WIP :: 7/25/12

I seem to be making good progress on my sewing related projects this week!  I'll attribute some of that to the fact that the Tour de France finished on Sunday so my evenings are once again free.  At least until the Olympics start.  ;]  I love watching the Tour and the finishing stage is always exciting & makes me want to go back to Paris.  History in the making as Bradley Wiggins was the first ever British rider to win the Tour.  To really make the point, 2nd place Chris Froome was also a British rider from team Sky; as was the stage win going to Mark Cavendish (4th year running) from team Sky as well.

Anyways, onto the sewing portion of our Wednesday. 

Complete

- My first zippy pouch!  I used the awesome Keep Calm print I picked up recently for the pouch and lined it with a blue circle/dot print from my stash.  It was easy to make and I love it!  Even if I'm not to sure what I'll put in it just yet...

 in progress
- Made more Roman Stripe blocks as well and they are making a happy little pile on the floor of my sewing room.  Picked up some more grey solids at Hancock's of Paducah on Sat. - including one of the new colors: Steel.

-Swoon: worked on piecing the backing together.  I may have to take this to work just to lay out the parts and make sure they will be large enough for backing.  

-leftovers II: I put together a little sample of tumbler blocks I had cut from scraps.  I may want to use this for quilt camp or a GS project in the future.  Especially now that I have the tumbler die for the Go! cutter at work! ( & still need a picture of it).  

no progress
I can't ignore this category for another week so here's the list of projects that are currently loose, looking like they don't care.  ;)
- Christmas quilt
- Swap blocks: deciding on making 1 or 2 quilts with these
- Summer Sampler: must decide on quilt design!
-GS quilt: need to just suck it up and seam rip this baby!

Linking it up over at Lee's again this week - here's to more quilting! 

PS:  if you like what you read/see go ahead and become a follower!

WIP :: 7/18/12

Greetings to everyone popping over from Lee's weekly quilt status round up.  I'm glad to keep up with posting - they certainly keep me thinking about my progress and behind the sewing machine each week. Been working to get things re-organized at work post-camp and vacation this week still and enjoying the Tour de France in the evenings.

Here's what's stitching this week!

in progress

-Roman Stripe:  made a handful more blocks for the summer quilt and cut out more color strips. I need to get more grey fabric for the squares and am waiting to see the new greys of the Kona colors.  

-leftovers: my Junior Quilters are working hard on their quilts each month and turning out great pieces.  I took the leftover & rejected blocks home and matched them with the sample blocks I'd made at the start of the year.  it'll get a border to make it a bit bigger (it's 30"x30" now) and then I may finish it for the 100 Quilts for Kids with Swim, Bike, Quilt.


That's all for this week dear readers, here's to the next!  :)

WIP :: 7/11/12

Whew - summer has been just as busy as normal schedule so far! I'm glad to be back to post for the Work In Progress, I seemed to keep missing Wednesdays over at Freshly Pieced the last couple of weeks.  On with the show: lots of pix today!

complete
-Quilt Camp!  Does it count as my finish since I'm in charge of camp?  Yes you say? Oh good.  :)  I had 55 kids in 2 weeks this year for camp, ages 5-16, and 3 different projects for the skill levels.  Just typing that is a lot, but it was so much fun!  I love having the kids come & make their projects start to finish, and seeing them learn about & love quilts as they do it.  Click here for more information and to see how awesome the kids were this year! We go through about 15+yds. of batting, 20+yds. of backing fabrics, and a lot of white as you can see in the picture below!

33 yds. muslin: pre-camp

what's left post-camp!

-mini project: We host a Kidz Day in the Arts each year at the Museum with hands-on activities for kids, free admission to the galleries & other activities.  This year the theme is the Olympics, and I found a great idea on Michael's website for this cute Olympic torch craft.  Saw it, stopped everything to try it out, used my AccuQuilt to cut out some stars and voila!

-Christmas quilt: the top is finished!  I had all the blocks together for several weeks, and wanted to make it a bit wider.  While on vacation, Momm & I went to a quilt shop in WI and I found the coordinating blue plaid print on sale- a nice surprise.  It's certainly Christmas in July with this finished top.

in progress
-Roman Stripe: Momm & I had a quilt day at home towards the end of vacation which was great.  I worked away at making more of these blocks & love how quick they are to come together. I realized I'll need the quilt to be about 9 x 11 blocks for a total of 99 blocks!  This is way more than the 56 blocks I was originally thinking, so I'll have to keep churning these out.

-Swap blocks: right now I'm looking at how big of a quilt I want with these blocks.  Love how it looks as a large quilt, or it could be 2 smaller quilts. Not sure yet - stay tuned.


-Wonky blocks: I also made a wonky square-in-a-square using Quilt Dad's tutorial.  these blocks are so much fun to make, can't wait to put them into a top.




-Swoon: backing fabrics purchased and ready to piece once I get some time.  See previous post for details on this.

As you can see, lots going on here.  What are you working on this week?

100th post!

For all the fabric lovers out there - here's some eye candy for the middle of your week.  It's also my 100th post on the blog!  It's so odd to think I've got 100 posts of quilt & adventure type ramblings.  Thanks for reading along dear readers.   :)


  I went to Hancock's two weekends ago with the intent to purchase backing fabric for my Swoon quilt, and fabric to supplement what i already pulled from my stash for my summertime roman stripe quilt.  I also had the intention to use the gift certificate I'd gotten from J for Christmas!  So awesome.  :)


After walking up & down every aisle (which is no easy task!) and fawning over the solids for some time, here's what came home with me:

the whole lot - aren't they lovely?

The top two prints are Timeless Treasures Keep Calm Multi-color and Vintage Modern Hopscotch in sky.  They aren't for any particular project, I just couldn't resist them.  

These are the pieces I picked out to supplement my summertime Roman Stripe quilt.  It's mostly pulled from stash fabrics in the teal colorway with pops of that cerise color and varying shades of grey for the solid half of the blocks.


fabrics: 
Michael Miller solid, Fog
Vintage Modern, dots in Sky
Robert Kaufman Fusion, teal colored
Timeless Treasures print in fuchsia/cerise

To the right are the large cuts to piece together the backing for my Swoon quilt!  So excited to get working on this again.  The plan is to have 1/2 & 1 yard cuts of the colors make up the backing to re-emphasize the sea glass look of the quilt.


fabrics:
Kona Azure
Bella Solid #9900 75
Wilmington Blue Dot #39065 color 441
Kona Pond
Kona Lagoon

Sunday Snapshot #11

Here's a few shots to fill in the gap.  Enjoy!

From a hike out at Giant City State Park this past weekend!  It was a good park & super awesome to be outside enjoying the sunshine and trees and a good hike.  Will definitely be back to try out some of the other trails this summer.

giant city 'streets'

looking up

               

looking down from the top of the bluff

onwards & upwards!

WIP :: 5/30/12

Wow!  It' been a few weeks since my last WIP post - can't keep track of the days apparently.  Hope ya'll had a great Memorial Day weekend - I certainly did.  It was jam packed with fun: contra dancing, road trips, Improv shows, day off, sunshine & biking.  :)

I'm also 2 posts away from my 100th post!!  wow! 

complete

front

-Mother's Day gift:  I knew I wanted to make a handmade gift for Momm this year, and it got sent out a bit late, but was still pretty awesome.  I followed Faith's tutorial for the iPad case and it was so easy! Great directions and I wasn't worried about putting in my first ever zipper.
  

back

The hardest part was choosing fabrics, even when it was narrowed down to just my stack of batiks!  I was especially pleased that the iPad fits inside the case! [since it was crossing state lines]

- Swap blocks: I also made 20 more X & + blocks for the 2nd round of the swap on flickr.  Sent them on their way this week & will be excited to see what comes back!

new!
-Picnic quilt: I got the itch to start piecing a new quilt/blocks over the holiday weekend. I decided to make a quilt for picnics & things for summer using the Roman Stripe pattern.  I put together a couple test blocks and really like them!  They will be shades of grey triangles & teal/aquas w/a pop of pomegranate/cerise.


I mocked up my idea using EQ6 and really love it! I see more of these colors coming home with me from the fabric store.  

-Wonky Blocks: I also pieced together my first wonky star blocks.  They were so cute & begged me for some friends, so I have 4 wonky blocks now and am thinking of making it around 6-9 for a quilt inspired by Faith's Liberated Sampler.  




in progress
-Summer Sampler: backing is pieced finally!  now to baste it all together.  that will need to wait until the workshop is over so I can use the tables at work.  :)


 no progress
-Swoon - so sad there's no progress on this one.  It's my summer goal to have this baby finished.  Better get cracking now that summer has unofficially started!
-GS quilt
-Yellow Brick Road




linking back up to Lee's at Freshly Pieced!  Happy Wednesday!

spring blogger's quilt festival!

Welcome!  This is my first time participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival put on by Amy at Amy's Creative Side.  I blog hopped around on the last round and decided this time I would share a link & a quilt too!

This is a quilt I haven't shared here yet.  This is my second ever finished quilt!  It's called Shattered Chaos because it's sort of like bits of stained glass and was made in 2006.  It measures 41" x 50".

I went to the Mid-Appalachian Quilters retreat/weekend out at Mount St. Mary's school with Momm one year and we took several classes.  This class, called Triangle Tricks, was Sunday morning and used a neat concept of creating double HSTs as the main block.  

That's when the power went out.  

Turns out, some car hit a transformer nearby so we had to end our weekend early : sewing machines & irons don't work very well in a power outage!


However, we did learn how to make the basic block, so I went home and made lots more of these handy little guys and decide to use 4 of them to create the pinwheel look with the white triangles.  I opted against sashing and just threw all the blocks together & sewed them up.  I then stipple quilted it - my first time ever free-motion quilting! 


It's not quite a lap size quilt, so I have a sleeve on it and hang it on the entry wall in my apt. now for some extra color & cheer.  love this quilt.  :)