Thursday, September 2, 2010

Quilt-Along Competed!!

I finally finished unpicking my unfortunate quilting mistake last night. It is mistake I hope to not repeat any time soon. Of course, I started quilting it up first thing this morning. (I still don't have any make-up on :) In the end I decided to abandon the picture quilting idea. You just couldn't see the detail. Instead I went for an all over stippling stitch in red in a slightly larger pattern than what I normally do. It took a bit to get used to but I got the hang of it. I am really, really, happy with the overall outcome. So now it's all bound up and ready to go. Ya!!! This was such a fun quilt-a-long. Thanks again, Amy!! Your the greatest!! Happy Quilting!!






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Wednesday, September 1, 2010

There so cute and Little!

I finished my four patch squares for the chubby star quilt-a-long!! I am really getting excited about this project. These squares will end up being 1" squares. So tiny, but oh how I love them. They are just so fun and I am really happy with how well my center seams came out. I love when four squares meet to make one perfect point!

Sorry, the pictures isn't the best. I don't claim to be a photographer by any stretch of the imagination.



We'll I suppose now that I have completed those I best get back to my unpicking. I still truly despise unpicking but I am making progress. Pretty soon I will be ready to start a nice free motion all over stippling. That will be good!

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Monday, August 30, 2010

Bits and Pieces


So I managed to unpick 1 1/2 squares last night. What else ya gonna do while watching the Emmy's. It actually made the mazillion commercials and long acceptance speeches much more tolerable.

I spent the morning cutting. As in the whole morning. I am starting a new twin size quilt that has a lot of pieces. I also cut out my strips for the chubby squares quilt a long. Those are some tiny squares.

Add On - I figured this post needed a picture. I just finished strip piecing for my chubby squares and cut them into 2 patch rectangles. Now I have to turn each of these little guys into 4 patch squares. Good Times!


I also have a huge event coming in a week. I am super excited about it! No hints, you'll just have to wait and see. And if you do happen to know (Because you have seen me working on it at sewing night), just keep it real hush, hush :)

So that's it for today. I am off to get the kids at the bus stop. Happy Quilting!

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Friday, August 27, 2010

I Truly DESPISE Unpicking

And suddenly I find I will be doing quite a lot of it.

So you know that Christmas Quilt that I have been posting a few squares of each week. Well here's the story. I decided that I wanted to try something new on the stitching and since it was a sampler quilt I thought I could do some "Sampler" quilting. This was totally new to me but I just jumped in head first.

I printed off 16 different Christmas images from the computer, cut them out and decided they would be my template. I ran to JoAnn's and bought a water soluble pen and was ready to go. The plan was to stitch an image on each square. Super cute idea, right??

So I started quilting this morning. After the first block I decide that you couldn't see the picture stitched in white and that I should rethink. So I moved to alternating red and green. I restitched over top of the white one (ya, that is going to be super fun to unpick) and decided it looked better although it still didn't show up as much as I hoped.


I moved on to the next block and once again, the design just didn't show up as much as I liked, but I thought, ah well, I don't want to unpick because I hate that.


So on to block three. Same story, cute image, but it just blends in a little to much. Keep pushing on though, since in the end, I almost always like my mistakes.


So on to block 4 and HORROR!!! The block is upside down!! This normally would not be that big of a deal but block 4 has writing on it that is upside down, Awful!! Then it hit me, the back has that same writing print in a huge box in the middle and you guessed it, the images are all upside down on it!!


At this point there were some frantic shouts, followed by some frantic tears. And then chased down with a donut and ice cream. I had crossed the line where I just am unwilling to keep nursing a mistake. So now, I have tons of unpicking to do. Also, I find myself really debating if I still want to quilt in pictures or just do more of a free motion random stitch. I mean if they are barely noticeable . . . . What do I do. Any opinions??

***  SO I can't find these pictures any more to replace them.  Just know it stunk to unpick :)

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Free Motion Quilt-A-Long

So I recently joined a free motion quilt-a-long (see side bar) to work on improving and expanding my free motion quilting skills and technique. I am so happy about this quilt-a-long as I have felt a bit in a quilting rut (stuck with stippling). However, trying to break out with only self teaching has proved to be a little bit difficult. This is the perfect fit and exactly what I was hoping for!

As you can imagine, the focus of this quilt-a-long is the quilting and not on piecing together an amazing quilt top. So we were challenged to just grab some scraps, piece them in the 11 lines given, and get ready to quilt. This way if you aren't to happy with your quilting, it is okay, because you aren't to attached to your quilt top.

So I decided to go for a "I Spy" look as I have lots of scraps in that. I started going through my stash and realized that I didn't like the "Girly" I spy prints mixed with the "Boyish" I spy prints. So you guessed it. I made 2 tops, one girl and one boy. I figure this gives me twice the opportunity to practice the new skills I will be trying to attain. I am so excited to start!! Stay tuned for my adventures in Free Motion Quilting :)



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