Heartbreak

I woke up one morning to my husband telling me not to freak out but...my Disaster Monster decided to improve the back of Jean's quilt with black marker. Catastrophe!

After the panic subsided, I remembered that the quilt wasn't quilted yet so I unbasted it and tried various methods of removing the ink all to no avail. So I booked it over to Joanns in the hopes that such a darling fabric hadn't been completely snatched up in the two months since I had bought it. My good fortune held and I was able to buy another yard and a half of the material so all is not lost and my little monster doesn't need to be shipped to a reform school for two year olds.

In the end, I am just super grateful that I refolded the quilt to have the back facing out rather than the front. If she had colored on the front, there probably would have been no hope for her :-). On a happy note, I loved the material so much that I wanted to have extra to use for another project some day but didn't feel like I could spend the money with no real need. So now, I have extra fabric once I cut around the 8"x3" mark.

My totally unrepentant two year old complete with the "tattoo sleeves" she gave herself the same morning.

I sent out a family wide e-mail that morning exposing the wretch for what she was to alleviate my angst. My sister-in-law Sara called up later that morning to make sure that my daughter was still okay. But I am the oldest of six children and my parents made sure that I learned the lesson early that "people are more important than things." And this situation wasn't nearly as bad as when we found out my brother had recorded over my wedding video with a football game.

The Vanquishing of the Green Monster

I made this quilt for my husband Tim. He loves having something huge he can snuggle in (can big manly men snuggle?) for TV watching and the quilts we currently have are seriously thread bare. It was this project that forced me into learning to quilt. Tim seriously dislikes tied quilts (although I think it would have been cute for this quilt) and I couldn't find anyone local who could quilt it for me. While researching online trying to find a proffesional quilter I found that most people seem to be quilting themselves with just their normal machines. I hadn't even realized that was a possibility! Completely intrigued, I set my mind to figuring out how in the world to do it myself.

The bulk of the work was done for this quilt during the three months Tim was out of town last fall. I did my final quilting an evening after he returned but was again out of town for a residency interview. Since this quilt was so large I didn't dare attempt free motion quilting and stuck to stitching in the ditch.

I enlisted my 6 year old to help me baste it (really too large to handle on my own) and rolled it up nice an tight leaving just the edge I was starting on free (I know people recommend starting in the middle, but I didn't). I pulled a couple different tables together (in the front and to the side of me) so I could have a lot of surface area to hold and stabilize the quilt (have I mentioned how completely huge this quilt is?). I put my kids to bed, popped in BBC's 6 hour Pride and Prejudice and I was off. 8 hours later, I had it completely quilted and the binding sewed on and had everything cleaned up an hour before my husband got in around 2 am none the wiser.

My arms were actually sore the next morning from working with that quilt for so long. It was really heavy and cumbersome.

I didn't have a chance to get the binding hand stitched down before Christmas, so I gave it to him as is. He knew I was making it for him, but I know that he didn't seriously think I would finish it.

I have a scrappy border on it of all my extra green. I used the 100% cotton warm and natural again and even though it makes the quilt so much thinner than I am use to on quilts, it is amazingly warm and toasty.

Jean's Coin Quilt

My sister-in-law Jean just had her third baby and her first boy, Ronnow Jack. I decided to try my hand at a stacked coin quilt and followed Moda's tutorial for the quilt. I couldn't find any sufficiently boyish charm packs so I just picked out a ton of different fabrics at Joanns and got 1/8th of a yard of each much to the dismay of the subsequent patrons in line.

For her quilt Jean requested pastel colors with an emphasis on green. I stuck mostly to blues and greens with one yellow thrown in for adventure. My husband is a fan of consistency and subtly in quilts and I kind of make all my quilts just to hear him say "that is the best quilt ever, we should keep that one."

I've had it basted and ready to quilt for couple weeks now, but I haven't figure out how I want to quilt it yet. I am still nervous about machine quilting. My one and a half experience with free motion quilting ended well but was a very rocky journey and Tristen's quilt was much smaller than this one. I put together a few sandwiches to try it out and either my machine or my skills needs some serious servicing.

This quilt just screams of a Christopher Robin boyhood to me, innocent, safe nature at its best. When I look at this quilt I see summer mornings hiking through the woods, the first snow fall, a salty beach day or a spring field of flowers. The blues, greens and the natural muslin sashing are so wonderfully and outdoorsy boyish to me.

Isn't the back fabric darling? I love the coin stack strip on the back of Moda's quilt, but I thought this fabric so adorable that it needed to stand on its own. This is a close up of my favorite scene. Monkeys and Elephants both have an important place in our family.

Just to show you the "nature" in the quilt:

Rushing winds...

...climbing vines...

...gorgeous birds...

...lacy (albeit uniform) snowflakes...

...stunning sand-dollars...

...and of course fields of flowers...very boyish flowers.

I can't decide whether the birds or the sand-dollars are my favorite, probably the sand-dollars.

Our beach is bereft of sand-dollars however, darn it. As a teenager I once found a complete sand-dollar on a Corpus Christi beach in Texas. It was a magical find that stuck with me.

Things I learned:

1. I normally baste with a spray adhesive, but I don't think it works that well on natural muslin. The quilt top just wouldn't stick very well. I had the same problem with the muslin on my vintage baby quilt. So I did use the adhesive but I pinned it as well to save on last minute frustration.

Butterfly Infestation

I copied this adorable butterfly template from my sister-in-law Melanie. She had a gorgeous butterfly infestation at her house as well. I enlarged the pattern until I had three different shapes and then traced it onto scrapbook paper. I then folded the paper along the two straight lines of the body to make the wings flap out. If the scrap book paper was thin, I would double up on it. I stuck them to my wall with those little sticky squares you use for placing photos in scrapbooking.

Sara's Quilt

I can't take credit for this one, I actually bought a kit from Quilt Taffy with the pattern and fabric. All I did was cut and sew. You actually sew the little 2.5" squares on top of the quilt leaving the edges raw and eliminating the need for any more quilting.

Things I learned:

1. I used a glue stick to keep the squares on the quilt top rather than pins. So. Much. Easier. I highly recommend it.

For the life of me though, I couldn't get a good picture of it. This first one is too bright and garish, the next too dull. The bottom one is the most accurate of the true colors of the fabrics, but it was such a beautiful quilt I feel bad I couldn't get a better picture of it for my collection.

I sent this one to my sister-in-law Sara. It is a little smaller than lap quilt size, but the colors matched her so perfectly, I had to send it to her even if she didn't have a use for it. I think she winded up hanging it on her daughter's wall.

My Current Most Favorite Quilt

This started out as just a practice quilt. I had all these little flannel squares already cut and left over from a previous project and I had tons of left over red flannel for the backing. It was a throw away quilt. But instead of just doing a standard patchwork, I turned the 5 inch squares on their sides to be diamonds and then I quilted it just with diagonal lines through the center of the patches. Then end result just speaks to me.

First of all, I adore red and pink together and have my entire life. Valentine's day has long been my most cherished holiday simply because of the colors. An entire month of red and pink. How awesome is that? Second of all...I think you all know how I feel about straight lines. The diamonds and diagonals of this quilt just sooth me and make me feel like all is right with the world. Third of all it is flannel and warm and toasty all over.

But, I didn't have that many squares left and so the quilt is fairly small and pretty useless. So when this cute little beauty latched on to it when we were visiting my sister-in-laws, I relinquished my rights to it.

You can see my own adorable tyrant in the background there.

All Ready to be Shipped!

Isaac's Quilt

I actually made this from a pattern I bought for my oldest 7 years ago but never had the courage or motivation to actually try out. But when my sister-in-law showed us the nursery she put together for her son, I knew I had to give it a try because it matched too perfectly.

This was my first ever paper piecing and it kept me up at night trying to work up the courage to just sit down a give it a try. All my worrying was for naught. It turns out that paper piecing is my soul mate, my long lost love, my kindred spirit. All those straight and perfect lines are so deeply satisfying . I was actually disappointed when I finished all my little sail boats.

I stitched the top quilt while watching Twin Peaks (amazingly interesting considering how old it is) and the first three years of IT Crowd (so funny I had to call my out of town husband and tell him to find a computer and watch them with me immediately so we could talk about them).

I also agonized over how to quilt it, but in the end, I free motioned quilted the boarder with a meandering stitch and stitched in the ditch around each little sail boat square and that was it.

Things I learned:

1. I really don't love doing sashing. It is hard to get everything lined up just right for my perfectionist eyes and I had to accept a lot of imperfection with this one. Also, the yellow was so thin that I made the decision to double up on the material and that made getting it to lie smooth very difficult.

2. I love the binding part of quilting. I love making the binding, I love stitching it on with my awesome new walking foot (ebay), and I love hand stitching it on at the end. I just love everything about binding a quilt. Perhaps because it is the last thing, perhaps because it just pulls everything together and makes it look so finished, or perhaps it is because it is easy to get straight lines and reasonable perfection out of it. All I know, is that I find it incredibly soothing.

I made a scrappy binding for this quilt.

The bottom pictures capture the actual colors the best (as I remember the quilt).

Tristen's Quilt

Tristen's quilt was my next big project. I made the top quilt at the same time as Isaac's in October but didn't actually get it quilted until January. I did most of the top quilt while watching Berkley Square a British mini-series. It was actually pretty good. I enjoyed it.

This was my first attempt at free motion quilting. I bought a darning foot off of ebay, did some Internet research and I was off. It was pretty scary.

I used 100% cotton Warm and White batting and used a meandering stitch with white thread on top and bottom.

Things I learned:

1. Make sure the foot is down when you start sewing (silly, I know, but I forgot on more than one occasion creating lots of little step ladders in my quilting stitch).

2. Make sure to remember to lower the feed dogs

3. Wear some type of gloves to keep traction because fingers lose it pretty quickly.

4. Only thread the needle with the foot in the up position. For some odd reason it really doesn't work well if you thread it with the foot down. I swear, it makes a difference.

Tristen and his quilt. Isn't he adorable!

The only thing I couldn't figure out was occasionally, the needle just wouldn't stick a stitch and I would get these long lines. I would watch the needle going up and down several times but the stitch wouldn't stick until the 4-5 time and sometimes I wouldn't notice it not sticking and so I would wind up with this long line of thread between stitches. Any ideas? It wasn't the speed or tension, it just wouldn't stick sometimes.

Things I would do differently. I love white contrast in quilts, but in this quilt top I feel like the white overpowered the green. Next time I would use a larger more vibrant print to contrast the white, see how that goes.

Fairy, Fairy Quite Contrary

This past Halloween I tried my hand at making my girl's costumes. Thank goodness for the internet.

The Green Monster

Last August I finally started my first quilting project. So exciting! I had been collecting fabric and working up my courage to start for several months previous. I really had very little confidence in my ability. I haven't been able to stop reading long enough to really learn any new skill set (I really, really love reading). Plus, I had the classic First Child Fear of Failure working against me. It is really scary to just jump into something, learning as you go, making mistakes, wasting time and money...but it turns out it is incredibly rewarding too. I have never really learned to be good at something outside of a classroom setting. But I was determined to give quilting a real try.

First Project: A 90" x 105" patchwork quilt in shades of green with a few yellows and blues thrown in for variety. I cut 378 5.5" squares and sewed them in strips with a 1/4 inch seam allowance. I then sewed the strips together to make the quilt top.

Things I learned:

1. I am a really bad cutter and therefore need to give myself more than a 1/4 inch buffer. Many of these squares are sewed right against the edge and I didn't have extra fabric to try again on many of them. I am afraid to wash the quilt for fear that it will all fall apart. While quilting it, I actually discovered a hole and so had to go back and re-sew some of the lines.

2. I learned I am a perfectionist. I really, really need my corners to all match up. This is really hard to do when you are a bad cutter. I winded up cutting a 5" template from a cereal box and drawing my 5" square on the back of all the squares so I could line the lines up when sewing them together. It worked pretty well.

3. I also have forced myself to be okay with some small imperfections. My mom's rule of thumb is to only fix things bigger than a 1/16th error. Glory be to God for dappled things and all.