Catching up with a nautical quilt!

When there's a nautical themed nursery...it's time to have some Fun With Flags. Especially when the baby's name is six letters. Nautical quilt ahoy!

I drafted the signal flags to finish at 6" square. I framed them in brown to ensure that I didn't lose any of the definition with a dark blue or white flag against the navy and white fabrics. I then surrounded those with alternating bands of navy blue and white courthouse steps-style. Each block finished at 16" square.

The signal flags are made out of leftover solids from Niece Quiche's quilt. I bound it with the same brown as the frames in the blocks. I think the combination of solids with the extremely controlled color palette turned out rather striking.

Biggest blocks I've made

Closest to the actual color of the backing

Quilting detail and closeup of backing/label

Stash report (2017 catch-up):

Fabric Used This Week (in 2017): 5.5 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date: 44 yards
Fabric Added This Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 48 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 4 yards gained

Catching up, Part 2: Oops, these are out of order!

My next door neighbor in 2017 had a grandson born in the spring of 2017. I made a scrappy string quilt for him. I let a random number generator decide color placement just to see how it would do...hence the blues all being at the bottom.

So hard to get colors right in old pictures from my old phone.

Dinosaurs!

I originally bought this dinosaur fabric in Korea intending for it to back a different baby quilt. But that baby quilt was too wide and instead the dinosaurs got to be used now!

Label

I bound it in cowboy boots and lassos, because it seemed fitting for a Texas baby.

Stash report for 2017...I think I managed to come out ahead for that year! More quilts to follow...


Fabric Used This Week (in 2017): 5.5 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date: 38.5 yards
Fabric Added This Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 48 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 9.5 yards gained

More Catching Up...

Catching up is always a bear, but let's get into it anyways.

I had three friends at church whose babies were due within...a month of each other? I thought it would be fun to see how far I could stretch a single block design and still make the quilts look totally different. I decided on a Courthouse Steps block as the basis for the quilts...jokingly calling it "Church Steps" as all these ladies were friends from church.

The first baby's nursery was vintage school themed, since the mother was a math teacher before having him. I bought school-themed fabrics to be the block centers - letters, numbers, school supplies, blackboards with math equations on them, chemistry equipment, etc. I wanted the quilt to have balls of color across it so I spent a while planning out which color would go where in the quilt.

Graph paper is my friend!

I really loved how the quilt turned out, and so did the recipient. It's bright and colorful and matched the nursery decor perfectly. The backing I chose was a blueprint of a model airplane that I found at JoAnn Fabrics. (Colors aren't totally accurate as they were taken at night, and while I've tried to correct them a bit it isn't quite worth it to chase down the perfection. The quilt has long since been given away, oh well!)

Fun, bright front

More muted but fun back

Label and closeup of backing and binding

And, of course, I had a wonderful binding helper.

Fabric Used This Week (in 2017): 5.5 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date: 33 yards
Fabric Added This Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 48 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 15 yards gained

Getting closer!

Jade, Binding, and...Did I Buy More Fabric Again? [An unfinished post that I have just now found, two years later]

I finished and delivered a quilt! Now called the Jade quilt, this was the pink and green quilt I mentioned in my last post. I chose a split 9 patch design for the blocks. This quilt took me forever, as I got hit with some severe exhaustion for a while there, but I finally got it done and delivered!

My block layout - with a helper!

Finished quilt

The layout of the front was fun to play around with. Looking at it once it was assembled I realized that there were a few places where two pieces of the same fabric ended up extremely close to each other, but I still love the overall effect.

Slightly blurry backing and label shot

I absolutely love how well the backing paired with the top. Thank you, JoAnn Fabrics, for having this beautiful butterfly print this spring! I had completely forgotten what fabric I'd picked for this quilt, and when I pulled out my purchases and found this one I about exploded. It ended up being perfect! I chose a shirt out of my bag of shirts to be de-boned and turned into quilting fabric for the binding, and I love the way it looks with both the front and the back. I didn't even need the entire back of the shirt for the binding on this quilt, so I've got more for future quilts.

I've also finished the top, quilted, and done the machine portion of the binding of my next quilt. I'm still working on the hand sewing portion of the binding, so it isn't *technically* finished yet, but it's coming along nicely. I'll do a full post on it when it's done. I'm not going to count the fabric for this quilt yet, since it's not finished.

The colored pencil binding stripes are perfect!

And then...I started cutting pieces for the next quilt after this one. However, once I made my plan for this quilt I realized I had barely any of the fabrics I'd need for it. I love scrappy quilts...so of course I needed to buy more fabric. I swear, I'm trying to use more than I buy this year!

Whites for the next quilt

Fabric Used This Week: 5.5 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date: 27.5 yards
Fabric Added This Week: 11.5 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 48 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 20.5 yards gained

I've got some serious quilting to do if I'm going to end up out of the red by December! I guess it's a good thing that I still have...10 quilts on my list for people I know who have had or are going to have babies between now and April. Eep! 

Oh, and public service announcement: change your rotary cutter blades and machine needles. I know I don't do it often enough (I'm finding that changing the cutter blade every project is about what I need to do to keep it running smoothly and not skipping) so here's your reminder! 

A Finish, and SO MUCH FABRIC

I finished Baby R's quilt finally! Remind me to never do a quilt with this many pieces again...or with pieces that finish this small. Uggggggggggggg. Seriously.

Overlook all of the missing points...

The main blocks are a design I pulled from my copy of 5,500 Quilt Block Designs - design number 2460, "Rosie's Purina Whirligig." I drafted the alternate blocks myself, with the small squares finishing to .75", and the center square finishing to 2". Again, why do I hate myself? The fabrics in the chain of the alternate blocks are the same as the sashing in the recipient's older sister's baby quilt, though, and I didn't have much of it to work with.

It got a little warped hanging over the rocking chair.

I backed the quilt with a light blue fabric with brown polka dots on it I'd gotten on clearance from Fat Quarter Shop, and just so happened to have a perfect binding to go with it - a brown batik with light blue grass blades on it. I love when my stash comes through for me!

I love the binding!

Judy over at Patchwork Times isn't doing a stash report link-up anymore, but I really want to keep track of my fabric usage. I made a HUGE purchase at Joann's this week, and while everything has a project to be a part of...it's a LOT of fabric. So I've got to make lots of quilts to get back into the black! I did finish another quilt this week, but it's currently in the wash so I'll have to blog about it later. I'm counting its yardage, though - I need all the help I can get!

Fabric Used This Week: 11 yards
Fabric Used Year to Date: 22 yards
Fabric Added This Week: 30.25
Fabric Added Year to Date: 36.5 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 14.5 yards gained

I also bought batting, since I was out of crib-sized batting and I still have 6 more quilts to make for friends, family, and coworkers. Here's a picture of the fabric I bought:

Most of what I got was from the clearance rack. I have 3 distinct themes for my next quilts - a green/pink quilt (the greens at the bottom, and the backing second from the top in the back pile), a school-theme quilt (the two fabrics on the right, and the backing is the third in the pile), and a pink/red/gray poppy theme quilt. I had very few lighter reds, and almost no grays in my stash. This is no longer teh case. And I found the best backing ever - poppies on a gray plaid background.

Hold me accountable, people...

Work In Progress

My quilting time is pretty scarce these days but I have been doing what I can when I can (okay, not always...the internet is far too easy to get lost in). But I am making a lot of progress.

Baby J-kwelin had a baby sister born on my birthday last year. Of course, since her older sister had one of my quilts this little girl needed one too. There was a block design in my 5,000 Quilt Block Designs book that actually had her name as part of it, so I picked it and haven't looked back. Funnily enough, this design is VERY similar to J-kwelin's design...like turn four half-square triangles in a different direction similar. So the sisters will have similar but different quilts.

Five blocks to go, then the alternate setting blocks.

I love how the design is turning out, even if every block pretty much has at least one place where a point has been chopped off. Seriously, it's a block made entirely of half-square triangles and flying geese. It's going to happen.

In other news, I won some fabric two weeks ago (but didn't have time to post last week)! Annie of Annie's Ruby Slipperz had a giveaway for 5 fat quarters on her blog when she recently came back into blogging. I won! I got to choose the color I wanted so I picked *gasp* neutrals. This is what she sent me - they'll be perfect for adding some variety into my stash. I've been using a lot of neutrals.

Yay new fabric!

Finally, I've been doing leaders and enders almost since I got seriously into machine quilting back in 2009-ish. For several years, my leaders and enders have been paper-pieced blocks from The Civil War Love Letter Quilt book by Rosemary Youngs. I've finished 34 blocks from the book so far. My book didn't come with paper piecing patterns, but I used phone book paper and drafted the blocks based off of the picture/pattern in the book. Some of these have some really small pieces and paper piecing definitely makes me more confident about the way the block will turn out in the end. My current block is this one:

First of five of these stars complete

What the block will look like

I've changed the colors from what they are in the book on all of these blocks. I'm sticking to a similar color scheme as the log cabin quilt from my last post - brown, green, orange, and blue.

Finally, my stash report:


Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 11 yards
Fabric Added this Week: 1.25 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 6.25 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 4.75 yards used


I'm still in the black! I've got a lot of quilts to make (this one, 3 friends are due in April and May, my neighbor's daughter in law is due in April, and a coworker of hubby's is going to be welcoming his first sometime soon as well) so time to sign off here and get sewing while I still have a chance!

Linking up with Stash Report Sunday and Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times!

A Short Update

I entered my first quilt show! I didn't place, which I pretty much expected, but I had 3 quilts in the show all with my name on them! Aaaahhhhh!

The first quilt was Niece Quiche's Star Wars quilt. My sister was kind enough to send it back to me to put a hanging sleeve on and compete with.

The second was for Twig, my one year old son. The top has been done since...um...September? October? I knew I wanted to quilt it on my new mid-arm machine but kept procrastinating because I didn't feel ready to do it. Like I would mess the quilt up if I did it. I spent a lot of time picking out the quilting and actually had the machine break down but the owner of the company that made my machine was very helpful via email and we got it working again. I finished this quilt the day before everything had to be turned in for the show.

I called this "Twig Cabin" since we called my son Twig until we decided on his name.

 The third was for baby H3, my nephew. His nursery was ocean themed so I designed and made this quilt in less than a month. When the mid-arm broke down I immediately switched gears and prepared it for quilting on Jenny the Janome. The quilting was simple and pretty fast, and this was finished the day before the show as well.

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times for her Stash Report:

Fabric Used this Week: 11 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 0 yards
Fabric Added this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Added Year to Date: 5 yards
Net Fabric for 2017: 6 yards used