Thursday, October 28, 2010

(not so) Funny things happen when you're stupid

I finally decided what to do with all the pink. I'll only use some and sash them in white. Smart, right?

Considering the fact that I made a decision, I started rearanging the pieces so they look nice in 7x9, not 10 x 12. Be smart, I said to myself, don't lay them down or you'll make 101 trips to the floor and back to the sewing table. Arrange them on your mat! Smart, right?

Well, one piece led to another and in no time (read more than 1 hour) the pieces were all lined up, ready to be sewn. With the white stripes. Smart again, I know.

Now can anybody tell me why i didn't cut the white straps before putting all the pieces in order on my cutting map? Anybody? Who's the smart one now?

Monday, October 25, 2010

Upgrade to the love (and hate) quilt

I might have found that thing that really changes the love& hate into I love this quilt.

I added some hand stiching. It was quite challenging to find a way to hide the threads because I did it after the quilt was finished. It turned out quite nice and I am tinking about adding an orange touch. Just thinking, for the moment.



Now I'm having another dilema. Is there such a thing as too much pink?
In quilting, of course. I'm sure everybody knows what too much pink in real life means.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Yeah, baby!

I am so out of my bad hair day. Or bad quilt day. Or lost inspiration day.

How did I do it:
  • told my self I cannot possibly make a quilt that makes both (quilte different) parents happy, be a baby quilt, and like it myself.
  • stopped everything and did something I actually enjoyed
  • started all over

First, I took off the table everything I took out for this quilt.

Then I remembered I had a quilt with awfull binding but it mached very fell with the butterflies that I just received. So I changed it.


It maked me feel very good to have, quite quickly, something nice ready. And it made me feel good about myself and gained a lot of points for the moral.

ThenI thought about a quilt I would really like to make. Nice, smooth, warm, just like for a tiny baby. And even though it was not for the mom, nor for the dad, I think I got a lovely baby quilt. As in, you know ... for a baby?














And a quite diferent and crazy back. I was lucky to find a binding that had white dots on green and white and red stripes, so it mached perfectly: dots for the froand stripes for the back. Didn't pay enough attention when joining binding at 3 am, but still looks great.



Thursday, October 21, 2010

Blockage

One of the things I love in quilting is that I do it for pleasure. I create whatever I like and, if somebody else like it and eventualy wants to buy, that's fine. Ok, it's more than fine :). But I could never see myself making a quilt for somebody, or making a quilt with someone's fabrics. At least not in the near future.

So I decided to make a gift, for a friend with a 3mo baby. Things were really ok until I started thinking what would they (the parents) like. And from that moment on, things got only worse. I can't, for the love of God, decide what to do. I have less than 48h left and i cannot move a finger. I have too many ideeas but none of them seem to fit them enough.

I already stopped one quilt in the process, the frame on the squares seems too big for I wanted and now, of course, I don't love the colours anymore. Or prints. Or blocks. Grrrr...

The solid is actualy a Moda Teal, so the colours are very wrong in this pic. Still doesn't say anything to me :|

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Scraps and fireworks quilt

A while ago I found in a very small store in my (very small) home town some fabrics and bought a lot of them for about 1,5$/m. They're all quite thin, thinner than regular quilting cotton and also have a satin finish so it's quite hard to work with them. But I like them a lot and today one of the, just poped up when I was in desperate need for a backing.

A few days ago, when I made the love&hate quilt, I tried using piano claps for the border. I realised they were way too big, but the leftovers reminded me of Rita's tutorial. The moment I finished the first quilt, I started cutting pieces for the scrap quilt. Of course I didn't measure, just looked at how big I would like them to be and then realised I have a problem with the middle white squares, they were 3 5/8". Nice number to work with...


I used the tutorial until I got to quilting. I am not too found of diagonal lines, so I went with simple straight lines, just the way I like it. At some point I realised my walking foot is making me problems again and, to avoid any bulk fabric when crossing the lines, i decided to do a little hand quilting too.




I love hand qulting but with the right needle that I didn't have, so my fingers are still in recovery after only 4 rows of hand stiches on a baby quilt.
Note to self: go buy good needles.


I used again Rita's binding and it's getting better. One thing I did different from the tutorial, was adding a little white border before the binding. I like it better when the binding doesn't bite the edge squares. I'll try make it invisible next time (putting the white border exactly the binding width so the design remains unchanged and the white doesn't show), but I have to fix my walking foot before this.





Of course, every quilt makes me learn something, usually that there's still something that can go wrong that I didn't think about. But, at some point, all the surprises will finish. Hopefully :)

Did I mention what I found when I was changing the foot? A power miner with a snowtrooper mask. A classic ...

Monday, October 18, 2010

Love and hate quilt

I know that people like different things and what's ugly for some might be gorgeus for others. But when I make something that I consider ugly, I guess I'm in title to say it out loud :)

It started really nice, with White Kona and my all time favorite, Wendy Slotboom. Small butterflies that made me smile looking at them.







Did I mention I always have at least one lego guy watching?


Things stopped pretyy much here because I only had a small piece of Breeze and couldn't find something to mach them. Than one evening I decided I have to many QIP and I need to start finishing them. And something very bad happened: I decided to use a fabric I do not like. At all. Even if it was the binding only, if you add a not so inspired border, it's the key to failure.




Funny thing, though, the minute I started taking the pictures, I rememberd why I loved this quilt before the binding (and border) and right now it doesn't seem so ugly anymore. I guess it will be forever a between-love-and-hate-quilt



Plus, it was my first time trying Rita's binding and, although I thought I will never be able to do it, or at least I'll have all my fingers bleeding, this didn't happen. It's almost perfect, much better than I immagined. And I realise I can make it perfect, so it must be a good quilt after all.





And the back...well...I love this fabric. It's way out of my confort zone with too big prints for me, but the way it feels and the way it completes a small scale quilt...well..I'll be using it again for sure.


Sunday, October 17, 2010

The always difficult first post

After 4 years of motherhood, I finally rediscovered the crafty in me. I blog in romanian but I just hate flickr talks, so it must be a good enough reason to have an english blog.

I love to quilt, it's my new obssesion, hope it will last. Fortunetly, I have very good help, always on the sewing table, always with a lot of (lego) monsters to test the quilts, so it must be a good start.