Custom Throw Pillows

My bedroom has 3 windows above the bed. They let in a lot of light from the street lamp and even more from the moon. So we put curtains up to cover them almost immediatly.

There wasn't really a great way to open the curtains (maybe we could have done a wrap to pinch them in the center?) so the windows always stayed covered. Which basically made it that we didn't have windows. But these curtains were not blackout, so while they were good at night, the room was too bright to nap during the day.

You can see in that picture we also didn't have curtains. Well, there is a flagpole across the street that the guy keeps a spotlight on all night (as I guess he should). That spotlight comes in through the crack in the blinds at EXACTLY eye level to where I sleep (the window side is my side of the bed). Kevin can't see it, but curtains were a priority for me. (Once I put a t-shirt over the blinds, they became a priority for Kevin.)

A few months ago we got curtains, and I think they added a lovely finished look to the room. But they didn't match the small curtains. And the small curtains weren't really working as well as I'd like.

So I got another panel of the curtains, with the idea to make a set of small curtains.  But then watching movies in the living room, I had the goofy idea to stick the throw pillows into the square windows in our kitchen that glare on the TV.  And they blocked out all the light. And filled the window well almost completely.

I realized I had a solution. Instead of making curtains, I could make pillows.  And they fill the window almost completely (just a little light around the edges). The room is nearly black- which make napping very easy.

But even better is that I can take them out of the windows during the day, and use them as throw pillows on the bed. So my bed looks fancy, and the windows let light in.   

Since we were going to use them as throw pillows, it was important they be washable- the dog hair gets everywhere. So I made pillow forms and then put an invisible zipper in the seam and the curtain fabric is a pillow case.  The curtain cost $23.79, the zippers $0.60 each, the fiberfill was $12 for a 5-pound box (and I have about half left)- so the pillows were about $10.50 each.  Pretty good price for made to match, custom pillows. It would have been hard to find throw pillows on sale for that amount. And now I also have window coverings!

Did the gushing blog post give off how excited I am about this?

Building Blocks Quilt Along: Post 6

 This month's block was a pinwheel. This was a difficult one to piece, since I am really really trying for accuracy.  Mine weren't too far off, but they also weren't perfect. 

The quilting designs this month were really fun. Two of them went really heavy through the center, which I think had a bit too much build up, and my stitch in the ditch still needs a lot of work, but overall I think these look really good.  This is the first time I've done pebbles as a pre-marked designed. I don't think I would mark them again, but I'm happy with how they look. Marking them means that I got to have a lot of different sizes, and they look really good- but it loses freedom of how to fill the space if your circle is just a bit off.  However, I love how pebbles let you travel anywhere when you get stuck. There is so much traveling anyway, that you can just go back over anything.  My favorite of this block though is the echo quilting curves. I love the movement in it.

And here is what the progress on the whole quilt it:

Color Challenge #2

My small quilt group is doing a 12 x 12 color challenge each month this year.  For some reason, I haven't been sharing them on the blog- I should update with all of them.

I missed the February meeting and just now got around to catching up with that quilt.  I decided to try a few new things with it. First- I wove the center instead of piecing it. I think the weaving makes a really cool look, but for a sampler quilt like this I didn't spend the time making sure it was perfectly centered, I probably should have, as the ends get cut off unevenly.

And second, I hand stitched the binding to the back, instead of bringing it to the front and machine stitching. I used Mirage fabric from Connecting Threads, and the way it is printed if you hit it just right it brings up white thread :(  But you can reall only see that very close up.

These aren't my favorite colors, but overall, I think it looks pretty cool.  I didn't quilt the middle with the weaving. It should be fine on a wall hanging, but that big spot without quilting really makes me want to do something with it!

Fat Quarter Shop 12-pound Grab Bag Review

I recently ordered a grab bag from fatquartershop.com.  If you read my other grab bag review (from Craft Connection), you'll know I was disappointed- a lot of the fabric was poor quality and it didn't amount to much savings per yard.

This review is the opposite of that. I bought a 12-pound grab bag from Fat Quarter Shop. The UPS label said it weighed 13 pounds- so they did a great job filling this box up!

This box doesn't look that big...

http://www.fatquartershop.com/12-pound-fabric-grab-bag
It cost $78.99 with shipping, so not cheap (right now though there is a coupon code ddapron, I believe- It would have saved me $14!!! but I looked all over for a week before I ordered and couldn't find a code. Now I'm kicking myself of course.)

This fabric was all top quality, first rate fabric. Name brands like Michael Miller, Timeless Treasures, Moda.  Almost everything was yardage - selvedge to selvedge cuts. So little of it was other cuts, I actually didn't include them in my totals.

Non-selvage cuts: one 10" square, one 1/3 yd x 1/2 yd rectangle, two 6.5" x 10.5" rectangles.

So what about the rest? There were 75 pieces. They ranged from 5" to 32". The length I got the most of was 18", with 20 pieces. The second most common length was 23", with 9 pieces. And the third most common was 16", with 6 pieces. Typing out this paragraph makes me want to break out my Fathom statistical software. I could tell you all kinds of statistics about the fabric lengths (such as the average length being 16.5" inches, or the median being 18"- which as I already pointed out is the mode.  Do you want to know how many are within 1 standard deviation?)

This stack really doesn't SEEM that big...

But that would be boring.  More interesting might be to know that in all I got 34.3 yards of fabric. Which means the price works out to $2.30 per yard.  Since all of it is great quality useable fabric, I'm pretty happy with this. Even the designs I won't use will be great backings for small wall quilts. (My wall quilts always have absurd backs.)

And even more interesting might be pictures of the fabric:
Polka Dots

 Geometric Prints

 Solids (wish I got more of these!)

 Stripes and Chevrons:

 Floral and Leaves (the second from the left on the bottom row is my favorite fabric- a gorgeous tree print that I just want to frame as is.)

 Novelty fabrics:

 A group I couldn't categorize (I LOVE this peacock!):

 Kids fabrics:

 Another group I couldn't really categorize:

I am just SO in love with this box.  Once I use a quarter or half of it, I might buy another one.  But I think I am going to be really patient and wait for a coupon code!

Building Blocks: Post #5

 This month's block was Drunkard's Path.  I had never done curved seams before, because I had heard they were really hard. The pattern is actually set up to do this as reverse applique with a raw edge (sew the two squares on top of each other, and then cut away to reveal the fabric underneath)- but that isn't really a "stretch" for me, and this pattern is about learning new things.  So I googled to learn how to make the template to sew the seams as a pieced block. (Turns out it was really easy- draw the squares twice with the seam line marked. On one square mark 1/4" inside the seam on the other mark 1/4" outside the seam, and now you have templates for the two pieces.

So is sewing curved seams hard? Well, not really- it's just like sewing in a sleeve!  I practiced a method with pins and without pins and I found using pins to be both faster and more accurate.  I am really happy with these blocks.

 

The quilting wasn't too difficult, though there was a lot of traveling involved.  On the spiral block I wobbled really badly at one point, so I'm a little annoyed about that- but I absolutely LOVE the design. It reminds me of Celtic Bubbles, that I use quite a bit.  For that block, because there is an open string end in the middle of the block, I actually had to bury my threads. Since these blocks will be cut and sewn together later, I have just been sewing right off the edge as a shortcut :)

 Someone on the Building Blocks facebook had a brilliant idea to use a computer program to put together images to share our quilt progress.  So cool! This is what I've done so far, and what is yet to come!

Building Blocks: Post #4

The next block in the building block series is a "modern" block. This block should be incredibly easy because there are no matched seams.  Well, I still managed to sew one different from the other- so one of my blocks is sewn backwards.  If it can be done wrong, I'll do it wrong!

This block was to teach about quilting on different scales.  I do a lot of small scale quilting, so it wasn't really a problem for me to do the 1/8" scale which is what a lot of people struggled with.  I still struggle with straight lines, but maybe they are getting better.  I don't think I'd do tiny cross hatching on the inside of a quilt though- the travel lines get really heavy!

I didn't take a picture of the tracing, but rest assured, it was sloppy and I quilted okay in spite of it :)

Here are the fronts:

And here are the backs:

Craft Connection Scrap Bag Reviews

I just realized I never posted these reviews- I got these scrap bags in October 2013.  Someone on quiltingboard.com had recommend CraftConn.com as a place to get some good scraps. We had just had a guild speaker talk about scrap quilts- and really, I don't have many scraps :(  So I want to build up the collection just a bit.  This definitely helped do that!

Since getting these bags, I actually haven't done any scrap quilts, but I've used a lot of the solid fabrics to back small quilts. Usually it has had to be pieced (often just with itself to make a different dimension), but it has been getting used :)

So here is what I got:

Now let's talk about it is.
I got two 1 lb solid scrap bags ($4.14 each), one 1 lb bright scrap bag ($10.50), and one 1 pound pink scraps bag ($8.00).  Shipping was $12.35.  In retrospect- the bright and pink are kind of expensive because at the time fabric.com's 3 pound scrap bag was $19.99 (though it is now double that), and fatquartershop offers a large grab bag for a lot less per pound (but a higher cost over all).  However, in the case of craftconn, you get what you pay for. The scraps in the bright and pink bag are just much better fabric than the solids. The solids are pretty shabby- many of them are pilling already- right out of the box!  I was pretty disappointed by that.

I figured out that the fabric cost me $2.95 a yard overall.  Since I'm using it, it isn't that bad, but fabric.com often has sale fabric for that price- so I could have just gone and selected a few of those cuts if I want it for backing and test blocks. However, since I wanted a variety of colors and patterns, that wouldn't have worked for me here.

Since I planned to review the scrap bags (and I PLANNED on being more prompt) I measured all the fabric. The bags ranged from 3.2 yards to 3.5 yards each.  I split the shipping cost per box and a pound ranged from $2.06 to $4.12 per yard.

Here is what I got:
Solid bag #1 (1 pound; weighed 1.01 pounds)
17" cut of yellow, pink, green, blue
1 Fat Quarter of blue (very faded, unfortunately)
9.5" cut of black, and two of white
6" cut of black
14" cut of thin muslin
This was 3.2 yards, the bag was $4.14 + $3.09 for shipping or $7.23 total; $2.26 a yard.

Solid bag #2 (1 pound; weighed 15.9 ounces)
17" cut of brown, beige, yellow, pink, green, blue
15" cut of white
11" cut of black
3" scrap of black
This was 3.5 yards, bringing it to $2.06 a yard

Bright bag (1 pound; weighed 15.9 ounces)
16" cut of pink and rainbow
15" cut of stripes, red, and orange
7" cut of green
9" cut of green and dolls
6 Fat Quarters
1 9" square
This was 3 1/3.  The bag plus shipping was $13.59, bringing it to $4.12 a yard.

Pink Bag (1 pound; weighed 15.9 ounces)
5"- one cut
17"- 2 cuts
2 Fat Quarters
14 Fat Eighths
This was 3 1/3 yards. The bag was a total of $11.09, making it $3.33 a yard.


So overall- I can use what I got, but I don't plan to buy a grab bag from this place again. The solids were crappy fabric, and the other fabrics were too expensive for unknowns.

Building Blocks: Post 3

I'm quickly catching up on this quilt-along, even only being able to sew for a short amount at any one time. (I go in Friday for new x-rays. Hopefully the bone has healed and I can remove the neck brace. And hopefully the neck brace and the weird posture it puts me in is the cause of the pain, and I feel better next weekend!)

It kinda makes me wonder if I am going to stick with 'along', or if I should just go through the blocks at my own pace. The thing is, for a few blocks, I might need the video instruction.

Anyhow- this block was super easy to piece. The outsides are wider than the inside strips because, remember, this gets trimmed to 8" squares before assembly.

As before, I found some of the tracing difficult. It is hard to do long lines because the fabric shifts. And because I am tracing the circles, they aren't that accurate. (Sorry the writing block is rotated. It isn't on my computer then turns when I upload it and I can't turn it back)

 And here is the quilting (I don't get it. Here the writing block is upside down!).  You can see my circles need a lot of work. Writing words is probably the easiest, though tracing is easier to do than free handing them (but that is because my handwriting is awful):

 

And the back of the blocks. I don't really have any issues with these. I think overall they are pretty good.