Piles of orange....

We did our strip swap at LVMQG the other night and I brought home a ton of wonderful orange strips... I've been cutting and sorting and this is where I'm at right now...

I won't be able to show details of my project until the reveal at the end of June...but it will be awesome!! 

Happy quilting!

Orange swap....

I got together six yards of orange fabric for our strip swap at the LVMQG....

Cut and bagged!

I had this idea that I was going to do a quilt with diamonds and a bunch of y-seams.  But when the little blocks had to join together in the center I ended up with a hot mess!!  So I gave up that idea...but I'm not done thinking....

Epic Fail April 2012

On to something new....

Vintage Sheet Swoon Quilt....

I made one of the Swoon blocks at our retreat in February--and then made 3 more to make a 48"x48" square wall hanging for my classroom/sewing room.  They are 100% made from recycled vintage sheets.  Here are the finished pics...  I did add a half triangle thing in the corners of each block--it makes a little diamond when they join together.

An up close of one block--this is the actual color of the quilt.

Vintage sheet backing....

Ryan enjoying Spring Break with Buddy in the Mancave....and his new braces!

Buddy, our best dog friend ever!!

I think I'll go sew on something!!  Have a great day!

Client with low standards...

Jill (over at DarlingJillQuilts) commented that I should get more of my PPP done so I could provide some motivation to all of us tired quilters!!  ;-)  LOL....

I told her I was going to finish my PPP piece (90" x 90") then throw on something of my own.  But PPP is about as boring as practicing the tuba so I said to myself, screw it!!  I have a client with super low standards so why not PPP on her quilt (it is my own, just in case you think I'd do someone else dirty like that).  So I cleaned Alli up with some more Everclear, wound 4 bobbins and loaded a top that needed some easy quilting.

I was all serious and professional about loading the backing... It is so perfect and tight...you could bounce a quarter off that backing!!  Now the real story...I was too lazy to square up the backing (it is a vintage sheet) so I just ripped it and hoped for parallel sides!!  Super lazy, but it worked!

Then, since I was in lazy mode, I decided to float the top.  This means that I didn't roll it on the top roller, as instructed in the APQS "How to Load A Quilt" video.  LOL....you can probably guess from the blue tape wrapped around the top roller that I have no intention of ever rolling on a quilt top.  I float all my tops, with the batting.  If I was a super lazy woman, I'd float the backing as well---but maybe that crosses a line for me....maybe....

My ability to quilt parallel, serpentine lines is a function of how much "cleaning" with the Everclear I did that day.  Hmmm.... so I had the forethought to premark the top this afternoon with the blue washout marker....every 1".  See the blue marker??  Makes it look kind of trashy right now...

Then it was serpentine, serpentine, serpentine!  That was all I could think of as a quilted waves across the lines....our friend Annette lives in an older part of Las Vegas and when we leave her house we are always told to "Serpentine!!" to our car to dodge any wayward bullets or other crazy violence...LOL!  I think we should call it "Ric Rac" quilting....sounds better, with less of an ominous tone, to me anyhow!!  A sea of texture...this is what I always wanted!!  And all of this was done in 1 hour and 15 mins.  It took me 8 hours of quilting to do parallel lines on Ryan's mancave quilt.  That is 6.5 hours I can never get back.... ;-(

I'll bind it up, wash it and post about the actual quilt.  Right now I just feel like a quilting rock star!!!  Easy peasy lemon squeezy!!

Happy quilting!

Fabric Bucket...

I saw some nesting bowls that Jeni made on In Color Order and I though I should make them....but then I was too cheap to buy the pattern because of the new longarm AND Ryan needed Round 2 of braces suddenly (if I had known that was coming this week I might have reconsidered the longarm....maybe).  So I'm on a budget now--only necessary quilting items!!  ;-)  wink, wink....

So I did what every budget-conscious quilter does and I Googled "fabric bowl tutorial" and found several lovely and FREE options.  I went with this one from The Stichin' Chicken... The Fabric Bucket Tutorial.  I did use fusible fleece inside as the batting and I think I need to buy a bolt and make a bunch of these little buckets...

I made the pattern that they had in their tutorial and used a vintage sheet for the outside and a little aqua fabric that I had in my stash.  As a bonus, I made a little coaster/mug rug??  as a companion for the basket.  I plan on putting cleaning rags for the longarm in the basket and using this pair in the new quilting room!!

Happy Quilting!

Mom's quilt...

I finished piecing the quilt about a month ago and it just returned from the quilter last weekend.  Slapped on some binding (by hand, I love it!!) and it is finally finished.  This is a WIP from a year ago....

The pattern is Antique Etoilles from Moda Bake Shop.  I am not recommending this pattern as the directions are a hot mess....It is about 64" square...

The quilter did an overall feather meander...lovely!

This was supposed to be done for Christmas but I fell behind with the move and didn't finish it. 
Merry Christmas, Mom!!!  LOL...better late than never!

Off to two dental appts with Ryan...then more sewing.  Turns out I have a ton of the Maison de Garance fabric leftover (due to miscutting and a slew of other problems) so I decided to do a disappearing 9-patch for a charity auction from the scraps.  It is scary when you have enough fabric leftover from a project that you can make a whole new quilt from it....Hmmm...

Happy Quilting!

More PPP...I don't suck, suck, suck.... :-)

I loaded on some muslin yesterday for some PPP.  I'm on Spring Break right now and it is full of sewing, nasty yard work, more sewing, cleaning, etc.  Still, a nice Staycation...I'm not complaining. 

I spent a full hour lint rolling cat hair off the take-up roller prior to loading the backing (wait, maybe that was complaining).  What a hot mess....Anyhow, here is what happened yesterday.

Starting off with some random junk....Trying to throw around a big machine takes some adjusting.  Maybe I should lay off the chocolate poke cake and pick up some arm weights....???  When your circles look like squares (squircles) then you know you need more PPP...

Trying out the vertical lines and bumps....thought it looked like a tuxedo shirt.  I was planning on using that later this week but not sure now....

I like the texture with these bumps....bump, bump, bump, turn, bump, bump, bump, turn....etc.

Hearts that don't join in the center...jacked that up.  Sun fan things...guess what, you can't go up with that design...need to go horizontal or you get to a point that you can't move on...duh...

A feather fill....but kind of half-assed.  LOL....the south side is a traditional feather, but I thought I'd try out the hook-feather on the north side of the spine.  Don't give up your day job, Vic!!  WTF?  Was I drinking the Everclear???

Anyhow, the guy who sold it to me was supposed to come back into town this weekend and come to my house to tweak some things.  Funny thing, though, I haven't heard a peep from him???  What do you think this means??   You don't get much customer service for $11K these days....LOL... I'll fix it all myself--whatever!!

I'm binding my Mom's Quilt From Hell that came back from another quilter this weekend.  Hopefully I'll have some pics tomorrow!!  ;-)