Stars in the Technicolor Galaxy...

I know that you can scarcely believe it, but this master procrastinator has stayed on task for two months in a row with the Technicolor Galaxy BOM!  Block #2 was a big task and I've actually held off quilting them all until next month when there are only 4 blocks to complete and the load is a bit lighter.

This month covered all twelve Star Point blocks that surround the Color Wheel.  Each block is foundation paper pieced and has 14 different pieces.  They were very easy to assemble but it was keeping track of the progression of color around the wheel that was the tricky part.  I pretty much kept the Color Wheel splayed out on the floor at all times and each time I completed a piece, I laid it out where it will eventually be sewn into place.

Since I consider myself to be fairly proficient in paper piecing at this point, there wasn't too much technique that was new EXCEPT for the materials that I used.  Until this point, I've only used regular copier paper.  The templates that I purchased along with the class included wash away foundation pieces.  They feel a bit like iron-on interfacing and have the patterns printed directly onto them.  They are supposed to wash out completely the first time that you launder the finished quilt.  I really liked how I could apply my fabric directly onto the foundation pieces and hold them securely with a swipe of washable glue stick instead of a myriad of pins.  Everything stayed so nice and flat!  It will be interesting to see the texture after the first washing!

But aren't the colors just gorgeous? I love how one blends right into the next and how the low volumes of the background add extra interest without taking away from the brightness of the colored star points.  Now it's onto Block #3 for April - piano keys!

Linking up:

An Epic WIP...

Just looking over my last few months of posts, I realized that I've been blogging about a lot of finishes but not really doing many "in process" posts.  As a blog reader, those are some of my favorite reads, so my bad for dropping the down and dirty process posts!  But I've got a WIP that will be year-long, so you'll probably tire of reading about it long before I tire of sharing it....

the EPIC Technicolor Galaxy Skill Builder BOM for 2015 taught by Alyssa at Pile O Fabric!!!!

Now hold on here, my 10 faithful readers might be wondering, didn't you start a BOM a looong time ago that still remains unfinished and sitting on a shelf?  Doesn't that make you feel guilty about starting a new one?

Um, no.  No it doesn't.

Because you know what?  I live in New England where we've had the longest, crappiest, snowiest winter in a long time.  And everyone in my family got sick with an awful cold that was THISCLOSE to being a flu.  And my kid's school got cancelled for a whole extra week because of snow on the roof.  The week before February vacation! And everyone has been crabby and miserable!  And there were weeks when the air literally hurt your face when you went outside for two minutes!  And just looking at this rainbow BOM makes me happy.  So is that what you really want?  To give me guilt and keep me from being happy?

Yeah. That's what I thought.  So let me show you Block #1 - the color wheel

I am not a sewer that is immediately drawn to solids, so I knew the major change I'd be making to this BOM was to cut out the solids and go with all prints.  Plus, I wanted to add in a little more aqua and replace the reds with deeper pinks.  I also decided to cut the color from the "D" ring of the wheel and replace it with low volume scraps.  To audition fabrics, Alyssa suggested using the coloring pages provided in the month's instructions with little scraps of fabric.  It was a really great way to audition the prints and get a decent idea of how the colors would blend together!

The main skills introduced this month were: creating your own fusible bias tape from scratch, glue basting your fabric shapes onto your muslin square, shaping your bias tape so it will cover up all the raw edges and fusing it down, then (of course) practicing your FMQ.

The only hiccup I encountered was attaching the strip of fusible to my bias tape.  Some parts just would NOT stay stuck on.  After attaching a few rings according to the instructions,  I took my own advice and just glue basted the rest on.  It turned out just fine, but at least I got to practice two different methods.

Oh, and yes I know that my FMQing leaves a lot to be desired - yeah, I'm looking at you drunken and wobbly "clamshells".  But I'm not going to be ripping anything out.  This project is a chance to practice, practice, practice!  Hopefully by the end of the year, I'll be able to look back at this center block and see how I've improved as the rings of blocks expand.

Next month will be focused on the 12 Star Points around the color wheel - looks like the most labor intensive month of the year, so stay tuned!

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

The Quiltalong of Stops and Starts...

When I was literally two weeks into a new (and labor intensive) paper pieced quilt, I saw that Lee at Freshly Pieced was hosting a quiltalong at We All Sew for her latest pattern called Chandelier.  I loved this pattern so much and was already dying for a change from the crazy tiny paper piecing.  But I was determined NOT to go fabric shopping - I had done too much of that recently.  So I gave myself a couple of self-imposed rules

Rule #1: I wanted to try and look through my hefty Pinterest folder of color schemes and pick something that I liked but wouldn't usually be immediately drawn to.  Plus, I wanted to pick a color in that palette for the background that was not my usual light or white background.  The above four choices were my top picks.

After a lot of IG hemming and hawing, I decided on the deeply saturated tapestry palette with the bright aqua blue as the background solid.  Which brings me to Rule #2:  I could participate in the quiltalong if I shopped from my own stash - with the one necessary exception being if I needed more solids for the background. I did a fairly quick fabric pull and came up with a solid selection.

I was JAZZED and ready to go!  And then came the cutting.

So. much. cutting.

But I powered through and was still on track for week two!  Celebrating, I opened up the instructions for week two.  And then read about the epic amount of HSTs.

So. many. half-square-triangles. to. trim.  Spoiler alert:  I did not stay on track for week three.

In fact, I did manage to complete a few blocks but only because I stopped assembling all the HSTs as my brain was begging for a break.  And sadly, they are still all hanging out to the side of my ironing board.  Just waiting for me to pick them up and start again.

I'm coming lovelies....eventually.

Around the World Blog Hop...

I know that I promised a post about the year that was ScrapBeeLicious and while that's still coming, I wanted to write a smidge (okay, a lot) about a blog hop that's been pretty popular over the summer.  The Around the World Blog Hop has bounced around quilters all over the globe and landed squarely in my neck of the woods in September.  I've been tagged by two amazing quilters: Laura at Little and Lots and Sarah at Smiles Too Loudly.  Laura, Sarah and I are all part of the SMQG and though their blogs are amazing and provide quite a bit of inspiration, it's been even more of a pleasure getting to know them through guild meetings and retreats.

So, on with the meaty bits of the blog hop!

1. What am I working on?

I just started a brand new project that's a year behind the crowd - the Forest QAL.  My epic procrastination is not too bad though since all of the tutorials are available for free and there are quite a few finishes to crush on.  That's one of my favorite things about the online quilting community.  You might have missed the boat to do something along with a crowd, but all the information, encouragement, and inspiration is still out there for you to tackle an epic project!

The Forest QAL is comprised of some seriously amazing paper pieced blocks inspired by nature and I'm planning on taking a very muted but maybe not entirely low volume journey through the woods.  I hope that you're interested in walking along with me, because I think this meander is going to talk a loooong time.

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?


I don't necessarily think that I'm all that different from the other modern or modern-traditionalist quilters out there at the moment.  I have a really hard time creating original designs and have no problems following some one else's patterns.  I do usually try to flip a portion of a pattern on it's head so that it's uniquely mine.  My Broken Oreo quilt comes to mind - most others were using the larger portions of the herringbone to tell a more monochromatic story, while the sashing was consistently neutral/white or one print of fabric.  Instead, I decided to mix up my sashing colors and keep all the herringbones black and white.  I loved the effect and it definitely stood out in the crowd.  

The same idea with my Little Bookworms quilt - I loved Film in the Fridge's Converging Corners pattern but I sketched it out so that my corner's had matching colors that created scrappy stars throughout the quilt.  All little differences that make my quilts really MINE.

I think the biggest compliment I've gotten regarding my style came from Laura at our BMQG/SMQG retreat weekend.  I was just starting out on my Alphabet Rainbow Stars quilt and when she saw the blocks up on the design walls, she said something to the effect of "Even if I didn't see you sewing these, I would know that this is one of your quilts!"  Maybe because of my well documented love of rainbows, maybe because of the black background, or all the fussy cut alphabet centers, who knows?  But whatever the reason, it made me feel really great that day :)

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

I started my blog mostly because I felt like my Flickr descriptions and show and tell narratives were getting a bit long in the tooth.  While my family loves and is super supportive of what I create, they're not necessarily super interested in hearing all about a project's origins, fabric choices, potential layouts, etc.  So I took a leap of faith, opened a Blogger account and here we are, ONE-HUNDRED-FIFTY posts, almost 500 followers (still small potatoes I know, but it's a LOT to me!), and countless words later!  It's been amazing to feel like part of such an inspiring and welcoming group.  

I just want to make things that are beautiful, tell a warm and snuggly story, and spread around a little quilty love.  Oh yeah, and show off my cute kids whenever I get a chance ;)

4. How does my writing/creating process work?

Sometimes I feel like these posts are a huge dose of word vomit because I just want to tell you all everything about my projects - the good, the bad, and the ugly!  I'm not a stellar wordsmith.  I just want to share and I have a hard time waiting to do so.  If you see a post, it's probably because I've finished something within the week and just can't wait to write about it.  I don't think I'll ever be a blogger with a stash of posts all lined up and waiting to be published.  Maybe that's why I've gone so crazy with Instagram lately - it's instant gratification of the crafty kind!

I know I'm supposed to tag 3 other bloggers, but honestly I think that almost everyone I already follow has been tagged once before my procrastinating butt has gotten on board here!  Ah well, thanks for taking the time to read a little more about me and stay tuned because some fun stuff is coming up soon! :)

It's Been a While...

...since I posted anything about my alphabet stars quilt. My mistake for not sharing the progress I've made on it so far! 

Over two months ago, I finished all the FMQ on the top. I knew from the start that I wanted fairly dense quilting and was planning on all of it being concentrated in the black spaces on the quilt.

After all, I reasoned, if I'm using black thread then my mistakes won't be terribly obvious! Brilliant thinking, right? But as I spent what felt like hours doing FMQ "straight" lines,  I came to the sad realization that all this work was going to stay relatively invisible on the front. Head smack.

But, I plowed through and got it done working on and off through a long weekend. When I finished up, I knew immediately that the star centers needed some extra attention. In an hour, I went through the whole alphabet and did some FMQ flowers with white thread. I really like the loopiness alongside the straight lines!

So what the heck is taking me so long, you might ask? One final quilting element - I decided to hand quilt the inside of each star with variegated perle cottons in 6 different shades. I love the effect, but I am definitely a sloooow hand sewer.

At my speed, this will last the rest of the summer. But I think the effect is so worth it, I don't mind taking things easy!  It's come on vacation with us, so maybe I'll get more than a few letters done sitting lakeside.

Enjoy your summer everyone!

WIP Wednesday...

It feels a bit like I’m living in the land of Quilt OCD over here.  Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to finish off two big projects at once while simultaneously starting to dip my toes into dressmaking for grownups.  But the quilts…the quilts!

After finishing up my tilted star alphabet quilt top, I knew exactly how I wanted to quilt it with a mix of free motioning quilting and hand quilting.  I love this top and have never tried to free motion on anything larger than a quilt sandwich before, so I knew that I couldn’t dive right into it without practicing on something first.  My main fear about free motion quilting is that I’m so green with it, I don’t want to totally screw up a quilt top for the sake of practice.  What do to??

So I dipped into the WIP pile and came across this – my black and white broken herringbone top.  I was in a rush to finish it to participate in the MSBHQAL a while back with the intention of adding an extra column and 2 rows to make it more lap sized.  As it stands right now, it’s more of a generous crib size.  Somehow making the extra blocks just fell to the side as I worked on the feather top, Little One, Mon Amie, and other assorted projects in the past 6 months.  I still really like it as a quilt top, but I have to say that I’m a little more in love with the individual quilt blocks than the top as a whole.  Has that ever happened to you?  Long story short – it’s a finished quilt top that I’m not super invested in and already had backing fabric for.  Hello practice quilt top! 

Months ago, I signed up for Elizabeth Dackson’s FMQ Craftsy class and am just now getting around to watching the videos.  They are fantastic - it's really helpful to see how she's moving the fabric around instead of just reading a tutorial online.

Generic darning foot on the left and the BigFoot on the right

When I first attempted FMQing with my On the Boardwalk mini, I bought a BigFoot for my machine and really struggled.  I found that the large plastic disk really obstructed my view of where  I should be going and it felt like I was trying to quilt blind.  Seems like you should be able to clearly see through the plastic, but maybe there was glare from the machine's light?  I don't know but it just wasn't working for me.  I went out and purchased a generic darning foot which looks more like what I’ve seen Elizabeth use in her videos and boy did it make a big difference! I feel like I can really see what I'm doing now.

I’m still struggling with matching the speed from my foot pedal with moving the fabric around, but I feel like I’m getting a better handle on things as I work through this one!  My plan is to keep it simple stupid and just move back and forth through each block with curliques in the black and white sections.  It’s still looking pretty sloppy, but I think I’m getting better!  Once I make my way through the black and white quilt, I’ll feel more confident to try something only slightly more difficult on the tilted stars.  

Linking up:  

Another Rainbow Quilt...

I gave you a sneek peek of my finished tilted stars rainbow top in my giveaway post from last week, but here it is, finished and positively gorgeous in all its glory!

As I mentioned before, I started by making two blocks just before our guild retreat in March, made 14 all at once during the retreat weekend, and then tried to finish a couple blocks a week until they were finished.  I got them all pieced and pressed by the middle of April and then (sadly) just let them sit in their project box until last week.  Almost immediately after I finished all 27 blocks, I started to piece the first row and then immediately got disgruntled...any guesses why?

The problem areas were where three star points were intersecting at once.  (Side note:  if I hadn't set these blocks slightly staggered to get an odd number of blocks in the top, then I would have had 4 star points to fight with - yeesh!).  I felt like I either had seam allowances flipping in the wrong direction through the feed dogs or they simply got stuck right under the needle where those 9 layers of seam allowances were trying to get through at once.

So I got short-tempered after two rows and put them away for a month, only to pick them up again at the beginning of May.  Once I pushed through all of those uber-thick seams, it really didn't take long to completely piece together.  However, I think the top was trying to punish me because in the middle of one row, I didn't see one particularly ill placed pin.  My needle was nice enough to spot it for me, shriek in terror (or maybe that was my machine.  Or me.  Whatever.), and break in half with a little piece flying up and hitting me right below my eye!

I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned somewhere once before that I hate using pins because I have an irrational fear that one will break and hit me in the eye.  Irrational NO MORE my friends!  I typically only use pins while piecing long or heavy strips or where seams need to meet up perfectly. I still will of course, but I'm definitely going to be more vigilant about removing them as they approach the needle.

As I was piecing, I got really, really excited when all the points lined up perfectly...

...and said a few choice words when inexplicably they didn't.  Oh well.

I tried to use a bunch of different blacks for the background and ended up using 14 different fabrics.  The one above I love but am still wondering if it's a little too loud compared to the others.  Not like I'm going to take it out at this point, but I can't make up my mind if it adds interest or is just distracting.  Thoughts?

I think it even looks beautiful when it's all crumpled up on the ground after a windy photo shoot.  It must be love. :)

I do have a definitely plan for quilting this beauty that involves a mix of free motion machine quilting and hand quilting using a variety of variegated perle cottons, so stay tuned as I practice, practice, practice my FMQ skills and ask for advice!

Linking up:

Crazy Mom Quilts - Finish it up Friday!

Lots of Goodness and a Giveaway...

I've been a little lax about posting lately but there is an awful lot of good stuff going on over here!  First of all, remember my enormous feather quilt?

Well I took a leap of faith (and a huge weight off my shoulders) and sent it off to a professional!  This is my first time sending a quilt out to a long-arm quilter, but I couldn't ask for better hands to place it in than award-winning quilter Margaret Gunn.  I cannot wait to see what she does with it - I'm on pins and needles waiting!

I've also finished up a small project for the BMQG Sewing Room Swap.  I can't show you the finished product yet because its currently travelling to its new home, but watch out for the reveal this Friday.  Instead, here's a sneak peek at the fabrics that I pulled...

After rushing to make a sample block for my turn as the ScrapBeeLicious Queen Bee for May, I managed to finish up a second block after I posted the instructions.  The dark purple is hard to photograph, but seeing two blocks put together really shows what the overall pattern will look like.  I am SO in love with these blocks and cannot wait to see what these talented ladies can pull from their scraps!

And finally, lest you think that my tilted star alphabet blocks have been languishing in a box somewhere alone and forgotten...well, you just might be right.  I actually finished all the ABC blocks over a month ago but when I started piecing them together into rows, I saw that where the star points were abutting, the seams were getting pretty thick.  A hazard of paper piecing sometimes, but so frustrating!  So I put it away until I felt like tackling it again...and next week I will have a finished top and (I hope) some quilting in progress to share.

Spoiler?  I actually proved my greatest fear that a broken needle can fly into the air and hit you in the eye.  Okay, near the eye.  But still! Shudder...

And now for the real reason that you might still be reading (but I hope you've had a fun read along the way ;)) is that today is Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!!  I am positively drowning in fabric over here and my bins are starting to overflow.  I'd like to giveaway an assortment of 6 fat quarters in a rainbow of colors - because I love a good rainbow quilt and hope that you do too!  There's some Tula Pink, Lizzy House, Thomas Knauer, and a few other Free Spirit fabrics thrown in there - all great names to have in your stash!

Simply leave a comment to let me know what color you love to sew with the MOST and you will be entered to win.  If you want a second chance to win, leave me a comment to let me know how you follow my blog (Feedly, Bloglovin, etc.).  International comments are welcome and I will close the comments on May 16th at 5pm EST.  I'll pick the winner through the good old Random Number Generator on May 18th.

Just a reminder that if you're a no-reply commenter, please leave your email address in your comment so that I can contact you if you win.  Thanks so much and happy commenting!