Freshly Pieced

WIP Wednesday: A Happy Week

2012-02-22T00:25:00.000-06:00

Ah, it's been quite a week around here, in more ways than one! Lots of exciting things are afoot, but here's what I've got for you today.

Completed:

Solids quilt. This is my first finished quilt of 2012—and I can't show it to you. How annoying. But I'm very pleased with it, and even more pleased that it's finished!

New projects:

Challenge mini quilt - Mark Cesarik was nice enough to send me a little preview of his upcoming line, Cosmic Burst. These vivid colors practically leaped out of the envelope all on their own–they're so fabulous! Can't wait to finish this mini and enter it in the Modern Mini Challenge at Ellison Lane Quilts.

No progress:
• Hexy mini quilt
• Do Good Stitches Asterisk quilt
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA
• Skill Builder QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1
New projects - 1

Currently in progress - 9

Your turn—link 'em up!

What You Are Making

2012-02-20T05:00:00.000-06:00

The Freshly Pieced Flickr group has been up and running for a few months now, and I love seeing what you all have been doing with my patterns and tutorials! If my graphic design career has taught me anything, it's that creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum. So the innovative twists that people have put on my designs very often inspire me right back.

Here are just a few of the beautiful things that have popped up in the Flickr group recently. If you've made something inspired by a project you saw here on my blog, please join the group and add your photos!

UllaBee's Ribbon Star block really sings in solids

Very cool hexagon quilt by CraftyJak, using my Hexing Around block

Brooke's version of my Supernova quilt using Castle Peeps

Mosaic block quilt by Debbie of Esch House Quilts

One of Ara Jane's fabulous Arkansas Traveler blocks

Sew Crafty Jess's Herringbone pillow

Hand-quilted hexagon mug rug by Sarah of Fairy Face Designs

"Kissing Koi"—Patti (Retired to Quilt) made this take on my Kissy Fish pattern

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your creations!

New York Beauty Quilt-Along

2012-02-16T05:00:00.000-06:00

Kati's New York Beauty mini

On Sunday I showed you my New York Beauty mini quilt, and on Monday you probably saw this unbelievable New York Beauty masterpiece from Kati. Now I've got a challenge for you: Make a New York Beauty quilt of your own! And make it along with me—and lots of other talented quilters. Sound fun?

I am beyond excited about the New York Beauty Paper-Piecing Quilt-Along, which starts March 5! Ten bloggers (including me) will take one of the New York Beauty blocks shown here, and we'll give you step-by-step instructions, photos, and tips for making that block. By the time we're done, you'll have 10 unique New York Beauty blocks for a stunning quilt.

Each instruction post will show you how to make one 8" square block—you can either make four of the same block to create one large 15.5" square New York Beauty block, or you can mix and match the 8" quarter-blocks to create your own unique design. And of course, keep in mind that these blocks are all paper-pieced. If you've been wanting to give paper-piecing a try, this quilt-along would be a great way to jump in!

Here are the approximate fabric requirements to make ten 8"-square blocks:

• 10 fat-eighths for main fabrics (or 5 fat quarters or scrap fabric)

• 1-1/2 yards background fabric

I'm planning to make 15.5"-square blocks from nine of the ten block designs, making a quilt that's around 45" square. To do that, my approximate fabric requirements are:

• 36 fat-eighths for main fabrics (or 18 fat-quarters)

• 5-1/2 yards background fabric

Here is the schedule for the block tutorials:

March 5 - Kim from My Go-Go Life {Block 0}

March 12 - Sara from Sew Sweetness {Block 5}
March 19 - Megan from Canoe Ridge Creations (Block 1}
March 26 - Kati from From the Blue Chair {Block 8}
April 2 - Jeni from In Color Order {Block 7}
April 9 - Amy from Sukie Don't You Know Who I Am? {Block 6}
April 16 - Katy from The Littlest Thistle {Block 2}
April 23 - Lee from Freshly Pieced {Block 4}
April 30 - Amy from amylouwho {Block 3}
May 7 - Lindsay from Lindsay Sews {Block 9}

Are you in? I hope so! Grab the button, join the Flickr group, and go pick out some fabric!

WIP Wednesday: The One With Elizabeth Visiting

2012-02-14T23:59:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone, it's Elizabeth from Don't Call Me Betsy! I'm enjoying some hospitality from Lee and her family this week, so I'm taking a chance and hijacking W.i.P. Wednesday this morning. Not that there's a whole lot to report. Shockingly, we haven't done a whole lot of sewing yet, but we have had a lot of fun. Does making a family of snowmen count as progress? I'm thinking not, but I can say that Lee has been making some lovely hexies and debating how to lay them out. Here's what she's been working on this week:

Ongoing projects:
Hexy mini quilt - making more hexies! Still don't know exactly what I'm doing with them!

Awaiting quilting:

Solids quilt - made the back and basted, ready to quilt.

No progress:
• Do Good Stitches Asterisk quilt
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA
• Skill Builder QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 0

Currently in progress - 9

Your turn—link 'em up!

Modern Mini Challenge Inspiration

2012-02-12T12:18:00.001-06:00

Welcome to my stop on the Modern Mini Challenge blog hop, hosted by Jennifer of Ellison Lane Quilts. We're here to inspire you and get you ready to make your own mini masterpiece for the Challenge!

My favorite mini that I've made? Definitely this little guy, which I made for Suz of Patchwork and Play as part of Doll Quilt Swap 10:

Complexity. It's one of my favorite things about mini quilts. You can do things in an 18" square quilt that wouldn't be possible at a larger scale. A full-size version of this quilt would be stunning, no doubt about it. But would I have the patience for 30 or more 9"-square paper-pieced New York Beauty blocks? Hardly. : )

But in my opinion, what really makes this quilt special are the fussy-cut centers—the beautiful swirly circular motifs from Tula Pink's Parisville collection. Without that fussy-cutting detail, this mini would be pretty standard. But those centers give it movement and drama. Which brings me to another thing I love about minis: A small detail like this might get lost in a larger quilt. But here, it's the star of the show—as it should be! Fun, right? So many design possibilities in something so small.

Okay, so are you getting ready to make your own modern mini for the challenge? Don't forget what's up for grabs—gift certificates to the Fat Quarter Shop and bundles of Flea Market Fancy! Squeal!! You have until March 4 to sew your own mini to enter in the Challenge. Click here to learn more about the schedule, the requirements, and the prizes!

And don't forget to keep following along with the blog hop. Happy sewing!

Feb. 6 - Stitchery Dickory Dock
Feb. 7 - Fairy Face Designs and Amy's Creative Side
Feb. 8 - Lily's Quilts
Feb. 9 - Patchwork Notes
Feb. 10 - Don't Call Me Betsy and Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle
Feb. 11 - Sukie, Don't You Know Who I Am?
Feb. 12 - Freshly Pieced
Feb. 13 - From the Blue Chair and Poppy Makes
Feb. 14 - Needles, Pins, and Baking Tins
Feb. 15 - Mon Petit Lyons and Felicity Quilts
Feb. 16 - LR Stitched and Random Thoughts Do or Di
Feb. 17 - Life's Rich Pattern and Twin Fibers
Feb. 18 - Cut to Pieces and Sew Sweetness
Feb. 19 - Swim, Bike, Quilt

WIP Wednesday: Rolling Along

2012-02-08T05:00:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately I don't have much to show this week. I accomplished a ton, but it's all on one project that I can't show here yet. So you'll have to take my word for it that I'm firing on all cylinders these days. : ) And that's a good thing, because this week I need to whip the house into shape for some really fun company! Yes, Elizabeth is headed up toward my neck of the woods—we're going to hang out, party with our kiddos, and of course, do some sewing. Which means that this time next week, her and I might just be working on some WIPs together! How fun is that?

Ongoing projects:
Solids quilt. The top is now complete! Woot! So it's not a finish, but it sure feels like one. Can't wait to get quilting.

No progress:
• Do Good Stitches Asterisk quilt

• Hexy mini quilt
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA
• Halloween quilt

• Farmer's Wife QA (hoping to get back to this one soonish! gasp!)
• Skill Builder QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 0

Currently in progress - 9

You know what to do! Let's see those WIPs. Link up, comment, and enjoy!

WIP Wednesday: Back In Business

2012-02-01T00:12:00.000-06:00

Happy Wednesday! And it is happy, because I have my machine back! I no longer have to use "The Hulk," as the Milwaukee Modern Quilt Guild girls nicknamed my Hello Kitty back-up machine. So I'm finally ready to get down to business and knock some projects off this list.

New projects:

Asterisk quilt. November was my last month in Do. Good Stitches (at least for a while), and it was also my month as quilter. I asked the ladies of the Love Circle to make asterisk blocks in warm oranges and pinks and cool grays and whites—a color palette inspired by a winter sunset. Here are all the blocks I received, all together, looking fabulous! I just need to make my own blocks (I'm making four) and then I can get it pieced. I had considered adding sashing, but now that I see them all together, I'm really digging the haphazard feel. It really does look like a winter sunset in quilt form, doesn't it?

Ongoing projects:
Solids quilt. Made some really good progress here, even though I was using The Hulk! Wish I could show it to you, but not yet.

No progress:
• Hexy swap mini
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA
• Skill Builder QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 1

Currently in progress - 9

You know what to do! Let's see those WIPs. Link up, comment, and enjoy!

Modern Mini Challenge

2012-01-31T05:00:00.000-06:00

I'm sure you guys have heard about this by now, but just in case you haven't ...

Jennifer of Ellison Lane Quilts is having a Modern Mini Challenge. Inspiration, creativity, a giveaway, and Flea Market Fancy. Need I say more? Probably not, but I will anyway!

The Modern Mini Challenge is a 5-week series that kicks off with a blog-hop of inspiring minis by your friendly neighborhood quilt bloggers. I love mini-quilts because—I admit it—I'm a paper-piecing nerd. I love complex piecing. If somebody thinks I'm insane for trying a project, then I know I'm doing it right. : ) But the crazier a block is, the less likely I am to make a lot of them, so minis are perfect. And even if you don't see yourself tackling a New York Beauty block, minis are the ideal place to try something new and think outside of the box.

So, after we've got your creative juices flowing, let the challenge begin! You'll have two more weeks to create your own mini masterpiece and link it up at Jennifer's blog. And it better be good, because there are gift certificates to the Fat Quarter Shop and bundles of Flea Market Fancy on the line.

Click here to check out the schedule and all the details, and don't forget to follow along with the blog hop. Can't wait!

Feb. 6 - Stitchery Dickory Dock
Feb. 7 - Fairy Face Designs and Amy's Creative Side
Feb. 8 - Lily's Quilts
Feb. 9 - Patchwork Notes
Feb. 10 - Don't Call Me Betsy and Flying Blind on a Rocket Cycle
Feb. 11 - Sukie, Don't You Know Who I Am?
Feb. 12 - Freshly Pieced
Feb. 13 - From the Blue Chair and Poppy Makes
Feb. 14 - Needles, Pins, and Baking Tins
Feb. 15 - Mon Petit Lyons and Felicity Quilts
Feb. 16 - LR Stitched and Random Thoughts Do or Di
Feb. 17 - Life's Rich Pattern and Twin Fibers
Feb. 18 - Cut to Pieces and Sew Sweetness
Feb. 19 - Swim, Bike, Quilt

Me In a Magazine!

2012-01-27T12:12:00.001-06:00

Remember my secret project using Thomas Knauer's beautiful Pear Tree fabric? Well, I can finally reveal the quilt—and I'm so excited to tell you that it's also my first published quilt pattern, available now in the March/April issue of Quiltmaker magazine!

There's my quilt! And look, there's me, up in the corner! Coolness!

Would you be surprised to hear that you don't have to paper-piece this quilt? A few people who have already made the pattern have told me that it's very easy to piece. It looks more complicated than it is—can't beat that, right? : ) All you have to do is pick up the March/April issue. I haven't seen it on newsstands yet, but you can click here to purchase a copy.

And that's not all: Quiltmaker is making this quilt available as a kit. The kit includes the pattern and all the Pear Tree/Andover fabric you need to make the top and binding—click here to purchase (it's currently out of stock but I'm sure it will be in soon). Backing is available separately.

Finally, I was excited to learn that the members of Quiltmaker's Scrap Squad will each be making this pattern using their own scraps, and those versions will be featured on Quiltmaker's blog over the next two months. The Scrap Squad is a specially-selected panel of Quiltmaker readers who make one pattern from each issue. They can include their own ideas and variations on the pattern, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with mine!

A few more things to note about this quilt: It was beautifully quilted for me by fellow Milwaukee Modern Quilt Guild member Lucinda Fenske, and Thomas Knauer was kind enough to send me the Pear Tree fabric from his own stash when there was no more advance yardage of it to be found. Thank you, Thomas! Go check out his blog to see the fabulous new lines he has in the works, including Flock and Savanna Bop. I think those Flock dot prints will definitely be finding their way into my stash!

WIP Wednesday: Running In Place

2012-01-25T00:01:00.000-06:00

You know what's super helpful when trying to make progress on WIPs? A sewing machine. You know what I don't have right now? A SEWING MACHINE. Okay, I take that back—I don't have my sewing machine. It's been having some issues, and in the last week those issues escalated, so I reluctantly took my machine in for a tune-up on Monday. It's been almost three years since the last one, so I guess she was due!

Fortunately, I have a back-up. Here it is.

Yes, I'm "sewing pretty with Hello Kitty" for at least the next week. This was my daughter's big Christmas gift—it's what we sewed Pumpkin the elephant on. One of my justifications for buying it was that it could serve as my back-up machine if mine ever broke down. And while it sews surprisingly well for the price, it's not exactly my ideal situation. : ) So I don't know how much I'll get done in the next week, but at least I have something I can use.

Completed:
Bee blocks. I barely managed to squeak these out before my Babylock became unusable. If you missed the post about them, it's here.

New projects:

Solids project. Would you believe I've never made anything entirely from solids before? I am now! And how about this yummy color palette?

No progress:
• Hexy swap quilt
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA
• Skill Builder QA
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1
New projects - 1

Currently in progress - 10

Okay, let's WIP it up. Show me what you got! Link up any post from the last week featuring a work-in-progress. Don't forget to link back here and comment on other links. Happy sewing!

January Bee Blocks

2012-01-23T14:13:00.001-06:00

Wait, it's January 23, and I'm already posting my bee blocks for the month? That's got to be a record! This month's blocks were a lot of fun, and all over the map stylistically, which was nice.

First, the girls from the Milwaukee Modern Quilt Guild have started a new local bee that I'm taking part in. Rebecca, who blogs at Pieces and Cream, was up first. She asked for the "Envy" block, designed by Angela in the 99 Modern Blocks book, and gave us fabric from one of my all-time favorite lines, Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow. This block is such a great example of simple but powerful modern design. It has fantastic movement to it, and repeated throughout a quilt, I expect it will be stunning! It does however involve the dreaded Y-seams, which I used in my Mod Times quilt. Y-seams aren't complicated, exactly, but I do find it difficult to keep them straight and un-wonky-ish. In fact, one of the brown strips in this block is kind of making my eye twitch right now. Other than that, I love this block and hopefully Rebecca can work with it!

For the Sew Beautiful bee, Cherie asked us for this Carpenter Star block in bright, springtime colors. She drafted this block herself to be intentionally Swoon-like, and while I love Swoon, I think I might love Cherie's version even more! Yes, there are a lot of HSTs involved, but it makes a huge 18" finished block, so just like Swoon, you don't have to make a ton of blocks for a good-sized finished quilt.

For Stash Trad, Lynne asked for her beautiful LynneBobSquarePants block (tutorial here). This block has been on my to-do list forever, so I was happy to finally get a crack at it—and for Lynne herself. When you compare this block to Cherie's Carpenter Star, you can see how endless the possibilities are with HSTs. They're such a fun and versatile unit in quilting—if you haven't yet learned how to make them (and make them well), it is absolutely worth the time to do it!

Last but not at all least, Bree of My Crafty Crap asked for this fun Polaroid block for the String Me Along bee. I have to say, of all the blocks I've made for other people in the last year, this is the one I've been most tempted to keep for myself. : ) (Don't worry Bree, it'll be in the mail tomorrow!) This block was designed by Corey of Little Miss Shabby (here's Corey's original block), and Bree wrote up a tutorial for creating it, which you can find here. Can't wait to see how this quilt comes together for Bree!

WIP Wednesday: Recovery Mode

2012-01-18T00:11:00.002-06:00

Really, Wednesday again? I accomplished very little this week. My excuse is that we've been in recovery mode around here. Recovering from colds, and recovering from that creativity block I talked about last week. It's taking longer to get back to full form than I would like, but I think my mojo's coming around. Slowly.

Ongoing projects:

Bee blocks, bee blocks, and more bee blocks.
It basically took me the whole week to get my 4x5 Bee blocks done. Now I'm moving on to my other bee blocks, of which there are shockingly many this month. Here you can see my progress on several of them: Yes, I've taken the fabric out of the packages! Go, me!

Swap mini-quilt.
I can't you tell you how rare it is for me to actually cut and start piecing something without a fully-formed plan in my head, but that's exactly what I'm doing here. I hope I figure out where exactly this is going, and figure it out right quick.

No progress:
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA
• Skill Builder QA
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 0

Currently in progress - 10

Link 'em up, ladies (and gentlemen). Let's WIP those WIPs into shape!

Ribbon Star Block Tutorial

2012-01-16T14:19:00.001-06:00

My 4x5 Modern Quilt Bee blocks really grew on me as I worked on them—I think the ones with the white backgrounds look especially fab. So thanks to everyone who weighed in and gave me some encouragement about this block. Without it, I probably would have moved on to yet another design! And since people seemed to like it, how about a tutorial?

This is my take on a traditional Christmas Star block. It would look pretty great in holiday fabric, but I would hate to see it pigeon-holed as strictly that, so I'm calling it Ribbon Star. The tutorial makes a 12.5" block.

Cutting:

Background (white):
• Cut four 3" squares
• Cut eight 2.5" squares
• Cut eight 2" squares

Star (yellow):
• Cut one 4.5" square
• Cut eight 2.5" squares

Color A (pink):
• Cut four pieces, 2.5" x 4.5"
• Cut four pieces, 2" x 4.5"

Color B (orange):
• Cut four pieces, 2.5" x 4.5"
• Cut four pieces, 2" x 3"

To make the block:

1. Mark the wrong side of all of your 2.5" and 2" squares with a diagonal line from corner to corner.

2. Lay out your pieces before you start sewing. I find it helpful to work from this layout as I sew—you'll be far less likely to get your colors and directions mixed up! Start with the 4.5" square in the center, and then lay out the 2.5" x 4.5" pieces in a cross shape, alternating colors as shown.

3. Now add the 3" background squares in each corner, and the 2" strips around those squares, as shown.

4. Next, lay out the squares that will be your star points. I put these squares face down, so I can see the marked diagonal (this is also exactly how the pieces will be sewn together). Note that to create the star points, the marked diagonals should always go from the center out.

5. Sew each pair together on the marked diagonal.

6. Trim off the excess 1/4" from the seam and press. I always press diagonal seams open—I find it to be more accurate than pressing to the side.

7. Add your 2.5" background squares in the same way you did with the star points. Note that the marked diagonal should always go the same direction as the star-point diagonal that you previously sewed.

8. Add your final set of 2" marked squares in the same way as you did the previous squares. This time, make sure the marked diagonals are angled so that they form the outer star points.

9. Your units should now look like this. Sew the block together, starting with the 2" x 3" orange units to the 3" background squares. Take care as you sew to make sure those points are lined up!

10. Done!

As always, if you make this block (or anything else inspired by my blog), I would love to see it! Please join my Flickr group and add your photos!

Since I made five of these blocks for my 4x5 hive, here it is in other colors:

Aqua, gray, and yellow for Lindsay

Aqua, teal, white and gray for Lyanna

Yellow, spring green, and blue for Elizabeth

Orange, gold, and plum for Deb

And the orange, yellow, and pink block featured in the tutorial is for Wendy. Enjoy, ladies!

WIP Wednesday: My Weird Week

2012-01-11T00:01:00.000-06:00

Yeah, so I had a weird week. Lots of thinking and planning, not much doing. Or, I should say, lots of thinking and planning and changing my mind and being indecisive and giving up and looking at Pinterest because it was easier than making a decision ... and not much doing. I need to snap out of it! But I did manage to get a few small things accomplished.

Completed:

Pumpkin the elephant
My first-ever joint project with my 5-year-old is done! And, well, I'm kind of glad. Not because I didn't like sewing with E. (that part was awesome), but because I have no clue how to sew softies. It turns out that I royally screwed up the legs, and this particular pattern requires a lot of hand-stitching, which was kind of a pain. But it does look like an elephant, and E. loves it and is so proud of her part in making it, so that's the important thing! Still, I think we'll have to tackle a doll quilt next. : ) That's way more my comfort zone.

New projects:

4x5 Bee blocks
I have been paralyzed with indecision for several days over what to do for my 4x5 Bee blocks. See? Weird week! This has never happened to me before. I hate to say it, but I think I'm on quilt block overload right now. I've just looked at too many of them lately or something. (I know, is that even possible? Apparently it is.) At any rate, here's one of several test blocks I've made. I'm not in love with it, but if I can't come up with anything better, this might just be what I'll go with.

No progress:
• Secret swap mini quilt
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA
• Skill Builder QA
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1
New projects - 1

Currently in progress - 10

Now it's your turn! Link up any post from the last week that features an unfinished project. Don't forget to put a link to my blog in your post, and comment on some of the other links. Have a productive week!

Busting Out the Dance Bag

2012-01-10T05:00:00.000-06:00

So, this adorable kid has been taking dance classes for the better part of three years now. And I have been intending to make her a dance bag ... for the better part of three years now.

This is the dance bag I finally made for her, after all this time. It took me the better part of three hours. Yep, gold-star mom, right here. : )

Anyway, this is from a free tutorial by Simply Modern Mom. I love that it's a hobo bag, instead of a too-cutesy little tote bag. E. feels pretty stylin', in fact. The fabric is Peacock Lane, with a Michael Miller Dumb Dot for the lining. You gotta have pink and black for a dance bag, right?

I made a few changes from the tutorial—since I used lightweight quilting cotton, I added some fusible interfacing to the lining. (I hate how fusible interfacing always seems to bubble and wrinkle in the finished product, so my solution was to fuse it to the lining instead of the outer fabric.) I also eliminated the braided handle, and I added a magnetic snap, because I know my daughter, and I know the contents of this bag will just end up on the floor of my SUV without some sort of closure. I used this fab tutorial from Sew Crafty Jess's blog to put in the snap—magnetic snaps couldn't be easier! Really!

Edited to add: I'm linking up to TNT Thursday at Happy Quilting and the Threading My Way linky for bags and totes! Great idea, Pam!

WIP Wednesday ... And We're Back!

2012-01-04T08:52:00.002-06:00

Ah, it's good to be back to the normal routine, isn't it? My daughter is back in school, the hubs is back at work, everything's right with the world again. And, I have two completions! Considering that I took a month off from WIP Wednesday in order to complete them, it's a darn good thing.

Completed (since last WIP Wednesday):

Summer Sampler Quilt
You saw this one here—I finally got motivated to finish it off and give it to my mother-in-law, who was recovering from surgery. It's nice to get this one off the list, and I no longer have any projects in the "Completed Tops Awaiting Quilting" category! Woot!

Mystery Quilt #2

Another big completion checked off the list.

New projects:

Mini-swap mini quilt
This mini was promised a while ago, and is part of a little private mini-swap. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with it yet, but I'm digging the colors! (Hopefully the recipient will too.)

Pumpkin the elephant
I'm starting to teach my 5-year-old to sew! She really wanted to make a softy. I've never made a softy myself, so it's a learning experience for both of us. : ) This is from a Melly & Me pattern that I bought several years ago and never used until now. I was a little confused by the legs, but other than that it seems to be turning out okay (knock on wood). I've done the cutting, pinning, and applique stitches, but E. sewed all of the seams herself, with my guidance. She's doing fantastic!

Currently in progress - 10

Link 'em if you got 'em! You all know the rules - link back here, comment, etc. etc. Have a great week—it's good to be back!

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

2011-12-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

My biggest accomplishment in 2011? Well, there were lots of highlights. But the thing that really stands out for me is that I finally figured out how to finish my quilts.

It sounds crazy, I know. But at the beginning of 2011, I was not at all confident in my quilting and binding skills. Piecing was another story—I felt like I had that part pretty much down. But I couldn't free-motion quilt at all. Let's face it, I could barely even manage straight-line quilting. My basting skills left a lot to be desired, and binding? Well, I could do it, but it wouldn't win any awards for fine craftsmanship or anything.

Quilts of 2011

1. Summer Sampler quilt, 2. Supernova quilt, 3. Do. Good Stitches hexy quilt, 4. Modern Meadow quilt, 5. Warm/Cool Quilt, 6. Supernova complete, 7. Mod Times quilt, 8. Wrapped In Hope quilt, 9. Fall Equinox quilt complete, 10. Urban Lattice quilt complete, 11. Cross-Terrain quilt

I made 13 quilts this year. Seriously! 13! My goal for 2011 was to make 12 quilts. Somehow I actually squeaked out an extra one. And it's amazing how much you can learn over the course of making 13 quilts. Free-motion quilting? Check. Machine binding? Check. Basting—especially spray basting? Check check check. Going into 2011, I often sent quilts out to be long-armed, especially the "important" ones. By the end of 2011, I was confident enough to finish one myself that is going to be in a book. Wow.

Other projects of 2011

1. ssswap mug rug, 2. AnneMarie's mini quilt, 3. Elizabeth's mini quilt, 4. Lego storage bag/playmat, 5. Strip-pieced zig-zag mug rug, 6. Harlequin pillow, 7. Teacher gifts, 8. Commissioned pillows, 9. MMM swap placemats, 10. Commissioned pillows, 11. DQS10 quilt finished, 12. For Make Mine Modern, 13. Bloom Pillow, 14. Potholders, 15. Mosaic squares shower curtain, 16. Wonky Sun Pillow

Other highlights:
• hosting my own quilt-along (Supernova) and co-hosting another (Summer Sampler Series)
• going to the Sewing Summit and meeting lots of blogging buddies in person
• participating in more bees and swaps than I can count
• making the top five in the Connecting Threads fabric design contest
• hosting WIP Wednesday and watching it grow
• joining the Milwaukee Modern Quilt Guild and making new friends there
• guest-posting on the Fat Quarterly blog
• publishing my first Moda Bake Shop tutorial
• making quilts for charity (one for Margaret's Hope Chest and one via the Do. Good Stitches bee)

How lucky am I that all these amazing things happened to me in one action-packed year?

In fact, looking back at my goals for 2011, there are only a few that I didn't meet. I did not finish my mom's king-size quilt, despite gentle reminders from her. I did not make bed quilts for my daughter or my niece. I did not make Christmas stockings or a tree skirt or finish the Christmas quilt that I started for my family in 2010. Hmmm, are you sensing a theme here?

So that brings me to my goals for 2012:

1. Make things for my family. So many wonderful quilty opportunities came my way in 2011, and I was always so flattered and excited to be asked that I hardly ever said no to anything. As a result, things for the people I love most got shoved way down the list. That's not good. This year, I want to do all of the things listed above that I neglected in 2011. After all, what is this hobby really good for if I can't use it to bring happiness to the people closest to me?

Figgy Pudding fabric that's been waiting for me to turn it into a quilt for a year and a half

2. Make Christmas stockings, a tree skirt, and finish that Christmas quilt. This kind of goes along with #1, but I'm determined to make it happen this year. Pinky swear!

3. Keep saying "no" to things. My goal is to be much more selective about what I say yes to in the coming year. So don't feel bad if I turn you down for a bee, swap, blog hop, guest post, etc. It's not you, it's me. : ) Isn't it hilarious that last year one of my goals was to do more bees and swaps, and this year one of my goals is to not do so many bees and swaps?

4. Make more non-quilty items, like bags, skirts, etc. Since making a skirt with Anna's sew-along, I've got the bug to do more of this! (Yes, I am still planning to post about the skirt, I just need to get my husband to take a decent picture of me in it.)

My oldest (who's now 5!) in a hat I knit for her way back when

5. Do a little knitting again. Once upon time, I was a knitting fiend. Then quilting came along and stole my heart away. But lately I've had the urge to dig up those knitting needles again. You never truly forget your first love, I guess.

6. Design another fabric collection. I'm hoping to set aside some time in the coming year to make this happen. Both my kids will be in school in the fall (one full-time, the other three mornings a week), so I'm thinking of dedicating that preschool time to fabric design. I've got to do something with myself while my babies are away, right?

Um, yeah, something tells me I won't have a problem filling up my free time. : ) So here's to 2012. Happy new year, my wonderful bloggy friends!

Christmas Swap Round-Up

2011-12-29T11:39:00.003-06:00

So how was everybody's Christmas? Is the whirlwind done at your house? It is for me—we had a lot of fun and the girls looove their gifts, but I can't say I'm sorry it's over now. : ) I actually have a few moments to breathe again!

But before we usher in 2012, I need to share a few last swap goodies from 2011. I swore off most traditional swaps a few months ago, because I seem to just spend way too much time on them, but Sukie suckered me in with her Twitter Secret Santa Swap. We weren't required to send a handmade item, but of course when it came down to it, I couldn't resist making something. After all, my partner was the amazing Katy of I'm a Ginger Monkey and Fat Quarterly! Send her a secret santa gift that didn't include something homemade?? As if.

So here's the gift package I sent to Katy (which she finally received yesterday, so now I can show it to you!) Thangles, a Clover marking pen, some hand-dyed perle cotton, and a FQ from Denyse Schmidt's Picnic and Fairgrounds line from Joanne's. (I was thinking those prints may not be available in the U.K.?)

And I made her this mug rug using Badskirt Amy's x-and-plus tutorial and a newspaper-print fabric. I used wavy-line quilting on it because that's one of my favorite quilting tricks, and I learned it from Katy! I hope she enjoys it!

My Secret Santa swap package came from the talented Amy of Stitchery Dickory Dock. Check out the incredible stuff she sent to me: How adorable is this notebook?? I've loved this fox paper-piecing pattern for ages and she totally nailed it with the colors and prints.

And that's not all—she also sent me this coffee cup cozy, the travel mug that's in it, and she filled the mug up with candy! Whew!

I love the cozy's Half-Moon Modern prints and handstitching. (You can find a Moda Bake Shop tutorial by Amy for this very cozy right here.) And it just so happens that I have another one of these Copco mugs and it is my absolute favorite, so I'm thrilled to have another one. It fits in my Keurig coffee maker (many travel mugs don't) and it's nice and simple, functioning like a basic Starbucks disposable. Except that this one has a reclosable spill-proof lid, which I've never seen on a Copco mug, and I couldn't even find it on Amazon! So yes, I love it—clearly, the fact that I've gone on about a mug for an entire paragraph should indicate that I will treasure it forever, LOL. Thanks, Amy, I love it all!

I also swapped recently with Becky from My Fabric Obsession. I designed a new blog header for her and she sent me these fun goodies in return—a Jane Market Bag in Neptune, and some coordinating FQs! You guys—it's Neptune! I love this collection so much. I bought a layer cake way back when it first came out, but frittered most of it away on some pillows that I didn't even end up liking (this was back when I still didn't really know what I was doing). I used most of the remaining scraps in my Single Girl quilt. So I'm super excited to get a second chance with this hard-to-find collection. Now I just need to decide what I'll do with it! And the bag is so roomy and useful—I've already used it probably a dozen times. I even packed some stuff in it when I went out of town for the holidays. Thank you, Becky!!

And here's one more Christmas present for me (and my girls). I won a giveaway from Kylie of My Addiction to Quilting. She sent me this soccer ball entirely hand-pieced from hexies! The girls love it—it's so nice to have a ball they can freely chuck at each other, LOL. Kylie also sent some beautiful purple fabrics, and I seem to be eternally short on purple in my stash, so they are much appreciated. Thank you, Kylie—you are so sweet to send these all the way from Australia!

One of my favorite things about having this blog is how I've been able to send items all over the country and the world, and receive things right back. Australia, the U.K., Europe, Canada–what a wonderful exchange. Here's to more swaps in 2012.

My Own Blogger's Choice Bundle

2011-12-28T21:03:00.002-06:00

Hey, don't you just love the "Blogger's Choice" fat quarter bundles at the Fat Quarter Shop? And don't you totally dream of the day you get an email from the Fat Quarter Shop asking you to choose your very own bundle of fabric?

Okay, maybe that's just me. : ) Regardless, now we all get to be superstar bloggers for a day. Laura at Quokka Quilts had the genius idea of hosting a contest to choose the next Blogger's Choice bundle. Just choose fabric from the Fat Quarter Shop, post your bundle, and link it up to her contest post.

So here's my entry. I had a blast choosing this bundle. Almost as fun as shopping, but without the disapproving look from your spouse when the credit card statement arrives. And the winner gets a half-yard bundle of their chosen fabrics! Nice! So skip on over to the Fat Quarter Shop to make your own. My fabric names/links are below.

1. Bespoken by Pat Bravo, Orchid Jaquard
2. Meet Me at Sunset by Dear Stella, Pink Gridlock
3. Bella Solids Gray
4. Dazzle by Melissa Averinos, Clementine Flowers
5. Puttin' On the Ritz by Bunny Hill, Grey Princess
6. Yard Sale by Dear Stella, Sky
7. Divine by Rosemarie Lavin, Tangerine Linen Texture
8. Paparazzi by Red Rooster, Light Gray on White Dots
9. Bella Solids Magenta
10. Dazzle by Melissa Averinos, Melon Jewel
11. Cotton Couture Solids by Michael Miller, Violet
12. Ooh La La by Pillow and Maxfield, Sherbet Cercle de Fleurs
13. Dazzle by Melissa Averinos, Clementine Shadow Stripe
14. Palladium by Dear Stella, Gray Gridlock
15. Power Pop by Jenean Morrison, Aqua Girlfriend

Happy Holidays

2011-12-24T11:30:00.011-06:00

I was tempted to whine in this post about how busy I've been the last few weeks—and how much I still have left to do. Then I realized, this holiday has the potential to be hard on everybody, in one way or another. And "being busy" doesn't hold a candle to what some people are facing this season. But there is also the potential for a whole lot of happiness. So in that vein, I'm not going to post pictures of my perfect Christmas decorations (because mine so aren't) or dozens of wrapped gifts (because none of mine are wrapped yet, so that would be hard to do).

Right now there is exactly one present wrapped and under my tree. So I'm going to post about that, because this is where my holiday happiness lives, crazy wrapping and all. : ) (Pretty sure my daughter got some help from my husband with this wrapping, and the picture of the psycho inmate in the wheelchair was his idea of a hilarious joke. Let's hope, anyway.)

Very happy holidays to all of my blog readers and your families. I hope, no matter what challenges you're facing, that you can find the happiness. There's not a day that goes by that I'm not thankful for this blog and appreciative that people take time out of their busy days to come here, just to see what I'm making. You guys bring me almost as much happiness as the one present that's under my tree.

A Sampler For All Seasons

2011-12-07T10:14:00.008-06:00

Reminder: WIP Wednesday is on Christmas break! It will be back on Jan. 4.

I would like to briefly interrupt your Christmas planning to bring you a bit of summer in December—My Summer Sampler quilt is complete! : )

My mother-in-law had hip replacement surgery last Friday. The surgery had been scheduled for January, which I thought would be good timing for me to make her a quilt. When a spot opened up for her to have the surgery earlier, I thought I might not be able to manage it, because I was already so busy. But then I realized, I had the perfect quilt for her, and it was already very much in progress ... my Summer Sampler!

The top and the back were already done, so all I really had to do was quilt it and bind it. But of course, I can never leave well enough alone or make anything easy for myself. I immediately decided that the current size was too small to be useful, and I wanted to make it bigger. So between Wednesday and Monday, I took the borders off the original top, made eight additional sampler blocks and added them, put new borders on, added to the back to get it up to size, basted it, quilted it, and bound it. Whew!

When I decided to add the extra blocks, I wanted to find and choose new block designs quickly, so all of the pictures in the Summer Sampler Flickr group were invaluable to me. Many of my new blocks were inspired by the extra blocks that some of you made. I love Claudia's beautiful red and aqua quilt, and the additional blocks she chose were brilliant, so many of my new blocks came straight from her quilt. Thank you, Claudia, for inspiring me! : )

Here are the blocks I added:

Another Star of Virginia (tutorial here)

Another Greek Cross (tutorial here), but I changed up the colors/values to give it this octagon shape

This fun star-within-a-star block

This HST star, which Isabelle used in her colorful sampler

My version of the Diamond Chip block, from Sarah Fielke's book Quilting From Little Things, as seen on Monica's Happy Zombie blog

Snowblossoms block (free paper-piecing pattern available here)

Another HST-type block

This cute star variation

So here's how the top started out, before the extra blocks ...

And here again is my refashion/completion.

And my MIL seems to just love the quilt. She said it's beautiful work, cheerful colors, and that she will "treasure it for the rest of her life." Wow! She's a very practical woman who isn't at all prone to exaggeration, so that was a wonderful compliment coming from her and really made me feel great. I'm so glad she can enjoy it while she's recovering.

So, that's one major thing off my list. I've also got our Christmas decorations up and made excellent progress on my Secret Santa Twitter Swap item, so I am feeling a lot less stressed today! Score one (or several) for me.

Quilt Stats:

Size: 60" x 74"

Design: From the Summer Sampler Series Quilt-Along, hosted by Kate, Faith, and myself, plus eight extra blocks. For tutorials for the original 12 blocks, click here.

Fabric: Various lines/prints, with background in Kona White

Quilting: Free-motion stippling by me on my home machine

Back: Various lines/prints

Binding: Lotus Full Moon Dot by Amy Butler in Cherry

Christmas Crunch

2011-12-03T11:43:00.004-06:00

Well, I am definitely feeling the pinch of the holiday season! On the quilty front, I've got a huge deadline in less than two weeks for the secret project that I sneak-peeked here. I'm also suddenly trying to finish a quilt for my mother-in-law, who had major surgery yesterday, and I've got two Secret Santa gifts to get out ASAP. And in the "rest of my life" category, I still have to do our holiday decorations, all of my Christmas shopping, and my Christmas cards ... and I have to get all that stuff done early, because I'm spending the week before Christmas at my sister's in Michigan! This on top of the fact that my 2-year-old is thoroughly acting her age lately, so it's hard for me to get anything done during her waking hours.

Um, sleep much? Nope, not me.

So this is a long way of saying that posting will be sporadic around here through the holidays. I've also decided to put WIP Wednesday on hiatus until the first week of January. Feel free to do your own WIP Wednesday posts anyway—there just won't be a linky. I'm sure most of us have little time for blog-hopping right now anyway!

Wish me luck with all my stuff—and best of luck with all of yours!

WIP Wednesday: How Is Everything Doing?

2011-11-29T23:41:00.006-06:00

It's been an interesting week, starting Monday morning when I learned that my Yahoo email account was hacked, and almost 400 people in my contacts list got an email from me with the subject line "How is everything doing?" Sounds like something I would say, doesn't it? : ) My apologies if you are now the proud owner of an Australian iphone based on my "recommendation." But hey, it's Wednesday, so let's find out how everything is doing.

New:

Another classified project

Yep, another secret quilt that I can't show you just yet. And unfortunately this is all you will see of it for a loooooonnnnng time.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:

Summer Sampler

No progress:
• Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints QA

• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA

• Skill Builder QA

• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 1

Currently in progress - 10 (10 seems to be my magic number. I just can't get away from it!)

Okay, so how is everything doing with you all? Link up a post from the past week featuring a work in progress. And get sewing!

Bee Wrap-Up

2011-11-29T09:25:00.009-06:00

Since it was my month to receive blocks in two of my bees, I only had to make one bee block in November. And with all of my bees taking the month of December off, this is actually my last bee block of 2011.

Krista of Poppyprint asked the Stash Trad bee members to make this pine tree block. She asked us to do our blocks in any bright color, with a stripe used in the large triangle and a black print for the tree trunk. I don't have a ton of stripes in my stash, but I thought this stripe from the Treasures and Tidbits line would work well.

Ayumi was nice enough to set up a paper-piecing pattern for this block, so that's what I used to get my points right on. I don't think my seams would have been this perfect if I had done it any other way!

So that does it for my 2011 bee blocks! This was my first year being in any bees, and as usual for me, I jumped in with both feet. I ended up participating in six different bees this year (though not all at one time!), and made a total of 54 bee blocks this year! Whew, that's a lot.

1. Mod Mosaic blocks, 2. [Sew] Beautiful January block, 3. String Me Along January Block, 4. Spiderweb block for Elizabeth, 5. Do Good Stitches blocks, 6. Do Good Stitches - Love Circle August, 7. Drunk love block for Emily, 8. Wonky Star block for Rachel, 9. Wonky star block for Rachel, 10. 3x6 block, 11. Do Good Stitches - July block, 12. Do Good Stitches - Around the World block, 13. Cracker Scraps block for Angela, 14. Improv block for Kati, 15. Sew Beautiful - July block, 16. Circle of Geese block for Brooke, 17. Oregon Star 4x5 Bee block, 18. Bento block for Franswimmer, 19. Dutch Pinwheel, 20. Drunk love block for Elizabeth, 21. "Me" block for Angela, 22. Do. Good Stitches strip block, 23. 3x6 bee block - 2nd quarter 2011, 24. HST block for Sharon, 25. Christmas block for Katie, 26. Pine Tree block for Krista, 27. String Blocks for Patchwork Queen, 28. Drunk Love block for Beth, 29. House block for Cara, 30. String Me Along block

Looking forward to more bee blocks in 2012!

Updated to add: If you would like to join a bee, a good place to start is the Quilting Bee Blocks group on Flickr. That group has a list of upcoming bees that are looking for members.

However, my favorite bees by far are the ones where somebody (like you!) just decided to start his or her own bee, and invited some favorite bloggers/flickr friends to participate. So if you would like to be in a bee, consider starting one yourself! Make a list of people that you would be interested in exchanging blocks with, and ask them if they would like to participate. You'd be surprised how often they will say yes (especially if you ask people who aren't already in a lot of bees). "By invitation" bees like this tend to produce higher quality blocks, and the members will be less likely to flake out on you, making for a happier experience all the way around. The Quilting Bee Blocks Flickr group has lots of resources for anyone considering starting their own bee. Look for the "Quilting Bee 101" posts in the Flickr group's discussion forum.

WIP Wednesday

2011-11-22T22:54:00.006-06:00

Two finishes this week. You heard me. Two. Finishes.

Completed:

Skirt Sew-Along - I did it! I made a skirt! That I can totally wear! Like, in public! It has a zipper! That I put in! This is worthy of all seven exclamation points in this paragraph! I'll have a full post on it as soon as I can get some decent pictures of me wearing it.

Pear Tree project - also done. Also awesome. Mark your calendar for March, because that's when I'll finally be able to show it to you.

New:

Gen X Quilters' Charmed Prints Quilt Along

I don't know how far I'll get on this one before Christmas, but I spent a little time today deciding which charms to use. I ended up with a combination of charms from AnneMarie's Spoonflower and Japanese swaps, plus some prints from my stash and Heather Ross scraps that Kelly was nice enough to swap with me.

I'm thinking of something along these lines for the accent prints in the feature blocks.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:

Summer Sampler

No progress:
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA
• Skill Builder QA
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 2(!)
New projects - 1

Currently in progress - 9

Link 'em if you got 'em! You all know the rules - link back here, comment, blah blah blah. Have a great week!

Learning Curve

2011-11-21T18:37:00.013-06:00

My friend Lisa recently asked me to give her a little sewing lesson. I was super excited about it, because Lisa is always telling me that she's "not crafty." I think the only reason she's not crafty is because she's never tried to be! She's got a great sense of style, and she's one of those rare people who has a real appreciation for handmade items even though she doesn't actually make things herself. To me, that's a crafty girl who just hasn't been turned to the dark side yet. : )

So we sat down and made this pillow together. She shopped my stash for the fabric, and gravitated straight to this bold zig zag print that I recently picked up for bags and the like. Here's Lisa's finished pillow looking mighty happy in its new home on her sun porch.

I don't know if I'll turn Lisa into the sewing nerd that I am, but our little lesson got me thinking about the nature of "craftyness." I believe everyone has the capacity to be creative. But it's like so many other things in life—if you don't use it, you lose it. The more you flex your creativity muscles, the stronger you'll get at it. And I know everybody has the capacity to learn a technical skill like sewing. That just takes motivation and practice. (I won't lie—sometimes it takes a lot of practice.) In my mind, creativity + technical skill = craftiness. Therefore, everybody has the capacity to be "crafty." Yes, really.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe it really comes down to motivation. If you truly want to learn how to sew (or knit, or decoupage, or whatever), there's nothing stopping you. So what are you waiting for? Get going!

WIP Wednesday: Whose Echo?

2011-11-16T00:01:00.006-06:00

First, a big huge thank-you for making my WIP Wednesday anniversary celebration so fabulous! I'm overwhelmed by the number of links we got last week, and by the numbers of comments on those links! You guys really brought it. Not that I would expect anything less from you, the most fabulous blog readers in all of cyberspace! And I think the "most comments" giveaway was a big success, so I'm now actually considering doing that every so often, just to get everybody reinvigorated about commenting. Fun, right?

Anyway, what have I been up to? Let's take a look.

New:

Skirt Sew-Along - Well, I've now made it through Day 3 of Anna's sew-along, and I'm very pleased with my skirt so far! Next up is that darned zipper. I think I've been avoiding this step, but I'm hoping to tackle it soon.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:

Summer Sampler

Completed quilts currently being bound:

Secret Pear Tree project

Currently in progress - 10

Winners!

Now let's find out who gets a bundle of Echo FQs!

The winner of the first bundle, which goes to a random WIP linker-upper, is link #136, Tami of Tami's Tiki Hut! Yay, Tami! Enjoy the Echo, I can't wait to see what you do with it.

The second bundle goes to one of the readers with the most comments on other links. There were 17 amazing ladies who went around and commented on every single WIP Wednesday link. Great job, you guys! This is what WIP Wednesday is all about! I wish I could give every one of you an FQ bundle, because you all totally deserve it. But according to the random number generator, the winner of this bundle is #14. The fourteenth person to tell me that she commented on all the links was Allegory of {sew} Allegorical. Which is awesome, because when I commented on Allegory's WIP post, I told her that if I had a bundle to give away for best WIP post title, she would win it with her "WIP Wednesday: Robots and Bacon Edition." Unfortunately I had no such giveaway this week, but it looks like she got the bundle anyway! Allegory and Echo were clearly meant to be together. : )

Speaking of comments, I really tried to get around to all of the links myself this week, but I just couldn't manage it. I ended up commenting on about 100 of the 145 posts. So I just want you all to know that even if I don't make it to your post every week, I really do appreciate you linking up. But with so many links to get to every week—and with husband, kids, sewing, and other blog posts to write—that's just gotten unmanageable. I wish I could get around to all of them, but something had to give, and I guess it's been this. But I do try to hit at least a few posts each week from people who are new to me. And even if you don't see me, please know that I appreciate your being there!

Thanks again for making last week's celebration so much fun! Here's to another year—now let's link 'em up!

Photo Shoot with Susanne

2011-11-14T17:51:00.009-06:00

So do you guys all know Susanne? She blogs at Susanne Loves and is such a talented sewist, quilter, and photographer. And (at least temporarily) she's a fellow Wisconsinite. Not only does she sew some beautiful things, she takes gorgeous pictures of said things, so there's always plenty of eye candy on her blog. She is also completely hilarious! I love reading her about her take on life.

Anyway, it crossed my mind a few weeks ago that it would be nice to get some family pictures taken—we've never done that, beyond the usual mall studio shots of the girls when they were babies. And hey, maybe I could even get a decent profile picture of me at the same time? And who better to take those shots than Susanne?

She lives about an hour and a half from me, and was sweet enough to offer to come to me to do a photo shoot with my whole family. She got some fabulous shots of the girls—don't they look like angels here? (Trust me, they aren't!)

Some of my quilts also got the Susanne treatment, as you can see above. I may even have snuck into a few of those quilt shots myself. : ) So a new profile pic should be coming soon. In the meantime, check out Susanne's blog post about our photo shoot. Thank you, Susanne! We had a great time and it was wonderful meeting you at last!

Trying Something New ...

2011-11-10T14:36:00.009-06:00

I think I've officially lost my mind. I'm attempting to make myself a skirt!

I know, right? Since when do I make clothes? But one of the biggest lessons I brought home from the Sewing Summit was to try to break out of my comfort zone and make things other than quilts. Like bags, for instance. Or maybe even a skirt. (Because that has to be one of the easiest garments to make, right?)

Then I saw that Anna of Noodlehead had made herself the cutest little skirt, and that she was going to do it as a sew-along. Since patterns confuse the life out of me, what better chance for me to give that a try?

And here it is so far! It kinda sorta really looks like a skirt, right?

It has pockets and everything! I've only made it through the end of her Day 2 post, but so far, so good. I was concerned about the fact that the back of the skirt seemed to be at least 2" wider than the front—leave it to me, the quilter, to want everything to match up perfectly. But Anna assures me I should be okay.

And behold my French seam! What a useful technique this is for encasing raw edges, and so easy too. Even if the skirt doesn't turn out in the end, I'm glad to have learned this.

So no problems so far, knock on wood. Anna's directions and photos have made everything very clear. I don't think I would have gotten even this far if I were relying solely on the pattern! But then again, there is the dreaded zipper coming up ...

I'm linking up to TNT Thursdays at Happy Quilting. This is definitely the ultimate "trying new things" for me!

WIP Wednesday: Anniversary Edition

2011-11-09T00:01:00.017-06:00

That's right! WIP Wednesday is one year old this week!

Hopefully you already saw my big finish of the Original Supernova. Completing that long-term WIP was my way of kicking off this week's celebration. But wait–there's more! Today I'm featuring the 8 original WIP Wednesday linky ladies from one year ago. And of course, what would a party be without a giveaway?

But first, I want to thank every one of you who has linked up to WIP Wednesday over the past year. WIP Wednesday got its start after I had already done a few of my own (non-linky) WIP reports, and Elizabeth had the genius idea that I turn those weekly posts into a linky. That first week, eight people linked up. A year later, look how it's grown! I love hearing that WIP Wednesday motivates people and helps them get things done.

Another shout-out goes to the 8 wonderful ladies who linked up that first week. You guys have been with me from the start, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. I also think these 8 bloggers represent a nice cross-section of the many quilters who link up each week. So instead of my usual WIP rundown (which will return next week), I thought it would be fun to find out a little more about their WIPs.

Elizabeth of Don't Call Me Betsy

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? Looks like it was back in June, when I was averaging more than 10 projects at a time, like WIP Wed #30.

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? Right now, my longest WIP is definitely my Single Girl quilt. The top has been finished since March, and I can't seem to bring myself to attempt quilting it. It's king-size, and though I've quilted 3 queen-size quilts, there's something about those extra 10" or so that keeps freaking me out. I'm fully aiming to finish this quilt before the end of the year.

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: I think my favorite finish at the moment is definitely my most recent finish—Fabricland. The design is near and dear to my heart and it is just so soft and perfect for snuggling.

Leila of Sewn by Leila

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? I would guess that I average 5-7 fairly active works in progress. We don't count the ones that haven't seen the light of day in over a year, right?

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? I have been quilting for 10 years, ever since a friend talked me into going to a block-of-the-month club at a quilt store. My oldest not-at-all-in-progress quilt is that block-of-the-month quilt. What to do for the border has hung me up for years. I think I have decided to do an applique border, but I don't want to start another handwork project until I finish up my Grandmother's Flower Garden hexagon quilt—which I wrote about in my first WIP Wednesday post. My little girl and the quilt have both grown in the last year, but they are not finished yet.

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: One of my favorite finishes this year is the Tree Quilt I made for my brother. It was made from blocks from the Bee Improvisational group and I love it. I made a smaller version as a commissioned quilt this fall—I'm still in love with the design. Now I need to make a full-sized quilt for myself.

Melanie of My Fifteen Minute Break

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? Right now I am at my highest. I stopped counting at 20 ... way too depressing.

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? My grandmother's flower garden quilt. I don't know if I'll ever even finish it! It's so not my style anymore, and it's so time consuming. I haven't touched it since last year and don't miss it at all!

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: My Dr. Seuss quilt for the baby! I think it's super cute and I was actually able to finish it! Amazing in itself!

Becky of Becky's Blabber

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? A guess would be about a dozen (everything from cut pieces to finished quilt tops all ready to quilt).

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? That would be my first quilt, started for my boyfriend at the time, who's now my husband of 19 years. I finished it last year on our 18th anniversary.

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: In the last year, it would probably be my first Project Linus quilt ... made from an old UFO that I dissected and split up into 2 smaller "charity" quilts.

Ann of A Girl In Paradise

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? I would have to say somewhere around 6 or 7.

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? Ironically, it would have to be my Apple Core Quilt and my 2010 scrap quilt, which I wrote about in my first WIP Wednesday post. Before I started blogging, I was actually pretty good about finishing a quilt.

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: That would have to be the memory quilt that I made for a friend. It was a quilt that I designed myself and I just love how it came together.

Amy of Harriet Homemaker Strikes Again

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? I had to laugh at this, since I probably have the longest list of WIPs on the planet. There are somewhere in the ballpark of 30 in various stages.

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? That would be the very first quilt I made, the Sherbet quilt. It took 3 months to start, another 3 months to piece the top, another 3 months to make a back, then another 14 months (give or take) to get to the quilted stage. How many months until I bind it? Who knows!

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: I think my two favorites would be the Sleepytime Baby quilt I made for my cousin's baby, and the collaboration quilt made with my mom and sister for my friend's baby.

Thearica of Pig Tales and Quilts

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? I don't keep track of my UFOs, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say I have close to 20. I host a lot of swaps on a quilting forum and I need to get all of those blocks into tops and get them quilted!

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? That has to be my Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Bill Travel the World swap quilt. I hosted a swap in 2005 with 50 quilters. We each made 50 blocks using either the Sunbonnet Sue or Overall Bill pattern, so that we all received 1 block from each swapper. I have yet to make those blocks into a quilt, but I plan to do it someday!

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: It is my Friendship Piggy Quilt! Friends from a quilting forum that I frequent are always sending me pig fabric, because they know my husband and I collect pig pottery. Over a period of 5 years, I received many fat quarters, and finally I had enough to make this quilt. I use it on my couch to wrap up in at night—it's like receiving a super hug from all my friends every time I use it!

Susan of The History Quilter

What is the largest number of WIPs you've had going at any one time? I've had as many as 6 projects on my WIP list and have worked very hard not to increase that number, as I have little space in my house for storage.

What is your longest-standing unfinished WIP? Sliced Coins is my quilt that has been on my WIP list the longest, as I joined the Sliced Coins Quilt-Along with Elizabeth back in January. The quilt top is finished but has been languishing in my closet (where I have most of my WIPs) for months. I would like to finish this one up, as it is destined for a spot at the end of my bed.

Tell us about the WIP finish in the past year that you are most proud of: Honestly, my greatest WIP is my Supernova, as I was instantly drawn to the pattern/quilt-along when Lee first announced it. As I moved through the QA, I felt my skills getting better, and although the finish is not perfect, I learned a great deal about quilting. Supernova is now folded nicely on my couch and joins me on my lap on the nights I actually have time to sit on the couch.

Well thanks, Susan! And thanks to all the ladies for the fun run-down, and for being there for my fledgling linky a year ago.

Giveaway!

As a thank-you to you all for making this linky what it is, I'm giving away fat quarters of Lotta Jansdotter's new line, Echo. I'm crazy about this line and I love her designs. Two winners will each get 8 FQs of this fabulousness.

Chance #1

Link up to this week's WIP Wednesday.

• Link up any blog post from the last week, featuring a work-in-progress. That means there must be something unfinished somewhere in your post. Posts with only finished works will be disqualified.

• You must link back to my blog, Freshly Pieced, either in your post or on your sidebar.

• The linky closes tomorrow morning at 2 a.m. Central time, so you must get your links in by then.

Chance #2

Between now and Tuesday, November 15, comment on as many WIP Wednesday links as you can. Whoever comments on the most links gets an FQ bundle.

• Leave a comment on this post telling me how many links you commented upon. You must leave your tally in a comment on this post by Tuesday, November 15, at 1 p.m. Central time.

• I will be verifying the winner's comments—if you win, but you don't have as many as you reported, I'll move on to the next person.

• If more than one person ties with the same number of comments, I'll draw a winner from those top commenters.

• One comment per link please.

• This part of the giveaway is open to everyone, even if you don't have a blog.

UPDATED TO ADD: So far we have five rock stars who have commented on every single link! (Minus their own.) So at this point, to be eligible for the giveaway, you must comment on every link—your own link and my post do not count. Those are still very good odds, so keep commenting!

Good luck! I'll announce the winners in next week's WIP Wednesday linky. Thanks again for linking up with me, and here's to another year of WIP Wednesdays. : )

Supernova Redux

2011-11-08T10:33:00.015-06:00

Okay, get your fainting couches ready ...

My Original Supernova quilt is finally finished! Only fourteen months after I started it.

Tomorrow marks a whole year of WIP Wednesday linky posts. One year! And I thought, what better way to celebrate than to haul out one of my longest-term WIPs and actually finish the darn thing? Also motivating was a hilarious comment from Eryn on last week's WIP Wednesday that if I didn't finish off the Original Supernova soon, she was going to find out where I live and swipe it. Well, here it is Eryn—swiper no swiping!

The front is made up entirely of Hope Valley prints by Denyse Schmidt, Kona Snow as the background, and Kona Stone for the star "extenders" and binding.

The back is made up mostly of Denyse Schmidt's DS prints from Joann's. The two I used (the yellow is from Fairgrounds and the pink is from Sugar Creek) work perfectly with the Hope Valley color palette. (Sorry for the awful pictures. Ugly rainy day today. As soon as the sun comes out I'll get better ones and update this post.)

I pieced this differently than the method I used for my Supernova quilt-along. Original Supernova is pieced entirely from squares and HSTs. It is also much smaller than my QA Supernova—Original Sup is 48" square, with each Supernova block finishing at 12" square.

I came up with the alternate way of piecing this for the quilt-along to eliminate the HSTs and give people fewer squares to piece. But I think there are benefits to this method as well. I definitely recommend this method if you have a lot of directional fabric, because the other way requires a lot of advance planning to coordinate the direction of the prints. If I were going to make this quilt again, I think I'd go back to this original method, but I would increase the size like I did for the QA, and I would use Thangles to piece the HSTs.

Speaking of Thangles, I have to add one more thing to this post: Check out this a-MAZ-ing pillow made by Amy of Don't You Know Who I Am? These are the TINIEST Supernova blocks EVER! Each block measures just 7", with each teeny square 1" finished! Amazing! She used Thangles for her piecing as well.

Anyway, I'm so happy to have Original Supernova in the "finished" column at long last. The top has actually been done for just under one full year. It's also worth noting that this is my 10th finished full-size quilt of the year—I just need to complete two more by the end of the year to meet my goal of 12 quilts in 2011! Woo hoo!

Be sure to come back tomorrow for my big anniversary celebration of WIP Wednesday. There will be a giveaway for everyone who links up, and a special "retrospective". You won't want to miss it!

WIP Wednesday: Rerun

2011-11-02T00:39:00.009-05:00

Okay, seriously. Working on one secret project for two straight weeks makes for some BOR-ing WIP posts. Sorry! I promise there will be more to see here next week. Although I'm pretty sure I said the same thing last week. In the meantime, please enjoy some lovely recycled photos. (But you loved them so much that you can't wait to see them again, right?)

Ongoing:

Secret project - I finished the blocks tonight, so I just need to put the top together and make the back, and it will be off to the long-arm quilter.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:

• Summer Sampler

• Hope Valley

No progress:
• Halloween quilt (Yes, I am stubbornly still intending to work on this as soon as I get half a chance—if I don't, I'll just be in the same boat next year!)

• Farmer's Wife QA (*sigh*—still on hold)
• Skill Builder QA (ditto)
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 0
Currently in progress - 10

Okay, give me what you've got! Link up your WIPs below, and have a productive week.

One More Summit Swap

2011-11-01T13:40:00.005-05:00

I have one Sewing Summit swap item that I made, but unfortunately didn't complete in time to actually swap it in person at the Summit. Happily, Elizabeth's mini is all done now, and she has received it, so I'm free to share it! This was for my "roommate swap" with AnneMarie and Elizabeth. Elizabeth's mini is the same design as AnneMarie's (which you can see here), but in different fabric/colors.

As you might remember, each star is from Carol Doak's 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars, which features stars named after each of the states. So I went for the hard-core symbolism and did four stars: Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, and Utah. One for each of our home states, and one for the state where we all met. I really love how both of these minis turned out!

I used yellow thread to quilt Elizabeth's, a decision I questioned after it was done. But now I like it and I'm glad I broke out of my usual thread rut. : ) And I love love love the stripey binding. I usually like to do striped binding on the bias, but this one just called out for straight-grain, and I'm really happy with the end result.

Here's the back, with several iterations of Dena Designs' Tarika. I love these prints.

Yay for roommates, sewing buddies, and friends. Thanks for a fun swap, ladies!

Two Months of Bee Blocks

2011-10-31T05:00:00.014-05:00

Happy Halloween! The last day of October means it's time to post some bee blocks. Except that as I got ready to post the October blocks, I realized I never showed you September's either. So here they are, all in one fell swoop.

{Sew} Beautiful - September

AnneMarie asked for this Dutch Pinwheel block using Ruby charm squares. I can't wait to see all of these blocks put together. It's going to be gorgeous. You can find a tutorial for this block right here.

{Sew} Beautiful - October

Katie asked for Christmas blocks of any design, using fun holiday scraps. Bee members had already done a few Christmas trees and some presents by the time I got around to doing my block, so I whipped up these twinkly wonky stars.

Stash Trad - October

This is a brand new bee for me. It was organized by Lynne of Lily's Quilts and features traditional blocks done in our own modern stash fabrics—how could I possibly say no to that? There are some amazingly talented ladies in this group and I'm so excited to be making blocks for them!

For our very first month, we made these "Cracker Scrap" blocks for Angela (you can find the block tutorial here). This was a fun, easy block to make, it looks great, and OMG it's HUGE! Something like 19" square. So you could whip up a very good-sized quilt in no time with her tutorial.

Do. Good Stitches - September

Natalie asked for strip blocks of any design, in a single fall color. My color was red, and I ended up doing a version of my strip-pieced zig-zag mug rug—only waaaaay longer. : ) This block measures 48" by 6.5"! Can't wait to see how this quilt comes together.

Do. Good Stitches - October

Melanie asked for Around the World blocks in any bright scrappy colors. We used this tutorial to make the blocks, and I was really surprised at how quickly and easily they came together! This will be such a fun quilt.

String Me Along - September

Sharon asked for any half-square triangle design, using these Amy Butler charms. I love this offset HST design.

String Me Along - October

Nicey Jane string blocks for Sabrina. If this block looks familiar, that's because it is—this is my second set of Nicey Jane string blocks for this bee in the last few months. : )

And finally, a little look ahead to November: It's finally my turn in the {Sew} Beautiful bee! This is such a fabulous bee—everybody in it is so creative, so inspiring, and more or less on time. : ) And since these ladies are all among my favorite bloggers, I wanted to assign a block that called for a little creativity and personality.

So I've mailed out this fabric to my beemates and I've asked them to create tree blocks for me. The blocks can be pieced or appliqued or both. They can make a tree of any season, with leaves or without, with wildlife or without, etc. They've got free reign—as long as there's something tree-ish in there! I did give them a Flickr gallery with quilty tree inspiration—you can check it out here. I can't wait to see what the {Sew} Beautiful ladies make for me in November!

BQF: Warm Cool Quilt

2011-10-29T22:11:00.003-05:00

It's Bloggers' Quilt Festival time again! Unfortunately I don't have a new finish this time around, but I can show you one of my favorite quilts from the last six months.

My Warm Cool HST quilt. I love it, my daughters love it and often request it when they're sitting on the couch, and hopefully you love it too. : )

It's scrappy and colorful and snuggly and a great size for a couch quilt. Many of my all-time favorite prints are in there—some of which I have used up and can't buy anymore.

There are like a gazillion HSTs in this quilt (actually 266 of them). I got really sick of squaring them up, but somehow that didn't translate into me being sick of this quilt.

I like how the back turned out as well. This quilt makes me happy no matter which side is facing up!

And a few more reasons to love this quilt: It was my first attempt at spray basting (which I now love), and only my second attempt at FMQ stippling (which I also now love). So in many ways, I feel like this quilt was where I turned a corner and became a "real" quilter.

Thanks for checking out my BQF quilt! Enjoy the festival!

Size: 54" x 74"
Design: Warm/Cool Quilt-Along by Jeni at In Color Order (thank you, Jeni!)
Fabric: 219 colorful prints/scraps
Binding: Mini Muu dot by Lecien
Back: Mostly Kona Cotton solids
Quilting: FMQ stippling

The Winner Is ...

2011-10-26T20:40:00.004-05:00

It's time to pick a winner of the 12 Gifts of Christmas Giveaway! But first ... 450 comments?! Wow. That's a lot. Thanks for all the Lego bag love!

Anyway, the winner of the $25 gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop is #107, Vio, who said, "What a great idea!!! All of my son's super hero toys and cars need a place like that to live. Thank you!"

Well, Vio, now you've got some free fabric with which to make it! I've sent you an email. Congratulations, and thanks to everyone who entered.

WIP Wednesday: Nothing Doing

2011-10-26T00:01:00.003-05:00

Okay, I think this might be a first: I've got a WIP Wednesday post with no pictures. Back when I was a reporter, every morning I would tell my editor what I was writing about that day, and he always had the same question: "What about art? Is there art? Get me art!" Today, I have no art. Somewhere, that editor is cringing.

Ongoing:
Secret project - My deadline looms, so this was my major focus this week. It's going to the long-arm quilter and I promised to get it to her by the end of the month. Also: behind-the-scenes sewing stinks. I wish I could show this to you!

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
• Summer Sampler
• Hope Valley

No progress:
• Halloween quilt
• Farmer's Wife QA (still on hold)
• Skill Builder QA (yep, ditto)
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 0
Currently in progress - 10

So there's my picture-less WIP Wednesday post—are a thousand words worth a picture? You tell me. : ) And while you're at it, link up your own post featuring a work in progress. Don't forget to link back here and comment, comment, comment.

Also, stop back later today, when I'll be drawing a winner for the 12 Gifts of Christmas giveaway! A $25 gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop is up for grabs. Have a great week—I promise I'll have some art next time.

And the Sewing Summit Swag Winners Are ...

2011-10-22T10:37:00.005-05:00

First, thank you for all of your great comments on my Lego bag/playmat. If you make one (or anything else inspired by something from my blog), consider adding a photo of it to my new Flickr group, Freshly Pieced Sewing. I love seeing what you all make!

But more importantly, let's draw some winners for the Sewing Summit swag!

Swag Package #1
The winner of the Olfa Precision Applique Scissors, the Seville quilt pattern from Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew, an Aurifil thread variety pack, and a fat quarter of Basic Shades Gray from Riley Blake is #162, Miranda, who said, "Awwww, how generous! Thanks for sharing!"

Swag Package #2
The winner of the Kona Cotton Charm Pack from Robert Kaufman, decorative twine from The Twinery, pillow patterns from Mod Kid, and a mini cutting board from Olfa is #47, Michele, who said, "Great swag! You're so sweet to share."

Congratulations, ladies! I'll be sending you an email for your address. And remember, my 12 Gifts of Christmas giveaway is still open! (As are all of the 12 Gifts of Christmas giveaways.) So don't forget to enter to win a $25 gift certificate from the Fat Quarter Shop.

12 Gifts of Christmas: Lego Storage Bag/Playmat

2011-10-20T05:00:00.018-05:00

Welcome to my stop on the 12 Gifts of Christmas Blog Hop!

Today I'm showing you how to make a drawstring Lego storage bag that doubles as a playmat. Fun, cute, and useful!

I think Legos strike fear into the hearts of organized moms everywhere. We store ours in a big plastic tub, but a few pieces always seem to disappear when my daughter dumps it out to play. And she hates putting all those pieces back into the tub.

So I went in search of an item my sister had for her Legos 25-plus years ago. It was basically a big circular piece of fabric with a drawstring around the edge. The Legos were stored inside, but when you wanted to play, you could lay the fabric out completely flat and spread out the pieces directly on the fabric. This allowed you to easily find the piece that you wanted—but when it came time to clean up, just pull up the drawstring and you're done. Genius! Apparently they no longer make this handy contraption, but that's where a little sewing skills are useful, right? Plus I could make my version a whole lot cuter than the '70s-looking fake denim I recall my sister's being made from.

This bag spreads out to become a playmat that's about 50" wide—a generous size even for the most Lego-obsessed kids. And the bag/playmat combo would be great for other types of toys as well—I'm thinking baby toys, stuffed animals, matchbox cars, or anything with lots of small parts.

You will need:

• Approximately 40 pieces of fabric, 4.5" x 22" (The 22" length can include a selvage—the selvages will end up hidden. A fat-eighth bundle would be perfect for this project.)

• 9"-10" square of fabric for the center

• Total of 1.75 yards for the back of mat/inside of bag

• 1/2" grommet-setting kit and 20 grommets (don't be afraid of grommets! They're so easy!)

• 20 - 1.5" squares of fusible interfacing

• About 14 feet of cotton braided cord (I used 3/16")

• 6 inches of 1"-wide twill tape for the drawstring slider

How to make it:

1. On your 4.5" x 22" pieces of fabric, mark the bottom edge 1.75" from each side, as shown. If you are using a piece with a selvage, make sure to mark the selvage end.

2. Cut the piece on an angle, from one of the marks you just made at the bottom of the rectangle, to the outer corner at the top of the rectangle. Repeat on the other side, cutting from mark to outer corner. If you're using pre-cut fat quarters or fat eighths, check that the length of your pieces is precisely 22" before cutting. Length variances can throw off your angles here.

3. You now have a wedge-shaped piece that looks like this. Repeat the first two steps until you have 40 wedges.

4. Sew your wedges together, lining up the tops of the wedges. It doesn't matter if the bottoms line up. I pressed my seams open.

5. Sew your wedges together in sets of 10. Ten wedges makes a quarter of the circle. Sew the quarters together to create the full circle.

6. When you're ready to sew the final seam in the circle, stop and lay out your circle so that it's as flat as you can get it, regardless of whether your final two raw edges match up. If they do match up, congratulations, you are a sewing rockstar! As you can see, mine didn't come together so well. If you have a gap in your circle when it's lying as flat as it can be, as I did, that means you probably need to add one more wedge. That's why I said you would need approximately 40 pieces of fabric for this project. : ) So at this point, I cut and pieced wedge number 41 into the circle.

7. Now that I've added another wedge, when my circle is lying as flat as possible, the raw edges actually overlap, especially toward the outside of the circle.

8. To fix that, use the top (overlapping) piece as a guide to cut the bottom piece. Line up your ruler with the edge of the top piece and trim. You can now sew your final seam and you end up with a flat wedge-pieced circle measuring about 50" across. (By the way, I think this would also be a great way to make a Christmas tree skirt or a quilt.)

9. To create the center, I traced around one of my salad plates, which are about 8.25" across.

10. Cut out your circle and pin it into place, covering the hole in the middle of the circle as well as any selvages.

11. Applique your center circle by sewing around the edge with a zig-zag stitch.

12. To prepare for setting your grommets, take the 1.5" squares of interfacing and press them onto the wrong side of the circle. (The interfacing will give your grommet a little more stability.) I placed my interfacing squares in the center of every second wedge piece, with the top edge of the square about 1" from the raw edge.

13. Now the outside of your bag is looking good, so let's tackle the lining. Circle measurements require too much math for me, so instead, I laid out the outside of the bag and then laid pieces of fabric over it until I had a design that I liked and the entire outside was covered. Then I sewed all the pieces together and laid out both the outside and the lining again. Using the outside of the bag as my guide, I trimmed the lining into a circular shape, leaving about 1/2" of extra fabric all the way around.

14. Pin around the edges and sew a 1/2" seam around the perimeter, leaving an opening about 5" wide for turning. Trim excess seam allowance.

15. Turn your circle right side out and press.

16. Top stitch around the outside of the circle. I stitched 1/4" from the edge and about 2" from the edge. I used the top stitching to close up the opening I left for turning.

17. Now you need to cut the holes for your grommets. I know, this part is scary. If you screw up, you could be ruining the whole project. But no pressure! I promise you can do it! : ) Feel each wedge to find the ones with the interfacing that you added before turning. On each wedge with interfacing, mark the center of the wedge about 1.5" from the top. Then cut a small "X" into all three layers of fabric (outside, lining, and interfacing). I did this by pinching a small fold right where I wanted the X, and then clipping a V, which turned into an X when unfolded again. Finally, to clean things up a bit, snip off the points that you created.

Adding the Grommets and Finishing the Bag

1. First, don't buy the Dritz grommet-setting kit that's available at Joann. I started with that one, but the plastic setting tools are so cheap and poorly made, they only lasted for six grommets. Buy your grommet kit from a hardware store instead. I got this kit from my local Ace—it was only $1 more than the kit from Joann and it works way better. (My kit came with brass grommets, but I also found satin nickel refill grommets and used those instead.)

2. A grommet kit has four basic parts: The anvil, the setting tool, the grommet barrel, and the washer. The washers sometimes have pointy teeth on one side to grab the fabric you're setting the grommet into.

3. To set the grommet, position the barrel piece on the anvil with the barrel sticking up, and put the X-shaped hole in your fabric over the barrel of the grommet, as shown.

4. Put the washer over the barrel and the fabric, as shown, teeth pointing down.

5. Put the setting tool on top of it all and use a hammer to wail on that bad boy until it flattens out and becomes attached to the fabric. You may have to put some arm into it—I don't recommend trying this during nap time. : ) Also, be sure you are doing this step on a very hard surface—like concrete or a work bench. I don't want to be responsible for any maimed dining room tables.

6. That's it—you've just installed a lovely, professional-looking grommet.

7. Add the braided cord, lacing it in and out of the grommets around the perimeter of the circle. Knot the ends of the cord. Take your twill tape and wrap it in a figure 8 around the two ends of the cord, just above the knots. Sew down the middle of the figure 8 to create a drawstring slider. And you're done! You now have a Lego keeper that turns into a handy playmat while the Legos are in use.

Giveaway!

The giveaway is now closed.

Thank you to the Fat Quarter Shop for sponsoring the giveaway. Another big thanks goes out to Jennifer of Ellison Lane Quilts for hosting this blog hop and including me in it! Don't forget to visit all of the other bloggers for own their gift tutorials and giveaways—the schedule is below.

Friday, October 14- Jennifer @ Ellison Lane Quilts
Saturday, October 15- Ayumi/Pink Penguin
Sunday, October 16- Amy/ Lots of Pink Here
Monday, October 17- Faith/Fresh Lemons Quilts
Tuesday, October 18- Penny/Sew Take a Hike
Wednesday, October 19- Kati/From the Blue Chair
Thursday, October 20- Lee/Freshly Pieced
Friday, October 21- Elizabeth/Don't Call Me Betsy
Saturday, October 22- Melanie/Texas Freckles
Sunday, October 23- Lindsay/Craft Buds
Monday, October 24- Amanda/A Crafty Fox
Tuesday, October 25-Vanessa/Little Big Girl Studio

WIP Wednesday

2011-10-19T00:01:00.003-05:00

So, I've decided it's time to drop the WIP Wednesday week numbers. This week would have been #48, and that's getting into a range that feels a little too OCD to me. Because obsessively tracking your dozens WIPs is totally normal, but numbering your posts? Crazytown. So consider the numbering officially dropped!

New projects:

Secret project - I can't show you this one, and it's going to be a while before I can reveal it. But I can't resist showing you the fabric I'm using—Pear Tree, Thomas Knauer's upcoming debut line for Andover. I've had my eye on this line since the first sneak peeks surfaced a few months ago—how could you not fall in love with that sweet little bird? So I'm excited to be getting a crack at it.

12 Gifts of Christmas Project - new and complete! Come back tomorrow for a closer look and a tutorial.

Ongoing projects:
• Elizabeth's swap mini-quilt
• Halloween quilt

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
• Summer Sampler
• Hope Valley

No progress:
• Farmer's Wife QA (still on hold)
• Skill Builder QA (yep, ditto)
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1
New projects - 2
Currently in progress - 11

So I showed you mine—now show me yours! : ) Link up your WIPs below—don't forget to link back to my blog and show your fellow linkers some comment love. Have a great week!

Sewing Summit: Swag

2011-10-18T05:00:00.009-05:00

This giveaway is now closed.

Of course, another great thing about the Sewing Summit: Free stuff! Some of this came from the general conference swag bag, and some from the dinner organized by Jennifer and Elena. Either way, it was all good!

Fabric—Peacock Lane FQs from Michael Miller and my favorite print from Outside Oslo by the Needle Shop.

Patterns from Denyse Schmidt, Amy Butler, Izzy & Ivy, and Brassy Apple.

Batting samples from The Warm Company.

Tools and notions galore—including my first pair of FMQ grippy gloves, from Grabaroos! (I hope I'm a size 8.)

But even if you didn't go to the Sewing Summit, you can still take home some of the swag! I'm passing some goodies along to a few of you—here's what's up for grabs:

Winner No. 1 gets a pair of Olfa Precision Applique Scissors, the Seville quilt pattern from Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew, an Aurifil thread variety pack, and a fat quarter of Basic Shades Gray from Riley Blake.

Winner No. 2 gets a Kona Cotton Charm Pack from Robert Kaufman, cute decorative twine from The Twinery, a trio of pillow patterns from Mod Kid, and a mini cutting board from Olfa.

To win, just leave a comment on this post. I'll draw a winner sometime on Saturday. Good luck! And thank you to all of the Sewing Summit sponsors for providing such great loot!

The Sewing Summit: Swaps

2011-10-17T05:00:00.009-05:00

My two favorite things about Sewing Summit: Friends and fabric (in all its many forms). Happily, the weekend offered plenty of opportunities to combine the two!

Elizabeth of Don't Call Me Betsy, AnneMarie of Gen X Quilters, and I arranged a little in-person roommate swap. How often do you get the chance to exchange swaps in person? It was so fun to receive things made by my closest blog-friends-turned-real-friends. : ) From Elizabeth, I got this adorable hexagon zippy pouch with hand-quilting around the hexy. I'm determined to learn how to embroider someday soon, and this pouch will be perfect for my supplies!

The back is one of my fave blocks, the x and + block!

AnneMarie made me this gorgeous paper-pieced pillow from Heirloom. I LOVE Heirloom, so she definitely nailed it with this. It looks great on our couch too, as you can see. And guess what—there's a zipper in this, too. You ladies are totally putting the pressure on me to figure out those darn things! : )

Speaking of AnneMarie, here's something else she made me a while back, that I have yet to share, and which came in handy at the Summit. This sweet linen lingerie bag! How could you not love that underwear print? And the linen and decorative stitches are the perfect finishing touches.

And here's what I made for AnneMarie—yep, I'm still obsessing on the paper-pieced stars from Carol Doak's book 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars. Since all the stars in the book are named after states, I thought it would be symbolic and meaningful and just plain cool to use the Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, and Utah stars in my mini-quilts for the girls. One star for each of our home states, plus a star for the state where the Summit was held. (No, that's not my awesome carpet in the photo. That would be the carpet at Little America hotel.)

I wanted Elizabeth to get the same thing, but in different fabric. Sadly, this plan was far too complicated to execute in the time I had available before leaving for the Summit. I knew I should try to come up with a simpler plan, but once I thought of the state-stars idea, I couldn't unthink it. I had to do it. But I'm hard at work finishing up Elizabeth's and I hope to get it in the mail to her in the next few days. Thanks for your patience, E!

Moving right along, Kristie of OCD gave me this insanely cute framed clutch while we were at Summit, as payment for creating a couple of blog buttons for her recently. LOVE the fabric, the flower, and the blue doodads on the frame. Also, this particular clutch is famous, because it's straight from Kristie's framed-purse tutorial for the Moda Bake Shop! Click here to see my clutch's 15 minutes of fame (and learn how to make one yourself!)

The inside of the clutch, with Kristie's cute label.

Here's a stack o' goodies I scored at the Summit FQ swap, organized by Kaelin of the Plaid Scottie. We were all expecting the swap to be a full-contact sport, but everybody was super calm and orderly. After the swap, several of us used our FQs to test Elizabeth's Rain-Man-like knowledge of fabric lines. That red and orange print in the bottom-right corner was the only one that stumped her! Anybody know it?

Yet another swap I participated in was the Color Wheel charm swap organized by Kati of From the Blue Chair. I would love to make a pixelated color-wheel quilt like Kati's, and with these charms, that should come together nicely.

I think that about covers the swaps. Come back tomorrow for my final Summit-related post: The swag, plus a swaggy giveaway!

Announcing the 12 Gifts of Christmas Blog Hop!

2011-10-13T05:00:00.001-05:00

I know—I just posted about a Halloween quilt. And it was like 72 degrees yesterday here in Wisconsin. So it's not feeling much like Christmas around here just yet. But if you guys are anything like me, you probably wait until, oh, December 15-ish to suddenly decide that you need to make handmade gifts for every friend and family member in your life. (Remember my potholder-palooza last year?) Then you just end up a giant ball of stress and you pull out all your hair in frustration and you look like you got hit by a UPS truck in your holiday pictures. Nobody wants that. So, October? Totally not too early to start thinking about handmade gifts. It may seem early, but take it from a procrastinator—it's not.

So I'm super excited to tell you that the "12 Gifts of Christmas" blog hop, organized by Jennifer of Ellison Lane Quilts, kicks off tomorrow! It's 12 days of tutorials, tips, and gift-making tricks that you won't want to miss. I will be sharing one of those 12 gifts with you, along with 11 other amazingly talented bloggers.

And that's not all—there are prizes! There will be 12 giveaways—one at every stop on the hop—from sponsors such as Pink Castle Fabrics, Fabricworm, and the Fat Quarter Shop. And you guys, the grand prize is a $250 gift certificate from Fabricworm! I'm only sorry that I'm not eligible! Fabricworm is also offering a 15% discount for blog-hop readers while the hop is running.

So join us starting tomorrow with our hostess, Jennifer of Ellison Lane. Thanks, Jennifer, for putting together such a fun hop. Let the gift-making begin!

WIP Wednesday #47

2011-10-11T23:59:00.008-05:00

First of all, if you didn't see the news, I got word Tuesday evening that I did not win the Connecting Threads contest. Well, such is life. Click here for my post about it and why I'm mostly okay with that (no, really!). I would not have been able to rest until I saw my fabric in actual quilting stores anyway. : )

Okay, moving on! How was your week? Mine was, um, a bit of a whirlwind (you know, there was that little thing called Sewing Summit). But let's do the WIP run-down anyway, shall we?

New projects:

I'm not big on decorating for Halloween, and I don't generally care for Halloween-themed fabric. And yet, I have been obsessed with making a Halloween quilt for the better part of the last year. I don't quite understand it myself. But last year around this time I saw a tumbler quilt made up of orange and black prints. I can't remember whose blog that was on (my apologies if it was yours), but for whatever reason, that quilt stuck in my head and I Simply. Must. Make it. Besides, those orange Katie Jump Rope prints are just begging to be in a Halloween project, and I know my girls will love having a seasonal quilt like this. So here are about 300 tumblers in Halloween colors—but no actual Halloween fabric in the bunch! I cut these last night in less than an hour with my Go! Baby cutter. Once again, the Go! Baby shines when it comes to odd shapes. Hopefully the piecing will go just as quickly.

Ongoing projects:

Elizabeth's swap mini-quilt
Elizabeth, AnneMarie and I were roommates at Sewing Summit and decided to arrange a little in-person swap among the three of us for the occasion. I finished AnneMarie's mini-quilt by the time I left, but try as I might, I just wasn't able to get Elizabeth's done. I felt terrible, but the Connecting Threads designs and September bee blocks just put me irreparably behind. Fortunately Elizabeth was super understanding about it, and I'm determined to finish it off and mail it to her by the end of the week. So here's the start of Elizabeth's mini. More on this tomorrow, as well as the item I finished for AnneMarie and what both girls made for me!

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Summer Sampler
Hope Valley

No progress:
• Farmer's Wife QA (still on hold)
• Skill Builder QA (yep, ditto)
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1 (my swap project for AnneMarie - post on that tomorrow)
New projects - 1
Currently in progress - 10

You're up! Let's see what you've got. Link up any post from the past week featuring a work-in-progress. Have a wonderful week!

Connecting Threads Results Are In!

2011-10-11T20:31:00.013-05:00

And I didn't win. The winner is Virginia Odien's Laundry Day—congratulations, Virginia! It's a lovely line and I'm sure it will be a big success!

Obviously I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. But the fact is I'm looking at this as an opportunity, too. To be completely honest, from the start I wasn't sure that I was a good fit aesthetically with Connecting Threads. But this contest gave me the kick in the pants that I needed to actually design an entire line of fabric, something I probably would not have done any time soon otherwise. And your many positive comments have given me the confidence boost I needed to believe that maybe I really can do this. Only time will tell!

I'm considering shopping this line around to some of the major fabric manufacturers—the work is already done, so I might as well. (I just need to figure out how exactly to go about doing that!) But even more so, I'm looking forward to starting on my next fabric line. That may sound weird coming from the person who didn't win, but the entire time I was designing this line, I couldn't help thinking that I was going about the process backwards. I designed the focus fabric for the contest without really thinking about an entire line—then when I ended up in the top five, I built my line around that focus fabric. For my next line, I want to take the opposite approach. I want to spend the next month or two thinking about the inspiration, the mood, the story I want to tell. I already have a few ideas floating around in my head—I'm looking forward to seeing where they go from here. Lizzy House's ebook, How to Enter the World of Fabric Design, has been a huge help to me already and no doubt will continue to be.

Thank you to Connecting Threads for hosting a great contest and giving us unpublished designers a chance to get our work out there. It was an amazing opportunity with or without the win. And thanks to all of my readers for your tremendous support and lovely comments. I don't feel like any less of a winner today than I did yesterday. : ) I hope you'll stick with me while I keep slogging away at this particular dream!

The Sewing Summit

2011-10-11T05:00:00.002-05:00

Wow, what a weekend! What can I say about the Sewing Summit? I'm having a hard time breaking it all down in my head! But let me start with this: Everyone reading this should totally go next year. Yes, seriously! If you are active in the online sewing community in any way, this is the conference for you.

Everywhere I turned, I was able to meet and chat with people I've gotten to know through their blogs and Flickr. It was so fun and weird and amazing all at the same time to be meeting for the first time people that I already feel like I "know." But there's just no replacement for being able to put a real living face to the avatar. And no replacement for real-life bonding over a shared love of fabric and the beautiful things we create with it. I think I am completely in awe of every single person I met! There's no question that all of you guys are super inspiring online, but you are even more so in person. I came home last night full of ideas, determined to learn some new skills, and so energized to tackle it all.

Here are just a few of my favorite moments:

We were greeted with all of these gorgeous handmade lanyards at registration. Karen of Venezie Designs made all of these using fabulous designer fabrics! My Heirloom lanyard matched my voile scarf. : )

Friday night, I went to dinner with the ladies of the {Sew} Beautiful bee. Our bee had such an amazing turnout at the Summit! Only two members were missing (we missed you, ladies). So fun to actually sit down with all of these ladies at the same table!

The classes were wonderful. Here's Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew teaching the Free-Motion Quilting class, showing us how she rolls a quilt. I was blown away seeing her quilts in person. Let's just say that Allison is definitely the right person to teach this class. : )

Jeni from In Color Order taught a fabulous class on fabric selection. We took a closer look at the color wheel and how it can drive fabric selections and color combinations for quilting. Jeni's class also included a total Oprah moment when she handed out Kona color cards to everybody in attendance. "And you get a Kona color card, and you get a Kona color card ..."

(By the way, the swag in general was just plain uh-MAZ-ing. And don't you worry, as soon as I sort through it, I'll be giving some of it away to you all!)

Another one of my favorite classes: A class on mini-quilts by Amanda of hey porkchop fame. She is hilarious and so darn inspiring. She definitely made me think of mini-quilts in a whole new light. The Aspiring Authors Panel on Sunday was great too—very informative about the business side of publishing craft books.

Kate of Swim, Bike, Quilt, Faith of Fresh Lemons, and me—the hosts of the Summer Sampler Series all together at last!

On Saturday I was lucky enough to go to a group dinner organized by Elena of Breakfast For Dinner and Jennifer of Ellison Lane Quilts. These two ladies are just as kind and lovely in person as they are on their blogs.

I got to both start and end my trip with Amanda of Saskiriana Handmade. She was on my flight from Denver to Salt Lake (as well as my flight from Milwaukee, although I didn't know it at the time!) She is ridiculously sweet and made waiting for connections a lot more entertaining.

But by far one of the biggest highlights for me was hanging with my two roomies, Elizabeth of Don't Call Me Betsy and AnneMarie of Gen X Quilters. These are the two ladies I have bonded with the most in my blogging career, and to get to hang out with them for a whole weekend was such a treat! I heart you guys! : )

There are so many people I wish I could have hung out with more! (Kristie and Cara—I'm looking at you.) In fact, I think that's my only complaint about the weekend—I wish it would have been longer so I could have spent a bit more time getting to know people. What an inspiring group of people and what a wonderful, giving community. I am beyond happy to be a part of it and to get the chance to hang out for a weekend! It is so nice to be able to say that so many of you are now my "real" friends instead of just my "blog friends."

A huge thank you to Amy of Amy's Creative Side and Erin of Two More Seconds for organizing the whole thing. I am blown away by the amount of work it must have been. If you would like to see more pictures from the Summit, head over to my Flickr photostream. And stay tuned for posts about my Summit-related swaps, not to mention the one where I pass on some of my swag to you!

WIP Wednesday #46 ... PLUS!

2011-10-04T23:53:00.006-05:00

Update: My fabric collection is now up on the Connecting Threads blog! If you are so inclined, head over there and tell them how many dozens of yards of it you plan to buy. : )

Time for another WIP Wednesday! But before we get to the WIPs, check it out ...

My first Moda Bake Shop project is live today! I am so ridiculously excited about this! You got a sneak peek at my Cross-Terrain Quilt a few weeks ago, but now you can see the whole thing ... and make one of your own, too. So head over there and check it out. Don't worry, we'll wait.

Okay, all done? Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

New projects:
Sewing Summit preparations - I can't believe I'm getting on a plane in two days! And that I'll get to hang with so many bloggy friends! I'm hopping up and down while I'm typing this—that's how excited I am. Want the blow-by-blow from SLC? I'll be tweeting my little thumbs off the whole weekend, so follow my Twitter feed for all the details.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Summer Sampler
Hope Valley

No progress:
• Farmer's Wife QA (still on hold)
• Skill Builder QA (yep, ditto)
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1 (bee blocks)
New projects - 1
Currently in progress - 10

That's it from me until next week—can't wait to see some of you in SLC! In the meantime, link up those WIPs, peeps. Any post from the past week with an unfinished project is fair game. Please link back here to my blog in your post, and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Thank you!

2011-10-04T23:18:00.006-05:00

WIP Wednesday is coming up momentarily, but before we get to that, I wanted to take a minute to say thank you for all of the wonderful comments about my fabric line. All I can say is ... wow. Obviously I had hoped it would go over well, but the reaction has been beyond what I expected.

I really feel like I put myself out there with this fabric line. That may sound odd coming from a blogger, but somehow these designs feel a lot more personal than what I write and post about here. Maybe that's because fabric itself is so personal and, to borrow a phrase from some of my favorite HGTV shows, "taste-specific." There's not a fabric line in existence that everybody will like. So I can't do anything other than design for myself—and hope that others happen to like it too. I've never been so nervous hitting that "Publish Post" button as I was when I unveiled the collection! That you guys have reacted so well to it means the world to me and makes me almost not care about the outcome of the contest. Almost, but not quite. : )

I also want to thank all the other bloggers who have posted, tweeted, etc. about my collection and helped me get the word out about voting. I wouldn't have had this opportunity without all of your help! And last but not least I want to thank the always-wonderful Elizabeth, who was my one-woman focus group, sounding board, and motivational coach. : ) Whenever I started to doubt my ability to do this, she got me back on track! Where would I be without you, girly?

Connecting Threads has started posting the finalists' collections on their blog, Notions. Virginia Odien's adorable Laundry Day is the first one to be featured, so head over and check it out. Thank you again!

Introducing Kaleidoscope Lane

2011-09-30T15:58:00.005-05:00

Well, here it is ... what I've spent the last month working on! I'm pleased with it, and I hope you all love it too.

Mosaic

Swirls

Kaleidoscope Dot

Glazed Tile

Plaza

Medallion Stripe

Scallop

Garden Path

So now it's up to the Connecting Threads staff to decide whether my collection is the one they want to produce and sell. Connecting Threads will be featuring all five of the finalists' collections on their blog, Notions, in the coming days, and will announce the winner in the next few weeks.

I haven't seen the other finalists' collections yet, so I have no idea how mine stacks up, but regardless of what happens, I'm so glad I did this. I learned a lot about designing a complete line of fabric, including many lessons about how to approach the design process next time (if there is one). And since I'm happy with the end result, I feel like it's a win for me even if my line doesn't end up being produced. But of course, fingers and toes crossed that it will be!

WIP Wednesday #45

2011-09-28T01:34:00.006-05:00

Welcome back to WIP Wednesday! Not much to report this week, since you all know what I've been working on lately, but here goes nothin' ...

Ongoing:

My Connecting Threads fabric contest entry
Still plugging away, polishing up my designs and getting the files ready. Two more days to get it all done! I hope to be able to show them to you on Friday.

4x5 Bee blocks
So, you might think I'm crazy for tackling a block like this in the middle of the Connecting Threads time crunch. And you're probably right. But honestly, I've enjoyed the break from all the intensive computer time. I actually find paper-piecing fun and relaxing (I'm weird like that), so these blocks are really hitting the spot right now.

I ended up doing the Oregon Star because one of my hive-mates chose this incredible mini-quilt by Mrs. McPorkchop as her "Favorite Block." That mini has always been one of my favoritest faves myself, so I decided to look into the pattern for it. The pattern comes from the book 50 Fabulous Paper-Pieced Stars, by Carol Doak. I probably never would have given this book a second glance if it hadn't been for Amanda's mini, but once I got past the very traditional fabric used in the book, I realized the patterns had a lot of potential. I think I still love the Oregon Star the most, but you'll probably be seeing a few of the other stars from me as well, sooner or later. In the meantime, I've got two 4x5 blocks done, three to go.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Summer Sampler
Hope Valley

No progress:
• Farmer's Wife QA (on hold until October)
• Skill Builder QA (ditto)
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
New projects - 0
Currently in progress - 10

That's it from me—now it's your turn to share. Link up any post from the past week featuring any unfinished sewing project. Be sure to link back here to my blog and comment on at least a few of the other links. Enjoy!

Back At It

2011-09-27T05:00:00.001-05:00

Well, hello there! How are you all? I've missed you while I've been slaving away on my Connecting Threads contest entry! But at the same time, I did enjoy the freedom of my blogging (and sewing) break. I felt like I could a) breathe and b) really focus on my design work. That felt very good indeed. It is not an exaggeration to say that I have been sleeping, eating, and living these designs. They're the first thing I think about in the morning when I wake up, and the last thing I think about at night when I fall asleep. And I'm probably dreaming about them in between, but I'm so tired, I don't remember. : )

I so wish I could show you the results of all of this work. I just don't think it's quite there yet. But I will say that I truly love what I've done. It was touch-and-go for a while, but around the middle of last week, I had a breakthrough, and there was no going back. I'm kind of working a Farmer's-Wife-goes-Bollywood vibe—and if that isn't the most whacked description you've ever heard of a fabric collection, I would love to know what is! So stay tuned, because I'm going to have a BIG post featuring all the prints coming up in just a few days.

In the meantime, WIP Wednesday will be back tomorrow. Yesterday I turned on my sewing machine for the first time in almost a week, and I've even fit in a little work on my 4x5 bee blocks.

Also, Angie of Stitching By Starlight is featuring ME today in her "10 for Ten" interview series! She had a fun list of questions that I enjoyed answering, so head over there to read about little old me. And every 10 for Ten interview features an amazing giveaway, so even if you couldn't care less about what movies I like, I know you won't want to miss out on free fabric. : ) Thank you, Angie!

Entering Freak-Out Mode ... Now

2011-09-20T01:53:00.008-05:00

Hello—it's September 20! That means I have to finish designing my entire Connecting Threads fabric collection in the next ten days! omgomgomgomg.

If Tim Gunn were paying me a home visit right now, I think he might pronounce himself worried. And I certainly wouldn't want Tim Gunn to worry about me—not even an imaginary Tim Gunn. So I'm signing off for the rest of the week. No blog posting, no blog reading. I may actually go to the trouble of temporarily un-installing Google Chrome from my computer. That's how serious I am.

So, there will be no WIP Wednesday tomorrow. Feel free to post a WIP update anyway, but the linky will be AWOL this week. Bear with me. I will resurface at some later date with a fabulous line of fabrics (knock on wood). : )

Strip-Pieced Zig-Zag Mug Rug

2011-09-19T06:00:00.002-05:00

Welcome to my turn at Mug Rug Madness! Thank you to Erin at Two More Seconds for inviting me to be a part of this round. This is a fun blog hop and I'm so excited to be involved!

I've got this fun little zig-zag mug rug for you today. But don't worry, no half-square triangles involved here! This one's strip-pieced and can be put together while you're waiting for a batch of holiday cookies to finish baking. I made mine using the Ready Set Snow collection from Moda—the bright colors of this collection lend themselves all kinds of design possibilities. Ready to make yours?

1. Cut the following:

Blue stripe

• 1.5" x 7.5"

Red Christmas tree print

• 1.5" x 2.5"

• 1.5" x 7.5"

• 1.5" x 10"

Green stripe

• 1.5" x 7.5"

• 1.5 x 10"

White snowflake print

• 1.5" x 2.5"

• 1.5" x 7.5"

• 1.5" x 10"

Red swirl print

• 1.5" x 7.5"

• 1.5" x 10"

Blue dot

• (4) 1.5" x 2.5"

• 1.5" x 7.5"

2. Pair up the 7.5" and 10" strips that you just cut, using the photo above as a key. I.e., the blue stripe goes with one of the Christmas tree print strips, the other Christmas tree strip goes with a green stripe strip, etc. The 2.5" strips do not get paired up. Sew each pair of strips together.

3. Cut your sewn strips into 2.5" sections. You should now have 17 2.5" squares, plus the 6 additional 1.5" x 2.5" pieces.

4. Arrange the squares (plus the extra 1.5" x 2.5" rectangles) as shown above.

5. Sew the squares together into angled rows.

6. Sew the rows together, aligning the vertical seams to get the correct placement of each row.

7. Trim your mug rug by lining up one of the angled seams with the 45 degree line on your cutting board, as shown.

I trimmed mine to 6.75" x 8.75".

8. Quilt and bind you mug rug. I quilted straight zig-zag lines 1/4" from the seams.

9. Pour yourself a cup of coffee, relax, and enjoy!

Again, thanks again to Erin for hosting Mug Rug Madness. Hop over to her blog to see lots of other cute holiday mug rugs, plus tips and tricks for making your own.

Aurifil Winners

2011-09-15T09:02:00.008-05:00

Thank you to everyone who entered the Aurifil thread giveaway! I really enjoyed reading all of your potential scoreboard messages (and your reactions to my barbecue parfait).

The winners of the Aurifil trial packs are:

Comment #164, Jodi

Comment #121, Tanya

Comment #153, webmailaddress2

Comment #83, Sharon

Congratulations, ladies! I've contacted all of you—please email me your mailing addresses so I can get your Aurifil thread out to you!

WIP Wednesday #44

2011-09-13T23:00:00.003-05:00

Well, I had a productive week and got all kinds of things done! Unfortunately, due to an odd convergence of projects for contests/other people/other blogs, I really can't show you any of it! You'll just have to take my word for it. And unfortunately, it makes a rather dull WIP Wednesday post ...

Completed:

Secret project - Done! Here's a teeny little sneaky peeky. You'll be seeing a lot more of it very soon, I hope!

New:

Mug Rug Madness
Erin at Two More Seconds is hosting another round of Mug Rug Madness, and I'm so excited that she asked me to participate! I'm using Ready Set Snow by Me and My Sister Designs, which is such a fun collection. My tutorial will be running next week, but the blog hop's already started, so head over to Erin's blog to check it out.

Ongoing:

My Connecting Threads fabric contest entry
I've got some rough designs, but none of them are quite ready for their public debut. But you'll be the first to see them when they're ready!

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Summer Sampler
Hope Valley

No progress:
• Farmer's Wife QA (I probably will be putting this QA on hold until after the Connecting Threads contest deadline)
• Skill Builder QA (ditto)
• Kaleidoscope QA
• Intersections
• Figgy Pudding quilt
• Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1
New projects - 1
Currently in progress - 9

You're up! Link up any post from the past week featuring any unfinished sewing project. Be sure to link back here to my blog and give the other links some comment lovin'. Hopefully I'll have more to show you next week!

Weekend Randomness and a Giveaway

2011-09-12T05:00:00.001-05:00

Happy Monday! Here are a few shots from my weekend ...

We went to the Brewers game on Sunday, and THIS was my lunch. It's a "barbecue parfait." Layers of pulled pork, beef brisket, and mashed potatoes, garnished with barbecue sauce and chives. Yes, it was every bit as awesome as it looks. No, I couldn't finish it. McLurky polished it off for me. But I'll still need to go to the gym at least 15 times this week to make up for it.

And speaking of McLurks, just look at what my awesome goofball husband did. Yes, that is the scoreboard at Miller Park, and yes, it says "wonky & freshly pieced hexi blocks rule!" I love that it didn't occur to him to put something like, "Happy birthday to my beautiful wife." (My birthday was Friday.) Nope, not my husband. LOL. (Sorry about the cruddy iphone photo taken through the ball screen.)

Since I had such a fun weekend, let's kick Monday off right—I'm giving away some Aurifil thread! Have you used this stuff? I've only used Guterman's up until now—mostly because it's available at Joanne's. I mean, it's just thread, right? But having used Aurifil for a few weeks now, I get why people love this stuff. I've had no thread breakage or tangling with Aurifil thread, and I actually think less lint has accumulated in my machine since I started using it. Everything just seems to run more smoothly. And Aurifil is easier to get ahold of than I expected—I found a shop just 15 minutes away that carries it. Not much further than Joanne's, after all. Aurifil is also available on Amazon.

So, would you like to try some 100% Egyptian cotton thread? I've got trial packs with all four of Aurifil's thread weights, plus a spool of their wool thread, to give away. Just tell me what message YOU would put on the scoreboard at a major sporting event. What do you want the world to know? How much you love Aurifil thread? That your kid got an A on his math test? The awesome thing you had for lunch today? (But whatever it was, it won't beat the pulled pork parfait. Sorry.)

I'll randomly choose four winners on Thursday, Sept. 15. For more information about Aurifil and their thread weights, click here. Good luck!

WIP Wednesday #43

2011-09-07T01:03:00.011-05:00

So, it's 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, and I completely forgot until about about 3 minutes ago that I need to do a WIP Wednesday post. : ) I guess between the three-day weekend, my daughter's first day of school (Tuesday), and my obsession with getting blue dye out of my hexy quilt, I completely lost track of what day it was. So, I am thoroughly unprepared this week, and this post will be light on content. But hopefully still heavy on the linky goodness. Bear with me.

Completed projects:

Do. Good Stitches Hexy Quilt - Yeah! Finished it. But it was not without its, um, challenges. You can read all about it here.

Ongoing projects:

My Connecting Threads contest entry
So this is obviously going to be taking up a lot of my time in the month of September. I have until September 30 to design 5-8 supporting prints for my focus print. I decided to begin the process by making a few changes to the focal. I tightened up the design elements, eliminating some of the negative space (click here to see the old version, for comparison's sake). I also worked on the color palette, because I wasn't happy with the palette in the original version. I tried out probably 10 or 15 different palettes before finally settling on this one. I'm still not sure I'm 100% thrilled with this, but I do think I'm on the right track. So at this point I'm going to start working on the secondary designs and see how/if the palette develops.

And have you checked out my Facebook page? There will be more about my design process showing up there, if you're interested. You can also find a shot of the focal print in repeat, as it would look on a fat quarter, which helps put the scale in perspective.

Skill Builder Sampler Quilt-Along - currently caught up
No block this week. Phew.

Farmer's Wife Quilt-Along - falling behind
Totally didn't do my blocks this week. Totally had other things going on. Oh well.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:
Secret Project - the top is done, and this quilt is gonna be yummy! Hint hint. ; )
Summer Sampler
Hope Valley

No progress:
Kaleidoscope QA
Intersections
Figgy Pudding quilt
Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 1
Currently in progress - 9

Okay, WIP 'em out! Link up any post from the past week featuring an unfinished work-in-progress. Please don't forget to link back to my blog in your post, and comment on some of the other links. And as always, happy sewing. : )

Hexy Quilt - Finished and Really, Really Clean

2011-09-06T16:14:00.014-05:00

My hexy quilt for Do. Good Stitches is finished and looking great. But it was quite the ordeal getting it there.

I was so happy when I pulled this one out of the dryer yesterday. This is definitely my best free-motion quilting to date—my stitch lengths are starting to even up and my stippling is getting more curvy and flowing. And I couldn't be more pleased with the design (which uses my Hexing Around block tutorial), not to mention the color palette. The ladies of the Do. Good Stitches Love Circle did a fabulous job on these blocks.

And then ...

... I saw this.

And this.

And THIS!

Um, horrified! I've never had color-bleeding problems before. Just to be on the safe side, I wash all of my quilts with Shout Color Catchers. And they do often catch some dye. An amazing amount of red ended up on the Color Catcher when I washed my Warm/Cool quilt. But I've never had anything like this happen—and the Color Catcher that was in the wash with this quilt only came out with a tiny amount of blue on it! I don't know how foolproof Color Catchers are supposed to be, but this one clearly didn't do its job at all.

It wasn't just one fabric that was the culprit, but appears to be at least two—one of which was in my own block, and it was a Park Slope print from Free Spirit! I am stunned that a high-end designer print like this would bleed so badly. If anyone has any thoughts as to why this may have happened on this particular quilt, please share. Because I'm stumped.

But thanks to wonderful advice from Jeni and several other ladies on Flickr, I've managed to clean up this disaster pretty well. Shout Ultra Gel stain remover, a bottle of Oxi-Clean, and three trips through the washing machine later, and the dye stains have faded considerably. In fact, it might be difficult to find them if you don't know where to look. I hope so, anyway! And this quilt is nothing if not extremely clean, after four launderings. : )

I'm super happy with the back. I love the blue, green, and orange floral plaid from Meadowsweet, but it's not the most usable print in the world. But on a back? Perfection! And it works great with my palette for this quilt.

This quilt is off to Wrap Them In Love, which distributes quilts to needy children around the world. Thank you, Love Circle, for contributing! I also was conveniently able to do this as part of Lynne's Hex-a-Long at Lily's Quilts, which you can check out here. Thank you, Lynne!

Quilt stats
Design: My own—see Hexing Around block tutorial here

Fabric: Various scraps contributed by Do. Good Stitches' Love Circle
Back: Metro Living Circles in Chartreuse, Modern Meadow Acorn Chain in Pond, Full Moon Dot in Tangerine, Kona Cotton in Sage, Kona Cotton in Banana, Sandy Henderson's Meadowsweet Peony Plaid in Lime, Tufted Tweets Ovals in Grass
Binding: Michael Miller Ta Dot in Sea

Size: 44" x 61"

Quilting: FMQ stippling by me on my home machine
Completed: September 2011

Freshly Pieced on Facebook and Twitter

2011-09-02T11:37:00.005-05:00

Did you know I'm on Facebook and Twitter? I've been hanging around there for a while, but now I would like to start making better use of it, as a way to have more interactive conversations with all of you.

Just click the buttons above to follow my blog in whatever way(s) work for you, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, an email subscription, Google Reader, etc. (These "Follow Me" buttons will also be in my sidebar from here on out.)

Have a wonderful weekend, and to those in the U.S., enjoy the holiday. I know exactly what I'll be doing: Quilting my Do. Good Stitches hexy top, and starting on my Connecting Thread designs! Come on over to my Facebook page to let me know what your plans are!

Top Five!

2011-09-01T10:51:00.007-05:00

The voting in the Connecting Threads contest is now over, and yes, I am officially in the top five! Can you hear me squealing and jumping up and down from there? : ) This means that I have the opportunity to design my supporting prints and create an entire line based on my focus fabric! I have tons of ideas for it, and I can't wait to get started.

Connecting Threads staff will choose the grand prize winner from the five finalists, and that person will have their line produced and sold on the Connecting Threads website. I have the entire month of September to design my supporting prints, and the winner will be announced on October 12.

I'll keep you updated on my progress as I work on the line, and I'm sure you'll get some sneak peeks. My goal is to design at least 15 supporting prints, but we may be limited in what we can enter, so I will no doubt want input from all you wonderful people about what you think should be included.

Finally, a great big THANK YOU to everyone who voted! It is beyond amazing to have the support of so many sewists, crafters, and fabric addicts! I would not be in this position without all of YOU!

Sewing Back-to-School: Ironing and Pressing

2011-09-01T04:00:00.001-05:00

I'm guest-posting over at Sew Sweetness today as part of Sara's "Sewing Back-to-School" series—a month's worth of informative "back-to-basics" articles. My post covers everything you ever wanted to know about pressing and ironing, but were afraid to ask. Or too bored by it to ask. Or something like that.

Seriously though, pressing is so much more important than you might think when it comes to accurate piecing. My tips just might help your next quilt come together a little better. So what are you waiting for? Head over there!

And thank you, Sara, for having me over to your place today. : )

Counting Down ...

2011-08-31T15:57:00.008-05:00

We're in the final hours of voting for the Connecting Threads contest, and at the moment I'm still in first place, but by a mere 20 votes or so! You guys, I don't want to nag (I do that enough to McLurky at home), but if you haven't voted, it's now or never! Click here to vote!

And thanks a million times over to everybody who has already voted. I hit 1,000 votes earlier today! Wow, for real? So whatever happens, it is pretty great feeling to know I have all of you guys in my corner. It really is. : )

WIP Wednesday #42

2011-08-31T00:01:00.002-05:00

Well, it was a catch-up week for me. I caught up on my quilt-alongs, I finished up my August bee blocks and other obligations, and now I'm turning my attention to September. I've got some quilting in my very near future!

Ongoing projects:

Skill Builder Sampler Quilt-Along - currently caught up

I had two blocks to do this week, after missing last week's. The first, the "Breaking Out" pinwheel block, is one I've actually done before, for a bee. As per Leila's instructions, this time I used the "Magic Method" for making flying geese. This was a completely new technique to me, and I loved how fast it was. It does seem a bit magical—one minute they look nothing like flying geese, then suddenly ... there it is! Unfortunately I didn't find this process to be as accurate as my usual corner-to-corner method of making flying geese. So this block is a little wonkeriffic. But I love my fabric choices, and it's a fabulous block design regardless.

I went back to my tried-and-true corner-to-corner method for the next block, "Double Star." I think this might be my favorite block of the QA so far. I LOVE how mine came out! I ended up using my light print for the outer corners instead of the dark print, and I really like how that looks. Don't you just love it when one little change can make an entire block look so different? Why yes, I am a design nerd, why do you ask? : )

Farmer's Wife Quilt-Along - currently caught up
26 blocks complete, 85 to go. Click here to read about this week's blocks.

Completed tops awaiting quilting:

Summer Sampler Series top

Hexing Around (Do. Good Stitches quilt)
I pieced the back tonight, and I'm ready to baste this one tomorrow. Any thoughts on how I should quilt it? Standard FMQ? Straight lines? I don't think I'm up for anything too fancy here ...

Hope Valley

No progress:
Kaleidoscope QA
Intersections
Secret project
Figgy Pudding quilt
Wonky Log Cabin

This week's stats:
Completed projects - 0
Currently in progress - 10

Okay, let's see your WIPs! Link up any post from the past week featuring an unfinished work-in-progress. Please don't forget to link back to my blog in your post, and comment on some of the other links. Have a wonderful week. : )

Farmer's Wife—Week 11

2011-08-30T05:00:00.006-05:00

After a week off from the Farmer's Wife QA while I was on vacation, I arrived home all refreshed and motivated. I wanted to do three blocks this week, since I was only able to do one block the week before I left.

Then I remembered that one of those three blocks would be #26, Cut Glass Dish, with its 24 teeny-tiny HSTs. And I decided, maybe it's time to start doing the blocks in random order. : ) So welcome to my new and improved, highly randomized Farmer's Wife quilt.

Up first: block #24, Country Path. (I started this one before I realized Cut Glass Dish was imminent.) And check it out, I screwed up the color placements AGAIN. At least I noticed it this time. : ) Two of the blue-print triangles and two of the yellow oval-print triangles need to be swapped. Fortunately, I think it's a pretty easy fix, and I will try to tackle that sometime this week. Because it is kind of bothering me—the block doesn't look as organized as it should, or something.

Next, block #86, Squash Blossom. Yep, I got my hot little hands on a few of the new Sugar Creek prints by Denyse Schmidt (the blue floral and the green gingham). You knew those would have to show up in my Farmer's Wife quilt somewhere, right? I thought about paper-piecing this block, but since it's basically constructed in strips, I decided against that. And it came together fine using the templates, so I'm glad I did it this way.

And here's block #109, Windows. If you're looking for a super quick, easy Farmer's Wife block, this one's for you! I decided my change of strategy was so worth it when I was working on this one instead of Cut Glass Dish. : )