A Finish for a Very Special Girl

I am very pleased to announce a very special quilt finished for a very special little girl - my neice, who I called neice Quiche in my last post. I finally finished the quilt and got it sent off to the wild world of Wisconsin, where it has been very warmly received...and I'm super excited to show it to all of you!

Neice Quiche has been very long anticipated and finally arrived this past December (I know, I'm a bit late on this quilt). When my sister found out she was expecting, she and her husband made a deal that allowed him to pick the nursery theme (before they knew gender) and he decided vintage Star Wars. I was SO excited they kept the theme even after finding out they were having a little girl...and so I got around to designing a vintage Star Wars baby quilt.

I did a quick search on Pinterest for Star Wars Quilts and found a pin that linked to Andy Rash's Star Wars pixel art and I was totally hooked. I drew the characters on graph paper, cut them out, and moved them around until I liked the design (with the hubby's help to try to make them all fit). I had decided on 1.5" strips unfinished/1" finished and the size had to fit on the Warm and Natural crib-size batting (package says it's 45x60).

Left: the colored-in cut-out pieces; Right: we re-drew them to make it easier to sew from, but coloring was too tedious.

At first, I was afraid of the design - the characters had enough overlap between them that I was envisioning Y-seams and other terrible things (hey, I hate them...if you can do them, the more power to you!)...until my husband pointed out that I could just make blocks of a fixed size and the characters would still come together in the end. Duh!

To make the quilt as best I could, I used my Go! Cutter to cut 1.5" strips, then sewed those strips into the most common strip pairs I'd need for any given block. I then sub-cut those strip pairs down into doublets - two 1.5" squares sewn together, not pressed. I pressed the top seams of each block to the left, the next row to the right, etc. so they would nest well; waiting to press the sub-cut seams helped all of that lay nice and easy for me.


The solids are all Kona cottons, which I'd bought from the Fat Quarter Shop. In all, I'd bought 6.5 yards of the solids and either 3 or 4 yards of the background, which was Stargazers Sky Milky Way Yardage (I can't find it on the Fat Quarter Shop now, but here's a picture of the fabric on Fabric.com:

Overall, I definitely bought too much of the solids, but they'll get used in the future, I'm sure. This quilt was fun, if a little finicky to get all the seams to match. After all, it contained 2,240 squares in total, and getting that many to match up...isn't necessarily impossible, but definitely difficult.

The backing was Timeless Treasures Fairy Tale Mini Stars Fuschia. I bought 3 yards and it worked well - I had a few strips left over from each side of the quilt but not too much. To bind the quilt, I opted for a navy batik with a snowflake design left from Texas Mom's 4-Seasons quilt. I think I got it from Fat Quarter Shop, but I'm honestly not positive because it was bought in 2010. I picked this print because neice Quiche is a December baby, and my sister's wedding was in December - her colors were blue and silver and she had lots of snowflakes in her decorations. I liked that the binding tied that in there subtly.

I quilted in a squared-off spiral so the quilting would go through every square of fabric (gotta help reinforce those seams for baby quilts - they'll get spit up on and need to go through the wash!). I randomly quilted a few stars throughout, as you can see in the character shots below. For the two ends of the quilt, I just quilted straight lines (the rectangle meant that I ran out of width to quilt before I ran out of length) to make the eye think that the spiral was still going.

Pictures from before I sent it off (this is bigger than my usual quilt, so I had to stand on the couch and get pictures of it on the floor):

The whole front - isn't this fun?

Backing, binding, and helicopter label close-up

Chewie yelling - I love his ammo belt!

Little ewok and Yoda

Emperor Palpatine; it's hard to see the magic sparks coming out of his hands but you can if you click to make the picture bigger.

*cue the Imperial March here*

She looks a little awkward, but at least she has the cinnamon buns!

Luke and C3PO, who is appropriately in the middle of the fight, probably trying unsuccessfully to calm everyone down. Luke's light saber and eyes are the same color as the Emperor's electricity.

Han shot first!

R2D2 in the middle of the fight, right where he belongs!

Storm Trooper

And now a few pictures of the quilt in action, used with permission from my sister:

I absolutely love the location of the characters. The droids, just like in the movies, have managed to get in the middle of the battles. Luke and Han are both trying to protect Leia, Chewie is throwing up his arms and doing the noise he is so known for, and the Ewok is getting into trouble as always, unaware of how tiny he is. Yoda is even almost standing on Luke's shoulders.

Stash Report, linking up with Judy L. of Patchwork Times whenever hers goes live:

Used this Week: 7 yards (front, backing, and binding)
Used year to Date: 7 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 7 yards
Yards to Goal: 43
Net for 2015: 0 yards added - I'm even! Wahoo!

Weekend Update

Hello! I thought I'd give ya'll a little update on my weekend. It's been quite wonderful so far...too bad it won't last longer. I went out to dinner on Friday night with a friend, her kids, and a few other ladies with their kids. It was one of the most stressful dinners I've ever been to. We had 7 children there all told, with the youngest being a baby and the oldest being about 6 or so. Four boys, three girls. Needless to say, it was a bit of a headache. We were in a back corner of the restaurant, but those kids would not listen for anything. Nobody got dessert that night. I think the restaurant, and everybody there, was glad to see us go.

Saturday, I went to a Pampered Chef party. I was only allowed to spend the cash I already had in my wallet, which was a whopping $15. I got two spice rubs...that mandoline slicer was calling my name, though. SO awesome. I always cut myself when I try to use my grater's mandoline side. Last time, I got my knuckle and it took almost a month to finish healing. Something to save up for, I guess!

I spent all of the rest of my day grocery shopping and sewing. I made this Potato soup for dinner, and it was amazing. I altered the recipe a bit, though. I used more of the celery, onion, and potato - I used the whole onion, I think either 3 or 4 stalks of celery, and 3 potatoes. Then, before I added the cream at the end, I added some baby spinach leaves and let them get all wilted. It was awesome! My bacon was a little chewy, though, because I tried using too small of a pot. If you have a large saucepan (a few inches high but with a very large bottom), use that for this soup. That recipe was enough for me to have one bowl plus seconds for two meals.

Sunday morning, I got up and made two batches of my favorite cookies. We were having a potluck lunch after church. Once those were made and baking, I put together some beef stew in the crock pot. I wasn't planning on eating it tonight, since I wanted to finish the soup, but I wanted to have it done for tomorrow night. I kind of ad libbed on the recipe, so I'll have to let you know how it tastes! I also made bread, and this time, the loaves didn't stick to the pan. Picture perfect! I'm thinking about trying to make whole wheat bread, but am kind of reluctant to change. I love this recipe for its simplicity, so does anyone have any advice?

On the sewing front, I ordered the backing for my mom's and my mother in law's quilt. They're actually the same backing, a batik that was on sale at Hancock's of Paducah. I felt really bad for buying it though, because I had to get a ton (pieced back) and even on sale it was expensive. 10 yards of a fabric that's priced at almost $10 a yard...yeah. I had my husband's permission, though, so I bought it. This is the backing:

I swoon over batiks, so this was right up my alley. Hooray! I'm now about 2/3 done with the quilting on Pop-Pop's quilt. I'm so excited because this means that it'll be done with plenty of time to enter it in the Project Modern Challenge!

In other news, I got to see Pop-Pop today. I was Skyping with my mom, and my dad was picking him up from the Assisted Living Center for Sunday lunch at my parents' house. We stayed on long enough so I could see him and he's looking great. He's looking much better than the last time I saw him. The Assisted Living Center is definitely taking good care of him. If nothing else, the food has made a big difference. He hated cooking for himself, so having food prepared for him is a huge thing. My dad got him to talk a little bit about when he was in WWII, which I always love hearing about. I can't wait to have this quilt for him. He hates the cold, and it's about to be winter so it'll be just in time. He seriously is a bigger baby about cold than my husband (I love you, honey!), who's from Texas. He was wearing his jacket, zipped all of the way up, at my parent's house today.

My husband today was saying that I'm perfect. Why am I perfect? Because I can make yummy food (like beef stew and homemade bread and cookies and potato soup) and I can sew and make quilts for people AND...I'm a nerd. I'm a nerd because when he sends me links like this one I start thinking of what else I would have to put with it to have the right outfit (my black leggings and my Rocket Dogs shoes). And when I can't figure out what movie to watch, I watch our Special Extended Edition of the Lord of the Rings movies. And then laugh at them. Because quotes like "Are all these children yours? Gracious, you've been productive" just make me laugh. Besides, when Agent Smith from the "Matrix" movies comes out with long hair and elf ears and says "Welcome to Rivendell" you just can't help but mentally a "Mister Anderson" to the end of it. And then, because you really can't talk about Lord of the Rings without showing this, here's one of my favorite little songs made from bits of the LOTR movies:



Now whenever you see the movies, you'll remember these little bits of the movies and will laugh at them. I love this video...seriously!

I'm supposed to get the first snow of the year this week. I don't know if I'll see it, since my office is in the basement, but I hope I do. There's something magical about the first time it snows. But if it snows daily until spring, I might start having problems. We'll see!

Anyways, just out of curiosity - what did you get done this weekend, sewing or otherwise? I'd love to see some comments about it!

Not FNSI, but...

So Friday Night Sew-In isn't for another few weeks...but I may or may not have had my own FNSI by myself tonight. I was originally planning on going to my real-life quilting friend's house for dinner (leftover tacos) and a movie (who knows what) and probably some quilting or at least drooling over the Hancock's of Paducah catalog. But with this cold, I didn't want her or her two little boys to get it (little kids are even more miserable than grown-ups when they're sick!). I'm feeling much better, but I don't want to risk it. To top it off, I ended up having to stay at work until just late enough that I had to choose between checking the mail just in case Pop-Pop's quilt backing and batting arrived and getting gas in my car. Needless to say, I chose the mail. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything there. :(

So back to my evening. I had leftover tacos anyways, and hand-quilted on Heather's baby quilt while watching Pride and Prejudice. It's my all-time favorite movie, and I really wanted to see it. There's just something about Lizzie and Mr. Darcy...it makes me smile. And, since I haven't made any progress on the sewing front beyond the hand-sewing (which is extremely slow and I won't bore you with pictures until I'm done with that quilt), I wanted to share with you all the evolution of my plan for my mom's quilt.

It started off with me just wanting an Autumn quilt. So what's more Autumn-y than falling leaves, right? Right. At this point, I was living in a hotel, so my resources were very limited and I didn't have any graph paper. My first attempt at figuring out the quilt was this:

Pretty impressive picture-taking skills there, right? And pretty awesome artistry too. It's hard to get a picture of a piece of paper that small....but if you look, there's a tree with a knot hole and leaves falling in the air. As soon as I had drawn this (on the back of the hotel's pad of paper), I realized that the quilt would need something to help anchor the right side. The left side would have the tree, but the right would have a lot of air. So I took a lined notebook I had, tore out a sheet and used it to mark up another piece of paper and made my own graph paper. Sometimes you just have to make do! So I added a hill on the right side - that would provide a bit more vertical interest on that side and make the base of the quilt visually more heavy. The solid green down there would weight it and make it seem more...real. Does that make sense? Here was my next version, on homemade graph paper!

Again, sorry for the flash. Taking pictures at 9 at night isn't easy. Originally, I didn't have as many leaves as you see here. I thought that I wouldn't want leaves directly next to or diagonal from each other, nor would I want the touching. My husband, as you can see, threw that out of the window! He also re-did my leaf color scheme. Aren't I lucky to have a husband who's willing to get involved in my quilting? I love him!

And then, you've seen my final design. I did this when I got a pad of graph paper, and I made the quilt a little bit bigger (about 6 inches wider). I did this because I'm a fan of quilts that are more square than long, skinny rectangles, and I didn't have enough room on the original homemade graph paper to fit any more width. I also added some leaves, since I made so much more room (my blocks will finish to 6 inches wide...if I can manage to sew correctly, which is always a big if!). Finalized design is here:

Don't be afraid to change your design...or to make a quilt that scares the living daylights out of you! I'm not afraid to admit that I'm terrified of this quilt. The leaf blocks don't line up in the least, which will make sewing everything together a pain in the rear end, I'm sure. To top it off, there are a TON of seams per leaf block, which is a TON more places where I can mess up my blocks. So far I've managed to keep my blocks big enough to at least fudge size-wise, but I'm nervous.

What scares you most as a quilter?

Pop-Pop's Quilt Process Part 2

What you see here are stacks of 108 green 4.5 inch squares and 108 brown 4.5 inch squares. Oh, and the bags of scraps from cutting said squares. Aren't I organized? Haha, yeah right... you just can't see the rest of the room, or the rest of my house for that matter!
The bag on the left is my bag of future stuffing. Up until very recently, pincushions were stuffed with pieces of thread too small to sew with, or fabric bits too small to be sewn into a quilt. I really hate wasting, and I don't usually have anything for a leaders / enders project, so my thread snippets and those super-skinny fabric bits from squaring up that block for a quilt go in there. I might also put it outside next spring for birds to use in their nests. I just don't want to buy stuffing if I already make it every time I sew, you know?
Back to Pop-Pop's quilt, though, having my iron right next to my sewing table made cutting so much easier. Some of you may laugh at that, but this is the first time I have had a whole room just for my sewing. Being able to immediately press a wrinkly fabric before cutting is a bit of a luxury for me.
Those stacks are very organized to make the sewing process easier. All squares of any individual fabric are together, and they are subdivided into smaller stacks of ten. All of each fabric may not be in the same group of ten, but they are still right next to each other (as in, if a fabric is on the bottom of one stack, more of it might be on the top of the next stack).
This organization helps with my piecing method for this quilt: the random number generator. Yes, I am a nerd. I start with the generator picking from 1 to 108, and whichever fabric it chooses, I use so long as it is not already in that square. The next time I take from that stack, the generator picks from 1 to 107,and so on. For ease of counting, I shuffle the "one less" up through the stack so that like fabrics stay next to each other and as many stacks have 10 squares in them as possible, effectively leaving one less square in the top stack. It's a bit more time consuming, but the nerd in me is absolutely jumping for joy. Nerdy math and computer stuff plus quilting equals a fully satisfied quilter and a fully satisfied nerd. It has tried to make several repeats already, and my most plentiful brown has been used in all but one 9 patch so far, but my most plentiful green still hasn't been touched yet. I am really curious as to when that green does finally get used.
I'll keep ya'll posted on my progress!