WIP Wednesday 6.1.11

I can't believe it's June already!

My biggest WIP right now is my garden!

I need to finish up gifts for the girls' teachers!

Here is a start on one project . . . I'll show more when it's done.

I'm trying to copy one of my favorite art projects their teacher did with them this year.

I finished a couple of projects this week.

I'll do a separate post on my Bottled Rainbows quilt in a few days --

today I delivered it to my college for the alumni art fair.

Hopefully this weekend I'll have a chance to take pictures

of it in the college's art museum!

The second finish of the week was this cathedral windows pillow:

More about this pillow here.

This is the only other WIP that I made progress on this week,

a charm square with 1 inch borders quilt, idea copied from Poppyprint:

 

My little artists helped me hold this little quilt in the wind for photos.

I think it needs a border of Kona coal or light gray to complete it.

After these 2 projects, I'm ready to be done with Sherbet Pips for awhile!

Linking up to:

A New Quilt Along!

Yippee!
Elizabeth from Don't Call Me Betsy is starting another quilt along!
Not like I need another project to do, but it looks so cool that I just can't help myself!

Check it out here:

Cathedral Windows Pillow

I finished up my cathedral windows pillow today!

I used Angela's tutorial on Moda Bake Shop, and a charm pack of Sherbet Pips. 

Her instructions are wonderful --lots of pictures, very easy to follow.

I'd definitely recommend this tutorial!

 My points aren't quite as neat as Angela's, but it does get easier with practice!

Linking up to:

Giveaway Winner!

I am overwhelmed by the response to my little giveaway - WOW!

Thank you so much!

Stay tuned, there may be a similar giveaway in the future at SewCraftyJess,

or here again, or maybe we should even open an Etsy store!

Hooray, the winner of the giveaway is Laura!
Random.org chose #11!

Congratulations, Laura, I'll be sending you an email soon!

Laura said...

They are both so cute! I would take either one (the hexagon one is my favorite,though).

WIP Wednesday 5.25.11

Not too much going on this week . . . 

getting ready to pick a winner on my little giveaway tomorrow.

(The giveaway consists of one pincushion, 3 adorable fish pin toppers,

and a fat quarter of Heather Ross' lightning bugs fabric.)

Other than that, a few fabrics arrived in the mail this week, and I need to decide which one to use for binding my Bottled Rainbows quilt.

I'd love some advice!

Did you see the tutorial on Moda Bake Shop for Angela's cathedral window pillows few weeks ago?  I love cathedral windows -- I tried to do some by hand a year ago, and wasn't too happy with how they looked.  But sewing them by machine is definitely do-able!  Angela's instructions are great for ironing the squares, too -- I had tried making some in the past with some instructions that my Grandma had given me, but they didn't turn out as nicely as the new ones I just made.

Just practicing with some scraps -- this might end up as a pincushion!

Same story with this one -- I'm going to have quite a few pincushions, I think!

12  gray Kona squares, all ready to go!

Hopefully I'll have this project finished by next week.

And I'm still hand quilting circles on my double hourglass quilt -- 20 done, 36 to go!

As usual on Wednesdays, I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced:

Giveaway Day!

It's Giveaway Day at SewMamaSew, and I've teamed up with the wonderfully talented Jessica from SewCraftyJess to offer this little giveaway!

I asked Jess if she would make coordinating fish pin toppers for these little
pincushions that I had made.  What do you think?

Didn't she do such a cute job with these?!

The giveaway will consist of one pincushion, 3 adorable fish pin toppers, and a fat quarter of Heather Ross' lightning bugs fabric.

You have 3 chances to win!

First, leave me a comment with which pin cushion shape you like best.

(If you win, would you like the hexagon or rectangular one?)

Second, let me know if you're a follower (or become one!).

Third, hop over to Jessica's blog to enter her giveaway --

she has a set of pincushions and  pin toppers to give away, too!

Thanks for visiting!

I'll announce a winner on Thursday May 26th,

and mail out the prizes on Friday, May 27th.

Comments are now CLOSED!

FNSI

This friday was another FNSI, hosted by Heidi.I spent Friday (and Saturday, too!)finishing up gifts for our Sunday School teachers!Our last day of Sunday School is May 22nd, and I wanted to do something nice for each of the amazing women who volunteer at our church each week--there are teachers, helpers, and "music ladies"--so there were quite a few gifts to make!

I couldn't just make the same bags . . . it would have been too boring.So I tried out a few different things --pennant flags with "Alleluia" embroidery,2 gathered clutches (love the tutorial at Noodlehead), and zippered bags with tree and flower embroidery (these are my favorites).The girls made lots of cards, and had fun covering the envelopes with stickers.Then we added chocolates -- each bag is filled with yummy goodies!
Now it's on to end of the school year teacher gifts -- good thing I've got a few weeks.Our last day of school isn't until June 9th!

WIP Wednesday

It's been a great week!

I was so happy to get Lexi's quilt finished . . . 

mostly so that I could put her Christmas quilt away!

I entered this quilt into the Bloggers Quilt Festival

at amyscreativeside.com -- read more about it here.

Over the weekend I decided to get back to work on my Bottled Rainbows.

And once I got going, I couldn't stop.  These blocks are so much fun to piece!

This pink one is my favorite (and my little artists' favorite too --

we all love pink, and really love cats).

Favorite block

New additions this week

These blocks are each 10.5inches square.

 I had originally intended on doing 16 blocks -- 4x4 to make it square,

because I liked the symmetry of it.

But the last 4 blocks that I had all ready to go had almost no fabric
scraps to go with them.  I just couldn't make it work.

So I decided that I was happy with 12 squares instead.

I'm trying to get this quilt finished up in time for my college reunion (in 3 wks) -- one of my college roommates told me I just had to enter a quilt in the alumni art fair.  I spent an entire day agonizing about which quilt to enter, and when my husband came home, he said "this is it -- this is the coolest quilt I've ever seen."

How interesting.  So this is it!

I just need to decide on a binding fabric.  Nothing in my stash would do, so I ordered 3 fabrics from Etsy and am going to try them out as soon as they arrive.

Almost finished!

I'm still working on these blocks based on Arajane's tutorial here.

I made up some blocks with Kona snow, too (last week I had only done the brown), and am wondering where to go from here.  I have lots more scraps, (Sugar Pop fabric leftover from my Supernova Quilt), so I can make more of either (or both!) colorways.  So far I've thought of 1) keeping things totally separate (make one quilt in brown, one in snow), or 2) throw them all together -- one brown stripe, one snow, another brown.  Other ideas, anyone?

Linking up to:

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I finished up my "Trees Quilt," just in time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.
Thanks for visiting!

I made this quilt for my daughter Lexi's bed.
Now she has a spring/summer quilt for her bed,
and we can tuck her Christmas Quilt away until next winter.
It will be fun to change these out and celebrate the changing of the seasons.

Quilt Back
Balloons on top, City Print on the Bottom

This quilt was my own design -- I just made it up as I went.
Lexi's bed is an odd size -- it's an antique bed,
smaller than a full size, but larger than a twin.
Her favorite color is red, so this quilt needed to have lots of red!
At one point she asked me if I could add some rocket ships to it,
but I just couldn't figure out how to make that work,
and she must have forgotten all about that request (whew)!

I could have named this quilt "adventures in machine quilting."
Mostly this is free motion quilted -- an all over stipple/meander in the red,
a tiny stipple in the blue sky, and pebble quilting for the green trees and borders
of the tree blocks.  I straight line quilted the grass, in narrow lines for the small tree blocks and wider spaced lines for the larger tree block.
I'm so happy that it's finally done and off of my dining room table.

Close up of the quilting

After washing, crinkly and soft!

I taught myself several new things in the making of this quilt.

I had never done bias binding, or sewn the binding on completely by machine.

I used this tutorial for the bias binding, and this tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts.

I have never liked the way machine sewn binding looks, but the way Rita explains it, you don't even see the stitches on the front side--it's great!

Because this quilt is for a child's bed

(and will be well loved, jumped on, used to build forts, etc.),

I figured that a machine sewn binding would be the way to go.

Binding

It's new home!

Thanks, Amy, for hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

It has been so much fun to hop around and see so many beautiful entries!

Also linking up to: