Arrowheads and Triangles

It's been over the requisite 3 months between posts, about time I let anyone who comes here (which is absolutely no one...don't worry, I don't feel bad about it) know what's going on in my quilty life. 

I stumbled upon the Arrowhead quilt by Initial K Studio and fell in love immediately. I swooned over the clean lines, negative space, and color graduation. So I bought the pattern and have made two lap quilt tops, with plans to make a couple of baby quilts. 

 I gotta figure out how to quilt these. Straight lines for everyone!

I also crushed over this Magnolia line by Alisse Courter. I've never done an isosceles triangle quilt before and thought it'd look good in that. Normally I mix lines pretty well, but in an effort to use the fabric right away and not stash it forever, I just cut it up and stuck it on the wall. 

 I think it's about time I actually use my "design wall" for its intended purpose and put up some more "design wall".  It's looking a bit like my body...

I'll check back in 5ish months-

Jenn

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Spring 2015-Facing East

So I decided to enter Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival this year. I've always loved reading about the entries, but I've never entered myself. Kinda nervous about it....

This is my entry for the modern category, and my most favorite quilt of all time! I made it for my dear friend who was going through stage 3 ovarian cancer (she's all good now), and despite how much I love her, I still had a hard time handing it over.

It's Carolyn Friedlander's pattern 'Facing East' from her book 'Savor Each Stich'. The pattern was perfect for my friend and challenging for me because I had never paper-pieced before (crazy, I know).

I loved adding little details and fabric scraps that were meaningful to my friend. It was such a pleasure to make!

My quilt holder really wanted a picture with our local sasquatch....

Thanks for checking it out! You guys are awesome!

Finishes and WIP's

I finally finished the binding on the Emmy Grace quilt, along with some mini's. The Emmy Grace quilt I was making specifically as a baby quilt, but it didn't quite turn out the way I hoping. We'll have to wait much longer for our baby. Oh well, what are ya gonna do? 

I have been waiting for this Lizzy House Natural History line for SO LONG! I had preordered a half yard bundle, which was also going to become baby stuff.... But I love it so much that it will become lots of kid stuff and maybe just stuff for me :)

This has been an exercise in pure frustration. I LOVE this DIY constellation quilt kit idea, but the execution leaves much to be desired. It proves quite difficult to embroider on tearaway stabilizer, at least if you're a perfectionist. Your stitches punch through the stabilizer, but then your stitches are hidden by the stabilizer. Frustrating, I tell you. 

Here are my first two minis ever! They don't go together at all, but I don't really care!

Super Kids

Apparently it's just me doing this now, so that's gonna be fun. Where Mindy and Jenni went? I dunno.

I decided it was about time I take a picture of the quilt I made for my niece Zoey. I mean, it's only been finished for 7 months. Too bad she'll have to wait to get it until she comes to visit me, which will be in another 4 months. My sister requested Super Kids by Anne Kelle. Which is darling fabric, but kinda hard to figure out what to do with.

We're currently under attack. The exterior of our home has been over run with flies. Mating. Ugh. It's so gross. And I don't know what to do about it. I think they're attracted to the flowering pear trees that are very close to the house, but short of cutting those down.... They are on everything. The truck outside, the tractor, the house, the railing, the windows, the picnic table, the deck, the trees, the patio furniture, the trashcan, the doghouse, the roof, everything. Everything. Everywhere. So. Gross.

And that's it. Ya'll have a good one while I fight it out with flies.

Emily's Quilt

I'm currently doing anything to get out of folding the MOUNTAIN of laundry that has strewn itself all over my bedroom and laundry room. I already vacuumed all the rooms in my house, steam-mopped every square inch of tile available, washed the dishes, polished my counters, cleaned out my sinks, and cleaned three out of four bathrooms in my house (I'm not touching my 15 yo's), and dusted. I also spent some quality time on IG, FB, and Pinterest. The laundry hasn't gone anywhere, so I thought maybe since it's been like, 2 1/2 months, I'd update the blog. Surely by the time I'm done with this, I'll be ready to tackle that laundry pile....

I got my first commissioned quilt last month. She paid me 65 bucks for 3 hours and 45 minutes of work. Not bad. It's only 45"x45" and had I known it was to be a wall hanging, I would've quilted it more densely. Oh well. It's also my first finish of the year. Yay! 

She requested the backing be solid white, so that was helpful in hiding my binding lines, which I'm not fantastic at yet. In fact, I still really hate binding. Like, a lot. I also don't know what's up with that picture. My carpet is NOT that color. 

My second finish of the year I absolutely LOVE. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, lovelovelovelovelove! And it is going to be so very hard to hand it over to the person I made it for. I suppose it's a good thing I love her more than the quilt :) No one knows if she is cancer free, since she can't have an MRI because of her cochlear implants, but they think they got all the cancer in the first surgery. She's doing really, pretty well. Which we are quite thankful for! Unfortunately, it seems like many people I know have been diagnosed with cancer, my grandmother included. But I supposed when you're 81, something like that is bound to happen :( 

Since I'm really hoping this quilt will get a lot of use, I didn't quilt it densely. I want it to be soft and snugly. I also love the tessellation that occurs with the "sunlight" spreading out, which would (if there was space) continue to infinitely cross and create more patterns. 

 I have to make this pattern again! Carolyn Friedlander is a genius! There is so much detail to this quilt! I absolutely adore it!

 We drive by this Sasquatch everyday after I pick my son up from Track. And everyday my 15 yo son asks if we can buy him. And everyday I day "No, I'm not buying a $500 cast iron Sasquatch". Then he asks if we can buy one of the smaller ones. No. No weird things in my yard. So I appeased him slightly by taking a picture with it :)

A Finish!

Yay! I finally have a finish! And yes, it's the ATBP quilt. This was the first time it stopped raining and was slightly less windy in about 5 days, so I just took advantage of that. Not the best pictures, but who really cares?

 I seriously LOVE this backing!! And I used Aurifil thread to quilt it. It's one of their "reactive" colors, so no chlorine bleach (as if). After all the breakage from the 50 wt thread, I used a 40 wt and I must admit that I've had a much more pleasant experience with the heavier thread. And the color matches perfectly!! Now to up my game in FMQ and we'll be good.

Seriously with my camera and the colors! The middle picture is the most accurate. This quilt finished at 72"x72". Just great for a lap quilt! Now on to other piles of beautiful fabric just waiting to be sliced, diced, and put back together.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
-Jenn

Facing East with Paws

Jenn here. I know, right? I haven't been on here since July!! Geez! My excuses? While many, really just boil down to laziness. And this year, even though my Sweetie bought me my dream machine, I haven't done nearly as much sewing as last year. I'm blaming that on my autoimmune issues. I'm just so freakin tired! Here and here, if you're interested in learning about them. And both of them together? Suck balls. Wait, are we allowed to say that?? Hmm...maybe I should rephrase that. "And both of them together? Just...super cool."  

Anyway, I have actually done stuff. Including July, I have in fact, finished two quilt tops, and am in the process of putting together a third. So that's good, right? Okay, I also quilted one of them, just need to add the binding. Ugh, I hate that part. 

So here's the pics of my tops. 

Okay, I love, love, LOVE Acorn Trial!! I'm not sure why my camera won't capture the true colors, but whatever. That was the layout I was gonna go with, but ended up with this instead. Now I have a bunch of 6" bear paw blocks leftover that I get to do something with. And I'm most certainly not complaining about that! This is also the quilt top I've quilted and just need to bind. Once again, ugh. 

I did back it in one of Alison Glass' new Handcrafted batiks. I'm very picky about my batiks, but I love every one in her new line! I'll put up a pic when I get the binding on. Ergh. 

I've been sitting on this since July. I adore Carolyn Friedlander's Facing East pattern! I know, I know. It's for my friend who has ovarian cancer. Luckily, every last speck of cancer was removed with the initial surgery and she's not even on heavy duty chemo! Just maintenance meds and a special diet. Miracles and tender mercies! I just need a fabulous backing and someone to quilt it to amazing perfection. That's possible, yes? I'd do it myself, but my FMQ skills are quite lacking. I'm working on that, slowly but surely. If you can recommend anyone with awesome skills that I can send this to, please do. Thanks!

So that's that. Not really. When my husband told me he custom-ordered a fourth smoker, I maybe bought hundreds of dollars worth of fabric that I've been coveting and now need to use.... I may or may not show you pics of my fabric-fest. It's really quite embarrassing, but oh so delicious. 

 Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday

The end. 

Fighting Like Girls-WIP Wednesday

Jenn here-

This year started out emotionally difficult for myself, but nothing like what my dear friend Emily is going through. Her father died two years ago, her mother last year (car accident), she's had 6 or so miscarriages in the past year and half and just two weeks ago, she was diagnosed with stage 3b (or 4, depending on pathology) ovarian cancer.

And...she's the most amazing person I have ever met!! She's a writer, a marriage and family therapist (day job), and works with the deaf community.

So what do quilters do when their close friends are in trouble? They quilt! I've been wanting to learn paper piecing for about two years now. I even paid money for Don't Call Me Betsy's Lucky Stars BOM club (which is beautiful)...for BOTH years and never stitched a paper stitch.

Until now. I suppose cancer calls for some paper piecing.

My first block, see that giant pucker? What the...?

I had Carolyn Friedlander's 'Savor Every Stitch' book in my Amazon cart for a while, just not sure if I should click that check out button. But when I happened upon the Facing East quilt along on Instagram #facingeastqal (hosted by citystitches), I was sold! The pattern is absolutely perfect for Emily, even if I have to learn how to paper piece.

It's so easy!! Why I waited so long is beyond me! I have a few more blocks to do, then I'll be done.

But, now I'm not sure how to proceed. Do you tear the paper off before you put the blocks together? Or after? Or does it even matter? And holy schnikes Batman, that's a lot of fabric waste! Do you keep those scraps for later paper piecing? I've never been too much of a scrap keeper, but this hurts my heart a little. And if you keep the paper on, do you just tape it to your design wall? Cause it ain't stickin' with all that paper on back. And does paper piecing take longer than traditional piecing, or am  I just slow?? There seems to be a lot of extra steps, like folding paper, and extra cutting. Just me??

Anyway, I've got plans to incorporate the "color" for ovarian cancer, which is TEAL. Which I have a lot of. I mean...A. LOT.

I gotta put the rest aside, and get back to sewing, gotta be quick on this one :/ But thankfully the way the cancer presented itself (hard rocks) it may have saved her life.
You can get to know Emily and her sweet husband (a playwright for Broadway and UncommonGoods) via her blog. You won't regret it. And if you'd like to donate to help with the medical expenses (which would be AWESOME and I'd love you forever), that's  here.

Baby Zoey's Quilt

Vintage Happy Churn Dash

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced when she gets back from vacation....

A WIP Quadry

Granted this isn't too "difficult" a situation, but still, who hasn't been in a state of uncertainty, or perplexed at just how they should go about quilted a finished, basted top? Of course, before the era of the Juki (let's now refer to it as Juki-bc...uh oh, I hope that's not blasphemous, maybe we should go with preFMQ...?) I would've just straight-line stitched it. I straight-line stitched everything (ok, I did hand quilt on occasion). And I loved it! But now? Well the whole world is open to free motion possibility!! Oh, the days before possibility! So, how would you quilt this? Pearle cotton on the negative space echoing the geese? Straight-line? Loops? Someone be brilliant and help me out :) I'll love you forever, I promise. Okay, I probably like you for always. 

Yeah, it's been folded for almost a week....

This quilt should probably have it's own day in the sun, except it's been so windy for so long (that whole "sweeping down the plains" thing), that this morning was the only calm moment to take a decent (and I use the term decent loosely) picture. You may remember this fabric from this post almost HOLY CRA... *sigh* like a year ago. In good news, I revamped it and it's done :) yaaay

Can you see the spot where I totally forgot to quilt??

Guess what?! I found a local MODERN quilt shop in Tulsa!! It's called the Owl and Drum and is close enough to my son's physical therapy place that I may end up spending hundreds of dollars there... So good and bad. While exploring the first time, I picked up most of these fabrics, then added a few from my stash. 

 And then that became this. 

And I'm not sure I love it.... 

Thanks to the encouragement of a couple of instagramers (mine is @jennrperkins) I'll be adding some aqua blocks to mellow out the yellow. Which is screaming hello to you. The yseams have been something awful, and I still have 43 blocks to go. Now is when I wish I knew how to paper piece, had this pattern in paper piecing, and my printer worked. But, since I don't have/know any of that, it's good, old tradition for me. 

Linking up with Lee of Freshly Pieced and Sew Fresh Quilts 

Thanks for coming this way-

Jenn

Wednesday WIP

Let's have a little chat about these pictures (okay, that first one really sucks, I don't know what's wrong with my iPad). Anyway, I'm really sick of working with 2" squares. I mean, really sick of it. I've been trying to convince myself that I can make just one block a day. Everything is cut and ready to piece, so surely I can do just that? Nope, I can't. As much as I LOVE the HR prints, and love the pattern, I just can't. So, I've done what I have tried so hard not to, started other projects. Which brings us to...

Flying geese. This is really my first attempt at them. Why I did it in solids and not prints I will never know. I mean, at least prints would have hid the glaring lost points. Some points are lost just in the bulk of the seam, not sew in. Others I just sucked at :) 

Turns out, I'm a perfectionist at heart, but much too lazy to actually follow through with that perfectionism. Ack! The ADD and OCD are fighting! It's a lifelong battle and I have no idea who will actually win. 

I do love the Kona solids I picked out. The blue is actually "Celestial" and not navy. A fantastic color, if you ask me. Which I'm sure you did :) The green is a little bright, but oh well, what're ya gonna do? 

This is what I can hardly wait to work with! The gray bundle and the tealish bundle will be a quilt (kaleidoscope?) and the Vintage Happy will be a churn dash quilt. I can wait a little longer because it just makes me happy looking at them and imagining their destinies. And petting them. And...mmmm...yum. I do love fabric....

I also have two baby quilts I need to start/finish. And about 4 super old WIPs. Ugh, how do I get myself in these situations?! Tell me I'm not alone, it might make me feel better :)

Have a good one

-Jenn

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced