First and Last Finishes

I didn’t realize that it had been quite so long since my last post! I spent a lot of that time just hanging out with my family and enjoying not having to travel for work but I did get some crafting done.

This was my last finish of 2011 and one of two that I made solely for donation. I noticed last year as I went through my stash that fabrics that I like when they come out (but don’t love) often ended up sitting in my stash unused. Since then I’ve tried hard to purchase only those fabrics that I really love and in doing so have saved myself money and space! I’m also trying to complete more non quilt projects. I mean how many quilts does one person need? Not to mention the fact that I have so many quilt tops already completed that still need to be turned into actual quilts!

This was my first finish of 2012 (although all but the basting and quilting was done in 2012). I’m working hard to finish everything I’ve already started before I let myself begin any new quilts. At the rate I’m going I won’t be making any new quilt tops until 2013!!

I let this project (and so many others) languish in the WIP pile because I didn’t have the skills or the time to quilt them the way I would have liked to. My original intention was a simple loopy loop quilt design but doing so required time and patience that I didn’t have. And because the the quilt itself ended up a bit wonky any attempt at straight line quilting would have drawn attention to the wonkyness. So I used this as an opportunity to try out a different quilting skill- free motion stippling. For a long time I was scared of dropping my feeddogs and I thought I would stitch myself into a corner and not be able to get out. But overall it wasn’t too bad. There was a bit of ripping when I first started before I got the tension and speed just right. I got myself some gardening gloves to grip the fabric and knocked it out in about a week. My stitch length isn’t totally uniform and I did cross my lines a few times but you can’t really tell. For a first attempt and on such a large quilt I think I did exceptionally well!

Over the break I also bought a bunch of fabric to try sewing my own clothes and I picked up knitting! So far I’ve made a cowl that I gave to my mom and I’m about halfway through a pillow cover. I’m trying to make sure I sew and knit items that I will actually use. When I bought fabric I stuck to neutral colors in simple patterns or solids. I bought enough to make a skirt and two blouses. I figure if I make them and like them than I’ll branch out and the same with knitting.

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Slow Stichin’

I finally finished diassembling, trimming, squaring and reassembling my Single Girl quilt top it was time consuming but it needed to be done!

I don’t know that pink goes especially well with the rest of the fabrics but I needed to go with a solid fabric to save money so I wanted to pick something I really liked. Something about the one inch square of Petal kept calling my name so never having seen it in person I went ahead and purchased five yards. I had a minor heart attack when I heard it described as cotton candy pink on another blog but was pleased when it arrived and it was exactly like the one inch square. I can see how someone might describe it as cotton candy pink but it has more purple in it, it’s really hard to describe…

Having invested so much time and money into this quilt i decided to hand quilt it. I’ve been wanting a project I could work on while hanging out on the couch and this will be perfect for that. I’m not sure how long this will take me since I’ve only ever hand quilted a baby quilt but I’m not in a rush.

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Visual Stimulation- Yellow Gold and Aqua Blue

Photo Credit

I first saw and fell in love with this nursery when randomly searching Flickr a couple months ago. I’m not currently pregnant nor do I plan on having children (possibly ever) so I wanted to try and find a way to bring this color combo into my home.

Photo Credit

This nursery shows a more kicked up version of the color combo and I love it even more than the first.

Photo Credit

My love of the yellow and blue combination isn’t new I found a couple other examples in my favorites.

Photo Credit

This relies heavily on yellow into orange gold with very little blue but I love the shades of yellow used.

Photo Credit

This purse is just too cute! One day I want to learn to make this little coin purses.

Photo Credit

This quilt made me realize how yellow and blue, in these shades, really sing together in a quilt. I think I’m going to make a two sided quilt using these colors. One side will use the Plain Spoken pattern and solids and the other side will use the Hop, Skip, Jump pattern using a mix of solids and prints. I think this will finally be a project worthy of cutting into my tiny Flea Market Fancy stash 🙂

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My Merry Christmas Manifesto

Hehe I love the alliteration 🙂

So here’s the deal, I know August is not when most people start to think of Christmas but I want to make the majority of my gifts for people and there is no way I would be able to get all that done between Novemeber to Decemeber (which is when I usually buy gifts for people). So I’m starting now in the hopes that between now and December I can get gifts complete for about 14 people. I started off by making a list of people and potential gifts then I tried to think of things that-

1) They would like
2) They would actually use
3) I’m actually capable of making
4) Would use fabric and notions from my stash

I think Christmas has become to much about impressing people and less about giving gifts people would use and oh say actually need. I want to give people useful objects of art, aprons that they can wear everyday and smile when they put it on etc. At the same time money is a concern for me and so is my oversized fabric stash. I have plenty of fabric that I could and should use before I buy anything else. Now I’m not saying I won’t be buying fabric in the next couple months but I want to make these gifts as much as possible from fabric I already have. If I need to buy fabric or notions that’s fine but I’m starting with the stash. It isn’t just my fabric stash I intend to use it’s also my craft books, cookbooks, and the hundred of free tutorials, instructions or inspiration projects I have starred on my google reader or favorited on flickr.

As usual I’m going to take all my fabulous readers along for the ride you can look forward to more pattern reviews, fabric shop reviews (listen I’m a realist!), and my own tutorials. If I make something from a book I also intend to find similar free tutorials or ready made items for purchase. After all we don’t all own the same books and we don’t all have the time, inclination, or skill to make gifts for everyone on our lists.

What are your goal (crafting and otherwise) for this Christmas?

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Fabric Shop Review- Hawthorne Threads (My personal favorite)

If you put a gun to my head and said I could only buy fabric from one shop then I would have to choose Hawthorne Threads. I’ve been a customer since they were known as Fabric Supplies on Etsy and the move to their own web shop has only improved their offerings!

Selection:

The wide selection of modern designers (well known and newcomers) was what originally drew me to Hawthorne Threads. It is after all an online store and one of my goals when purchasing fabric online is to save on shipping by shopping at as few shops as possible. They are also constantly getting in new fabric which is of course good and bad. Good because there is always something new to check out and bad for that same reason ;). Their selection focuses on the most well known of the modern fabric designers but they also carry a decent selection of Japanese prints and couple lesser known but up and coming designers. Many times they will carry the full line in all the color ways for the first stocking but after that they only restock the most popular prints (that’s just good business sense).

A couple cool features they have are the ability to search by color and hue as well as coordinating fabrics from the same line and a print in other colorways from the same fabric line. They also have a changing set of fabrics on the front page from different lines that coordinate well.

They have a very small selection of solid fabrics which is disappointing for me but I understand that it would be hard for them to offer a large selection and still keep inventory managable and make a profit.

Price by the Yard:

This is one of my other favorite features of Hawthorne Threads. Instead of a flat price for regular fabric and a second price for sale fabric they have tiered pricing based on all the fabric you have ordered from them in the past and how much fabric you are purchasing on a single order.

” Order Yardage Discount per yard
3+ Yards 25 cents
15+ Yards 35 cents
40+ Yards 50 cents

Order History Discount per yard
40+ Yards 15 cents
100+ Yards 25 cents
400+ Yards 50 cents

On an order of 3 yards (25 cent discount per yard),
where you have previously purchased 45 yards (15 cent discount per yard),
you would receive a 40 cent discount per yard in your order.
Fabric listed at $8.00 would be discounted to $7.60 per yard.”

We won’t discuss how much of a discount I get in case anyone I know is reading this and decides to stage a
fabric buying intervention 😉

Shipping:

These are the shipping rate for the U.S. but you can find the rest here.

“Whether you’re a manufacturer or a home sewer (or both as the case may be!) we pride ourselves on our fast shipping, so you are sure to receive your order as soon as possible. We make every effort to ship orders the same day they are placed.

Based on medium weight / quilting fabric that is 44″ wide 1/2 Yard USPS First Class $2.00
1 Yard USPS First Class $2.25
1 1/2 Yards USPS First Class $3.00
2 Yards USPS First Class $3.50
2 1/8 Yards – 9 Yards USPS Priority (Flat Rate Envelope) $4.80
9 1/8 Yards – 30 Yards USPS Priority (Flat Rate Box) $10.35
30 1/8 Yards – 40 Yards USPS Priority (Flat Rate Large Box) $13.95
(Tracking and delivery confirmation included)

USPS Express Mail is also available, up to 6 yards ships for $17.50.

Shipping Delivery Estimates USPS First Class 2 – 5 Business Days
USPS Priority 2 – 3 Business Days
USPS Express 1 – 2 Business Days

Signature Confirmation is available for $1.95
Insurance on your package is available for $2.50”

Their shipping rates are pretty standard and while I appreciate them maximizing the amount of fabric they can get into the flat rate envelopes sometimes it’s just too much and the envelope will arrive busting apart. Since the fabric comes wrapped in tissue paper I’ve never had the fabric stained or damaged in anyway but the potential is there.

Fat Quarters or Quarter Yards:

From the business perspective I understand why shops don’t offer these but as a hobby sewer I find this frustrating. Hawthorne threads does offer fat quarter bundles or some fabric lines by colorway but that’s it. And although they feature a collection of prints from various designers on the front page they don’t offer a fat quarter bundle of those prints together. The smallest cut of a single fabric you can order is a 1/2 yard but once the cuts get above 1 yard then you can get 1 1/4, 1 3/8, 1 1/2 etc so to me if you are selling 1/4 yards at that point why can’t you sell 1/4 yards as the smallest cut? However this is a pretty common practice in online shops.

Communication:

This is the third area I think Hawthorne Threads really excels. They have a blog and a newsletter to keep their customer up to date. You can also sign up for notifications when a particular line or even a particular print arrives. This is particularly helpful when you are looking for a single fabric from a line and don’t want to keep having to check back. They also post their current stockage online when you pull up a fabric so you know then if the stockage is low or very high and can decide when and how much you want to order.

Overall this is a fabulous shop run by an amazing couple who are incredibly helpful. If you haven’t checked them out I highly recommend you do so.

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Quilting with Painter’s Tape

Bento Box Quilted, originally uploaded by Indie House.

Quilting is done! I decided to take photos of each step of the quilting process for you. I always wonder when I see a finished quilt how they did it. Was it done by hand or machine, on a standard home machine or on a long arm?

This is the first quilt I’ve completed on my Janome and since it’s a 64 in by 64 in square it was quite the beast to finish!

In quilting you always want to start at the center and work out. I really like using painter’s tape as a stitch guide. I’m a little bit color blind so I have a hard time seeing and following most quilt markers. Painter’s tape is pretty impossible to miss and it comes in a variety of widths. You can also purchase special quilter’s tape that comes in widths as small as a 1/4in but it’s about twice as expensive considering you get half as much in a single package. Since painter’s tape is low tack you shouldn’t have any trouble with it damaging your fabric or seams but you should still be careful when removing it. I only tape the part of the quilt I’m working on. I find as you continue to move the quilt around the tape can start to peel up at the edges, the longer it’s on the more of a problem this can become. The tape can only be reused once, after that it becomes more of a hassle then it’s worth.

So I started with this

I followed along the inside of the outer pieces and the outside of the inner to create two sets of line in each part of the design.

You can see what I mean in this picture.

I moved out from the middle to the edges on the top, bottom, and sides.

In this design some of the tape remains from the previous sections, in your excitement to reveal your quilting keep this in mind.

In the small boxes I only quilted one set of lines, following the inner edge.

Still moving out from the middle

And the last set!

And some close ups of the individual blocks.

I’m hoping to square it up and bind it this weekend, so I can donate it to a local church.

Oh here is the back, you can’t really see the quilting on the green.

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Modern Quilting

canonjune09 138, originally uploaded by Shear Delight.

I can’t believe I got the back pieced and the quilt sandwich pinned together! To be completely honest I wanted to stop about half way through pinning but I had the quilt taped to my kitchen floor and I couldn’t really leave it there overnight. My husband to decided to bribe me to finish by offering to clean the kitchen if I could “just get that quilt off the floor!” I finished around 9pm, it took me about an hour to pin, and he was true to his word and cleaned up before we went to bed.

This morning I started taping it and quilting. I’d love to get it all quilted today but we will see.

I’ve seen elaborately quilted quilts that are undenialbly beautiful but that isn’t my personal style. I like clean simple lines that add to the quilt design without overwhelming everything else. So I decided to echo quilt the seams and then add another box within each box to pull the pieces together and help the seams become almost invisible.

I love how it looks with the tape and I’m excited to see it in stitches!

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