Work in Progress Wednesday

Postage Stamp Back and Binding

Postage Stamp Quilt:  

-Have all materials
-Need to piece back
-Need to sandwich and quilt
-Need to cut binding
-Need to bind and wash

...Spring Break project?

Purple Quilt:
-Taken an indefinite hiatus
-MUST be finished by May 10...gives more days to procrastinate

I got my quilt labels in from Spoonflower and they are awesome!  90 labels for 22 cents each after paying for rush shipping.  Pretty decent deal and next time I can slow the shipping since it won't be immediately necessary.


Selvage ends will work nicely to test out fabric pens!

Here is a close up picture of the squares.  They are super close to 2 inches but not exactly.













I FINALLY FIGURED OUT WHAT TO DO WITH THE SCRAPS LEFT OVER FROM THE POSTAGE STAMP QUILT!!!!!

I got two nook/kindle cases out of them and almost an iPad case.  The iPad case needs some work because its fractionally too small which is just frustrating.

I am counting down until the semester is over.  Only 22 days until Spring Break and flying to Arizona!  And 80ish days until Disney and even fewer until Graduation #2.  To walk or not to walk that is the question...

Well little has developed on the quilting front.  School has ramped up with midterms in a couple weeks and that leaves little time for quilting.  I have to go to Dallas for a conference March 4-6.  Accounting conference is a party....probably not really.

I have ordered the rest of the fabric for the postage stamp quilt and I am excited to finish it.  But I want to finish the purple quilt first.

I do have a little something to show you though!

Today I ordered labels to go on the quilts so they have a history.  I couldn't find any that I really liked because they tend to be old-lady-ish.  So I mocked up a label that I liked and am having it printed on fabric.

Spoonflower is the company I am ordering this through and I am excited to see the final product. It should be here by 2/25...can't wait!  Until then here is the mock up but it will be printed around 80 times on a fat quarter.  So I have 80 labels for $11!

It has space in the middle to write in who the quilt is for and when it was made.  You know the things that are always changing!

Snow-mageddon 2011

Well needless to say today was a snow day.  In Conway we received 8 or so inches.  Annabell was not too pleased given the snow came up over her legs.  She would not blaze new paths through the snow instead chose to follow in Derek's footsteps.

So today I got a ride in Joe's 4-wheel drive over to their house to work on Chelsey's t-shirt quilt.  Kimberly and I cut out the squares, ironed on the interfacing, and squared up the blocks.  When we attempted to fire up the sewing machine there was no such luck.  I pulled the machine apart too quickly to change the bobbin thread and we spent hours trying to re-assemble the bottom threading with no such luck.

This is the ancient machine we were attempting to use.  I think Kimberly might need a newer model.

Tomorrow is another snow day (thanks UCA!) so I am going to work on quilting the purple quilt before I work on anything else.  Now I am off to drink some cocoa and watch tv.

Weekend Update!

So I finished the postage stamp quilt top today. There are no pictures because it is too big to hold up and take pictures.  But I promise to take pictures when it is completed...sometime in March.

The leftover fabric from the quilt I was going to use to make placemats.  Well here is one completed.

Cute right?  But there are problems...

Here is it compared to the placemats we have on the table.  Its a wee bit small.  The quilter in me can't just throw it away after spending so much time on it.  So here is my solution...

Now I have a new mouse pad.  And three more...

It is nice for wide sweeping mousing.  Anybody else want one?  Leave me a comment if you do or if you can think of another solution for a 10"x 14" micro-quilt.

Stash Report & Postage Stamp Quilt

During the month of January, I acquired quite a lot of fabric.  I hit all of the stores in Conway, Little Rock and North Little Rock to check out what their inventory was like.  So this fabric is from Hobby Lobby (NLR, Conway barely has any), Joann (NLR,

conveniently located next to Hobby Lobby), Hancock's (Conway), and some from online stores. These are all of my yard cuts.  I am excited about starting to pull from my stash when making a new quilt.

These are all fat quarter pre-cuts and a stack of 5" squares (charm packs) in the bottom center.


I think I might have a problem....

Rachel at PS I Quilt started a Quilt-A-Long during the month of January.  I decided to grab some fabric and join the party.  I needed two jelly rolls (one solid and one patterned) so I decided to use Central Park since I have loved it since I first saw it.

The instructions for the Quilt-A-Long can be found here.  If anyone wants to follow the pattern later.  It's a quilt of 2" squares that is a fairly simple assembly.

I posted pictures of my strip sets on Facebook.  From there I cut the sets into 2.5" strips and sewed them together to form squares and eventually form rows.  I still have to press my seams open before I finish sewing the quilt top but it's really really close to being done!

 I have decided to quilt it diagonally but it's going to be quite a chore to fit this 60"x80" quilt onto the machine.  Lots of rolling and pinning.

I also have 27 extra strips that might just become some new placemats.  Derek is very uncertain about quilted placemats but I think they would fit right in.

That's all I have for now.  Let me know what you think.

A Brief History of Quilting

There have always been people in my family that quilted.  I never had a lot of interest until recently.

My sewing machine with seam ripper on
the left and small scissors on the right.
Handy!

For Christmas, I received a Brother sewing machine and decided to learn to quilt.  My first project was to be a t-shirt quilt of all the t-shirts I have that hold sentimental value but are no longer viable to wear.

Kim spent a day teaching me the basics of quilting and the skills that I would need to pull of my first quilt.  I learned interfacing, measuring and cutting, squaring blocks, sewing, making a quilt sandwich, quilting and binding.  These were all fairly simple on the small scale I was working on.  This is the product of my learning to quilt and sew.  Can you believe that I have never sewn a stitch on an machine before this tiny quilt?

When getting back to Arkansas, I started on my t-shirt quilt.  I took a day off work and started interfacing the t-shirts and cutting many squares.  This was the end product of piecing the quilt top.  It took ten days from start to finish for the t-shirt quilt.  That was some really hard work using hundreds of meters of thread.  I went through a whole 500 meter spool on this quilt alone.

After working on the t-shirt quilt I got hooked.  I started following all of the quilt blogs on right side bar.  My favorites are probably Film in the Fridge and PS I Quilt.

In my next post, I will show my stash and my latest project.