Farmer's Wife

I went to Barnes and Noble last weekend, and purchased the Farmer's Wife book.  After reading it, I've decided that I'm going to hand piece the quilt just as the author had done. 

Here is my progress so far.  :)






This one is actually my favorite so far, and as usual, none of the photos do the blocks justice. =/

The Opposition: Curved Piecing

Today, I finally decided to give curved piecing a whirl.  I.HATE.IT.  Not that I'm bad at it, but it's SO tedious.... and I don't like pinning.  I'll be so glad when I finish the two blocks I need to do with curved pieces.

Okay, rant over. Does anyone have any tips on making it easier, or is curved piecing just one of those things that we do?

Here's a photo of my "progress."





Thanks for reading!
Cassie

Anchor's underway

So, I finally decided that I could get over being upset with my brother enough to work on his Christmas quilt.  It's based on the design by Tula Pink (Anchors Aweigh).

Since he's in the US Coast Guard, I decided to do a patriotic theme - hence the red, white, and blue.   I did notice that some of the measurements of the negative space on this pattern are off by about a half-inch.  Everything seems to be lining up pretty well other than that, and it's coming along very well.



Tomorrow I have a treat for anyone who stops by - I'm finishing up my e-reader tutorial for Tutorial Thursdays.  :)

Linking up with WIP Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced

Thanks for reading!
Cassie

First HEX experience

I'm so excited that I finally decided to do my hexie blocks.  The first one is finished and it came out very pretty, I think. I decided to make my own hexie templates from the one that was in the class materials on the Craftsy class.



I was afraid the regular printer paper was going to be too flimsy, but it worked out okay.  I'm glad I cut the template out of a cardboard piece I snagged from a FQ, now I'll have it to make more paper pieces later.



I stitched them all together last night while my husband and I watched a movie.  Not many pictures occurred during this time.  :)



I can't say how much I love those little flat flower pins.



I machine appliqued my hexie stripe on with a zig-zag pattern.  Warm with one cool hex.  So, that block is finished - now I'm going to hope for my local quilting shop to carry more kona snow fabric so I can finish the rest of the series.. I wish the fabric fairy would bring me some solids!!

Studio Update! 

So, for a while, my studio has been a wreck.  Between all the home repairs and updates my husband and I are doing to our 103 year old house, my studio has become kind of a storage room.  Today, I got a bit of drive to clean up my fabric stash, and finally put it in its place - the awesome built in shelving unit in my studio. I was so excited because there is room in there to grow!

I wish that I had taken a before picture - my painting supplies were all over both the shelves, and it was generally a huge wreck.  I think as a general rule, there is never enough storage space, no matter where you live.  Don't you agree?



So, I'm calling both of these things my finishes for the week, baby steps, you know!

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday
And Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday this week at Sewing By Moonlight.

Thanks for reading, lovelies.
Cassie

Tutorial Thursdays!

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So, this week I've been kind of lazy.  My husband and I started watching Breaking Bad (from the beginning), and that has distracted me - so I've only been working on the Craftsy BOM from 2012.  I blogged about it yesterday, in fact!

I have to say that Craftsy's BOM class - for the sake of Tutorial Thursdays, we'll call it a tutorial "series" - has been very good so far.  I have not really learned a new technique, but it has been good practice, and I've been forced to kind of think about color matching as I go along, rather than just having all the fabric for the entire project laid out at the start (I went with the stash rather than purchasing a new bundle..)


That being said, I'm NOT going to actually post the tutorial, since I can't.  You have to register on Craftsy to actually take any of their classes (it's free to register).  However, I will post my finished broken spider web block :)



I just hate that my final point was off by like 1/8 of an inch.... I might unpick some of the stitches and try to fudge it a little.  I haven't decided yet - have any of you had any success with doing that?  Yes, it is a string block, so none of the seams are supposed to match other than around the center star. 

Hopefully next week I'll have a better tutorial for y'all.  Until then, share what you've been working on from a tutorial (or your own tutorial)! 

Thanks for reading! 
Cassie

Block Progress

My A.D.D. self has started another project.  Last week (I think), I blogged about wanting to start the Craftsy BOM series from 2012.  I just loved Amy Gibson's choice of blocks, so I told myself, "you can make one block a day, and that's that."  - Plus I just so happened to have a few yards of Kona Snow, the fabric she chose as her background fabric, so I took that as a sign.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you my progress so far.  I've got 7 blocks completely done, and one 3/4 done - my husband wanted to call it early last night so we could go for a run this morning... out of respect for the light sleeper, I turned off the sewing machine.

Here's what I've made so far on this project:

January Blocks

The Asterisk Block

Slashed Pound Sign

February Blocks

The Balkan Puzzle - this one has been one of my faves so far :)

Chunky Chevron

March Blocks

String Block

The IN-PROGRESS Broken Spider Web

April Blocks

These are hexie blocks which I haven't done because, frankly, my printer is out of ink!

May Blocks

Modern Frame Log Cabin - I really enjoyed the improv blocks.. I'm thinking about making an entire quilt of either a May block or something from March... but that's in the future.

5-sided Wonky Log Cabin

Well, that's about all for now! Finishing up the Broken Spider Web block today, and going to go pick up ink for the printer so I can do my hexie blocks.

Linking up with WIP Wednesdays @ Freshly Pieced

5 Hexagon Project Tutorials

Here you will find a list of 5 of my favorite Hexagon projects and tutorials.  As I've been perusing other people's blogs and work a lot lately, I thought I'd share these gems that I found.  I have linked directly to the original post (or where I found it originally), and have done my best to give credit where credit is due. 

Strip of Hexies Dish Towel by Wild Olive

Eye Glass Case by Liesl Made

Hexagon Park on Moda Bake Shop by Lily's Quilts

Hexagon Quilt Tutorial by The Sewing Chick

Stitchy Hexie with Embroidery Pattern by Clover and Violet

Thank you original authors for your hard work, and for sharing it with us! 

Thanks for reading,
Cassie

HST Tutorial (Tutorial Thursdays #2)

Good morning everyone!  This week I'm going to show you my amazing magical HST trick, it's probably not new, but I think pictures and a written set of instructions help.  At the end I really want to see what you guys have been working on as far as projects from a tutorial - or even your own tutorial!  I'm very new to quilting, so I will definitely try out whatever you share with me, then come back and show you what I've done.

So I'm going to get on with it.


The first thing to remember is that we're going to be sewing together 2 squares all the way around the edge with a 1/4" seam, closing them in together.  You want to start with two squares that are 2 inches larger than the size of your HST.  Each set of two squares will yield 4 HSTs.  I made 3.5" HSTs so I started with 5.5" squares of fabric.

Materials for 4 HSTs:
Two blocks of material 2" larger than the desired size of your HST.
Rotary cutter 
Mat
Ruler
Sewing Machine

Directions:

The first obvious step is to pin your squares together.  This will keep them from shifting when you are sewing all the way around the edges. 

Next take the blocks to the machine.  Start about 1/4" away from a corner (doesn't matter which, we're going to go all the way around this puppy.)  With your needle down, turn the corner 1/4" away from the end of each side.  Don't worry if you go over a little - I just backstitched a few stitches and turned.  The important thing is maintaining a good 1/4" border around the entire block.

This is what my corners looked like. Maintain the 1/4" seam around the whole edge and you'll be fine.

After you're done stitching around all 4 sides, take the block to the cutting mat.  Line up your ruler diagonally from one corner to the corner across from it.  Cut.  Flip the triangles and cut again - to get what looks like a QST with all 4 closed.  

Then, press. *Enter Darth Vader* Quilters always press to the dark side.  :)  Trim the dog ears, and then you are finished constructing your HST. 

 

I found this method to be much quicker than the traditional HST method.  I think you will too.  Plus you don't end up with a mark on your fabric. 

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Stash started!

I have been really fortunate in my sewing escapades so far.  I got a huge old Hon desk from freecycle.org which is large enough to host my cutting mat and my sewing machine, plus it has tons of storage for whatever.  As the name suggests, the desk was free!  I just had to pick it up.  Then the husband and I had to maneuverer  it into my art studio/craft room.

My mom has been accumulating a fat stash of fabric for quite some time.  I had no idea how much she actually had in her craft room.  I had been talking to her a lot about sewing, post catching the sewing bug - she seemed mildly interested, but humored me by listening as I gushed about being so happy that I'm finally getting the hang of the techniques and the latest idea I had for a project. 

She and my dad happened to be around town a few weeks ago, so I made the hour trip to visit them.  To my surprise, she shared her stash with me.  No, literally, she halved every piece of fabric that she had and gave me half of her stash.  When I got home and asked my husband to help me bring it all in from the car, he gave me this accusing look like I had spent a fortune.  When I told him it was from my mom, he looked relieved. 

So, here are a few pictures of the "stash" I got from my mom, combined with what little I had leftover from my Victorian Modern QAL (found here). 

 

For someone who has only been "collecting" for a month or so, I don't think my stash is too shabby!

 

Now for another project I'm working on: 

 

I found this tutorial in the Moda Bake Shop.  Baby Lattice Tutorial

 

My mom gave me some super cute flannel for a baby boy.  My sister-in-law is pregnant with her first baby (and my first nephew!), so like any loving aunt, I'm going to make plenty of goodies for him.  :)  I pored over hundreds of baby quilt designs, both free, and paid.  Of course, after my experience with the first quilt top I made, and the crooked corners, I wanted to find a more forgiving design.  This one was perfect!  And it was free. (Thanks Moda Bakes Shop!!)

 

So I made the quilt top out of these fabrics:  

 

I had to devise a sort of design wall for this project, since it called for a bunch of littler squares that were random in placement.  So I put up a piece of batting (next time I will use all cotton or fleece, I think) on the wall to figure out my placement of the blocks and start piecing them together. 

 

The piecing was definitely a breeze without the guesswork of where each piece belongs.  I was able to complete the entire quilt top in a few hours (not sure if that's good or bad - I'm a newbie (: )

 

Here is a picture of the top completed.  (Sorry, it's basted in this picture, going to take a stab at quilting this afternoon!) 

 



I also did something a little creative with the back.  Since we live in Texas, and it's a thousand degrees here, I made a cotton back for the quilt, so it can be used year-round.  This picture is also of the back post-basting.. sorry again.  You get the picture though.   

 

The fabrics I used for the back were a yellow and white striped and a random baby footprint fabric.  I think post-quilting, the back will be nice.  I was picturing something much cuter in my head.

 

Anyway, this is how this one stands right now - I'll post (hopefully better) pictures of the finished product once it's done. 

I think I missed my calling

Over the past month or so, I have been sew crazy. I picked up my first sewing machine - a Janome 7330 Magnolia - from Wait's Sewing in Tyler, TX last year, but barely used it, as I was a work-a-holic. (He doesn't have a website, but his YP entry can be found here)

As a stroke of good fortune, I have had the opportunity to spend much of my time lately in front of the machine. My husband wasn't thrilled about it at first, but then he started to see how happy it made me to create something beautiful out of a few scraps of fabric and time. (Plus his grandmother does a lot of quilting, and I think he's hoping that I can eventually create the beauties that she does - I hope so too!)

  Right now, I don't think it's anything more than just a hobby, but I would eventually love to do some design work - maybe put my painting skill to the test and come up with a fabric design. (How do you even get something like that started??)

Let me show you what I've been working on so far!

I have never been shy about jumping right in there and trying something new. So I started Googling and YouTubing quilting tutorials. (After all, sewing a quilt top must be easier than garment sewing....) I came across Crafty Gemini's blog and YouTube Channel. She had just started her Victorian Modern Quilt-Along. You can find her Victorian Modern QAL here.

...I decided to give it a go. This is what happened:

There are a few things I learned while putting together this quilt top:

1. Be careful when picking replacement fabrics if you don't want to use the ones from the tutorial/pattern/quilt along. I found that my fabric selections didn't really have the same "feel" as the original that Vanessa made. Anyway, there are only a few fabrics that I used that, in retrospect, I would have selected a different fabric instead. Namely, the green and corners on all the blocks, and the sashing strips. Other than that, I don't feel that I did such an awful job choosing fabrics for my first project.
2. Corners are not easy if you're careless with measurements and seam allowances.  A little here and there can really add up to the end result being off by quite a bit.  

Long story short: I started paying a lot closer attention to my seam allowances.  I still don't have a 1/4" piecing foot, but I did attach a little stack of sticky notes as a guide on my machine. That definitely helped - A LOT.

So that this post does not get too long, I will share my other projects in a future one.  Thanks for reading!

Special thanks to Vanessa, the Crafty Gemini - she came up with the design for the quilt featured in this post.  Here is a link to her blog: Crafty Gemini.