Progress

Over the weekend I made a little bit of progress on my Wonderland quilt. I've completed 11 out of 36 blocks. Here's a little sneak peak (for all two of you reading.)

Even though I'm not even half way finished, this bad boy has already taught me a lesson or two (ok, three.) What I've learned so far:

1) When purchasing fabric online, it's best to buy pieces all from the same collection. This ensures that your fabric selections will actually look good together. Quite unlike these:

...which were hand selected one by one from a variety of designers via the internet and to my great disappointment look really terrible together in person. Unfortunately, I didn't realize how unpleasant it looks until I had already cut and sewn blocks to look something like this:

(I'm almost too ashamed to post this here)

Granted, this is an awful photo, but you can still see what a poor combination this is. Now I need to figure out what to do with 16 mildly unattractive quarter circles.

So the lesson is, when shopping online, buy fabrics that are specifically designed to coordinate with each other to avoid the above catastrophe.

2) If I had it to do over again, I would've paid more attention to the direction of the prints when cutting. I was being quite stingy with these Wonderland fat quarters and cut all the strips in one direction. I thought I was being clever and efficient, but I've wound up with some oddly sideways butterflies and scissors that cut in opposing directions. For this quilt, I actually kind of like the disorientation, but for future reference, I'll be sure to cut with more consideration.

3) Kind of in the same breath as lesson 1, working with an entire collection of fabrics is just plain awesome! It really forces helps me to think outside the box when it comes to color palette and the way I piece. When creating the combinations for these blocks I had a tendency to want to put all of my favorite fabrics together to make some totally rad squares. This left me with nothing but the (let's just call them "less favorable" because there honestly isn't a bad color or print in this whole line) fabrics to create the remaining blocks out of which would make for an odd and unbalanced finished product. Using these colors and prints together forced me WAY outside of my comfort zone. And I liked it!

4) I really MUST develop a better system for photographing my work. Hovering over the top of the bed with my iphone is just not cutting it.

I'll be working on these blocks some more this evening and will hopefully (but highly unlikely) have a quilt top finished before I go to bed tonight. I'm thinking of piecing the top together sans sashing. Any thoughts?

Any one at all?

My. hand. hurts.

Yesterday was the day in which a fat quarter set of this...

became this....

72 - 2.5" x 12.5" strips

144 - 2.5" x 8.5" strips

72 - 2.5" x 4.5" strips

36 - 4.5" x 4.5" squares

I used Allison's measurements for this quilt. I just hope mine turns out half as lovely as hers!

While cutting (and cutting and cutting) all these strips I kept asking myself, WHY didn't I just buy the Jelly Roll??!?! And then I remembered... it's because this way I wind up with all of these wonderful scraps!

Aren't they pretty?

And of course I had to have an audience...

It may be time to make an appointment with the groomer. Poor Annabelle can't see.

I did some shopping yesterday, too! I bought a Charm Pack of each of these...

....which are destined to become baby stacked coin quilts.

I have a friend that recently found out she is pregnant. This is my way of "willing" her to have a little girl. Plus, I am just so in love with that Hushabye fabric!

And because I don't have enough unfinished projects as it is (ha!), I also purchased this Summer Soiree fat quarter set from Pink Chalk Fabric. Not quite sure what I'm going to make, but I'm extemely excited about this one!

So pretty!

Getting the hang of things

I'm a new blogger, as well as a new crafter, so there are many things that I'm still trying to get the hang of. Binding and blogging are two that come to mind.

Here is the king sized quilt I FINALLY finished for our bed. It's been "ready" for quite some time, just waiting on someone to come along and bind it. I put it off as long as I could. It's simply too hot to be using our down comforter these days so I had no choice but to sit down and knock it out. It's really light weight, simple and bright, fitting for Texas summers.

I made a lot of mistakes in this quilt. Very trial and error. I was so ready to be done with this thing, I wound up cutting a lot of corners. The backing is a king size sheet from Target and I top stitched the binding through all seven layers. The end result is far from perfect, but it's over with and that's all I care about at this point. I promise I'm not usually this lazy, but man! This is a HUGE quilt!!!

Here's the quilt for my pregnant sister. Her boys' room has a "transportation" theme, so I thought this would be fitting.

I didn't cheat on the binding for this one, but it's still not up to par.

Again, this is far from perfect. I used the wrong foot on the sewing machine, the wrong batting in the middle, and the wrong measurements for the back (there's a really ugly part that got pieced together last minute that I'm purposely not showing you.) But again, it's finished and that's all that matters. I wanted to give this to my sister for Mother's Day, but it wasn't ready in time. It's belated, but at least she's getting it before the baby arrives, right?

The dogs don't like it when I quilt rather than pay attention to them. (I wish this picture wasn't so dark. His sad puppy dog face is priceless!)

They make seam ripping so much more enjoyable. (From left to right is Leo the Boston Terrier, Annabelle the Lhasa Apso and Murphy the Brussels Griffon.)

(All fabrics are from Joann.)