow do they take a lot of time!

Small Group Challenge

Continuing the vlog idea.  Here is a peak into my sewing room as I make an improv block using equilateral triangles for my march small group challenge.





So? Do you like the videos?

2015 Small Group Challenge: Rectangles

For 2015 our small group challenge required us to pick a color that we would use in the challenge each month; then at the end of the year I will put them together as a quilt top.

The color I picked was Jade. Kevin told me I couldn't pick pink because it wouldn't be a challenge.  I have to say, this will be difficult to work with and incorporate other colors!

This month's challenge was rectangles. I made a simple, modern block using improvised piecing. I didn't have a plan when I started.

2014 Color Challenge Quilts

In 2014 my small quilt group came up with a challenge. Each month, someone would bring a fabric or collection of fabrics to act as color inspiration. Then all the members of the group would create a 12" quilt showcasing those colors.  It was amazing to see what different people did each month.

Although I didn't intend to, my quilts seemed to have a few themes running through them. I grouped them by technique, but you'll notice a lot of circles and stripes too! Here are my twelve quilts from 2014. I may have shared some of these before, but never as a group.



Two quilts with stitch and slash.  I love the red one!

And then there were applique quilts. Here the dresden plate is my favorite, but I also love the raw edge arrows.

 

The next group is improvised piecing. I love all of these, but the gray with pink is my favorite of the 12.  It is a lot of fun to piece with no idea of where you are going!

 And then a few odd balls. Painting instead of piecing, quilt and piece at the same time, woven fabric, and then my very first try at a mosaic technique (the flowers are from where I spilled something when we met at Panera...)

New for 2015: Dancing Butterfly

I finished the quilt that I showed in the Mosaic tutorial. I do need to post it soon (though, as infrequent as I post- is anyone reading?)


But first, Leah Day has struck again. In a great follow up to Building Blocks Quilt Along, she has released the dancing butterfly quilt. This pattern has amazing video support- you get a password when you get the pattern, and you can watch her every step of the way. I don't really plan to watch the videos, making it an expensive pattern- but I wouldn't even be quilting without Leah, so I think it is well worth it.

 

Even for a semi-experienced quilter, this is a great project. Especialy since I quilt such small scale most of the time, this is forcing me to work on my large scale quilting, something I'm not great at.

 

I picked fabrics from the $1.99 sale at Fabric.com so I didn't have much choice, and unfortunately my thread doesn't show up great on the busy fabrics, but I think that will just add texture and color to the quilt. The back is a really busy pattern, so the quilting won't show up much there at all.

So now, explanation of the pictures
The pattern is set up where you quilt two "design blocks"  and then use those patterns to quilt the butterfly square.

The first up: Paisley and Ocean Currents. You can't really see them in the design blocks- so I didn't do close ups. Paisley was a real challenge- filling space with a large design. And Ocean Currents I kept having thread issues, so it took me a long time to get through too.

And set two: Zippling and Feathers.
I didn't do close up of zippling, because it's just a stippling design, nothing exciting. The feathers I am mostly happy with. I used bounce back feathers, a method I've finally started to get better at.

 

The one thing with this quilt is that it is quilt-as-you-go so there is a binding that covers 1/4" of the edge. I was so nervous about having my feathers covered up, I did the border ones much too small. Since this is not a show quilt, I am not going to rip them out to fix them, but blah.

A final photo

This is my final post in the BBQA series- use the tags at the bottom to see the posts about the individual blocks.

This quilt was a GREAT experience for me. I almost didn't do it, because I'm not a beginner. But everyone can use practice.  I did learn some new piecing methods (curved seams, which aren't really part of the pattern; paper piecing, the house blocks, and the handle for the basket). I also got to practice my precision on well known blocks.  None of the quilting was new to me, but much of it (especially circles) needed practice. I'd never done marked quilting either.  I think my favorite thing about this was that it gave me something to quilt that was a small time commitment, just a weekend of quilting every month.  It certainly isn't perfect, and I'm not sure I grew as a quilter, but I got to quilt- and that's what I wanted.  But if you are a new quilter- the skills covered by Leah in this pattern are just phenomenal. The video support especially is great.

The quilt is put together with quilt-as-you-go sashing. This is the third time I've done this, and the third method I've tried.  This I think is my favorite.  A few don't line up well, but that was when I was using pins. When I switched the magic clips, they got much closer to lining up (nothing I do is perfect).  The last few rows were tough to wrestle through the machine, but overall, I really liked the method. You could hand sew for invisible sashing, but there was no way I was doing that.

I did hand sew the binding to the back, so it does not have a line.  Here is what it looks like altogether! You should be able to click to see this photo larger. (And thankfully the dark marks on the basket blocks did wash out...)

The quilt is now hanging in our front entry way.  I used a blind-hem method of putting the hanging strip on and you cannot see it AT ALL.  Very impressed with this idea, and so thankful I ran across the tutorial.
http://weallsew.com/2014/08/26/easy-diy-quilt-hanging-sleeve-almost-entirely-by-machine/

Block 12: Sawtooth Star

Excuse the formatting on this post: the photos would NOT go where I wanted them!

And the final block of the quilt-a-long (which I guess I didn't quilt along very well, since I started late and ended early...)  This was a really neat exercise in learning to piece new blocks while getting to focus on what I really like- quilting.

I really like how these blocks turned out. I did well piecing the star, but then when I put on the border I lost a lot of points :(  Guess I need some more practice.

 

Block 11: Wonky Stars

This was a fun block to do- you laid out four 12 inch squares then slash cut 5 lines into them in the shape of a star. Then you rearranged the two colors and pieced them back together again.  Very cool technique.

Not much else to say, so enjoy the photos. Again, I modified Leah's quilting designs a bit.

 

Block 10: Baskets

The part of the basket that was a challenge was making the handle. It was turned against a piece of freezer paper, and was difficult to get to really curve.

I used a gluestick to hold it down while machine appliqueing in place, and despite using these gluesticks many times before, it looks like after I rinsed the blocks the glue came through and caused dark marks.  I hope when I wash the quilt in the washing machine it just washes out all the way. I haven't had that happen before, and really dislike the dark marks!  You can't really tell from far away, so I'm not too worried about it.

I did three sets of blocks this weekend, and got a bit tired of marking, so I just did a few lines to give me a sense of the pattern and did the rest freehand. I also changed the designs a bit on these blocks and the next two sets. I was ready to be done- and some of them were just too tedious to mark or quilt.

I had all these baskets rotated so that they were point to the bottom left, and none uploaded that way.  Oh well, you still get the idea.

This weekend I also did all the sashing!  The quilt is 90% done- just have to hand stitch the binding now (which will take forever...) 

Building Blocks Block 9: House Block

This was my favorite block so far. I was nervous about it- because it required a lot of precision to get all the pieces lined up, but it ended up coming out exactly the right size it was supposed to be. I felt very proud of my piecing skills.  Of course, there were no corners or points to line up.

Here are the 4 blocks:

And their backs to show off the quilting. There was quite a bit of travel stitching, especially on the roof lines.

And here is what the quilt is looking like so far! Just three more months of blocks to go. I may just go ahead and do them, I never watch the instructional videos anyway. Except the paper piecing and the curve (which I actually modified, since it wasn't meant to be a curved seam), there really wasn't a lot of skill building in this set for me. I don't regret doing it though- it still was good practice on making a lot of pieced blocks. I'm really starting to dread the part where I have to sew all these blocks together with binding strips!