I have been horribly negligent....

I have not updated in several weeks... almost months.  I am sorry for that but I am in the midst of doing everything but quilting.  I did make the back for Molly's quilt and took it off to the long arm quilter.  I considered trying to quilt it myself but she wanted a minky back and I only have so much patience.  I am also in the midst of moving.  I have not packed up all my quilting stuff but I have packed up a lot of it.  I feel very much like this cat looks about now... 

So, I will be back as soon as we are settled.  Or if I have some time in the evenings and think about it, I may take this time to post some of the items I have done in the past.  

Ready for Quilting!

I knew this one wouldn't take too long at all, and it would have been done even sooner had we stayed in town for spring break.  But it was nice to get out and relax for a week and not have to worry about anything. Here is is all pressed and ready to be quilted.

The only issue is that I did not pay as much attention to the size as I thought and it is slightly larger than the backing I had planned to use.  I told Molly that she could have a fuzzy purple back so it looks like I am going to have to go with minky on the back.  Not my favorite thing to work with as it is stretchy and slippery and messy!  I hope I have enough of the purple stripe left for the binding... I think I do but it will be close!

Getting Started on Molly's Quilt

I have started cutting out fabric for my next quilt... AND finished!  After all the little pieces in the last quilt, I decided to work on an easier project.

This took maybe 2 hours to cut out including interruptions as it was all from a jelly roll and all I had to measure was length.  I even sewed a few of the 9 patches together last night.

This is sooooooo much easier than the last one was, a much needed break from all the little pieces.  I will enjoy making this for her and I hope she loves it as much as I love the little animals on the fabric!

The Celtic Solstice Top is Pieced!!!

I have finally finished the top of Celtic Solstice!!!  Here is a picture of it on top of my bed.  I made the king size and it is BIG.  (Especially on my queen size bed.)  This hangs to the floor on all sides and it is a fairly tall bed.

Celtic Solstice Top

I don't really have another way to take a picture so you can see the entire top as it is windy and snowing outside right now.  I will just take that picture after it is quilted.  Here is a picture slightly closer up of the top and one of the border.

Close Up

Borders

I decided I liked the zig-zag effect the Tri-Recs made when placed like they are here.  I also decided to stick with the scrappy theme of the quilt and added the green borders as two sets of two inch strips pieced together instead of just one green fabric.

Overall, I like how it turned out.  I'm glad I decided to make this and it is officially my first Bonnie Hunter quilt.  I have followed her online for a while and always enjoy seeing all her quilts and classes and travels.  What a delight it was to make this and also to see all of the other Celtic Solstice quilts that were made by her other followers.

I will get started on Molly's quilt soon... I went by the quilt shop and picked up my coordinating border fabric for the pattern.  This one should go by much quicker as it is only going to be a twin size!

too many options for borders... Help!!

I have made some amazing amounts of progress this week but now I am stuck.  I need to make the middle border and though I have all the pieces, I have not yet decided how to arrange them.  Here is what I have it narrowed down to:

The top is the original from the pattern but I can change the direction of the squares to make other patterns for the border.  These are the ones I like but I can't seem decide on one.  Help!!!

Still sewing away...

I have only made a bit of progress this week... but I hope to have the top pieced by this weekend.  I tend to be pretty motivated once I get to this point in a quilt.  I finished all 60 of the second block this weekend...

54-40 or Fight!

And then I trimmed up the edges of all 121 blocks...

That is a lot of blocks!

I haven't seen a pile that high of blocks in a while!  They are 9 1/2 inches now (to be 9 inches in the quilt) so it takes quite a few to make a king size quilt.  After I put the kids to bed last night I sat down with a beer and laid them all out into rows so they are now all ready to sew together.  I will start sewing them into rows this evening.

There was one four-patch that was facing the wrong direction.  I think it ended up in row four.  Not too bad to get one wrong out of 300.  I considered taking it out and fixing it but as I had already trimmed and such I decided to leave it in there.  I can't imagine that anyone else would ever even notice it.  It will just be there to remind me that that a little bit of imperfection is part of life.  

I am not even finished with this quilt and I am already thinking about the next one I am going to put together. It is Molly's turn for a quilt and I have had the materials for hers for some time.  It was supposed to be the next quilt like 3 quilts ago... then came the quilt for Christmas... and this one... but no worries!  I am going to do hers next!  It is a 9 patch pattern so it shouldn't take very long to do at all.  Here is the pattern I chose.  I found a super cute jelly roll some time ago that has adorable little owls and snails and such on it and when I found this pattern I knew that was what I would use it for.

I still need to get something to use for the coordinating non-white part of the border.  I also want to put a fuzzy purple blanket on the back of it for her as she loved that I did that with Gabe's quilt last year. 

Gabe's quilt not doing a swell job of hiding his messy, messy bed.

Sew much to do and always too little time!!

Block Two of Celtic Solstice

So, when I started this quilt I thought to myself, "there are 5 steps and a reveal (step 6) and they are released weekly so this is like a 6 week commitment. right???"  Boy was I misguided!  Don't get me wrong, I am loving making it and still anticipating how it will look when it is all put together, but I am close to 8 weeks now and I am just starting to put together the second set of blocks.  I finished the first 61 on Sunday and pressed the last 10 or so last night.

The only issue I had with these blocks is that the seams from the Chevrons and the Pinwheels were going the same direction on the majority of my blocks.  As they weren't on all the blocks and I know my pinwheels were all pressed the same direction, I guess I pressed the wrong way on most (but not all) the chevrons.  This lead to some bulky seams in the middle of these blocks.  I would guess that they would have been a bit less bulky if I had opted to turn the chevron to make stars instead but I really liked this composition for the block.  No worries though, the individual blocks still lay flat which is what is important to me.  

Now I have a whole new set of piles to sew together for the next block....

While this does not look as intimidating as the last set, there is only one less block to be made from these.  That means that due to less seams in these parts they lay flatter and look like less but really they are not.  I put a couple together last night to see how they would look. 

They are ending up the correct size and all.  I can already tell that my issue with this block is going to be keeping the colors on the 4-patches all going the correct direction.  I tend to get distracted, though it appears if the block is turned then they go the opposite... so maybe I only have to make sure they are all going the same direction in each block!  That would certainly be easier!

Final Piece to the Quilt!!

I have finished putting together all of the pieces and I am ready to start making the blocks!  Step 5 was these fun little Split Triangle units:

I am not the biggest fan of triangles, I always seem to mess them up and they never go together how they are supposed to.  Not so with these!  The strip cutting with the easy angle ruler has changed how I look at cutting and sewing triangles.  These were easy to cut, sew and for the most part they even came out the correct size!  Success!!

Now I have all the pieces I need to start making the blocks.  There are 2 blocks to make so I decided to start with the Birthday Girl block.  Here are the piles of pieces I need to sew together to make the first 61 blocks: 

Oh my this is a bit intimidating!  And this is only for the first half of the blocks.  I have another shoe box full of the other half of pieces to make the other block.  I did manage to get about 5 done this morning and will work on them more tonight.  I am going to take the kids for a short hike and then run some errands this afternoon.  

Not perfect but I love how the colors turned out together.  Some people turned around the chevrons to make the block into more of a star but I decided I like it just like this and will make them all with the diamond in them.  Time to get back to it!  

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

I didn't really take a break from the quilt as I have been working on it as well, but look at this cute pillow cover I made!!!  Now I just need to get a pillow to put in it....

This one is not for me, I got enough material to make 2.  This one is for my friend who was so wonderful to take my daughter's Girl Scout cookie order form to her work and sell enough cookies to get her to her goal. She has been sick and it has been so cold out that she wasn't going to make it this year, but now she has sold enough to get the prize she wanted!  Here is the tutorial I used, it was super quick and easy to make!

All Caught Up!!

I was a bit worried last week that I was getting too far behind, but with the super easy step 4 I am all caught up again!  4 patches!!!  I think I am becoming an expert on these.  I did a seam check fairly often and they all seem to be the size they are supposed to be.  I made 300 of them over the last week.  I had to run to the quilt shop in the midst of doing this as I had nearly run out of purple!!  I did not want to use too much in the same pattern as it is supposed to be scrappy and I was also able to go through my fabrics again and find some lighter purples I had previously omitted.

Look at that wonderful matched up seam in the middle!!!

Now I will be moving on to the final step before assembling the blocks!  Who am I kidding???  I will make enough to make a few blocks and then make a few to see how this is all going to look.  I am not patient enough to wait until I have made another 244 units!

As I was already at the quilt shop and I just could not resist, I picked up the Downton Abbey fat quarter bundle.  I have not ever seen the TV show but I have had my eye on this fabric since it came out, I think it is a beautiful set.  

I'm not sure what I will make with it yet but I hope it will be great! Maybe I can figure a way to watch the show sometime... hint, hint Netflix, get it together and get this show for me!!

Pinwheel, Pinwheel Spinning Around....

Every time I make pinwheel blocks, this song comes to mind.  Oh 1980's, you were such a simpler (is this even a word?!?!) time.

I am not anywhere near finished with the pinwheels that I should have been able to finish this week.  I fully admit this is my fault but I had to take a few days off sewing to work on stuff around the house and just got behind.  I have cut all the pieces I need and sewn all the triangles together.  I am working on pressing these to make into the lovely pinwheels that I love so much.  I did one to make sure my seams were all OK, here it is:

I love that this is scrappy!  I like doing scrappy quilts, they just appeal to me.  I love picking up fat quarters in the quilt shops and then just seeing where they end up when working on something new.  This is the first quilt in a while that I have dug into my fabric stash for.  I tend to work with fat quarter bundles as it is easy to coordinate with those and still have something that ends up looking somewhat scrappy.  I had to pick a color other than orange for it because for some reason I only have like 3 of those... maybe 4.  I chose purple/pink for this and I love how it looks with the yellows.  I'm excited, I am about halfway through making this quilt now! 

Chevrons and Pinwheels!!

I have been working on step 2 of the Celtic Solstice quilt ALL WEEK and I am still not done!  I guess I am really not surprised that it is taking longer than a week for each step.  I picked the larger size to make and I still have to go to work and spend time with the family as well.  That being said, all I have remaining in step 2 is to sew the remaining 100 halves together as I have pieced the sides of each and have already completed the first 144 of them.  Here is the first one I did to make sure my seams were good and see how it looked for me.

Chevron #1

The next step is 1/2 square triangles and pinwheels!  I love pinwheels, they are super cute and fun to put in quilts!  Here is a pinwheel quilt I did many years ago... well, I pieced the top many years ago at least.  It was the first king size I put together and it is one of my favorites!

Pinwheels!!

I remember with this one I had all the fabric for the borders set aside and ready to put on and then I took several years off from quilting as life was just too hectic and we were living in a smaller place.  There was just not the time or the space to do anything. When I finally got around to putting on the borders I found that I had miscalculated the outer border and was short on fabric... by less than 6 inches!!!  As all that time had passed there was no way I was going to find the fabric that I had selected so it was time to improvise.  

Ta-Da!!  I had plenty of green and purple left over from the rest of the quilt that I just made more pinwheels for the corners.  It added an interesting element to the border and made the quilt that much more special to me.  Love it!!

Hello World

Hello everyone.  Welcome to my new quilting blog.  I am currently working on Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice quilt.  This was a mystery quilt at the end of 2013 but at the time it was being done I was busy putting a quilt together for my little brother and his wife for Christmas.  This is an Irish Chain quilt and I was really happy with how it turned out.

Irish Chain

Now that is all done and they loved it, I have time to work on something for me.  I have finished step one of the no longer a mystery quilt and am currently cutting out step 2.  I hope to be done cutting this evening so I can begin putting the next step together.

These were pretty easy to put together, just quite time consuming as I have decided to go with the larger option from the pattern so I needed 380 of them!  It took most of the weekend to get them all done.