The Variation of a HST

As promised, some HST triangle layouts...depicted by midnight cell phone pictures...a feast for the eyes, to be sure. *Note: I was originally just taking the pictures with the intent to remember the layouts for comparison later, which is why I wasn't even caring about whether they were blurry or not. Sorry folks.

These are all shown in the order that I was throwing them up on the design wall:

I had to stop after about 2 hours because I realized I was making myself crazy with the sheer number of possibilities.

So, which layout would you choose?

My sewing machine was feeling so neglected!

Today I've planned to be extremely sewing-productive. I got up super early, gathered and made sustenance in the solid and liquid form, and mapped out my day at the machine.

I don't want to hand-stitch anything for at least two weeks. I love handwork, I do**. But if I had to guesstimate how much embroidery I've done over the past two weeks I'd say it's taken at least 24 hours. That's right. I've lost a WHOLE DAY to embroidery. Machine sewing, pleeasseee.

**Case in point: I could not be more pleased with all my Potter Patterns, and I love that they're hung right next to my sewing machine. And today's the last day you can get the 8-pattern bundle for $28!

This is what sewing at midnight looks like...

Except...I just embroidered a little bit for my Winterkist project [my day is next Wednesday! I'm a little obsessed with my project...]. Hey! If you did some embroidery or other handwork, you should show it off at There and Back's Handmade Parade! Be cool like me! :)

And this is what sewing at 1 am looks like...

Oh and I also sewed lots of nine-patches last night. I need 56 of those blocks for my queen-sized quilt. I didn't feel like moving my furniture to lay out the quilt, so I chose the method of just pulling random squares and sewing with abandon. Ok, maybe not abandon, because as you can see I laid them out a bit. Each stack has multiple prints of the same color within it. I just wanted to make sure that I didn't end up with 10 squares of that Washi print with the last nine-patch or something horrific like that.

I've never done that kind of sewing before, because I tend to like a balanced randomness [I think that's an oxymoron?]. But I sewed after I watched Project Runway, and decided to be a wild quilter [an example of what non-quilters think is an oxymoron, ha!].

Um, only a million more blocks to sew. Did I mention this needs to be finished by next week?

Gold Medal Tuesday

Hey! Link up your holiday projects here! Because it's the cool thing to do! 

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...so I woke up today and realized it was Tuesday.

And then I realized that I'd been sucked into the Olympic vortex. I think I've probably watched all 16 hours of Olympic coverage on NBC every day. The TV is on if I'm awake.

Table tennis? You can wipe your face after every 6 points.

Beach volleyball? The Brazilian women's team goes by their first names only.

Regular volleball? You have to be prepared to hug after every point.

Badminton? The fastest hit was recorded at 265 mph.

Dressage? Whaaaaat? FYI, the horse doesn't get a medal, which I think is unfair.

You're welcome for all that knowledge. I'll be sure to give you an update in a few days.

Now, on to the Olympics of sewing. Otherwise known as the only event I'd get to compete in because I'm exceptionally average [oxymoron? yes/no?].

I need 510 charms for my queen-sized quilt.

I have 280. And no more fabrics that work with my color scheme. Epic fail. So I think that I don't even make it to the medal podium for that effort. I wish I'd won gold so I could pawn it for some fabric money...

I started working with a new project earlier today. In various shades of green paired with Essex in Natural. I'm not sure what it will become, but I've toyed with a triangle design for my king-size bed quilt, so this is helping me see if I like it.

Here we have a very orderly layout of triangles

And here we have a haphazard turning of triangles. I'm leaning towards this.

I know I want to make bigger blocks next time though. Maybe I'll keep making baby triangles and turn this into a shower curtain?! [slowly but surely letting patchwork take over my house; don't tell Stephen].

Because I like the project so far I'm going to award myself the silver in this event. 

::the crowd roars its approval::

And today is the day that Issue 10 - Sew Britannia of Fat Quarterly is available for purchase! Aka the issue with my Twirling Clamshells pillow.

You have to buy the issue to see all the good stuff!

In true Olympic spirit in honor of the issue, I win a gold medal for that pillow! Because...42 pictures in that pattern people, 42 pictures.

[In case you were wondering if it's worth buying the issue...it's 111 pages. Chock full o' goodness]

PS, I only got 4 hours of sleep last night. I'm a terrible Olympian. And human.


*Linked with Quilt Story

PTS8 Progress

Oh hi!

First off, maybe you all can help me with something. Does anyone else think that the pancakes at Denny's taste like cookies?!

Phew, now that I've gotten that off my chest...

My Nautical Striped Skirt is being a bit of a contest floozie and has made it to finalist status over at the Summer Sewing Contest at Ellison Lane Quilts. Go vote in all the categories! There are some awesome, awesome projects to choose from!

I also did a lot of work on my Pillow Talk Swap pillow last night. A lot more than was necessary. Since I sewed 3 of the blocks together. And then I picked them apart. Ugh. I changed my process of construction up from my trial block to the ones I worked on last night. That was a mistake. It made pieces not line up just right, and that just won't do for something that's going to someone else!

But now it's sewn together, and I really like how it's evolved from my original idea to the finished pillow top:

 Design sketch in Paint and initial fabric pull

Trial block to even see if my templates that I made from my block drawing worked. This is when I added in the magenta, and I'm so glad I did...a great pop of color!

Mock-up in Paint by rotating the trial block

Finished top. I changed the corners out for solid gray because I thought it needed to be "floating" in a border.

After I cut out all the template pieces for the other blocks I made a paper pieced version in EQ5. Of course that would have made it simpler, but I stuck with the templates. Because I'm stubborn like that.

Today I'll be quilting this pillow top. I already definitely know how I'll be quilting the green section, and I'm just waiting for the other sections to show me what they want [you know, like how Michaelangelo always said that he was just uncovering what the marble was always supposed to be...not that I'm comparing myself to him, but I totally get his way of thinking...]

*Final thought - do you host your photos on your blog directly from Flickr or upload them in both places? Is it worth taking the time to do the code and not upload?

*Linked with Fabric Tuesday :)

Llamalicious - Finished!

*Today is the last day to enter the giveaway that corresponded with the Christmas in July schedule and prizes! You have until midnight :)



I know that llamas are not generally nice creatures in real life. But on fabric they're so so soooo cute! Laurie Wisbrun is a genius.
As a result of this, there is a picture overload that follows. I'm not even sorry about it.

See?! So I was more than happy to add them to the mini that I made for Jessica in our personal swap. I completely revamped my idea to work the llamas and the flapdoodle hats into the mix. Jessica requested colors of blues/turquoise/greens/yellows/grays, and then I think the hat fabric throws in that little punch of red to keep it from being too "matchy".

 I made the strips in groupings of 4 print fabrics and 4 white strips. The white finishes at just 1/2" and the prints are 3/4" finished. Then I sewed them into rows.

 The middle part did require Y-seams around the llama diamond, but it really wasn't difficult. In fact, I had to sew seams multiple times during the making of this mini, but the Y-seams I did all in one go.

 And hey, look at those matching points!

 So the hardest part of making this...? Going from the above picture, which is everything all sewn together...

 ...to this squared off version. Seriously. I had to stop sewing and go try to relax first, because I was that nervous about it!

 And, in the spirit of keeping it real around here, this is the back. I almost always press my seams open, but I must admit it was tough with this because the strips were so narrow.

 I also really debated when I got to the quilting. I didn't want to quilt over the llama, and the mini is already pretty busy, so I didn't want to add to that either. What do you all do when your quilt doesn't have a lot of negative space?

 I used my go-to straight-line quilting marking tool...my pattern tracing wheel that I use for making clothing. I marked lines half an inch apart going against the grain of the direction of the strips.

 I auditioned several options for binding, which I usually do by pinning strips to the quilt to see how it looks. Stephen even weighed in, although he chose the gray. In the end I'm so glad I went with white.

 Jessica told me she's spending a little time with our llama friend before she names him. I suggested Larry or Ferdinand. I love pets with absurd people names. It cracks me up. 

 My favorite part about this design [other than the llama, duh] is the fact that when the strips are going in the same direction that they don't match up from row to row, which you can see in the above picture. But then when they go in opposite directions that's when they match up perfectly. I think it gives the overall design a lot more movement. In fact, I think it kind of looks like anime cartoons when they have the little character flying through the air and have those sound or movement markings around them. I'm not sure a lot of quilters are too familiar with anime...Full Metal Alchemist anyone?

 I used leftover bits of the rows that were cut off on the back. It's like itsy bitsy stacked coins! It rounds out in size at around 16x20" [I think, I was very tired when I measured it...]

 And hey, the quilting shows up great on the back!

 I'm getting pretty good at catching all the binding the first time when machine sewing it all on.

Jessica, I hope you don't mind that I might make this exact mini over again and have it in my own home. We can be twinsies :)

*Linked at SewHappyGeek, Pieceful Life, Canoe Ridge Creations
*Also linked at Quilt Story

WIP Wednesday: Llama style

Did you see that the schedule and prizes for Christmas in July were announced earlier today? No? Well then go take a look and I'll wait.

Right?! Exciting stuff!

So what have I been working on other than holiday items in the 96 degree heat we've had in the past few days?

Well, firstly [firstly, is that a word?], yesterday I found out that I've been hired to teach quilting classes at the only somewhat modern shop around! I submitted about 12 of my projects and they're having trouble narrowing what to actually list on the class schedule :)

The twin version of my mustache mini. [I've just listed some of the minis in my Etsy shop]

 And Llamas.

Llamalicious llamas, to be exact.

Jessica and I agreed to a private swap a couple months ago, and I'm sad to say that I really played the moving card, and have taken much longer with her mini than I should have. So before I'm allowed to do anything else I told myself I had to finish that project! And I wanted to make it extra spectacular for her being so patient with me.

So I finally found my Photoshop CD and reinstalled it on my new computer. But um, I should probably take better pictures from the get-go, yes? Pinky promise I'm working on it.

Since she hasn't seen it yet, I'm only showing tiny sneak peeks, but I'll do the full reveal as soon as she receives it. I looooove it. Seriously. I might have to make another and turn it into a full Llamalicious quilt.

Seriously, hipster llamas? My quilting life is complete.

Do you have a novelty obsession thing like this that you'd love to see printed on fabric?

*Linked over at Freshly Pieced

Winners and WIPs

I am SO sorry for not posting the winner yesterday. I had a crazy day of back-to-back interviews for a job, teaching a friend to make a t-shirt quilt, and putt putt plans that got rained out and turned into a trip to a favorite bar.

So today we have our winner...

Lucky #14...

Sarah! She's so fun! Her blog is full of cross-stitchy goodness. And she's moved all over in the past year or so, and is now planning her 2nd wedding ceremony! She's just now becoming more acquainted with her sewing machine, so hopefully all this quilty stuff will help spur her on :) Sarah, I emailed you!

As for what I've been up to:

This is my friend Amanda working hard at the sewing machine. She was getting a little frustrated with sewing the jersey yesterday, and we discovered that she is not an accurate cutter at all, so I had to make her go back and fix all her t-shirt squares. I'm such a pushy quilt teacher ha! But she loved my suggestion that she turn the t-shirts into large polaroids, so I'm excited for the quilt to develop [bahahaha].

 Fantastic mail day! Cooking Light, which is a phenomenal magazine in my opinion; another triangle log cabin; fabric from The Intrepid Thread market sale [she apologized for having a computer printed message, how cute is that...and she included 2 charms!]

Today is rainy and dreary and I'm cutting more pieces out for my quilt. I made all the previous pieces smaller, and I picked up some more blue fabrics. It's so hard to find true blues! I can't decide if I want to use just 3 or 4 fabrics or continue with this scrappy version...

*Linked over at WIP Wednesday for the first time in a while! :)