How some quilts work

There are times when I know exactly what I want to do. Pretty much most of the times. But there are, of course, times, when I have no idea what so ever. It happens that I have a little time i should use and no idea at all, or just love a fabric so much I just don't know what to do with it.

When I received the heilroom stash, after a lot of staring, I decided to cut some 2" strips to play with. Those 'eyes' bothered me so much that I just left it like this and moved on.

But after the cross quilt and the baby princess, I couldn't stop thinking about these colours.

 So I took all the scraps out and started using every single tiny bit. I came up with 4 almost squares. Lined them up, added more scraps, and took the difficult decision: 1 quilt instead of 4 pillows.

With the new walking foot things went really well, no pulling, no stretching with only 7 basting pins. 

[I'm really sorry for the weird colours, me and the camera we're not 100% back together :)]

I hope it's safe to say I'm done with pink for a while. I finished almost all my pink fabrics so I should be safe :). However, crazy scrappy piecing gave me more ideas so there's another one on the way :). Not pink, I swear :)

A lot of WIP

An almost finish Echino baby quilt, just to take my mind off a not so beautiful week.

Unfortunately, my walking foot died. Again. And I was just not going to believe it. So I quilted and quilted, somehow hoping in the end it will look good. It didn't. I have a strong feeling I have to take all the quilting off and do it again.

[remember the little fellow that won't help me with pics? here he is again]

So I got even more angry and I cut.

And rearranged a hundred times

And even super cleaned the sewing machine.

And cleaned the threads' box

And started 3 awsome baby quilts.

[baby blue]

[baby smile]

[baby princess]

Now I am [not at all] patiently waiting for my walking foot. Isn't it a little too much 3 walking foots in one year?

A hard to make quilt

It all started very very well. And it finished the same. But the process...ah, the process...almost dried me out.

I started putting favorite fabrics two but two, not knowing what I was going to make. Went to two colours pinwheel, aborted, then to print plus white pinwheels...



... moved them about one hunderd times, found the perfect spot for each, found the right amount of sashing, basted to death with hundred of pins and...

Well, that's pretty much all the fun part. 'cause at some point, my sewing machine decided to get stucked in a tiny thread caught somewhere under the bobin.



One night and 2 hours trip to Brother later, nobody was there to fx it.
Another night and another 2 hours trip to Brother later, the machine was cleaned.
Another night and half quilted quilt later, the machine started leaving black oil staines all over the quilt. And the fact that I decided to quilt around the squares, therefore move the quilt a lot, did not help at all. Nor the fact tha I somehow didn't see the first staines and things got only worse as I kept quilting.




Hours of crying later, the quilt was washed but still had one black point.



Then a nother fun part came along with a great ideea, to hand sew a little.




Despite my anti-washing-quilts-before-giving-policy, I really think that this quilt might just be able to leave my house at some point. But only after I am really sure I really really really don't need another quilt, because, well, I love it!

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.

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.

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 :|

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 ...

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.