My First "Real" Quilt is Finished!

You have been with me through every step of this project...from when I bought the fabric through the present!   I finished the final stich last night!  I am very pleased with myself because it is very large and I quilted it on my machine and I used a new binding technique to finish the edges!   

That is my binding after I sewed the strips together and pressed them in half.  It was really long!  I was so nervous about trying this for some reason but it is actually not difficult at all!  This the last step, done after the quilting, so the layers are already held together and there is no worrying about anything sliding apart.

There I go!  YIKES!

The best part about this method is that the corners look perfectly mitered.  Previously, I would bind quilts by cutting the backing fabric larger and then folding it over and sewing through all the layers.  It worked fine, but there was alot more twisting and puckering potential and the corners never looked this good because they had to be hand sewn to finish them.  The create these neat little corners is so easy once you know what to do!  There are tutorials all over the internet so I won't explain very thoroughly but all you have to do is fold a 45 degree angle up and then fold the strip straight down over the fold.  My grandma sewed me a sample so I can see it unfinished which is very helpful. 

The most challenging part was finishing the binding where the two ends meet.  There is a way to make it fit perfectly.  I have instructions in a book but even with those it is still confusing at first.  Sure enough, mine didn't fit perfecty!  I realized my mistake though (The directions referred to a single layer of binding, not a double layer like I have here).  It still looks OK.  The binding was a bit short so I just made it fit with a few tiny pleats! 

All done!  After the binding is sewn around the perimeter of the front you press it away from the quilt and then...my least favorite part...hand sew it along the back to make a nice finished edge.  I was skeptical of the hand sewing, especially around a whole quilt!  It tooke a few hours and wasn't THAT bad although it is certainly my least favorite part.

This is one of those delightful corners I was talking about!  I love it!

I took a few full sized pictures this afternoon but they are all terrible.  In one the sunlight washes out one side of it and you can see the shadows from the window blinds.  In the others it looks all rumply.  I look at a variety of quilting related blogs when I am looking for ideas or instructions and alot of those quilters take artsy looking photos of thier quilts hanging from clotheslines or draped over picket fences.  Maybe I will try to drape it over the deck railing or something!

Changing the subject, my sister bought the commemorative Royal Wedding issue of People magazine and I saw this picture of the maid of honor's evening dress...I want it! 

Quilts!

Happy April Fool's Day!  I tried to think of some lie to write on here and then reveal that it was a joke but I couldn't think of anything very funny.  Sorry to dissapoint. 

I had some spare time yesterday and today and I finished assembling the top of my current quilt in progress!  This is my first "big" quilt that is not a t-shirt quilt and it is huge!  It is 84 inches long and 64 inches wide. 

The patterened fabrics were purchased in a pre-cut bundle and they all came from the same line.  This line seems to have been discontinued except for a few remnants on some websites so I had to find an alternantive that didn't look completely odd with the rest of the quilt.  Also, I wanted something cheap since the brand of the prints, Moda, is generally expensive at around $10.00 per yard.  Fortunately I found this...

Yes, those are cats!  Haha.  The blue actually matches perfectly with the blue in the quilt so that is the main reason I chose this.  And, of course, I like cats. 

The buzz around the Internet and Facebook today is that it is the first Twins baseball game of the season!  We are going to a game next weekend at Target field with a big group of people from my hometown!  We are staying in a hotel within walking distance of the stadium and other downtown Minneapolis attractions and I look forward to it!  On top of that, UND is playing in the hockey Frozen Four that same weekend in downtown St. Paul so ND people will be infiltrating!  This weekend could become a disaster!

In other exciting news, my birthday is next week and today I recieved an email from Ancestry.com that I had been given a gift membership!  My dad thought of the idea.  For years I have been interested in history in general and also family history and geneology.  I don't really talk about it because no one else really cares!  It is not something most people my age are interested in.  I don't remember why it started but it began when I was in middle school.  I am fascinated by the huge families people used to have and the way people can be connected.  Also, I love to imagine the experience of becoming new Americans and how we all came to be here. 

I spent about an hour on the site right after I recieved my gift and already found some new information.  The database had the World War I draft registry cards of two of my great grandfathers scanned!  I could see the images filled in with their own handwriting in 1918!  I have the membership for 6 months so maybe I will start another with to record my adventures in geneology.  I will probably password it so I can use full names and such.  They say (whoever "they" are) that you should not use identifying information on the internet for security purposes and I guess that is wise advice.  That is why I don't use last names and am vague about places.  So, I will let you know if I do! 

More Quilting!

I posted about my indulgent fabric buying binge a few weeks ago when I bought a big roll of pre-cut and coordinating fabric by Moda and I have been working on a quilt composed of that fabric.  It took me awhile to decide what kind of quilt I wanted to make.  I knew I wanted to do something more challenging than just sewing toghether squares like I have done so many times before!  I finally decided on this techique...

http://www.modabakeshop.com/2010/07/endless-possibilities.html#more

It is pretty easy...it lookes like may little triangles but actually you cut squares, sew two seams diagonally down the middle, and then cut between the seams and press them open to make a square with two colors.  They can then be arranged in endless ways!  It was very easy and looks more complicated than it is.  I had a picture of the diagonal sewing step but when I uploaded it a message came up saying that I had used the 1 gigabite of storage that came with the blogger account and I had to purchase more!  I thought that sounded outlandish but, indeed, there is an album with every picture I have ever uploaded on here saved!  I was annoyed but then I found out that 20 gigs costs $5.  So I bought the memory and hopefully never have to deal with it again.  If it took 1.5 years to fill 1 gig I imagine 20 should last awhile!

I arranged all of my squares on the floor first so I could made sure I liked the way they looked.  It was very time consuming and I had a cat pouncing on the squares and rolling around on them. 


I started sewing them toghether this afternoon.  ( I had made the squares two weeks ago). 

I assembled five rows today out of 21.  The pressing of the seams was the worst part! 

I can't help but be critical of my work...I noticed that the squares were not all perfectly uniform when I was sewing them together and I don't know why because I cut them with the rotary cutter and mat and they should be exactly the same!  Oh well...

See...that is supposed to form a point and not look like the end got chopped off!

That blue bird fabric is my favorite in the assortment!

Justin is in Kansas City for work and when he and his co-worker were in the airport yesterday they saw John Elway!  I have never seen a famous person in an airport. 

As a reminder that our lives are not filled with delightful quilting projects, kittens, and celebrity sightings, I will return to Earth and tell you about what is happening in our kitchen right now.  Justin has plans to process some meat this weekend with his cousin.  They are going to, I belive, make sausage and jerky.  Yesterday he removed several bags of pork and venison from our basement freezer and brought them upstairs to thaw in the refrigerator.  This morning I opened the fridge to grab my breakfast burrito ingredients and was greeted with a disturbing scene...a pool of blood covering the entirety of the base of the fridge under the crisper drawers.  There had been some leakage from the freezer bags.  OK, a hemhorrage.  It definitely made me recoil in horror.  There is also leakage from a bag sitting on the top shelf and puddling toward the back up there.  It is really gross and I have declared that I will not be cleaning it up.  Let me remind you all that, although I am not especially squeamish about many things, meat has long been an issue for me.  I didn't purchase and prepare ground beef or chicken for myself until I was in my mid 20's.  I hardly touched meat except for chicken, pepperoni, and hot dogs through most of my youth and into my college years. (And yes, I now know that pepperoni and hot dogs are more disgusting than beef any day but it was more about the texture than the actual content!) So...Justin can deal with this when he gets home.  Maybe I will go buy a jug of bleach for him to use.

Oooh! Fabric!

My job has been really slow lately so we have been on "standby" so far this week.  This means that we don't have to be at work but we still get paid.  It is mostly awesome, except that we have to be able to get there in 30 minutes if something comes up so I can't sit at home with Allan.  I have to stay in Fargo. 

With some of my free time I stopped by a specialty quilting store near my hometown and indulged myself with this bundle of precut fabrics from the company called Moda.  The designers that design fabric for Moda make collections that are so lovely/cute/beautiful that they fill me with inspiration for all the things I want to make in the future!  Actually, that happens to me in any fabric store.  The good thing about Moda is that the collections are coordinated to make it easier to choose fabric combinations.  They also sell pre-cut fabrics in different denominations.  The bundles are named after baked goods, such as jelly rolls and honey buns!  They have a good website called the Moda Bake Shop that features patterns and combinations for using the goods to make quilts and other projects.  It is one of my favorites!

The store I visited today carried Moda products!  Chain stores such as Hancock and JoAnn don't carry it so it is a special find.  I was kind of distainful of pre-cut fabric (it seems like buying the fabric already cut takes out part of the experience).  I admit though, hunching over the cutting board is not my favorite experience so I couldn't resist buying this roll of fabric called a "layer cake".  A layer cake contains 40 squares, each of a different fabric, that measure 10x10 inches. 

Oooh, these fabrics are so bright and cheerful!  The colors included are yellow, two shades of aqua, green, two shades of pink, and coral. 

I love that bird print!

I bought some yellow fabric (cheap, not from Moda!) for the supplemental fabric and have started cutting.  I will post photos when I have something to show. 

The quilt shop was a great place.  I also bought a few other pieces for a future project.  It was very hard to contain myself from buying more but in those situations I have to think about what I am actually going to do with a fabric before I buy it! 

New Techniques

This weekend, while Justin was sitting on a frozen lake in a little tent near his friends' little tents I decided to go to Northern Minnesota to visit my cousin Katie and our grandma.  Grandma Phyllis, although still healthy and mobile, is not crazy about driving in the winter and has been bored lately so we thought it would be nice to visit.  Also, she enjoys sharing our interest in sewing and quilting and I wanted her to show me how to quilt with my new sewing machine. 

When I was growing up we spent alot of time at my grandparents' house. We were there so much the summer my family was visiting/returning from the middle east that we had a season pass at the city pool there.  My aunt and my mom both stayed at home when we were little kids and during the summer we would spend days at a time there, eating summertime lunches of sandwiches and chips before heading to the pool for the afternoon where us girls (there were four of us...Myself and Andrea, and Katie and Brenna) would play "mermaid" games (Disney's The Little Mermaid was the movie of the moment).  My brother was the only boy and who know what he did all the time.  I don't know how he could stand it to be honest!  If we weren't swimming we were playing outside in the vacant lot (which is no longer vacant) next door or sitting at the table in the basement coloring and drawing pictures on the big stacks of computer paper and construction paper my grandparents provided from the school and bank where they worked while our moms sat up at the kitchen table paging through magazines.  It is the house they grew up in so being there often resulted in reminscing about funny stories from their childhood and lots of cackling.  Looking back, it seems very idyllic! 

Katie and I both mentioned our nostalgia at being at our Grandma's house.  At our age it is nice to still have that part of our childhood accessible because I know alot of people my age who have lost their grandparents and some did not even get to know them as children.  If they are alive, many have moved into assisted living or smaller, low maintenance apartments.  Although the decor has been updated with each decade almost everything is the same.  My grandpa's various coaching and teaching awards still hang on the wall in the basement, along with a bulletin board with baby pictures and funny newspaper clippings pinned on it that hasn't changed since the early 90's.  And I like it that way! 

The side of the basement where we used to draw and color is now my Grandma's quilting headquarters.  She has an abundance of fabric and a big fancy sewing machine and a big rotary cutting mat that covers the whole table. 

We put the proper quilting foot on my machine and Grandma showed me her signature swirling quilting design!  There was nothing to it!

This was my frist attempt.  It was OK.

I also learned the "right" way to bind quilts.  I usually just cut the back larger than the front and then fold it over and sew it.  The right way involves strips of fabric that are sewn on the back and then folded over and hand sewn on the front.  I am skeptical because I don't like had sewing but I think it looks alot better so I will give it a try. 

My first attempt.  The corner looks good!  By the way, those are just scraps...do not be alarmed by the hideous floral/snowman combination!

I think I've got it!

Ooooh...look what I did!  ALLAN!  The possibilities are endless!

On Sunday afternoon I stopped at the farm to pick up Jake because Andrea and Kirk were back from Hawaii.  At Christmas he had to be coaxed into his kennel with a meat stick before he would leave.  This time, he wouldn't go at all!  Not even for a meat stick!  He wouldn't leave the step and when I tried to lead him by the collar he put on the brakes and locked his legs in place!  My dad had to come out and carry him!  We recorded it on my dad's phone and I think it's hilarious.  It might be a "had to be there" moment but if you know the family you might like it.  My favorite part is when my dad says "Dinner plate!" and tries to get Jake to chase after a food tray.  It is kind of sad, too, because my parents' dog is crying and wimpering as Jake finally gets up in the kennel.  If you watch, please ignore the ridiculous giggling from my mom and I!  At 2:30 is when Dad finally takes action!

Sewing Machine!

Justin gave me a new sewing maching for Christmas this year.  I took it out of the box for the first time this evening and started experimenting.  I had previously read through the instruction book and knew it would be considerably more complicated than my old machine!  Wow...it is really complicated!  It was necessary to read the directions carefully to learn all of the mechanisms before sewing a stitch!   

This little screen tells you what is going on.  I thought it was funny that it displayed the fact that I was winding hte bobbin thread.  Usually it displays the stitch selection options and, when you select the stitch, gives you the option to change the stitch length and width. 

Look at all those buttons!  The red light is actually a button that you push to start sewing!  It has a foot pedal but you don't have to use it.  It was strange at first but I think I will like it!  There are 67 "utility stitches" and countless other stitches for decorative sewing, embroidering letters, and making button holes.  It will take me alot of projects before I experience these features!  I am very excited that it has the capability to quilt.  Maybe I can finally step out of my "tie quilt" comfort zone and stop taking the easy way out! 

Quilts x 4!

I have mentioned briefly the secret quilting project I was working on in this fall in preparation for Christmas.  I am going to finally reveal what exactly I was doing! (I know, everyone has probably been waiting SO anxiously! Haha!).

I was making four quilts for Mary (Justin's mom).  The covert operation started this fall when she and Larry were cleaning and cosolidating around their house.  As many of you know, Justin's dad, Dennis, passed away in 1991.  Over the years, she held on to several of his shirts that held memories of him as a reminder.  Mary found them hanging in a basement closet while organizing and was contemplating what to do with them.  She got inspiration from my blog posts about the quilts I made from my old shirts over the summer and asked me if I could turn Dennis's shirts into quilts for Justin and his sister and their grandmother, and also one for her to keep.  I was instantly excited about the idea so I went to their house without Justin's knowledge one weekend and picked up the shirts.  There were about 20, all along the same lines.  They had the snaps and pointed pockets and yokes of western style shirts, and the patterns were plaids and stripes.  I knew right away that they would make attractive quilts! 

This is the first one I pieced together!  I was the smallest of the three, consisting of 7 x 7 inch squares arranged 8 across x 9 down.  The other three were larger, with 9 squares across and 11 down.  Although it seems like alot of work, the sewing aspect went quite fast.  It was the cutting that took the most time.  There was quite a bit of seam ironing and ALOT of string trimming!  I did most of the work at Andrea's (it was nice to be able to work without Justin's knowledge and without having to hide everything from him) and strings will probably be hanging around her basemet for the next year.

Here they are, all finished!  I tied them instead of quilted them.  They are very soft due to the well worn shirt fabric! 

The tan shirt was Dennis's Cub Scout leader uniform from when Justin was involved in scouting.  For his quilt I repositioned the patches in the middle of the squares.  They were originally on the shoulder near the seam.  There was the patch shown above and an America flag.  These patches and the quilt corners were the only parts that required hand sewing so that was a relief!  I am not a fan of hand sewing...

This photo shows some of the pockets!  I love the look of the snaps! 

When I finished the project I had three bags of scraps remaining and thought it would be nice to make something more.  I thought that Christmas ornaments would be a good idea and searched for some ideas on the internet.  After a few test runs and rejected ideas I came up with these little Christmas trees!  They were a combination of a few different examples I found that for various reasons didn't work.  They were a great way to showcase the pretty colors of the snaps!

Here they are before I sewed the back on.

The pinking sheared edge really added to the look and fixed any uneven edges.  I had planned to use my mom's pinking shears but as soon as I tried to cut with them I realized that they no longer cut fabric because my sister and I used to play with them and use them to cut paper and make scrapbooks.  Sorry mother!  She told me to buy her a new pair and a few days later I recieved my very own pair for christmas! 

This was a great way to share the project with more family members! 

It was alot of fun to make these quilts.  I am prone to getting burned out on projects sometimes and not finishing them in a timely manner (such as the t-shirt quilt I finally finished this fall after I had the quilt top stashed in a closet for two years!) but I didn't while I was working on these (being accountable to someone else might have helped!).  I could feel Dennis's approval.  Everyone loved their quilts! 

Allan

There hasn't been enough Allan related content on here lately.  I don't see him enough!  I hope the poor kitten remembers me!  So...here are a few pictures of him.  I realized it had been awhile and decided to show off a few. 

Throughout the fall months I was working on a top secret sewing project with Justin's mom.  It was for Christmas.  I will feature the results in a separate post eventually but I had a few Allan pictures I hadn't been able to reveal because they would have ruined the secret. 

 

The surprise involved quilts (yes, multiple quilts!) which I finished by tying as opposed to real quilting.  One weekend I worked on it at home and Allan was a big pest the whole time.  Here he is burrowing in the quilt with one of his favorite mouse toys.

This photo is probably one of my favorites I have taken of him because he looks very bratty!  The turn of his ears and the look in his eyes betray the bad behavior that was about to come.  Right after the photo was taken he started ripping the thread out of the box (it's my old friendship bracelet kit again!  It was shown on here a few months ago when I was tying a quilt!).  I love how he look so expressive! 

Justin sends me picture messages of Al regularly to cheer me up.  Most of them are taken when he is watching TV in the basement. 

Fluffy neck!

 He's getting kind of fat and I like it! 

I miss my little buddy!

Baby Quilt

OK, I will show you what I gave Roommate for her baby shower gift!  It was a quilt and I think it is very cute.  I like it so much I wanted to keep it but that would be selfish of me and what would I do with a miniature quilt? 

This was my first attempt at a quilt with blocks of any other shape besides squares.  The pattern is called "tumblers" because they are shaped like a tumbler/drinking glass.  I suppose you could call it "trapezoids" if you wanted.  You can make them short and wide or tall and skinny.  Mine were, if I remember correctly, 6 inches at the wide end and 4 inches at the narrow end.  I tacked my indimidation about using a rotary cutter and now realize how lame that was.  It is really not that hard. 

I chose the aqua and red combination because we don't know what gender the baby is.  It was challenging not to make it overly feminine because alot of fabric, regardless of the color, is floral.  There is one floral pattern in here but oh well.  Babies don't know what is going on anyway when it comes to what textile patterns are socially acceptable for their gender.  I mostly wanted to pick attractive fabrics.  I like the contrast of the two colors. 

This is a close up shot of the quilting.  I wish I could say that I quilted it with painstaking detail as I watched TV at night.  However, that is not the case.  My grandmother, Phyllis, has a machine with a long arm intended for quilting so I sent it to her in the mail and she probably quilted this whole thing in 30 minutes or less.  She's kind of a pro!

Sewing with Allan

During my recent sewing exploits I took several pictures of Allan's behavior while I was trying to accomplish something. He was a huge pest. In order to get anything done I had to just let him do whatever annoying thing he wanted to do for a few minutes until he got bored and went to sleep.

Here he is tangling himself in the back of a quilt as I was trying to press the seam down the middle.

He loves to burrow under blankets and this quilt top was no exception. I was trying to put the front and back together and he kept messing it up.

More of his nonsense.

For these quilts, I tied them instead of quilting with a needle and thread (too much detail for me!) and I happened to have my old "friendship bracelet" kit from elementary school here! My friends, sister, and I used to make friendship bracelets out of embroidery floss. I learned many techniques at the various camps I attended. I found it when I was cleaning my room at the farm this summer and decided I wanted to make some bracelets! I never did but I was glad to have all the embroidery floss for my quilts! Allan immediately started tearing the box apart.

That blue thing is a plastic spinner tool intended for winding floss onto the cards. I recall that it didn't work as well as just using your hands but it looked cool! Allan is knawing on it here for some reason. Brat.

Then he started pulling out the cards of thread and bracelets. Oh well, no damage done to anything! I should enjoy his kitten-like behavior while it lasts!

Another Shirt Quilt

I previously said that I had finished another quilt. I will show it off...NOW! I made this quilt out of old shirts and other garments combined with scraps I had. The only thing I bought was the batting! I decided to do this because I was sentimental about some of the clothes. Don't think I'm a clothes hoarder or anything...I give away several bags of old clothes each year to thrift stores due to my limited closet space and penchant for clearance shopping at places like Old Navy and TJ Maxx. (By the way, if anyone in the Fargo area has anything to donate I recommend the New Life Center. It is a multi-denominational rescue mission. They have a thrift store but they also give items to homeless people at the mission and people in the community. I was moved when I was shopping there a few years ago for some old picture frames for a project and saw a little 8x11 sign by the door that said "All toys free to a good home". They give toys to kids for free! I also saw a family that looked like they had recently immigrated trying on winter coats. Can you imagine coming to Fargo and not having a winter coat? I immediately thought of the rarely worn fleece jackets and old coats that I had been hauling around for years and how much nicer they were than what was there. It was easy to let them go when I thought of another young woman finding a nice Columbia among the old crap on the rack. Anyway...it's a good place to donate if your closets are overflowing.)


I did it the easy way and tied it instead of quilting it. I can't imagine myself with a needle and thread actually quilting. I love this thing! It might look kind of ugly, but each square has meaning to me (well, most of them do)! Let me explain...

So many fabrics! Where do I start...that yellow plaid was a shirt I had in high school. I bought it when I went shopping before my basketball team went to State in 1999. I guess my mom thought the event required some new items in my wardrobe! (We did have many events to dress up for in addition to the games, such as banquets and hospitality rooms). I loved it but it was a size L, the size I chose when I was in high school. Everything was baggy and wide and now I know better so I cut up the shirt!

That solid turquoise fabric was from a pair of "scrub" pants I bought at a KD convention. I thought they were cute but they were actually pretty unflattering. They had a long crotch and strangely shaped legs. Of course they were...they were real scrub pants like drs. and nurses wear! They worked well with the other colors in the quilt at least.

The squares with the little daisies were from a sarong my aunt gave me for a present when I was still lifeguarding. It was a long peice of fabric that was meant to be wrapped around your waist and tied. I loved it because it was from Old Navy before Old Navy had infiltrated ND and was still a novelty. It also made a very cute addition to this quilt!

I wore this plaid shirt alot during my last two years of college. The first time I wore it, and I believe the reason I bought it, was on my 21st birthday in 2004. I was so excited to turn 21 and I loved this shirt. I still do...I almost didn't cut it up even though I haven't worn it for probably 4 years!

Oh, the Hawaiian dress...I actually sewed that disaster myself for a Hawaiian themed dance. It was the first garment I had sewn since home-ec. If anyone has ever used a pattern, you know that the size charts on the envelopes are wonky. Not being aware of this, I cut this thing about three sizes bigger than my normal size because the chart said a person who wore my size should have a 25 inch waist or some nonsense like that. I haven't been that size since 6th grade so I sized it up. Well, of course the dress ended up being nicely assembled but huge and my mom had to fix it. After that it fit perfectly! I think the pattern industry needs to reevaluate their sizing. I don't think it has changed since girdles were a part of womens' daily attire.

This shirt was from the palace of cheapness known as Old Navy. I bought it the summer after my Freshman year of college and wore it when I went with my soon to be KD housemates to Minneapolis for the weekend to go to our friends' birthday party. It was a blast and afterwards I knew that the rest of my college years were going to be filled with fun times and friends.

There's me and Roommate and the shirt in a more business like setting!

This picture was also from the time around my 21st birthday. In this picture my friend Jill and I are wearing the same shirt. These shirts were similar to my 21st birthday outfit. I think Western must have been a trend at that time.

Oh, my toga...this toga party took place the spring of my Freshman year. We girls went to Walmart to buy fabric for our togas and I bought 6 yards because I didn't know what I was doing. Well, 6 yards is alot of cloth. I think I cut off 3 to wrap around myself. Lucky for me there was enough of the toga to use for the back of the quilt, as well as for some squares! Perfect! I believe my sister wore my toga for one of the high school homecoming theme days the next year. I think its funny that I actually owned a garment that was specifically a toga! Who does that?

Awwww...Bergen on the beautiful west coast of Norway...The shirt I'm wearing was cheap and way to trendy to last but I held on to it because it reminded me of my trip to Norway. It didn't have alot of fabric to work with, but I got a few squares of the pretty embroidery.

The quilt is very light and soft and perfect for sitting on the couch. I'm glad I decided to do it while I had time on my hands!