Small things

I worked on a couple small things last week, since I needed a break from staring at but NOT working on the king sized quilt I managed to botch up and have to rip apart and trim and resew...

First was a fabric ball for a lovely six year old who said she wanted a ball after getting a look at my hexy paper piecing kit.  I figured she wont have high craftsmanship standards so I was not worried about her being too dissatisfied with whatever the end product was ;)

She picked out fabrics from the kit to use (do I have to admit I'd sewn some of it together before I realized  you need at least SOME pentagons to make a ball fit together?) so I decided to do all pentagons instead and cut the same prints in the new appropriate shape.

I used this tutorial, but decided to paper piece (since the whole idea came up after a discussion of paper piecing).  I think machine sewn would've been nicer looking or at least using pink or purple thread, but I used Gutermann specifically made for hand quilting that I've been using for all my paper piecing.

It actually bounces, I'm impressed!

Next was a pencil pouch with the tutorial from Little Big Girl Studio.  It had a slightly different take on putting together the pouch than I've used before, and was easy to follow with great pics. 

For this I used Essex linen and prints from Art Gallery's Indian Summer.  It was near impossible to cut 2.5" squares for the patchwork, I wanted to include MORE of the prints not less!

It was the perfect size to use as a clutch for an event over the weekend, fit keys, ID, phone & lip gloss :)

Finished Triangles Pillow

Seriously is it not obvious I love my pillow?

Oooh I love something I made, and the fact that I did my own template for it makes me a happy campter.  That wasn't so bad, a lot of juggling trying to make sure it was mostly color balanced, and trying to keep straight what pieces went where since I didn't number anything.

I'm trying to experiment with all the different types of closures I can find, so I opted for an envelope closure pillow cover.  I followed the tutorial at i'm a ginger monkey. 

 Headliner News from Blank Textiles
Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow Fabric - Herringbone 
Kona in some blue that I have a ton of ;)

I machine quilted it with Aurifil, just some abstracty-ish straight line quilting.  And YES, I did choose my text print placement carefully to include thunderous and cockpit. :|  I have the sense of humor of a teenage boy, after all.

April Blocks of the Month, Hexy Quilt Progress

Not For Paper

April has not been a good month for me block wise,  I guess it's only halfway through the month but phew!

First the block for the And Sew On... BOM at Quiet Play was titled either “Snip It Real Good”. or “Not for Paper"  I'm going with the second because don't want to associate this block with vasectomies, for realz!  I need to go back and fix up the seam for this, but I'm feeling very rushed so not in a hurry to do so.  Never mind that my fabric choices...phew.  See how small that picture is?  yeah, that is how much I don't want

Black Hole Star

April's block for the Lucky Stars BOM  is Black Hole Star. I like it OKish, I wanted to add some darker colors into the mix, but because of the layout, I didn't use any of the Moda Bella in Sand in it, it doesn't tie into the other blocks at all.  The measurements given for one of the outer pieces were a itsy bit too small and so that caused some issues too. I might see how it looks with Sand as sashing.

I've been making slow progress on my 1" hexagon lap quilt, I can tell its going to be...eccentric.  Hey it almost covers my knees now, that's something! ;)

January through April Luck Stars Blocks

King Sized Triangle Quilt

I'm pretty fond of super giant blankets (ones big enough that they'll still cover me at  4 am after my partner has spent all night tossing and turning clockwise and making them slowly creep across the bed and onto the floor on their side,  ya know?) so even though we only have a queen sized bed, it seems sensible (if unwieldy) to go bigger. I happen to be lucky enough that my quilt wall is JUST big enough to plan out a king sized quilt on.

Freshly Pieced - baby quilt

I have an inspiration as usual, a Triangle baby quilt from Lee at the Freshly Pieced blog. I'm using Mary Sue's Triangle ruler to make 7 3/4" tall triangles for this one.

So far I'm doing OK in the planning, I keep trying to add more and more colored bits and having less and less neutral showing. I guess this is one of those modern quilting challenges - managing to have a lot of negative space when I'm done.

I'm a fan of unusual quilt edges, so wont be doing straight edges, but a zig zag border that follows the triangles. Hopefully binding it won't be too horrible.



 I decided to make a cooler hued quilt than would be my natural tendency, to go with the Riley Blake Chevron curtains I have up.  I'm really confused by some of the fabrics I chose because I don't actually like all of them, but I'm going with it :p

My print choices are from Art Gallery's Carnaby Street, Anna Maria Horner's Field Study & Piper by Dear Stella. I'm throwing some matching solids in too, and using Kona in bone for the neutral.  I have a lot more tinkering to do and I'm not sure if I'll end up happy with it but that won't stop me from finishing it ;)

Triangles Pillow

Inspiration pillow @ Kitchen Table Quilting

Still on a pillow rampage over here, and had this pillow from Kitchen Table Quilting pinned that I wanted to do something similar to.  I DO plan on trying to do some form of every pillow on my pinterest board and I'm making pretty good headway!

Erica has a tutorial for how to make her pillow through that link, and maybe I'll try that someday, but I figured I should instead make more work for myself and wing it.

Freezer paper seems to have lots of versatile craft purposes I haven't discovered yet, and I want to try more of them out.  I planned my template out on an 18" square of it, and  I'll make a second copy of it so I can cut it apart to use for paper piecing and still have a reference for what the hell I'm actually trying to do.  My lines are 1" apart from each other. I didn't plan carefully so there are going to be a couple of Y seams I'm not looking forward to piecing together, but I think it will be straightforward other than that.

That craziness wont be my color scheme, I was just having color fun to differentiate the general layout.  I'm thinking black, blue, purple and green.

Linking up to a Lovely Year of Finishes, I'm sure this won't take too long to make so I don't feel time crunched to meet the deadline by the end of the month, but it's counting towards my trying new things this year goal.

New York Beauty Pillow

I am not sure I'm getting any better at paper piecing, but I am getting more patient at unpicking tiny stitches!

Pretty sure I'd written about wanting to do some New York Beauty blocks from the QAL that Sara at Sew Sweetness did last year.

I was originally going to do four blocks for the front and four for the back but I decided to take the easy way out and ..not do that. A nice simple back was about all I was up for by the time I finished the front :|

I used blocks 0, 4, 8 & 6. There are tutorials with helpful hints, all of which I totally ignored.

I didn't expect to default to "the sun is yellow, the sky is blue" philosophy but it sure simplified fabric planning!  I wish I'd taken pictures before I made it into a pillow, it was much prettier flat.  Seems like I should've added a border around it so the blocks were fully visible.  If I'd paid better attention in the Flickr group I would've realized this would be a problem. 




I stuffed this instead of using a pillow form, and handstitched the opening closed.  One thing I DO need to do is figure out how to sew pillows closed so that it doesn't crimp oddly.

Apparently out of the many many ways to do it, I chose an option that wasn't any of them.  I'll be be resewing the closure when I have a bit of time because it doesn't look nearly as lovely as it should.





The back well...an appliqued sun and free motion quilted clouds.  Not too much to say about it *cough* I took the lazy way out, as an excuse to practice my fmq.

I'm glad I tried my hand at these blocks, they didn't scare me too much, and it was relatively easy to match the seams up (aka I didn't screw anything up too much)

Now that I've had a few more minutes to think about it I've realized a better option is to just  un-pillow this and turn it into a mini quilt for the bedroom. I have a lot more wall space available than pillow space after all...

sensed photo op, butted in.