Triangle Jungle Quilt - Complete!

Well I gave myself a goal and I'm sooo happy that I was able to meet it.  I set out to make this quilt for my husband for Father's Day yesterday and I was actually able to pull it off.  It all started with my bundle from The Fat Quarter Shop and I just went from there.  I added more of the deep saturated colors like Navy, Brown, and a slew of Anna Maria Horner Fabrics that never seemed to have a home in other quilts I made.

The quilt measures somewhere about 60" x 85"....not the biggest quilt I've ever made, but a very generous "lap" quilt.  My husband is 6'2" and I knew he would need a longer quilt to really snuggle with this.

I did the quilting on my Janome Horizon, a simple free motion stipple design.  Which turned out to be a big pain in my a$$ because my machine and I were not on speaking terms that day.  Always seems to happen when you are on a deadline.  She wanted to be babied and cleaned out before anything could happen.  Cue 2 hours later.... finally was able to *start* quilting.  And then of course my back flipped over on itself over and over resulting in a lot of time between myself and my seam ripper.  Just keeping it real here.  

A fair amount of my troubles with the quilting stemmed from the fact that I used a poly batting with this quilt (that's the only kind my husband likes.  He's been telling me for YEARS. lol) and the spray basting.  The two don't seem to mix too well.  I actually do like poly batting for the loft it gives but heck if I don't like working with it for free motion quilting.  Trying to figure out if it would have been simpler to do straight line stitching.  Ah well.  Live and learn.  

The whole quilt is backed in Katie Jump Rope dots and bound with a new fabric from Cloud 9 fabrics available at Joanns (its so nice to be able to see fabrics IN PERSON before buying them by the way).  Over all the whole quilt is pretty but still masculine enough to suit both my tastes and my husband's.  

And look!  He was even helpful enough to hold up the quilt for me to photograph today.  He assures me that he was both surprised and loves it.  Time will tell if it gets used enough!  Right now it's living on our sofa and has been in good use for the last couple days.

Making the rounds

Friday is the day to be seen...on other blogs that is.  Today is twice the fun, with features on not one but two different blogs!


You can find me over at the Fat Quarter Shop's blog, The Jolly Jabber, with a little interview of me and a chance to WIN some fabric!  You could win that FQ Bundle I picked out. You want it.  Trust me.   I LOVE it...and may have already used the whole thing. teehee.

And there is a post up by Laura Gunn on the Michael Miller blog today talking about her newest line, Edges.  You can see pictures of the project I made with her line and a some other fabulous bloggers.  Hop over there for a chance to win a CHARM pack of this fun line.

I hope you all have a great weekend and a happy father's day!

Baby Swoon - Brr! Style : Finished!!

Eep!  I finished it! Finally.  I've had this Baby Swoon quilt in progress for a long time, about a year and a half actually.  I would have been done AGES ago if I hadn't decided that this would be a good quilt to try out some hand quilting.

I love the look of hand quilting, but my wrists did NOT love the activity.  I've been given advice on how to make that better, but I think I'll just stick with hand quilting as a little extra detail on pillows and smaller projects.  Anything that has the word "quilt" as part of my description will not be getting a dose of hand quilting from me.  Save the wrists!  Save the sanity!

I used mainly Laurie Wisbrun's delightful fabric line Brr! for this in the aqua/red colorway.  I supplemented those with some other fabrics I had in my stash that were in the same colors.  There's a Ta Dot in there, some Joel Dewberry and even other of Laurie's fabrics.  The background is one of those many Kona grays.  No idea what the particular color is.  I probably bought it at Joanns if that helps anyone.

The backing is mainly Laurie's Tufted Tweets Chairs in Red and the binding a fun Michael Miller stripe I bought on clearance at my local fabric store a while back.  Stripes are always the perfect binding.

The swoon pattern itself was fun but a bit frustrating because I kept picking directional prints...it's definitely a lot easier when you are not worrying about direction of your print.  And it grows quickly. So four blocks gave me a very generous sized quilt.

Such a sweet little quilt.  And I'm very happy finish up this UFO.  Now I just need to find a home for it!

Google Reader...on to new things...

Well by now, I'm sure you have all heard that Google reader is ending soon.  If you are like me, then you have been in denial about that and have delayed making a choice on what your new reader should be to keep track of all those lovely blog posts.  (I know you don't want to miss a single one of mine :p)

I did a small survey on facebook among friends and tried to get some feedback  on which new reader to try. It sounds like there are a few good options, but for now I think I'm going to go with Bloglovin.  I'll be honest.  It's not my favorite name in the world, but hey.  That's the least of my worries.

I've been getting daily emails from bloglovin for a while because I wanted to try it out.  I still need to figure out how to add an icon to my toolbar so it pops up new blog posts automatically as they roll in.  But it was super easy to switch over from Google Reader to Bloglovin.  Literally the click of a button as I recall to transfer all the current blogs you follow into this new reader.

So be sure to add me to YOUR new reader, whatever you choose.  Good times are ahead and you don't want to miss out. ;)

I've added a button in my side bar to make it easy to add to your bloglovin reader or you can click on this fancy exploding head picture above.  Awesomeness.  Wish I had her eyes.

edited to add: I found this helpful pros and cons blog post about bloglovin. Definitely has helped me understand things better already and be on the lookout for the hiccups.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Triangle Jungle - A Quilt in Progress

I've been feeling that itch to quilt.  But nothing too fussy...just fun and something that lets me chop up a bunch of fabric pretty quickly and get it back together quickly as well.

I had that beautiful stack of fat quarters from my blogger bundle for the Fat Quarter Shop.... (which looks like it is finally in stock!!  Go grab one!)

I *was* thinking of starting a Weekender with that fabric, but frankly I'm still scared of that pattern.  I needed to make something I was very comfortable making...a quilt. And I finally figured out a pattern.  Triangles.  Oh do I love triangles!

I used a Fons and Porter triangle ruler that I bought who knows when and got to chopping up ALL of the Fat Quarters from my bundle plus about 9 more...something like that.  It's changed the overall look of the color scheme a bit because I decided to embrace a bit of crazy pattern and darker saturated colors.

Here it is a few rows into the design process....

I'm loving it!  It's a different color scheme than I originally intended for these fabrics.  But the hints of brown and gray in my additional fabrics I added and really saturated teals and navys are just so fun!  My motto became :When in doubt, add Anna Maria Horner fabrics.  So happily I used some that I have been holding on to for a long time without knowing what project they should be in.  And THIS is it.  I'm sooo happy when I find the perfect place for long held fabrics.

I feel like less of a hoarder of pretty fabrics, and more like a person who patiently waits for just the right project for select fabrics.  Haha!  Gotta love the self imposed labels.  I can't be the only one who does that, right?

But the pretty triangles are all coming together.  Here's a moment of perfect point happiness.  Let's hope I can get most of them to look like this!  It does take some pinning but it is worth it.

I have about 2/3 of the rows sewn now and will sew the rest together today.  Then it will be onto sewing all of those rows together.  It's coming together quickly and I needed that.  Then it's off to get a special batting for this and I'll explain about that later. (ahh...the suspense...can you stand it!?)

Last Minute Teacher Gifts

So I'm pretty new to the "mom of a kid in school" thing.  My 3 year old has been in a preschool a few afternoons a week and it's all fairly laid back.  So I haven't really gotten into the mindset of teachers and school performances and picnics etc.  I have a lot of years for that right?

Anyway, I was caught off guard when I caught sight of another mom handing over some gifts for the teachers earlier in the week.  What?!  Gifts?!  Doh.  I made them gifts for Christmas.  I just wasn't thinking about it for some reason (I've bought a bunch of graduation gifts lately too...but alas no teacher gifts).  So what is a crafty girl to do but whip something up at the VERY last minute.

I know you  don't "have" to get something for the teachers but I really loved hers.  And I think a nice handmade item (with a little gift card) is good way to show I appreciate all their hard work.  I certainly wouldn't want to work with 2 and 3 year olds all day long!  lol  Not my calling!  So THANK YOU to Caitlyn's sweet teachers who are tickled by her girly girl nature as much as I am.

  

As for the sewing... I asked both ladies what their favorite color is (surprisingly hard for them to answer.  I forget that not everyone contemplates color all day long!).  And then I tried throw something together based on that and make it a little bit me of course.  I do not consider this type of sewing my forte at all but I can muddle through.  I covered my zipper ends with fabric matching the lining of each bag.

I think I cut each piece (2 exterior home dec weight pieces and 2 lining pieces) at about 5.5" x 9.5".  The zippers I had were 10" zippers so I just shortened them to fit my opening.  Before I sewed it all together (not doing a tutorial...there are tons out there...just google lined zippered pouch or something), I used a little double sided fusible and a fussy cut piece of cute fabric to add a little detail to one piece of the exterior.

I stitched around the outside edge with a simple straight stitch on the raw edge...those aren't going anywhere with the fusible and pouches aren't thrown in the wash too often, so all is good.  I chose a lining that would be fun to see when you open up the bag.  I love a good lining!  So it was an Anna Maria Horner print for one and a Tula Pink one for the other.

It fits a gift card in a little bit of packaging well.  And I think her teachers really liked them.  At least they told me they did. ;)  Maybe they were just being nice to Caitlyn's mom.

Stash Match - Ali's new game

Hey guys, my friend Ali is starting up a new game on her blog as a monthly feature.  It's called Stash Match.

Here's the game.  Hop over to Ali's blog and check out the inspiration fabric.  This month is an adorable Heather Ross print from her upcoming line Briar Rose.  Then check out the six bloggers and the bundles they picked from their stash to match that print.  Everyone has a different stash and sees the fabric a little differently.  The trick is to try to match the stash to the blogger.  There were rules we had to follow as the bloggers who pulled fabrics from our stash, but you can read about that on Ali's blog.

The fun for YOU is to go see if you can match the blogger to the bundle (I'll give you a hint...mine looks a bit different than the others...teehee!).  And if you do, then Ali will pick one lucky winner to win a F8 Bundle of Briar Rose!  Eeep!!!!  I definitely need some of that fabric.  

Have fun!!