I have a Black Belt...

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It is REALLY tough to add to my fabric stash when I live in a SUPER small town with very limited choices on designer quilting cottons for purchase.  So when I go to bigger city centers, I definitely take advantage of the beautiful quilt shops that are available.  It is probably a good thing that I don't live in a bigger city center simply because I could see myself going "off-the-chain-crazy" buying up every bolt in the country.  Let's just say I could easily achieve "BLACK BELT" status in buying fabric...

FABRIC STASH PURCHASE #1:
About 2 weeks ago, Stinky and I made a trip to Vernon.  I made a deal with him:  I would go with him to a few of his favorite stores if he accompanied me to a few of my favorite stores, then we would go for lunch.  It was a date!  I love going on dates with my boy!

Of course, you KNOW where I wanted to shop:  Yes - Stinky, my 15 year old son graciously and patiently accompanied me to a few fabric stores.  He helped me pick out some great fabrics to add to my stash and I left happy all in about 20 minutes!

Hiiiiiii - yah!!  Chop! Chop!  Added to the fabric stash!

Status:  ORANGE BELT!

FABRIC STASH PURCHASE #2:
I walk into a Kelowna quilt shop and start looking through the fabrics section by section ..."no... no... no... no..." I am finding NOTHING to buy - how can that be?!!!   Usually I can always go into any quilt/fabric store and find SOMETHING to buy... but really there was nothing!... No really bloggy peeps!... Nothing!...

Then I turned a corner... the clouds parted, the angels sang and rays of sunshine beamed down on the CLEARANCE SECTION!  Amy Butler fabric in the CLEARANCE SECTION????!  SHUT UP!  I started pulling bolts of fabric like a mad woman!!!

I ask the woman cutting the fabric WHY?  Why is the BEST fabric in the clearance section????  Answer:  Most of the women that come into the shop are older women who prefer a different fabric style... I think... what a crying shame!  BUT!  BONUS FOR ME!  Designer fabric at a fraction of the price and all for me?  I'll take one of each please!!!

Some Amy Butler fabric will do me just fine...

Along with a few Robert Kaufman pieces!

Soon I was blowing the smoke off the debit card and out the door in about 20 minutes!

Hiiiiiii - yah!!  Chop! Chop!  Added to the fabric stash!

Status:   PURPLE BELT!

FABRIC STASH PURCHASE #3:
I fill MOST of my fabric stash with online purchases.  There are some really great online fabric stores!  Hawthorne Threads HAS to be my favorite.  Regardless of the fact that the fabric has to journey across the continent from New York, I get my fabric in about a week's time and their prices are one of the best I have found online!  Bar none!  Not to mention they carry every kind of designer cotton known to any black-belted-fabric-buying-crazy-woman!  In fact, I am patiently waiting for a package to arrive any day now... when it comes I will definitely share the goods with you... in eye candy anyways!

Hiiiiiii - yah!!  Chop! Chop!  Added to the fabric stash!

Status:  BLACK BELT!

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Saturday Night Fever

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Once in a VERY blue moon, I will have a Saturday night where nothing is planned.  I really enjoy those evenings.  My biggest choice is what pajama pants to throw on and what type of snack to grab to take down to my sewing studio to sew and eat to my heart's content.  I love those kinda nights!  (You can call me a nerd I'm okay with that!)

This past Saturday night ended up being one those kinda evenings!  But instead of heading to my studio, I actually went into the office and sat down at the computer with a big mitt full of fabric.  Why - you ask?!  Well to scan fabric into my computer of course! 

I have been slowly trying to scan ALL my fabric (Ya!  Right!... Not in this lifetime or the next!) into my computer to use with my EQ7 software to design quilts.  It is fabulous to be able to "preview" the look of my own fabrics in the quilts I design before I slice into even one fabric.  But like everything else in my life, it seems like the quilting part of life gets shelved for higher priority items sometimes.  So, on Saturday evening I was bound and determined I was going to sit down and scan fabric and "play" on my EQ7 software.  And that's just what I did!

After scanning a pile of fabrics, I imported all the "jpeg" files of my fabrics into my EQ7 and got busy... playing that is!  

I love creating quilts on the EQ7 and then playing with different fabric combinations.  It is truly amazing how just a switch of fabric color can change the whole look of a quilt!  For example, I created this quilt using these fun fabric combinations:

I LOVED the unexpected results!  And I NEVER would have settled on these fabric combinations had I seen them just laying around on my sewing table.  Then I came up with this combination which I liked even more!

I think this one is even more fun!  Can you see that I have a thing for polka dots???  Then I decided to just switch out the 9 patch block in the quilt above and inserted a LARGER, simpler half square triangle block.  These are the results:

I think this is such a darling quilt!  I must make it!!!!  If you have not noticed yet, I truly love anything that has the unexpected in it and this is truly that!  Again, I never would've chosen the fabric combo's but I do really like this!

Another thing that I designed on Saturday night was a chevron quilt.  This is a quilt pattern that MANY people have recreated on the internet ALL OVER the place.  I see it on pinterest, blogs, magazines and the like.  I think most quilters like it because it is a fast and easy quilt to MAKE, plus you get high impact results!  Am I right my bloggy quilting peeps?  Not wanting to feel left out, I designed my own chevron quilt and this is what I came up with:

As you can see I have inserted the words "cozy quilt" on it, of which I think would be fun to applique onto a quilt for someone special.  And I thought the combination of blues and greens were a nice contrast.  If you look closely at this photograph you will also notice that there is a design of wavy lines going horizontally across the quilt.  The EQ7 software allows a person to design and insert the quilting pattern they want to do over the quilt once it is all pieced!  How cool is that?  And of course, the icing on the cake is that you can print that stencil pattern off and make it into a stencil to do just that!  

I thought these were pretty good results for a Saturday night of goofing around on software and eating snacks!  Don't you think?! If you are interested in reading more about the EQ7 software, you can read my last EQ7 post here, or just go visit their website and BE AMAZED at the possibilities of what you can do with this software.  Just watching some of the videos of what the software could do sold me!  I would definitely label this purchase as one of my ALL TIME FAVORITES to date with respect to quilting.  I promise you won't be disappointed!  I should be working for EQ7 should I not?!

So!  What did you do last Saturday night?

I'm Trippin'

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Ya I've seen them....  Allllllll over the internet and everytime I see one I drool.... just a little bit! 

You know what I am talking about?  Those gorgeous "Scrappy Trip Around the World" quilts that everyone is pumping out at warp speed?  Pinterest has a PLETHORA of them and everytime I see one I pin it to my Pinterest QUILTS board!

I am a perfectionist to some degree, but I thought I could "let loose" and unfreak my control freak'ish ways... maybe.........I can get a little scrappy people.... I really can!

But first I had to figure out how this was all done!  So I googled a few things and came up with this great easy-to-follow little tutorial from Bonnie at Quiltville.  Super easy instructions!  Bonnie did this tutorial up right!  I was off and running after just skimming through the first page. 

I decided that considering most of my fabric stash has a lot of blue and green-y colored fabrics in it and I had a lot of large scraps in those colors, I thought I would have enough fabric to pull off a quilt... (do you recall that I am really bad at starting a quilt project and NOT planning out whether I have enough fabric to finish it???!)  The nice thing is that with a scrappy quilt, adding more fabric just makes it look better right?...WINK!  WINK!...

I followed the tutorial to a "T" and cut all my strips of fabric into 2.5"wide by 16" long strips which will evenutally make 12" sized blocks.  I decided that I was going to incorporate the gray polka dot as my "consistent" fabric throughout the quilt.  Don't these strip piles look pretty on their own?

So here's my "loosely described tutorial" of how to do this:  I sewed 6 of those strips together along their length and I included a gray strip within each set of those 6 strips.  Then I folded that set of 6 strips in half (along the length) and sewed down the last raw edge, essentially forming a tube.  Of course I am ironing all those seams down as I go.  Once I did that, I squared off my tube ends to clean them up a bit:

Then I cut across the length of the tube at 2.5" intervals.  Creating what I call "bracelets."  After that, I numbered ONE square on each bracelet from 1-6 with my disappearing ink pen:

And then as per Bonnie's tutorial, got out my sharp seam ripper and ripped out the seam at the bottom of each numbered square.  I found that keeping the rule of always ripping out the BOTTOM of each numbered square always saved me from forgetting where I was ripping a seam out etc.  It went surprisingly fast! Can you see the faint written numbers on the last 3 bracelets?

And then the magic started to happen.  As I opened up each bracelet I could see the pattern emerge!  So fun!!!!

Of course after that I was on the home stretch:  Just lay out those strips and sew them one to another, ironing the seams as I went.

 I just couldn't wait to get another one done and lay it out to see the quilt slowly come together! 

This was one of those bonus days where I had planned out my Chicken Enchilada dinner way ahead, so that I didn't even have to stop sewing!  My dear sweet hubby served me right in my sewing studio (with my beloved Coca Cola - oh people it IS a problem!) so that I could continue on with my scrappy-mania!

I just kept sewing blocks... and more blocks, and more blocks... BECAUSE THIS PIECING TECHNIQUE IS SO DURN ADDICTING!

 
Yes, my bloggy peeps, a 10 year old could do this and make it look easy.  I truly enjoyed it as it was easily repetitive, worked up quickly and I loved seeing the results of each sewn block and how each color played off the other...

 And then I played with the lay out of these blocks which was also a lot of fun.  I would set up one lay out and take a picture...

and then make up another lay out and so on...

In the end I decided on this lay out:

Of course, once I decided on my lay out I got to sewing the blocks together in rows.  Here are two rows sewn together laid out in the beautiful Spring sunshine:

And just because I was on such a roll, I was able to prep a scrappy binding as well, in record time:

Doesn't it look just SO delish?  I LOOOOOVE fabric!  Just sayin'!

Now all to do is QUILT this quilt.  If you have any suggestions as to how to quilt this to really make this quilt "pop" comment below.  I would love to hear!  I can't wait to finish and show you the RESULTS! 

And!!!   Just because I am soooo addicted I had to start another one!  But this time in pinks and oranges with one consistent chartreuse line of fabric. But I will save that for another day... stay tuned!

Okay... maybe a peek won't hurt!





White Fences

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Weeeeee!  The baby quilt is FINALLY finished!  I honestly thought poor baby girl Felix was going to be a teenager by the time I got the quilt done! 

I have officially named this quilt:  "White Fences" as I am SURE that Felix will grow up to jump horses just like her Momma, Aunties and all the rest of her family... and this quilt does resemble white fences and earth colors don't you think?

Felix's mommy Maya picked out her fabrics and I set to sewing up this quilt shortly after Felix was born. I think Felix and Maya are happy with the results - which makes ME happy! I didn't want to make it a large quilt, so that it can be used as a blankie as well as a floor/play mat and of course, I have high hopes that as Felix grows older she can drag her "favorite" quilt around everywhere she goes, including to the stable and riding ring!

I did all of the straight-line quilting with a walking foot...

I didn't pre-draw any lines as I just used the width of the walking foot as my guide.  It worked quite well!

 And then I did some free motion "swirl" quilting on the white sashing portion of the quilt. 

I was super happy with how the appliqued letters turned out.  I MUST do more of this on quilts.  I love the look!

Amazing how the light really plays with the colors of this quilt.  Here is a photo of it outside where you can get an idea of the TRUE colors of the quilt. 

I sooo very enjoy making quilts and this was no exception! I just love how the straight-lined quilting really added to the character of this quilt.  It was so much fun to do!

I absolutely LOVE the last step of quilting, when it is all sewn up and you get to throw it into the washer and then.... when you pull it out of the dryer .... you see all that CRUMPLY GOODNESS...  OOOOOOOO - I just LOVE that part!

I am MONTHS late in getting this done and for what it's worth:  Congrats Jace and Maya on your sweet baby girl with her gorgeous LONG eyelashes.  I expect it won't be long and we will be seeing her jumping her own pony over fences just like her Momma! Giddy up!

 

 

 



SOME Spring Break progress

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I made plans to have a bunch of FINISHES during this two week Spring Break... Ya RIIIIIGHT! But at least SOOOOMMMME progress was made:  I am still working on that cute little baby quilt gift for Felix. I promised that I would FINISH this quilt before I touched anything else!  

While I quilt I turn on my cute little tv in the corner and usually hum while I listen to the white noise of the tv.  Once in a while I will sit up and take notice as to what I am hearing, but alas I just enjoy the white noise.  Is that what happens after being raised in a family of seven with something always going on or happening around the home?  I NEED the white noise?  But I do enjoy silence once in a while!... Wow!... I didn't know this was something I obviously have not grown out of!  

I literally only have two more sections to quilt.  Here is a close up of some of the quilted goodness.  My walking foot is doing a great job is it not?

And then hopefully I can start stitching on the binding.  I use good old "Easy On" speed starch on all of my fabrics before I cut any fabric and my bindings get an extra spritz of the starch as well.  I find it makes the bindings so much more attractive and they aren't so prone to going wonky on me.  I cannot wait to head down south of the border where I can buy spray starch for .99 cents a can!!!  I'll load up and be good for at least a year (*smile!)  Doesn't the binding just look so crisp and delish?  I know... I know... I know... I have to be one sick puppy when a pile of starch-prepared binding causes me to take a picture and blog about it!  Anyone with me?

And THE best part is yet to come!  That's when I get to sit with the quilt I have just created over my lap and hand-sew the whole binding on!  I cannot WAIT!  I find it to be a very relaxing and soothing chore... Even though this quilt won't be a long chore as it is a small baby quilt.

I hope you have all enjoyed some quilting goodness over the Spring Break.  And some sunshine beaming through your studio window!

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Packages and HST's

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Hello bloggy peeps! Remember I mentioned a few posts ago about winning some fabric??? The package arrived!!!! Thank you to Canada Post for such efficient delivery! Wow!

Not only did I pull pre-cut triangles of the package, BUT....

Also some pre-cut squares as well!  Thank you to Cheryl at http://quiltingandappliqueshop.com/ for the extra gift!!!! Weeeeeee!

 

What am I going to make out of these great fabrics? How can I incorporate both pre-cuts?

I am looking for any and ALL advice from all of my bloggy peeps!  Comment below with any ideas you may have.  I was HOPING to create a chevron quilt. 

Again a very special thank you to the Quilting and Applique Shop! Thank you for your wonderful generosity Cheryl!  I can't wait to make something and send you a picture - and of course blog about it!

In other sewing studio news I have been hoping to get another quilt gift done for a friend who had a baby in October (I know!  I know!  I know!  October!!!!)  I had a really hard time trying to find the RIGHT color green to back this quilt, but I have finally found the right color!  So the quilt has been sandwiched and spray-basted with THE one and only 505 temporary adhesive spray:

 

But first:  seriously????  Including tax here in BC, that is a $30 can of temporary spray (for only 159 grams!!!!  Ugh!  This is what makes me want to move to the USA!  Seriously!  How much do you guys pay down there?  I am surprised it doesn't say "... and your first born..." on the price tag.  I know I should be buying it online, but I was in a hurry for it and didn't want to wait any longer to get this quilt done. 

Anyways, I got busy doing a little teensy bit of free motion quilting and of course, some channel quilting using the walking foot.  Here is a little sneak peek of the front:  

And the back: (I promise the greens DO match - the photography makes me look like I am lying to ya though!)

 

 

Chickadee has been BUGGING me to make the quilt that I have had planned for her for quite a while...  If you recall, at Christmas I was planning to just "whip off" a quilt (over and above everything else) as a Christmas gift... ya right like that was EVER gonna happen! Read about that in this post. 

 

Since then, I have done a complete re-vamp of the quilt then how I first planned it on my EQ7.  I am now making an HST quilt and found this absolutely awesome method of producing a plethora (love that word!) of HST's out of only a few cuts and 4 seam lines! 

 

 

Here is that tutorial.  I just love the Sew Mama Sew blog!  You can find so much good information on there! 

 

So of course, like a dog seeing a squirrel, I ran off in another direction for awhile and got some of the HST cutting done and here are some of the results thus far. 

 

I just kept adding the HST's to the design wall as I sewed them.  I made some pretty good progress in only a few hours! 

 

 

I have SOOOO many UFO's!  I need to get some "FINISHES" under my belt!  Wish me luck!  In the meantime, YOU have some homework!  Remember?  You were going to give me some advice on what kind of quilt I can make out of those cute pre-cuts that I won!  Comment below!  I welcome all the advice I can get.  It gets those creatives juices flowing!  And you KNOW I need to add another UFO to the list anyways!