Pincushion, and Pinterest

Alright people, I'm having Pinterest issues.  Thanks to those of you who have followed me, however I deactivated that account and started a fresh one and am still sorting out some very strange following issues.  I'm trying to be in touch with their support team, which is easier said than done.  That said, I think I'll stick with the new account I created which you can find here.  It'll be a bit sparse until everything gets working how it should.

In the meantime, a pincushion....

I {re}took the plunge....

After so much helpful feedback from all of you earlier today, figuring out how to remove my last name from my display, noticing that the 55 people who are listed as "following" are actually people that they have set me up to follow (who I can delete apparently, though I haven't figured out how yet) I took my Pinterest account out of deactivation mode and am giving it a try:

Come join me!  You can find me here.  I'm not even totally sure what it means to have someone "following" you but I guess I'll figure it out.  :)

W.I.P. Wednesday

First off, I'm giving away two Kate Spain "Joy" Christmas panels and you are all welcome to enter {here}.  The winners will be drawn on September 3.  Now onto my works in progress....

I got over my panic of faded fabric from earlier this week, realizing it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, and now I have 9 jumbo disappearing 9-patch Brrr! blocks.  All of them are slightly different, but they each contain all of the prints.  I used this tutorial from Oh Fransson! to make the 9-patch blocks, but instead of making them wonky I made carefully measured cuts and it worked out great.  I'd highly recommend this method of making blocks like this (make sure you have a sharp rotary blade!), and once again I'm glad that someone else has figured out all the steps for me!

I made this bee block for Alisha.  It's the Mod Mosaic block, again from Oh Fransson!, and it was trickier than I thought it would be.  Improv doesn't come easy to me!!  I do like how it turned out though. 

I won this awesome Echo charm pack from Erica @ Kitchen Table Quilting!!  I'm thinking of some placemats, maybe the Crazy Placemats from "Quilting Modern".   

No progress:

* Sparkle Punch using Kate Spain's "Joy" fabric

* name tag for MQG meeting

* Granny Squares (it's been a while, but you can see them in this post)

Now, a question for all of you!  Pinterest....since it is no longer necessary to use a Facebook/Twitter account, of which I have neither, to sign-up, I decided to give it a try.  First off, the sign-up process seemed really strange to me in that I had to scroll through tons and tons of random photos and choose 5 that I "liked" before I could even complete sign-up.  Why do they care?  Then, once I did that, I right aways had 55 followers, all totally random people that I do not know and it freaked me out so I deactivated my account instantly.  Is this just how it works??  Does it creep anyone else out?  Looking for some wise words here!!

Alright, I'm out for now.  Have a great week everyone.

Christmas in August?? ~ GIVEAWAY!

** Giveaway now closed - winners announced here.  Thanks to all who entered. **

If you follow along with my blog, then you know that I've had a bit of an avalanche (ha - nice winter pun, hey?) of Christmas fabrics come my way via blog giveaways.  I'm really enjoying working with them, but I must admit I'm not much of a "seasonal" type person and I'm not usually drawn to these types of fabrics. 

The bundle of Kate Spain's "Joy" that I recently won included 2 panels.  They're cute, but I have a strong feeling I won't use them, so I'd like to give them away!  

The top panel is just a cute collage of winter/Christmas scenes, to be made into a small quilt or cut up to use in cushions or however you chose to use it.  The bottom panel is basically a kit for making 2 Christmas stockings.

TWO winners will each receive one of these panels.  Leave any old comment to enter.  I'll draw winners on Monday, September 3.

Good luck!

Update, progress, and free FQ

I hope I didn't freak you all out yesterday.  Yes, some of my Brrr! fabric has several fade lines on it but the more I think about it and receive feedback, the more I wonder if it had nothing to do with being in the light.  Really, the bundle was not in broad daylight.  It was near a window, yes, but so is all of my other fabric and I have never experienced fading before.  I'm carrying on and it's not bothering me all that much anymore - was just sort of shocking at the time!  In the meantime, some progress.....

Anyone want a free fat quarter??  Not from me, but Katie let me know that Spoonflower is having a free fat quarter offer using the coupon code ETSYPARTY12.  You do have to pay $1 for shipping.  I don't know how long this offer is going on for but I tried it from Canada, and it worked.  I picked up a FQ of this adorable Heather Ross fabric.  Considering it is an $11 (!!!!!) piece of fabric, it's not a bad deal at all!

May this be a lesson....

See that, across the lime green circle?  Ummm, yeah.  That's what's called faded fabric.  :(  I finally took out my Brrr! bundle that I won months ago, started ironing the FQs, and noticed right away what had happened.  It's not present on all of the pieces that I have, and is definitely most pronounced on the lime green than any of the other colours, but can I say how disappointed I am??   I'm sure you can all understand!  Of course I will still use it and I'm hoping that it will not be obvious on a finished object.  I'm chopping it up a fair bit (more to come on that!) so I'm crossing fingers that that helps to conceal it as well.  

So may this be a lesson to all of us, please store your fabric where it will not see the light of day!!

Grateful for commenters, and a few random tidbits

On my W.I.P. Wednesday post earlier today I posted about the "Sleep" baby quilt I'm making, my question being whether the Kona Coal works as a background colour.  I like Coal a lot, but wanted to see what others thought about using it in this project.  I received a comment from Janice (pssst...check out her blog, it's beautiful!) which made SO much sense to me.  This is part of what she said:  "I think the charcoal is making the white around the letters stand out more than the colors in the letters."  Hmmmm, as much as I like Coal, I think she's right!

Here's the photo showing "Sleep" with Coal:

And the new version, against Kona Snow:

It really does have the effect that Janice was referring to - the colourful letters stand out more against the Snow and the background fabric I used for the letters blends in waaaaay more than it does with the Coal.  I really think I'm sold on this idea, so thank you Janice!  I'll probably sneak Coal into the project as well, just not right against the letters.  (and I see that I inadvertently swapped my two "E's" around in these two versions...I think I'll keep the red one in the centre)

A few more little tid-bits, non sewing related.  My youngest, Owen, has had this bushy long-ish hair for over a year now, refusing to get a haircut.  Well today he finally said he wanted one so off we went!  The before/after....much better, no?

This haircut required a tiny bit of bribery on my part, and what he wanted was a Lego mini-figure.  :)  If you know anything about these you'll know that they come in a sealed bag and you don't know what you're going to get.  You can try to feel what's in the bag as much as you want, chances are you won't guess right!  This is what he got today:

Isn't she lovely??????   ;-)

W.I.P. Wednesday

I missed last week, but am back now and have actually sewn a little bit!  I'm participating in the Proverbial Quiltalong with Poppyprint using Denyse Schmidt's pattern, as I mentioned earlier this week, and I finally decided to go really simple and make a baby quilt that says "Sleep", as shown in the pattern booklet.  I also decided to use scraps, making each letter out of a variety of prints from one colour family.  This was my first time paper piecing with freezer paper, and it took some doing, but between yesterday and today I have all 5 letters finished.

I used Sally's Skirt from Hometown Reunion for the letter backgrounds, and am "auditioning" Kona Coal as the spacers between each letter and an upper and lower border.  What do you think?  Does it work?

 

That's all the sewing I've done, but I've also cut all of the print squares for a Sparkle Punch quilt, using the Kate Spain "Joy" FQ bundle that I won.  It was a LOT of cutting!  Over 400, 3.5" squares so far and I haven't even gotten to the background fabric yet.  I'm still debating on that one, thanks again for all the input on my last post.  I think at this point I'm leaning towards Kona Ash, but I do tend to be indecisive so my mind could change 15 times before I actually order fabric for it!

So those are the two major things I have on the go at the moment, and asides from those I have a few bee blocks to make and I still need to come up with something for a name tag for our MQG meeting on September 5.  Otherwise we're just enjoying the last few weeks of summer.  The weather has cooled down and today I'm wearing a sweater and slippers!

Have a good week everyone.

"Joy" + Kona .... advice please!

Hello friends.  If you read my post the other day you know that I'm a bit swamped with Christmas fabric!  Well, after considering lots of options (and being inspired by Toni's idea!) I have decided to use the FQ bundle of Kate Spain's new "Joy" fabric to make a Sparkle Punch quilt, designed by Elizabeth Hartman of the Oh, Fransson! blog.

Here's what it looks like - I have a FQ of each of these prints:

The Sparkle Punch design needs a background colour of course, and I'm having a really tough time deciding.  I'm a little averse to white in general - I find it a bit too stark and let's face it, I live with boys!!  So I was considering some of the grays that Kona has - even a dark one like Coal - but I'm just not sure.  And there doesn't seem to be a gray lighter than Ash.  Nothing has 100% grabbed me yet.  I searched around online a bit to see what's been done with this fabric, and since it's still very new there are not very many examples yet however the few I have seen all use a white background.  See here, here, here.  It's growing on me....a bit.

I worry that since many of the prints have a white background as it is, that they'll get lost in a general white background on the quilt, but looking at the examples I linked above, it doesn't seem to be the case.  

So, what do you think???  I'd appreciate any advice!!

P.S.  Here's a small bit of what I have cut so far, and that ruler you can see underneath???  It's a 6" x 24" that I just bought yesterday!  Can you believe I've never had one?  I'm one who tends to 'make do' (I used a 6" x 16" cutting mat until just a few months ago.....) but can I say, I LOVE this ruler!  SO much easier than what I was doing before, which I won't even go into...

Name tags, QALs, and Christmas

Hey everyone. I haven't been around a lot lately and I haven't been sewing, but I have been thinking! First up, my city is having its second Modern Quilt Guild meeting on September 5th.  I wasn't able to go to the first meeting but I plan to be there in September.  We've been challenged to make name tags for ourselves and I'm feeling a bit at a loss!!  These are a few that I've seen on Flickr (and Svetlana has recently made two really cute ones) but if anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear them.  This should be a small, quick, FUN project but I can see myself over-thinking it. What do you think?

1. My beautiful name tag!, 2. Name tag for STL Modern Quilt Guild, 3. Name swap, 4. Sewing Summit name tag

Next, I've joined a quilt along!  The Proverbial Quiltalong with Poppyprint, to be exact.  I have the pattern, and I'm trying to think of a quote to use.  I can think of all sorts of inspirational type stuff, but I kind of want it to just be something fun.  Still considering.....  In the meantime, Krista has asked the participants to post a photo of themselves with their pattern in the Flickr group, so here I am!

And finally for today, I've been a lucky girl lately and I've managed to come away with two huge bundles of Christmas-y FQ's!

A few months ago I won a bundle of 11 FQs of Laurie Wisburn's new Brrr! line.  I love this fabric, especially those polar bears, just not sure what to do with it yet.

Then more recently, I was shocked to learn that I had won a FQ bundle of the entire collection of Kate Spain's new 'Joy' line, including two panels.  The fabric arrived today and it's a huge stack!!

So I'm a little bit buried in Christmas fabric at the moment as you can see and I would love to do something special with them.  Any ideas?  There are quite a few directional prints in both of these lines, which limits the options a bit.  Hmmmmmm.

I think I'm all updated now.  Hope you're all doing well - we were away for a week and I checked my emails and blogs a bit, but not as much as usual.  Hopefully I'll get back in the sewing groove again soon, but for now we're just trying to stay cool.  We were spoiled on our vacation with air conditioning just about everywhere we were.  Not so much at home!!

Take care all.

Two family finishes...

Both of these projects have now been gifted so I can finally share!

First up, my scrappy postage stamp quilt.  This started out as a possible donation quilt project but when the patchwork was finished I liked it so much that I didn't know if I could part with it.  So it sat for quite a while as I decided how to do the borders and binding, which took a long time as you might remember!  Fast forward to more recently...my sister and her family are moving overseas this fall and I really wanted to send a quilt with them but I wasn't sure if they would be able to/want to pack a quilt, so I asked and she said "yes!", so I knew this quilt would be for them.

It is bordered in Kona Snow, bound with Kona Grass, and the backing is a gray gingham that I really like.  I figured that the back needed to be a little bit more subdued than the front!

The second finish that I want to show you is a mug rug that I made for my Dad, at his request.  I sorted through my fabric leftovers and picked out a bunch of different grays.  I went with a simple string block design, trying to make the strips different widths to make the "rounds" a little bit wonky, but I realize now that I should have varied the widths a lot more than I did to achieve more of that effect.  But oh well, I still really like the result!  It measures about 7.5" square.

I have to say - I've made a lot of quilting projects over the last couple of years and a lot of them have been for our own home, which is great, but making things for other people is even greater I think. 

A little help from my friends...

I have a finish to share that I'm really excited about.  As I mentioned, last week was my birthday.  I had dropped some pretty heavy hints (necessary in this house!) that I would like a Kobo Touch eReader for my birthday.  My husband came through and I've been enjoying my eReader so far, but of course what does a little techie device need?  A cozy!  And why buy one when you can make one, right?

Now, about the blog title...over the last number of months at different times I've done little swaps with other quilters here and there, and both of the fabrics I used for this project were ones that I received from my quilty friends.  The Tula Pink Prince Charming that I used for the outer came from Chelsea, and the Lizzy House Outfoxed Pearl Bracelet that I used for the lining came from Lucy.  Both of these fabrics I've been hanging on to and wanted to use for the "right" project.  I'm excited that I'm finally using them, so thanks again you two!

The Kobo is a bit smaller than the Kindle, which is what many of the tutorials I found were designed for.  I ended up combining a few different patterns, this one by One Shabby Chick (which is written for an iPad) and this one by Elizabeth Hartman (written for a laptop).  The Elizabeth Hartman one gave formulas for making a custom size - bingo!  Sometimes my brain doesn't work very well on its own to figure out those sorts of things plus seam allowances, etc., so I was glad to find that someone else did the work for me.  The finished pouch is a very snug fit but I think it's good that way and will likely stretch out a little with use anyways.

Did you notice the button and buttonhole??  This was my first time ever making a buttonhole on my machine!  I made a bunch of practice ones to get the width how I wanted it, but really, it was smooth sailing.  If you're afraid, don't be!  I didn't want to use velcro or snaps, and I wasn't crazy about the idea of an elastic loop either, so I just went for it and it turned out great.  Another little item to add to the "not as hard as you might think" category!

I've spent the morning sewing, now time for some lunch.  Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

What 270 hexagons looks like...

These are 1" hexies (measured along each side), and interestingly, 270 of them makes an approximate 27" x 27" square.  I'm feeling like "what do I do now???".  I don't like having unfinished projects but I don't even know what this is going to be!  At one point yesterday as I stitched on the last row that I had ready for now, I thought hmm, maybe I'll make it into a kitchen floor mat, but then I realized it is too big for that now.  I guess I'll tuck it away for now and add to it here and there - you will see more of this project in the future!

Linking up with Parade Day @ There and Back