W.i.P Wednesday 11, A Little Relief

I am so happy to be finished with this T-shirt quilt! I sewed it together two Fridays ago from 9 pm to 6:30 am Saturday morning. I slept for two hours and then got up to go rent time on the long arm machine so I could quilt it. It turned out really nice and my client likes it a lot. She gave it to her husband as a late birthday and Valentine's Day gift. I have two more T-shirt quilts to start soon. I am giving myself a week or two off from this type of quilt first. I need a break!

My cousin and I are working on a quilt for her brother. I have more half square triangles sewn and cut, but I need to square them up. There are so many that I am not looking forward to it, and I have less than half the HSTs that will make up the entire quilt top! Robin has the rest of them, I wish we were a bit further along on this project.

Here is another block for the Austin Modern Quilt Guild Block Swap. I am hoping to make a donation block this weekend.
The quilt guild is having our March meeting in a brand new Austin fabric shop, remnants:fiber[culture], owned by fellow guild member Jessica Sloan. On the right side of my page I posted a widget for her Kickstarter fund, please consider donating a few dollars to help her with some special plans she has for decorating the shop.

My family is participating in Relay for Life this year in south Austin. Robin, our cousin Sarah, and I are making this University of Texas Quilt for the Relay Silent Auction.This is half of the top, there will be two more rows of five blocks. I have a black Moda marble for the backing, and solid black for the binding.
You can donate to our team by clicking here. The money helps the American Cancer Society in their quest to create less cancer and more birthdays.

Here is the beginning of a quilt for a family member. I am using Kona solids, Lagoon and Robin's Egg. I don't want to say much more than that, except that I need to cut these strips apart but I have to buy the right ruler first.

I wish I had gotten more accomplished over the last week, but the only thing on my calender for Sunday is a family lunch and then I hope to sew all afternoon! It has been nice to take a little break after finishing the T-shirt quilt and I have so many meetings and events scheduled that it is hard to get much finished during the week.

I am linking up with Freshly Pieced, head that way and check out some other great blogs!

Also linking up with Manic Monday on the blog Sew Happy Geek.

W.i.P. Wednesday 10

Hello! Wednesday again! This keeps sneaking up on me; I took some photos last night, but I should of done it during the day. These photos aren't great.
Regardless, I have been very busy and I have a lot to show you. I just had a four day weekend which was really great. I spent most of my time working on this t-shirt quilt. I will be quilting it on Saturday. There is still a lot of work to do, I may have a late night Friday night, but it will get done. It is becoming more of a horizontal layout than I intended, I may have to take those four big pieces on the right side and line them up in a horizontal row at the bottom to create a more vertical layout.

custom order t-shirt quilt

Every so often I needed a break from this quilt, so I worked on a few other things this weekend. These are some half square triangles for my cousin's quilt that I mentioned last week. Robin and I created a layout with 90 friendship stars, which means we have to sew 180 pairs of squares and then cut them in to 360 half square triangles. So far I have sewn and cut 20 squares, and squared up two HSTs. So...there is a long way to go!

half square triangles for Ron's quilt

I also worked a little more on this Lego bag. These strips for the outside of the bag have been sewn together in groups of four, leaving me with 10 big pieces. There is still a lot of work to do on this.

Lego bag

Here is the mess next to my computer desk as I work on Robin's Save the Date cards for her September wedding. I got my desk for free (found it next to the dumpster!) and I am thinking about buying a new one from Ikea with some of my birthday money. This desk is big enough for my computer and nothing else. I don't have room to write or even set my printer. The printer lives in the closet and I get it out and set it up on the floor when I need it. I think I am overdue for a new desk.

working on Save the Date cards

I ordered this coral stamp from Stamp Out Online, an Etsy shop that was incredibly helpful and accommodating while working with me to get the coral looking just right for the wedding stationery. The shop has several great stamps and can create custom orders. I plan to order a stamp from their girly business section soon.

second draft of STDs

Recently, I joined the Scrap Attack, hosted by Stitched in Color. There I read about this scrappy piecing method. I tried it out last Wednesday and came up with this ten by ten inch block. I will eventually contribute it to the Austin Modern Quilt Guild's Block Swap, but I need to make it bigger. I really like this method and how crazy the block turns out. I pulled out scraps randomly and only paid attention to not having the same color next to each other. I plan to make more of these scrappy blocks using a monochromatic color palette.

Scraptacular block

Here is my sister's table topper. I pieced the back over the weekend without planning it out, I just added fabric until it was big enough. I am still thinking about how to quilt this and whether or not I will add heat resistant batting to it.

Christmas table topper

I am linking up today with Freshly Pieced. Stop by and take a look at some other crafty blogs!

Linking up at Jay Bird Quilts for Scrappy Sunday. I am so excited about the scrappy block that I made, and I am going to use this link up opportunity as a motivation to continue building those scrappy blocks.

I am also linking up with Lynne at Lily's Quilts. Click the button and support a few other small blogs with views and comments. If you find something that you love, become a follower!

My first quilt, for the Pay

In July of 2009 my friend Abbey had her second baby, Bruce. A few months before that I made a small green and brown blanket and gave it to her at the baby shower. Her oldest daughter, Macey, promptly took it and claimed it as her own. So I decided to make a quilt for Macey so that she would return the blanket to her baby brother.
I bought four fabrics from the remnants section of Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft, cut them in to 6 by 8 rectangles and took them up to Fort Worth to get help from Aunt M and Grandmother. They explained to me the problem with the fabric I had chosen and then helped me rework my quilt design. I originally bought the pink polka dot that you see in the quilt, a yellow and white striped knit fabric, a green fleece fabric, and the cotton butterfly fabric that is in the quilt.
I learned that it doesn't work well to combine different types of fabric and that it is best to use all cotton fabric when quilting.

Aunt M has lots of bolts of fabric in her sewing room closet and she gave me the green polka dot fabric, the light pink swirl fabric,the dark purple backing, and the solid white. I bought batting and more of the butterfly fabric from the store and set aside my knit and fleece fabrics.

My aunt C does not sew but she has a great eye for color and layout. She and I laid the blocks on the floor and tried arranging them several different ways. We eventually ended up on these diagonal lines of color and I was very happy with that solution.

I had not planned on adding these three borders or the white sashing in between the blocks, but I am glad that my grandmother suggested it. She is a traditional quilter, as is Aunt M, and they love to add a border to a quilt. Or two or three borders.

Aunt M has an embroidery machine so I used it to embroider Macey's name on the lower right block of the quilt top.

I pieced the top with their help and supervision and then Aunt M taught me how to sandwich the quilt and baste it with what seemed like a thousand safety pins. She showed me how to stitch in the ditch and gave me some clear thread for the top and I used a dark purple for the bobbin thread. You can see my stitch in the ditch lines on the back of the quilt.

After that I learned how to square up the quilt, piece the binding together and sew it on to the front of the quilt and blind stitch the binding to the back of the quilt. Piecing the binding strips together was the most difficult part for me. You have to get them lined up just right and I was always off just a bit. Aunt M would look at it and say, "No, rip it out. Do it again." She said that so many times during my first few tries at piecing binding, but practice makes perfect and these days my binding looks pretty goo...moat of the time.

I think overall this project turned out well for my first try at making a quilt. I gave it to Macey for Christmas in 2009 and she LOVES it, even now two years later. She calls it her Jessica blanket and has it in bed with her for naps and night time.

I am not sure who "owns" the green and brown blanket these days, but it is about time for me to make a quilt for Bruce. There is a third baby in the family by now and he and Macey each have quilts from me, Bruce needs one too.

I am linking up with Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday, go check out some other great projects made with fabric!

W.i.P. Wednesday 09

Last Saturday I spent eleven hours at a quilt retreat and had an amazing time. I took my sewing machine with me but never took it out of its case. I spent the day cutting fabric for several projects that I am ready to get started on. I cut fabric for two lego bags, one Christmas table topper, and one hounds tooth quilt top. I helped to make a quilt for a fellow Austin Modern Quild Guild member's new baby boy. I snacked on some yummy food, drank a couple of beers and of course chatted with all the other ladies at the retreat.

everything that I worked on at the retreat (or took with me but didn't work on)

solid blues for hounds tooth, the Amy Butler floral is a possible backing for this quilt

With the help of another of our cousins, Robin and I will be making a University of Texas at Austin quilt as a Silent Auction donation for this years Relay for Life event. We are calculating yardage and buying fabric this week and plan to put the quilt top together on an upcoming Saturday afternoon.
This year I am the team captain for my family's Relay for Life team Goertz Family Ties. You can make a donation to our team to help support the American Cancer Society in their quest to create a world with less cancer and more birthdays by clicking on this link. Thank you for your support!

Back to sewing and current projects: 

my block for the AMQG Block Swap

t-shirts for a custom order quilt, this deadline is coming up fast

Soon I will have to post photos of the wedding stationery that I am designing for Robin. I also need to continue working on ironing and folding my fabric stash. It is a big undertaking and I work on it a little at a time. I need to make eleven more blocks for the AMQG Block Swap and it is hard to do when I can't easily look over the fabric that is available to me. 

Robin and I are also starting a quilt for her brother, the fabric is almost all cut out and ready to start piecing. We will have to make 180 half square triangles! I will have photos of that soon.

table topper for my sister and her sweet tooth

Finished! one of two sets of Valentine's Day towels

second set of Valentine's Day towels

Have a great Valentine's Day next week!

These roses were a belated birthday gift from my hair stylist, Kristal. Isn't that sweet?!

The blue and green block that I made for the AMQG Block Swap is part of Faith's Solstice Stars Series on her blog, Fresh Lemons Quilts.

I am linking up today with Freshly Pieced. Stop by and take a look at some other crafty blogs

Valentine's Day towels

Valentine's Day will be here soon. I finished these sets of towels just in time. I made two sets of pleated towels from fabric that my cousin Robin and I chose at Hobby Lobby.
I read about this towel idea in American Patchwork & Quilting. The tutorial is called Jolly Holiday and was designed by Anna Griffin. She designed this tutorial to make pillow covers, but the editor of the magazine reworked it for kitchen towels. I made a few other sets of these which you can see here.

Robin's towel

These towels are fun to make and really cute when they are finished, but right now I have so many projects in the works and deadlines coming up, that I am mostly just glad these are done and off of my table. I originally planned to make two more sets of these towels for other family members, but I don't have enough of the solid fabric and I decided to save those white towels to use later. I am thinking about making Halloween towels for myself and for a friend with the Ghastlie fabric that I love.

my towel

 The funny thing about these towels is that when Robin was at my house last week and saw them, she thought that the light pink set was hers and the black set was mine. I told her that she chose the black fabric at Hobby Lobby and I chose the pink fabric, but now I like the black set more. She said she likes the pink set more. 

I am taking both sets to her house tonight and she can choose which ever towels she wants. (I hope she chooses the pink set.)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I posted these on Craftsy as part of Project Cupid.