A Finish! King Size Squares and Frames

Finally! I finished the king size quilt for my bed. I love it! I tried to fix the lighting in photoshop, but it just made the colors all weird, so I hope you can see these. Click on them to make them bigger if you want to see them better.


Here it is on the bed, with the blue and green rows on my husband's side and the pink and red rows on my side (plus the snuggle row in the middle of blue/green plus red/pink in each block).


The snuggle row is vertical with mermaids/green in this photo.


And here's the back. It took forever to quilt this thing, but I plodded through, with a goal of a couple of blocks per day, and it only took a month (!). The whole quilt has taken months, in between working on lots of other stuff, and has fought me at times, but I finally get to keep a quilt! Yay!

A Little Bit of This...

I haven't blogged much lately because I've been trying to quilt my ginormous wonky square quilt! It's slow going since there are 81 blocks, but steady. I'm outlining the two squares, plus one detail in the center square, like the pear, above and the bird, below.


I have managed to make my squares for Cancer is Sew Done, i'll be sending those off tomorrow. As I expected, they were a nightmare for a hand sewer, as I had to cut off all my knots and re-knot them after cutting out the circles, and now I can't zig zag them raw-edge to the backgrounds, so I'm asking the moderators to do that.


I got paid for the Japanese wonky square commission quilt I finished lately, so I made a trip to Austin's coolest, hippest fabric store, Stitch Lab and picked up these beauties. I "needed" them so I can make some more of the red and aqua gnome homes. Stitch Lab is the coolest because they have Japanese Kei dots (pink and blue below) which are like the Amy Butler full moon dots, but smaller, and because they have Echino in person! I've never seen them in person before, only online. I didn't buy any though, they are too expensive and the repeat is too large for me. I am a scrapper, I'd have to have a project in mind to buy a huge piece.


Oh! And they had this weird fabric, Edgie Veggies by Michael Miller. It's totally not my usual style, but I just couldn't walk out without some! I really like the eggplant and the kale (?) he's talking to. Two questions: why are there apples on a veggie print? And what the heck is in the pear's mouth? ;)

Bye!

This Thing is Enormous! Questions I'm Pondering

Why, one asks oneself rhetorically, would an all-by-hand quilter keep making such freaking huge quilts??? It just doesn't make good sense.


This is the half and half quilt I am making for my and my husband's bed that I started back in November. It was on hold waiting for backing while I made the Japanese wonky squares quilt. Here is my 25 year old daughter for scale. It's 10 feet by 11 feet! What the heck was I thinking? I must have just gotten carried away.


I planned to use a king size sheet for the backing (yeah, I know you're not supposed to use sheets but I like 'em). The one I had was too small so I measured the quilt carefully and bought a different king size sheet set that the measurements said would fit. Well, if you'll look carefully at the photo above, you'll see the corner of the sheet taped to the floor. What do you notice?

I just decided to take a row of blocks off the bottom and have it be 9 blocks by 9 blocks. I felt like the quilt was telling me that if it was 8 inches bigger than a king sized sheet (that gets tucked in!) then it just plain did not NEED to be that big. King sized beds are kind of square anyway. Another question: If one king size sheet did not fit my quilt, why did I think a new one would???

A final question: who wants nine 12-inch blocks? As an extra bonus, they are already sashed together! If you'd like to see which ones they are, click on the above photos to enlarge, they are the bottom row across. I will send them to the person with the best use for them in the comments by tomorrow lunch. Ok, Go!

Half Done!

It's half done! The ginormous quilt I'm making for myself and Mr. Babyquilts is halfway there. It's ten 12-inch blocks by nine 12-inch blocks, not counting sashing!

This is "his" half, the blue and green half, all sashed and ready to go. It also includes the 'snuggling' row on the right which are blue/green combined with red/pink. Now all that's left to do is four more rows of red/pink to attach to the right hand side.


Here's a six year old child and a koala for scale. It's huge! Click a photo to see the square themes better.

You know, it looks all innocent and fine and dandy now, but boy was I mad last night. I carefully pinned and sewed one whole sashing the long way, all the way down. Then when I opened it out, guess what, it was sewed onto the wrong side of the block strip, so the seam was on top! I was hopping mad! I had to then hand rip the whole seam, re-pin and re-sew. It took me several hours to get back to where I should have been. Oh well. Days like that really make me want to buy a machine, especially with all of these straight seams. I like piecing the blocks by hand, but sashing and borders by hand are straight up boring!


Wolfie says hi. "Hi!"

Munki in the Middle!

So...those munkis I got in the mail yesterday were burning a hole in my, uh, stash closet (?) and I had to do something with them right away! I wanted them to be in MY quilt which I'm currently sashing, so I went through the pink/red blocks to see which ones I didn't like that also had fabric that would match my new munkis. Since it's a charm quilt, I can only use each fabric one time, so somebody had to go.


I really didn't like the block on the right that I had made. It's hard to tell in the photo but the saturation of the bright yellow and the pink clashed with the super bright white of the flower fabric. Bleah. Aw yeah, these kitties look right at home in their matching frame. The saturated pinks match perfectly.


I also found this block on the left that I don't hate, but it's just too much busyness going on at once. I was going for birds/trees but it's just too much. Look at how sweet and cozy my bicycles look in there instead. So calm and frame-y. Sigh.

So do you think the new blocks are an improvement or a step down???

Hope you're enjoying my National Blog Posting Month daily post! Stay tuned for a post every day in November.

On the Design Wall - MY Bed Quilt!

Today on the design wall I have the quilt i'm making for my husband and my bed! Finally, I'm going to keep a quilt! Here is some fine artwork by my six year old decorating my sewing room.


My design wall, as it turns out, is WAYYYYY too small. This is only HALF our king-sized quilt: the green and blue blocks for Mickey's side. And it falls off the bottom and onto the floor. I need to get a king-sized flannel sheet and tack it up as my design wall. This picnic table cover flannel back is not working for me.


I'm putting the sashing in between the rows right now, it's going pretty quickly. Do you like it sof far?

More Green and Blue Blocks

Which is your favorite? Click to see them larger.

Do you see the little girl in the pool saying "shark!"?

Here Come the Green and Blue Blocks!

Gigi is here in her blue and green dress my mother made her to introduce the green and blue blocks! I showed the pink and red ones the last few days for the quilt I'm making for myself, in case you missed it. Which one is your favorite today???

Sorry for the terrible lighting, its been raining here for days! Click to enlarge for a better look.

Last Set - Which One Now?

So...which block is your favorite out of all of the pink/red blocks now? Get ready for the green/blue ones coming soon! Here are the last two photos.

Which One is Your Favorite Today?

Here's a gratuitous photo of Gigi wearing her Amy Butler dress to introduce the second set of pink/red block photos! Sorry for the not-that great photography below.

Which one is your favorite now? And do you like it more than the one you picked yesterday? Feel free to click on them to see the blocks more closely.

Which One Is Your Favorite?

Hello All,
I'm making a new quilt! No, I haven't finished the one for my son I showed with the light and dark blue squares, but I've started a new one anyway. I usually only work on one at a time and finish before I move on, but i'm breaking the rules! Winter is coming and I want a quilt for MY bed for once! I've never kept a quilt before, it will be a new thing.

So ok, here's the concept. It will be king sized, and will have 40 blocks on my side in red and pink, and 40 blocks on his side in green and blue, then down the middle will be 10 blocks with red/pink mixed with green/blue (that's us snuggling!) and the whole thing sashed in white.

I just let the fabrics decide how they wanted the blocks to be measured. I just told the fabrics that the blocks all had to come out to 10 1/2" square, but otherwise they could be however they wanted to be. The larger motif prints got center squares to fit their scale, and the same for the larger motif framing prints. Everyone got to be themselves and show off to their best advantage. And if someone didn't have enough fabric but still wanted to be in the quilt (i'm talking to YOU red and white daisies!) other fabrics jumped in to help.

I'll do three posts with the new blocks. Here is the first post! Feel free to click the photos to enlarge. Which block is your favorite of today's set?