Kitties, kitties.....

I am not a cat person. Never have been. Kittens are cute, of course, but when it comes to pets, dogs are the only way to go. However, we now have not one, not two, but FIVE cats. We started with the gray cat, Scout. Then my sister added the orange cat, Pippin. Then Scout had kittens. So now, here we are, with one dog and five cats.

They sure are mighty cute though! The little boy is the sweetest little thing ever, while the two girl attempt to destroy everything around them.

And Pip is now a big, fat, furry, lazy cat. He demands that his bowl always stays full. He is a finicky eater -- no people food whatsoever and only one kind of cat food. We bought a different brand a few weeks ago. He put a piece his mouth, spit it out, and then fell backwards on the floor in a melodramatic swoon and whining. I kid you not. I have never seen a cat or any other animal behave like such a diva. In the picture above, he was "helping" me quilt, that is, making a bed out of the fabric before I tried to cut it.

And, since Pip brought up the subject, here are the fabrics for my new quilt. I wanted to try something with more modern colors, but I had an awful time deciding what pattern. For now, I have decided on doing an Ohio star pattern and alternating pink and green stars, with black and white throughout. It will be interesting to see how it turns out!

Thoughts About Quilting, Part 3

Now that I'm home again, I can pick up my quilting series where I left off. :) After you have chosen your pattern and your colors, the next step is piecing.

There are lots of methods for piecing -- hand piecing, strip-piecing, chain-piecing, paper piecing, too name a few -- but the two I am most familiar with, and find easiest, are hand-piecing and strip-piecing.

The biggest difficulty with hand piecing is that you have to draw a a seam allowance to follow on the wrong side of the fabric. That is the only way you can make sure your seams will line up. It sounds like a lot of trouble and, at first, it is awkward, but once you find a system for cutting the pieces out and marking them as you go, it becomes easy. The quickest way I found was to make a plastic template. You can buy template plastic at any sewing/crafts store. Cut it the exact size of the square your working with and then use an Exacto knife to cut a quarter-inch seam allowance on the inside. You are left with a quilting "cookie-cutter" that you can lay on each piece of fabric and trace seam allowances with. Here are templates and fabrics I used in my wedding ring quilt. If you look closely, you can see where I traced the seam allowances.

Strip piecing is a little more complicated, but in the end, it makes assembling the quilt go much faster. You begin by cutting long strips of fabric.
Sew them together by machine. Hand stitching isn't taunt enough for this. The pattern will call for different widths and different arrangements of strips to be sewn together. Then, you cut the long, sewed strips, into narrow strips. To make the block, you sew the narrow strips together in different combinations. This is a really fun way to quick. I am looking forward to making another quilt using this method.

Of course, you can simply sew each piece together by machine if you prefer. My first two wall-hangings were done this way and my first quilt, the blue quilt, was strip-pieced. I was having so much trouble making my seams meet when it came time to join blocks, that I decided to try piecing by hand out of desperation. I loved it. I had so much more control over each seam and never had to worry about stretching the fabric or getting a gigantic knot in the back to untangle. ( You can see I am not the best of friends with a sewing machine.) Has anyone else ever tried hand sewing? I'd love to hear about your projects!!

Thoughts About Quilting, Part 2

Choosing Your Colors and Layout

This step requires more thought and preparation than any other. I spend weeks sorting through my fabrics to make sure I have the perfect color combinations before I begin a quilt. It is always best to pick a color palette and stick to it. Two-color quilts are the easiest to buy for by far, so if you are new to quilting, that's definitely something to consider. But, if you have lots of scrap fabrics that you would like to make into a quilt, it's still fairly easy to get a pretty color palette going. When you are working with scraps, remember to keep your fabrics in the same color family. If most of your fabrics are pastel, sort out the dark colors. If most of your fabrics are dark, rich tones, sort out any bland or pale colors. When you have all your scraps sorted, it's time to go shopping!
This week, I'll use a nine-patch block as an example. It is the easiest quilt block and a great one for beginners. All the blocks are constructed in the same way, but repeating two fabric patterns:

Prints on the outside, prints on the inside. I prefer to have a print and a solid in each square. When you shop for fabrics, try to find solids which bring out the a color in each of your prints. Then, if you have any solids, try to find prints that work well with them.
When you have all your fabrics chosen, the next step is to choose the layout. The nine-patch can be lain out many way and each makes a dramatically different quilt. My blue quilt repeated the same square over and over, so laying the squares side by side created an interesting pattern. You can hardly tell where on block ends and the other begins!

My spring quilt used an Around-the World pattern. The blocks are arranged in a diamond shape from dark to light to dark to light again. It's a more complicated layout.
This quilt uses a diagonal layout. See how the same block travels diagonally across the quilt? This would be a good pattern for a beginner.
The simplest layout of all is to sew lattice strips between each block.

Like I said, this is my favorite part of quilting, so have fun with it! If you have a dark fabric that you really want to work into a pastel scrap quilt, throw in a few more darks to balance it out and try different fabrics until you make it work. It's your quilt after all - your fabrics, your memories. With a little planning, you turn any stockpile of miscellaneous fabrics into a beautiful quilt!

Thoughts About Quilting, Part 1

Today, I am finally going to begin a series about quilts. I have been wanting to for a long time, but have never made time to for it. Now, every Monday, I am going to post something about quilting. It could be a step-by-step for a specific block, piecing techniques, tips on buying/coordinating fabrics, pattern ideas, or just a "things-I've-learned-from-mistakes" post -- I think I could write a book with just those. :)


Anyway, today's post is just a few thoughts about quilting in general and why I began. I became interested watching Simply Quilts on HGTV. The complicated, beautiful patterns those quilters showcased were so inspiring! I had to learn how to quilt after seeing theirs. My first quilt was a variation on a nine-patch, strip-pieced by machine, and hand quilted. This was definitely my "learning" quilt. Even in the picture, you can see all the seams that didn't meet. I love this quilt, though, just because it was my first complete one. I had it with me in some of my senior portraits.



This quilt was my second try. It is a wall hanging, instead of a full-size, but it was actually more complicated than the blue one. I still don't know if I'll ever have the courage to try applique again. Sorry for the funny picture -- I had to drape it over a low chair to show the full pattern. I will try to find a better way when I use it as an example in another post.
The pattern outside the applique blocks is Flying geese. Again, you can see that my seams don't meet as they should, especially on the green side. If you look closely, you can find all four of these fabrics again in my wedding ring quilt and all except the pink in my spring quilt.

After this, I did my Christmas quilt, then my Fan Quilt, then my Double Wedding Ring quilt, and finally, my Spring Quilt. Next Monday, I'll post about the first of three basic steps of quilting:

1. Choosing the pattern, layout, and colors. This is my favorite step and, in my opinion, the most important to take your time with!
   
   
2. Piecing the quil top
   
   
3. Assembling, quilting, and binding.

My Spring Quilt

I finally finished my spring quilt last night -- just in time for spring!! My room already looks so much brighter. If only I could paint the walls light blue. Sigh. Anyway, here is the finished quilt:

This quilt has a little story, too. I think all quilts have stories. It all started when I saw the pale green and pale blue fabric with coordinating patterned fabric at Walmart. I was trying to finish up my Double Wedding Ring Quilt, so I knew I didn't need to start another. I just could not pass by that those bright, cheerful fabrics, though.
I bought a very small amount of each fabric, probably a half a yard, then began sorting through my scrap bags to see what other springtime fabrics I had.
The yellow fabrics are some of my favorites. So are the china blue and rose pink fabrics. I found enough scraps in my bag to make a quilt top using a nine-patch block in an Around-the-World pattern. So, for about $10 out of my pocket, I got this quilt top. My favorite thing about it, is that it reminds me of a garden, with all the bright colors, the floral fabrics, and even some strawberry patches!!
Since I was still working on the other complicated quilt and this was a simple square pattern, I machine pieced it together. Then, I was so tired of quilting that I folded it away on my quilt rack all winter. I pulled it off just a few weeks ago and set to work on it. I was determined to have it done before April and I just did manage it. Now I'm so glad I decided to make it!!

Show and Tell Friday -- My Christmas Quilts

For Show and Tell Friday this week, I am going to post pictures of my Christmas quilts. I have made several quilts now, but these are some of my favorites. For more Show and Tell fun, visit Kelli's blog at http://kellishouse.blogspot.com/.



I handmade this quilt three years. It is completely hand-pieced and hand-quilted. The pattern is a Virginia Star with a lattice border. I love this particular star pattern. The tiny pieces could be annoying to work with at times, but I think the result was worth the extra trouble. There were definitely lessons learned in this quilt. The center pieces of the red star are made of a certain material which, when I bought it, was a really vibrant red color. After I prewashed it, it faded a lot, but I was so excited about getting my Christmas quilt together that I didn't even notice until I had made several stars. I thought about taking them apart even then, but I couldn't find another complementary red fabric with a muted pattern as hard as that is to believe. So I went ahead and used it.

Another mistake I made was going with "by the book" measurements for a queen sized bed. I discovered after I completed the quilting and binding that this quilt is about six inches too short for my bed. I could have solved the whole problem if I had just lain the quilt top across my mattress before I finished it, but I didn't even think about it. Despite its flaws, I really love this quilt. I love the bright colors and the stars. I put in on my bed in November and keep it on through January.

This is a little wallhanging I made about four years ago.I think it was my second quilting project. It's cute, but I didn't construct it very well. I learned one thing, though -- I hate applique!
This is my Christmas tree skirt. I think I made it three years ago. I was having a hard time finding fabrics I liked for this project in the store -- if I found a cute print, I couldn't find anything to match it or there wasn't enough of it. Finally, I saw these three coordinating fabrics with gold patterns and thought they would work really well together. The pattern was very simple to make. I wish I had made the skirt itself a little larger, though. I want to make another one sometime with different colors, just for a change.

A Quilt With A Looong Story

I began this quilt last year, May of last year to be exact. It began with a large stack of scraps I had left over from other quilt projects that I had to use up. I decided to make a double wedding ring pattern with them. That was the first decision. Then I began searching online to get ideas for color schemes. My very favorite palette is blue-and-white, but I had so many beautiful materials I wanted to use that I decided I would incorporate lots of different colors. The problem was to do this neatly, in such a way that all the fabrics would work well together. I came across a quilt online that used the wedding ring like a color prism. Their colors were much more vibrant than mine, but they gave me the basis for my idea. I would use blue, pink, green, and yellow like a prism, with my favorite colors, pink and blue, as the primary colors.
I had a lot of blue, and green fabrics to work with, but I had to buy a few extra yellows and pinks to complete the necessary number of sections. I also decided I wanted to make smaller rings than most double wedding ring patterns call for. I pieced all the rings together completely by hand in just a few months, then stitched the rings onto the white border. Now it was time for the big decision -- how to quilt it. I had made three full-sized and two small quilts before, but I hadn't done complicated quilting on any of them. I searched dozens of books at library before I came up with my final plan: intricate heart in the center of the rings, cross-hatching on the white border, a single row of hearts on the blue border, and simple zig-zagging on the outside white border. I did get side tracked for a few weeks considering the idea of an appliqued border, but gave that up finally as just too complicated.
I began the quilting process. All the quilting was done by hand. Some books recommended pencil instead of disappearing ink for marking quilt designs, but that would have made washing necessary once the quilt was complete. I just couldn't take the idea of washing it and possibly ruining seams that I had worked so hard on, so I used a disappearing ink quilter's marking pen and saturated each place with water as I completed it. I did have trouble getting the ink to disappear a few times and almost had a panic attack, but if I let the marks soak in enough cold water or used ice, they eventually came off.
Here you see the finished project, completed this May almost exactly a year after I began it. I did cheat and attached all those long borders by machine; otherwise I can say the quilt is completely handmade. What did I learn from this experience? A lot about quilting, but most importantly, I WILL NEVER DO ANYTHING THIS COMPLICATED AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Busy Day

The day before we leave is always so busy. No matter how much we plan in advance, it always seems like we have a hundred things left to do that last day. The first thing we did was return those library books I forgot yesterday. Then we went to get the oil changed and from there to another department store so I could look for a shirt while they were on sale. I got one that is so pretty -- one of my favorite colors, dark blue, and dressy enough for church. After that, we went to the grocery store to pick up a few things and came home. Since then, I've been busy cleaning. I always like to give my room a really good dusting and vacuuming before we leave and then I decided that while I was at it I might as well put away my spring stuff and clean out my dresser.


This is my pink pansy quilt. I'm kind of tired of it, but it goes with the other colors in my room, so I haven't changed it. My hair's looking kind of frizzy in this picture.......:)
Here's one shelf I had to dust. The little figurines are the last things my Grandma gave me before she died.
My dresser is cleaned off!
I decided to polish and organize my shoes, too!
When I finally finished cleaning, I began packing. I'm pretty quick at this. I've had lots of practice since we've been living away from our hometown for eight years and going back to visit about every three months. Sometimes, I even wait until I wake up the morning we're leaving to pack. I thought I'd go ahead and get some of it done today, though. All I have left to do tomorrow is pack up my makeup, hair styling stuff, and some books. Speaking of which, I should probably go get all the books I want to take right now and put them on the table so I don't forget any when I'm half asleep tomorrow morning at six.