April 2008

I tried Anina’s suggestion of monofilament thread in addition to a more spread out zig zag stitch (I think I have a blind hem but I have no idea which it is!). I did the ovals first and then the reverse appliqué. I think I got better (smoother lines) at it as I went on. Of course after I had finished the circle, I realized the center and melons aren’t quite centered in the circle. D’oh! I’m not sure how noticeable it is and I may redo it. I still need to do the corner diamonds. This will be B-7 when done.

All pinned. I need to get some red thread for the back before I can quilt it. I’m scared to go to the fabric store for just thread. Last time I did that I came home with 24.5 yards of fabric.

I’ll probably quilt this later this week or this weekend and mail it out next week.

I’ve been slacking in my treasury stalking. Here are a couple I found today.

That phrase we hear a lot in the house. Maeve doesn’t nap or do quiet time anymore but she really needs to. Not for peace and quiet for me, but for her to just decompress because Maeve really, really needs to decompress sometimes.

She was playing with her Tinker Toys when she told me she was going to lay down in her red chair. A couple minutes later she fell asleep. And she just snored a little bit.

Her chair sits against the edge of my desk so I’m trying to type really, really quietly right now.

I feel like I’m incredibly behind in all the projects I’m working on. I had a root canal this morning so nothing has gotten done today. I hope to pin the rodeo quilt tonight. I need to make a to-do list but I’m scared of how long it will be.

You have a hard time falling asleep at night because you just thought of a really cool pattern for your large stack of Amy Butler Belle fabrics.

At 5:11 pm on April 29, 2007 Liam Cormac came into this world 4 weeks early.

He has become such a wonderful little boy. Everyday I see his smile and my heart just melts. This morning he and I went to Duke Gardens for some relaxation and pictures. Ok, a LOT of pictures. Here are a couple of my favorites.

This is such a Liam face. I laughed out loud when I saw I had captured it.

I might add pictures later of our little party from tonight. He wasn’t too big on the idea of cake so there might just be a bunch of scrunchy faces spitting out food.

Edited to add a couple more…

Liam on his new quilt reading his new Very Hungry Caterpillar book.

His super cool alien cake.

And his thoughts on my baking skills.

So I’ll preface this with stating that I hate hand sewing (so this quilt will be quite the challenge for me!).

So I did my reverse applique with a small zig zag to see if it would work or if I really do, gulp, have to sit there with a needle and thread.  Most (all?) quilters could hand sew this and it would look much, much better.  But honestly, I’m not sure my hand sewing would look better than the machine’s attempt.

I might come back and redo this one.  I’m not sure.  Any opinions?

Eek!  I made a tiny block!

I fussy cut the center flower.  I really went back and forth on whether or not to fussy cut the yellow blocks and in the end decided not to.

The next block scares me a little.

Off to bake a chocolate cake…

My book and CD are here!

I want to start tonight but I also have to pin Cowboys, pin Maypole, finish the videogame quilt, bake Liam’s cake, wrap his presents, clean up the downstairs for his little party, finish the laundry …

… on his birthday because he isn’t getting any embroidered pants. I have a love/hate relationship with my sewing/embroidering machine. It sews beautifully. But when it comes to embroidering, it has a mind of its own. So (finally) this morning I was going to make him his alien pants for his birthday. They were going to have a cute alien/space ship on the bum kind of like Hanna Andersson’s Soft Landings Pants. I did the design this morning and got everything ready.

The bodysuit he was going to wear with the pants had aliens all over it and looked like it was drawn with a crayon (it’s from Target so you might have seen it if you’ve been in the baby section lately). The design was supposed to mimic that with satin stitches.

Well, this is where the pants are now.

After several tries to get the machine to start and center the design, it would not stitch. It stitched, but not properly. So after multiple rethreads, cleaning out, trying again and again, they just got trashed. I can’t even rip out all the bad stitches in them because there are so many. Maybe I’ll dig out some jean shorts for him to wear with the bodysuit.

Today isn’t going to well. Hopefully his flying saucer birthday cake will come out ok.

If you’ve played the game and sounded out the title it might make sense.

(It’s not ironed so it doesn’t look perfect yet.)

And look!  He ate ice cream!  He ate something other than a Gerber product!

I finished up the Maypole and Cowboy Rodeo quilt tops.

Normally I would work on pinning these tonight but I fell this morning while mowing (ok, so that sounds ridiculous but if you saw our yard, you’d fall too) and my back is bothering me so perhaps pinning is not the best thing to do tonight. Instead I’ll start working on this quilt:

Yup, just three colors. Any guesses? Or have I already said what it is?

And I bought some of this fabric the other day. Isn’t it just the coolest print?

No quilting tomorrow. We’re headed to the zoo!

… and the CD.

I can’t wait to start!  I plan on going along with the blog and I’ll post my progress here (I even made a Baby Jane category!).

Now to pick out fabric…

I saw this Dear Jane quilt this morning as I went from blog to blog to blog. It’s amazing.

(Photo from here.)

Wow. I’m am in awe. They have books and CDs and patterns and all that to make them. Sean? Are you reading this? <poke poke poke>

Nothing says yummy like fresh strawberries.  One in each hand and took another from any seller offering her one.

Poor Liam didn’t get any strawberries but he really enjoyed his stroller.

This is what I’m doing for Maeve’s new quilt only using the new Simplicity line from Moda/3 Sisters.

It’s put together using paper piecing which I’ve never done before but of course was willing to try.

So this is my paper. (I ended up not having Sanctuary scrap strips long enough for 8 and 9.)

Now, my understanding is that you set your machine to have really short stitches, sew on the front and have all the fabric on the back. When you’re done, the small stitch length has perforated the paper and you can just tear it off.

The finished back. This is way to messy for me. Perhaps I would get better at it but it seems like you can’t have perfect sized pieces and stitch with perfect 1/4″ seams using this method. Some seams are too short. Some are too wide.

And the front.

So my conclusion on paper piecing? It’s not for me. I guess I can see it working when working with curves or something, but not for simple straight lines. I think I’m just going to keep the pattern but make a cut list and piece it normally.

Unless… Did I do something really wrong? Is this not how you paper piece? Maybe I should just play it safe and piece it like I know how to.

I hope to get her quilt done sometime this summer.

As soon as I found out Liam was going to be a boy I started looking for fabric. Girl fabric is easy. Boy fabric is not so easy.

We finally found nursery fabric. I love it still. But it isn’t right for a little boy. Perfect for a baby boy.

And his quilt.

So at some point he has to leave his pretty little baby room and become a big boy.   Keep in mind that this isn’t going to happen for at least another year.  I’ve been trying to find fabric for it since the ultrasound.

This is kinda neat.  Rabbits and Racecars by Heather Ross.  But I think this is home dec weight.  Not really what I want for his quilt and there aren’t a ton of coordinating fabrics.

There is plaid.  But that sounds kind of boring.

There is always Pottery Barn Kids or Land of Nod.  But no way could I buy a quilt.  That would be just wrong.  Sean votes for this quilt from LON.

I think that would work great for a 5 year old.  Not a 2 year old.

So no fabric and nothing from a store.

Enter Spoonflower.  Custom fabric printing (and they’re local!).  Holy smokes.  I could design my own fabric, have it printed and then make Liam’s quilt, drapes and pillows from that.  Holy smokes.  Beta testing is supposed to start in May according to their blog.  Hopefully that  means things will be up and running in time for me to do Liam’s room.

So would it be way over the top to actually go through with this?  <blush>  Off to go design something in Illustrator.  Have I ever mentioned what I did in my former life here?  Eek!  I’m happy.

The blank spots are where the small diamond patches are going to go. Usually I would have sewed them first but I had to get this off the floor before Maevezilla came home from school.

I put paper in as placeholders when I stacked it all up.

I try to be random in my quilts but sometimes (ok, most all the time) I just can’t do it. I have to lay it out first to make sure all the colors and patterns are evenly distributed. So this means all my quilts get laid out on the floor block by block (or in some cases piece by piece) and then stacked up to sew.

My sewing room is our bonus room. It measures about 20′ square and is supposed to by my room. My computer, my books, my lounging room and my space for me. The kids object to this. They have a playroom. Neither one of them plays in it. They play in my room.

So whenever I need to lay out a quilt or pin a quilt I need a shovel to clear all the toys out of the way.

That’s the Maypole quilt so far.

Progress on the other projects for this week:

The Cowboys got ironed, cut patterns, and started cutting fabrics.

The video game quilt fabric that I ordered last week just now shipped. Note to self: don’t shop there anymore.

Pants? Yeah, haven’t even started.

I’m a little sniffly as we get close to the little man’s first birthday.

1. New Maypole quilt.

2. Start another custom quilt (a remake of this one).

3. The next video game quilt. I ordered the fabric and it’s not here yet. Hopefully it will be today.

4. Embroider a pair of pants for Liam.

No problem. Heh. Right.

The first of many quilts using this fabric. I love this line. It makes me want to go to the beach and veg with a margarita.

Maeve was very sad when she saw me sewing this quilt and it wasn’t for her. She told me that the monkeys were her favorite fabric and asked if I would please make her a quilt with it. She was quite pleased when I told her I would.

Some close up shots.

Back and binding.

Back detail.

Great for snuggling up with after a hard day being 3.

I saw a mention of this in the paper and off we went.  How could I pass up something called Herbfest?

Oops.

These got planted up on the wall next to the knot.  You can’t really see the plants because of the new fluffy pinestraw.

(The knot… in need of some weeding, de-leafing and mulching.)

And the coolest part of today… the Duck Parade.

I swear my next post will contain a quilt and not my kids or my house.  I swear.

Fun quilt with the Urban Chik’s Swell fabric line.

(Hopefully the pictures look ok since I’m editing them on my laptop and it has a reputation when it comes to colors and Photoshop.)

This quilt is for Liam for his birthday. I love how it came out… exactly like I imagined. I designed it yesterday while vegging on the couch after a horrible, painful dental procedure (I’m not exactly sure what they did but it was a periodontist fixing some damage to a tooth from a wisdom tooth. Fun.). I hope my little caterpillar likes it.

5.06.08 edit: I’ve now made one for Etsy too! Blog Link. Shop Link.

6.16.08 edit: Another one!

6.24.08 edit — Another one completed.

(Hopefully the pictures look ok since I’m editing them on my laptop and it has a reputation when it comes to colors and Photoshop.)

It measures 52″ x 36″. I hope to make another one for my shop once I get my hands on some more of the fabric.

Sometimes I wonder about Liam.

We went to Maple View Farm a couple days ago and decided to let Liam have his first taste of ice cream. He’s having a lot of trouble eating anything with chunks or texture. I’m slightly worried that he’s going to have no interest in eating his birthday cake in a couple weeks so I figured an ice cream cake might be the way to go since in theory he shouldn’t have any problems eating the smooth ice cream. The rest of us love ice cream (who doesn’t? Well, besides Liam.). I honestly think that if it weren’t for ice cream and pizza I’d be a vegan.

His opinion of ice cream?

He refused to eat anymore.

Sigh.

… for Liam’s birthday quilt and I accidentally came home with 24.5 yards of sock monkeys on the beach.  D’oh!

This is the same pattern I used in my silk quilt but done in a cotton print. I had to try it out to see how it worked and I think it came out well. It’s now up on Etsy.

Step 13. Forget to take pictures of the trimming and binding as you do them.

Ok, so I totally forgot to take pictures of the last couple steps. Oops. But it’s all done now.

It’s really sunny out today so there are tons of shadows. Maybe next time we should try pics on the deck in the shade. My quest for how to take good pictures of quilts continues.

So it was a really good thing that we finished all the gardening yesterday.  </sarcasm>

I gave the rosemary on the side of the house a haircut.  Maeve came and rescued a couple ‘trees’ from the clippings pile and went and planted them around the yard.

These are the trees in the ‘buildings’ of dirt.

These ‘trees’ didn’t get planted.  According to Maeve they were tired and were going to take their naps.

Sean had the kids so I got a ton of sewing done. I got two quilts - Posh (by Chez Moi) and Swell (by Urban Chiks) - pieced, sandwiched, pinned and ready for quilting. Also got the quilting on the Monkey quilt done.

Step 12. Quilt.

Step 7. Keep on sewing until it’s all together.

Step 8. Iron the top.

Step 9. Sew together the backing fabric and iron.

Step 10. Lay out the quilt sandwich.

Step 11. Pin.

All folded up and ready to go.

…work in the garden! The plan was to sew all week and then clean up the yard this weekend but it is supposed to rain… again… on Saturday. I love the rain. We need the rain. But why does it always have to rain on the weekends? Doesn’t the rain know how hard it is to do major yard work and mow with 2 small kids? Hrumph.

So here is the uglyness of the front of our house. We have boring holly shrubs from the builder, leaves that were blown in at some point, mess from the masons and lots of blah. It needs spring cleaning and some prettification.

I am waaaay limited in what I can plant here since we have the hugest herd of deer in existence. They eat EVERYTHING. The only things they don’t eat are boxwood, holly, herbs and ferns. I try and be positive and think about how aromatic my yard ends up because we have so many herbs it’s not even funny. When you turn on the side spigot you get this whoosh of rosemary. Yum.

So we did a trip to Lowes for some dirty stuff…

And a trip to the farmers market this morning for the herbs…

Maeve had a blast there as she always does. And in a couple weeks the strawberries start coming in. Drool. And then the peaches. Drool.

We have some rosemary, thyme, sage, curry plants (!), lavender, germander, peppermint (for the pots) and a lot more thyme. And as it turns out, I need 6 more thymes to finish up. Back to the farmers market! Darn. I just hate going there and oogling at all the plants.

So while we were outside a little froggie decided to join us. Maeve was in love. She was jumping around behind him like he was jumping, laying on the ground staring at him and just being a curious 3 year old.

We pulled up all the stones, filled in with some dirt and put the stones back. Maeve was in charge of putting all the little stones into the little holes.

I totally wore her out outside. She’s now playing quietly in her playroom. We should do this gardening thing more often! And because I know Sean will say something… I was in this picture too. I cropped myself out. I’m ok with being sweaty and dirty in the family picture album but not on my blog.

All done. I’m going to venture to say that it looks a wee bit better than before. Hopefully everything will fill out nicely this summer.

We didn’t get the other side done. It’s all cleaned up but we ran out of dirt, mulch and plants… oh and Liam woke up.

Wow. This is a really long post that really has nothing to do with quilts except for the fact that it demonstrates that I didn’t work on any today (so far… it’s only 5!)

Step 5. Sew together the rows.

Step 6. Sew the rows together.

Another custom quilt. This one is full of the lovable sock monkeys.

Step 1. Iron.

Step 2. Cut lots of diamonds.

Step 3. Assemble the puzzle. I could do this randomly but I’m too much of a perfectionist to be a quilter sometimes.

Step 4. Each diagonal row gets a number pinned to it and the diamonds are stacked up. If it were just me using this room I’d just leave the pieces on the floor until I sewed them. I’m sure the kids would love it if I left all this over the floor.

Sewing starts tomorrow!

It was actually up a couple days ago but I didn’t get to the blog post until now. Link.

It’s done!

It’s really hard to take a picture of a quilt this big. Sean needs longer arms.

And the quilted shams.

Alice asked about my quilt binding.

Why don’t I hand sew the binding on my quilts? Because I would never actually finish a quilt if that were necessary. I hate hand sewing with a passion. I even use my machine to sew on a button. It is the more traditional way to finish a quilt though and a lot of people find it relaxing. I tried it once and then went back to sewing it on with a machine.

I can’t decide if I like the stitching on the binding to be on the front or back. The binding for this quilt was sewn onto the back first and then flipped over to the front. The bobbin thread coordinates with the backing fabric and the top thread coordinates with the binding fabric.

Front:

Back:

I use 2″ strips and sew it on with a 1/4″ seam.

Step 14. Quilt.

Almost done!

Step 15. Trim.

Step 16. Cut binding strips and take a blurry picture of them.

Step 17. Attach the binding to the quilt.

Step 18. Flip the binding over and sew to the back.

All done! I’ll do a full set of pictures once it’s washed.

Off to sew some shams.