D&B Quilt

 I have finished and gifted my D&B quilt. Yay for me!! Okay, so I finished it  a month and a half ago, but I finally get to blog about it. :o) Since that was my one focus with a deadline, as soon as I finished it, I took a break. I haven't even looked at my sewing machine, area or fabric since July 28th. I feel a little guilty, but it goes away pretty quickly. I do get an inspiration bug every Wednesday when I read WIP Wednesday posts over at Freshly Pieced but then the world takes over again and I don't do anything about  it. But enough about that, let's focus on what I actually DID!

My 6'2" husband is back there somewhere.

Quilt label: The first verse of "Crazy Love" which was their first dance song.

The back is Moda 108" wide Dotty. This is a close up of the quilting. Just straight lines following the pattern.

On my King size bed. There is no overhang, but I'm alright with that. It's not for my bed. ;o)

Close up quilting on the front. I believe this is after I washed it. Most of the lines really are relatively straight. I promise.

Thankfully B loved it. She says it went on their bed right after the bridal shower. I didn't get to see it, so I'll believe her. For now. :o) I love this couple and I am very selfishly glad that they have something that could be an heirloom from the start of their marriage. And I made it. :o) No shame, I know. My camera has been acting up so I didn't get the very best pictures of us, but I'm trying to learn to just go with the flow and post pictures even if they do not look super professional.

Ready for the bachelorette party.

Rehearsal dinner night. 

 Did I mention my kids were the Flower Girl and Ring Bear? That's right: Ring Bear. My 4 year old was so excited that he was going to go down the aisle scaring people. "Rowr!!" It took me a little bit to get what he was talking about. Too cute. Check them out at: http://bit.ly/Pmkag6 and http://bit.ly/PmkiMw

Unfortunate smile when you're waiting too long. And a couple of celebratory drinks in. ;o)

See? I can smile better.

We couldn't stay the whole night at the wedding because we traveled to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico the next day. And of course, my lovely Babycakes was not packed at all. All in all, it was a pretty eventful summer. I managed to get two whole quilts finished, I have 2 in the works and the fabric for a third. I need to get my sewing machine serviced (a first for me!) and then I will get back in the swing of things. Babycakes would like to have our Swoon quilt finished before the end of the year.... isn't that sweet? He's delusional! Well, maybe not completely. We'll see.

Super Heroes Quilt

Super Heroes Quilt, a photo by VioEleven11 on Flickr.

I have a finish! I've been a little lazy about sewing lately, but with my nephew's birthday coming up, I put my butt into gear. I will admit that I missed finishing in time for the birthday party, but only by a week! I hope he likes it.

I used 4 prints of Retro Marvel Super Heroes by. Camelot Cottons, 2 other Marvel prints I found at JoAnn's (I forget who made them), Kona white for the sashing, black solid for the back with a scrapy quadrant and Kona Rich Red for the binding.
Because the scale of the prints is so large, I cut my squares at 12" and some rectangles at 12" by 24" to give it the look of a comic book. I didn't want the sashing to be too thin so I cut it at 3". I'm not sure that I like it so wide, though. It probably would have been fine if it finished at 2". I believe the end result is about 72" by 86". Not standard, but I'm okay with that.

Now I have no excuse for not focusing on my D&B quilt. I have it basted and I've sewn a 1/4" border on. I need to get to quilting! I officially have less than 4 weeks to finish BUT I have a week and a half of vacation starting on the 4th. I can do it!!! :o)

D&B quilt top is finished!!!

D&B on my king size bed. Please ignore everything that is NOT a quilt top. :o)

I finished! Whoo hoo!! This is only my second quilt top EVER to finish, and I am so happy with it. I had a bit of some personal drama with my design, but it worked out in the end,. It measures about 77" by 87". I wanted to add a border of multi colored 2.5" squares, but I think that would take away from the whole look of it. There is no rule that every quilt needs to be a standard size, so I'm sticking with what I have. I think I'll back it with Moda's 108" wide lime dottie fabric and bind it in a teal. The original plan was for me to take a long arm quilting class at my LQS, but I slacked too much. Then I thought about sending it out to be quilted, but I decided to attempt it myself on my little Brother (is my machine supposed to have a name?) so that I can be proud to say I made it all myself. I'm so excited for this finish that I ALMOST told the bride about it!! :o)

 Close up of D&B

 I've been very distracted this month. I discovered Bollywood movies. They're my type of movie! I love singing and dancing and cheesy love stories. It doesn't hurt that I've found some very hunky actors. ;o) The only downside is that I don't speak Hindi so I have to read the subtitles which basically leaves me stuck to the TV for up to 3 hours per movie. I managed to pull myself away enough to squeeze in To Kill a Mockingbird for book club and piece together the D&B quilt top over a couple of weekends. I had to keep reminding myself that it's just a bunch of quarter inch seams and I only have 3 months left to finish. I didn't touch anything Swoon related even one bit. I'm trying to feel bad about it, but I don't. :o) I think that's ok. I'll get to it. And now to finish!!

Swoon half way point.

Swoon half way point., a photo by VioEleven11 on Flickr.

I'm still Swooning, just at a much slower pace that I meant to. I've finished 8 of my planned 16 blocks and my random colors are starting to grow on me. The last 3 blocks I did had deeper solids and I think they really balanced out the pale and super bright ones I had. The only one I'm not overly fond of is #7 which is teal and gray. I loved the combination without the background. I didn't pay attention to how closely the two grays match up, and since that combo is one I have half yards of, there will be at least one other block like it. Oh well, maybe that one will grow on me too.

Formerly known as...

I admit defeat. My first quilting defeat, that is. I was really excited about my Triple Irish Chain wedding quilt for two close friends that are getting married this summer. And then I started laying out my fabric and it all crashed down on me. :o(   I believe that I DID pick out nice colors which I believe are close to their wedding colors/favorite colors.

But the truth is I DIDN'T pick the correct shades (tones?) of said colors for Irish Chain layouts. I wanted to do scrappy but keep the colors in the same place i.e. yellow always in the center followed by green then blue. But there's not real darker color than the rest so it all just jumbles together and does not look like I wanted it to.

 First try: yellows in the center.

Second try: blues in the center.

Of course I realized this AFTER cutting all my fabric into 2 1/2" strips. What to do? I thought maybe there was enough difference between the yellow and green to scale it down to a Double Irish Chain. No go. :o(

My scraps are just too different and at the same time, not different enough. Who does that?! Maybe I psyched myself out by not being able to see it all in the grand scheme of things. I know that I didn't like a single block, though, and that was enough for me. I thought about doing a rail fence with all 3 colors blending into each other, but again the colors are not conducive to that layout.

So after over thinking it all twice and out loud to my very patient husband, I decided to go for a rail fence stair step type of quilt inspired by Red Pepper Quilts. I'm going to make mine bigger with 3 strips of color and a wider white so I believe it will be a 10.5" square.

I am so over the hill with this layout now! Well, as long as I don't start over thinking things again. I sure hope not because I started piecing my strips yesterday. I'd like to do a thin white border followed by a scrappy 2 1/2" square border, probably doing a blue, yellow, green pattern again. So I've renamed the quilt (for now) as the D&B quilt. It's way shorter than "Triple Irish Chain Quilt". :o)

In other news, I managed to piece two Swoon blocks this week. It felt awesome to get back into it. I may try to piece the rest two at a time as well, just so that it doesn't take me all year to finish it. I'm not too thrilled about the over all colors. I probably should have focused more on the colors of the whole quilt rather than the theme. Oh well. It's just going on my bed. Nobody will ever know. Unless they read this blog. OR look at my flickr photostream. :o)

Make an excuse Thursday

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Next 10 blocks., a photo by VioEleven11 on Flickr.

Ugh. Shopping for fabric and taking a picture is all I've managed to do this week. I had a fun weekend full of girlfriends and wine, but not much on the quilting front. Side note: I bought 5 block pairings that's I'm pretty happy with. My LQS has having a moving sale so i couldn't only have them cut fat quarters, so I had to get a half yard of each. :o( Not too bad since I can just swap my prints and solids for colors 1 and 2, but it kind of messes with my original idea of not repeating fabrics. I'm happy with each color combination, I just don't know that they'll be very cohesive once they're all together. I only need one more block pair and I'll have all 16 for my King Swoon. Back to our regularly scheduled program: Oh, I also marked my Swoon squares and pinned them together. So I did 2 things. BUT I have not dusted off the sewing machine all week. Time to make an excuse!

My husband has been out of work since July. It sucks. I've gotten used to him being home when I came home and that's all done for the next 8 months. He's gone back to school! Good news, of course, but sucky for me! No more pampering, leading the "good life" coming home to my husband who's a great father and has definitely done more than his share of housework lately. His class is from 6 to 10 pm, which of course is prime bed time for my reluctant 3 and 5 year olds. Boo! I took him for granted and forgot how hard it is to be by myself with my children. Weird, isn't it?

Excuse number two: full work week! Overtime! Stinkin' work. I had my first 5 day work week last week after Christmas and all that, but the combination of excuse 1 and excuse 2 sucks. Lucky my kids have gotten home cooked meals so far. I can't promise anything for tomorrow, though. :o)

Excuse #3 is my book club's fault. We finally met this last weekend to discuss our last book. I finished Moloka'i over the New Year weekend, and I didn't want to start the next one before meeting for fear of both stories mushing up in my brain. Mind you 1898 Hawaii and 1942 France have nothing in common, but that's why it's called excuses, right? :o) Sarah's Key is actually a pretty fast read and because it is, it just makes me want to read it even more! I should be done soon, so there's hope for this week yet!

I have two blocks cut, marked and pinned so even if I manage to not get any Swooning finished this week, I think a two-for-one could put me back in the game. I do love seeing what everybody is coming up with on the Swoon -Along flickr page.

Wish me luck!

Swoon 3

Swoon 3, a photo by VioEleven11 on Flickr.

I spent way too much time thinking about this fabric and where it all needed to go. I'm really happy that it came out so well, but I think I'll stay away from directional fabric for now. That being said, I have a date with my best friend this weekend and she just happens to live next to the quilt shop where I've been getting all my lovely Asian print fabrics. We'll see how long I can stay away from directionals. :o) I want to have lots of color in the quilt, but it's kind of hard. I think I already have enough off-white, I now have two blocks that will have blue and green (different shades), so I guess I'll have to start venturing out to orange, maybe even yellow.  We'll see when I get to the store. These first 3 blocks are kind of muted. Not bad, but that's not how I want my whole quilt to look like. I have two solids that are crazy bright for Swoon 4 and 5.

I was a little late with finishing the 3rd block this week. My first two were finished on Tuesday and Wedneday. I finished block 3 on Thursday. I'm doing well since it's supposed to be one per week. I know myself, though, and I know that if I stop it's really hard to get my motivation back up and running. I have the fabric for my next two blocks already cut, so I'll probably work on them at the same time. I find that I usually do one night to make all my half square triangles and  flying geese, and another to put them all together. This last time, I think I cut a little bit of time off my construction by pinning both sides of a strip and then pressing. I also brought my squares out of my sewing area and took them to my daughter's ballet class. I was able to mark them all in the 30 mins I spent waiting for her class to be over. I almost have a routine! Yay me.