365.2014 - week 32

donner mine music camp week 2's quilt raffle prize - musical pinwheels

let the influx of new posts begin!
you saw the triangle musical quilt a little bit ago, and now it's time for week 2's quilt!  i had done this same quilt for last year's donation raffle, and since we still had bits and pieces left over, pulled another one together for week 2 this year.  it was fairly easy to pull together, and since i only had to make 3 more pinwheels, it happened like magic.
i switched up the quilting a bit this time around. last year my grandma just did a basic cross hatch all over, and so i broke it down to being different for the two different blocks. if it was a pinwheel block, i did a stitch in the ditch. for the printed blocks, i did a cross hatch within that block. both blocks were outlines around to frame the quilting. the border was also stitched in the ditch, and then once that was complete it was on to the binding.
as you can see, i didn't even bother removing cat fur...  but there you have it.
two musical quilts off to new homes, and a music camp who benefited from these generous, supportive individuals who send their kids off to camp.  until next year, donner mine!

weekend wips

insert random photo of tawny scrawny cat that has been showing up in our yard every so often.
why?  because i realized last night i had zero in progress photos ready to share with this post.
onward with the past week of crafting!
baby girl quilt:
this quilt is SO CLOSE to being done... but i've been so focused on churning things out with the sewing machine that i really haven't sat down and "relaxed" to do hand sewing on the couch.  i knocked a good chunk out last week, and could probably churn this out this week.  the goal will be wednesday, since thursday will be the last day i could deliver it before heading outta here.  the sooner, the better though.  i'm sure i have a slew of dvr shows i could watch.
room extravaganza:
failed to really work on.
i rolled a few more fabric pieces on to boards, but still have yet to really dive in to getting the final tub of fabric dealt with... as well as the rest of the room chaos.  chaos is probably an understatement...
sewvivor:
i suppose since i'm trying to knock out two projects before i leave friday morning, i'll break this down in to two parts as well.
challenge one: nautical
this past week i really knocked out this quilt.  and now its just down to the final parts.  i cut and pieced triangles on tuesday, and then got a few rows connected together on thursday.  finished the top on friday and knocked out all the quilting on saturday.  the binding is attatched and is 3/4th of the way done, so i forsee it getting done tomorrow.  which is perfectly perfect.
challenge two: bag
i purchased the fabric for this on monday, made sure i had all the bits and pieces i needed when we did a joann's run again on saturday, and once the binding gets finished, this will be next up.  worst case scenario, this one comes to colorado with me.  oh bummer.  something to sew with my equally crafty cousin.  rumor has it she has dual sewing machines at the moment.  win win for all parties.
quilt block swap:
we just got assigned partners this weekend, and here's an idea of the blocks i'll be making for my groups
group member's own pattern (waiting on pattern for this one)
quilter's choice paper pieced pattern (never paper pieced before, so this should be exciting...)
split 9 patch
double aster
garden fence
home town, state, country theme block (this will be an interesting one to decide)
cat block
ribbon star
and for kicks, here's the choice for what i'll be getting:
broken herringbone
each of these i have to make 3 blocks of, and then will receive 3 of my own blocks from each of them in return.  i haven't done a swap in years, so it should be interesting!  send outs don't have to happen until october, so that's a plus.  once i get through sewvivor, it will all be easy simple crafting from there.  which will come in handy when school is back in action.  ugh.  and that's just two weeks from today.  where did the summer go?  oh well...
happy monday everyone :)

365.2014 - week 31

weekend wips

another week of works in progress...  much of it was devoted to the music camp quilt, but it was absolute progress in that market, considering it had to be done by friday at the latest.  and yet, other things were still able to get done!
unfortunately i really don't have any individual photos for each segment, but anyways.  here we goooooo...
music camp donation quilts:
done, sent off and finished for the year.
i thought i would get some hand sewing done earlier on in the week so it could be sent up wednesday, but it just didn't happen.  i finished it late wednesday night (thanks to my dance class being cancelled for the evening) and then thursday sewed on the tag and photographed it.  sent it on it's way friday, and it was on to a new home.
moral of the story:  i will totally try and start these a little sooner next year.  i think i remember crunching to get them done last year, and that just makes for no fun with crafting.
baby girl quilt:
last week i knocked out the strips in one day, and this past week i continued forward and got the squares cut, chopped to triangled, resewed together, and then trimmed down.  originally i had a different pattern in mind, but it just wasn't working for me.  as of last night, the quilting was finished, and awaits binding.  that seems to be a common theme.  waiting on binding.  sounds like the title for my autobiography or something.  once the binding is a done deal, it's off to my aunt to deliver it to the recipient.  whoot!
room extravaganza:
i rolled 3 tubs worth of fabric on to comic book boards on monday, and that's pretty much as far as i got.  on the plus side, i only have one more tub of fabric to roll!  well... i know there is hidden fabric out in the living room to deal with as well.  ugh.  it's been quite a lull in productivity for this, but things are gradually getting back in motion.  i've got just under two weeks now until i leave for a week, and then school starts...  perhaps i should try and get something in motion...  yargh.
the color run:
a coworker of mine got me to sign up for the color run, which we participated in this past saturday.  it was my first 5k (or anything with the word "run" in it that i willingly signed up for) and it was a blast.  sure, i did a lot of walking, but there was a smidge of jogging that i did too.  it was quite a bit of fun.  how this fits in with the weeked wips is that i made a no sew tutu for the event.  knocked that sucker out in a day or so.  i'll have a post on that soon, once i get all my phone photos organized from it :)
sewvivor:
in case you missed the edit to last week's weekend wips, i was not selected to be one of the top 16 for this season of sewvivor.  i'm a little bummed, but will still push onward and keep my happy crafting going.  i still plan to do the challenges, which the first two i need to knock out in the next two weeks before i go to colorado on the 15th (bought my first ever plane ticket for my first ever flight!) to ensure that i have my crafts done and entered for the sew-along portion of the competition.  all crafting will not cease while out of state, but i would like to have the sewvivor projects moving right along.
craftster swaps:
i took the plunge and signed up for my first craftster swap since 2009.  especially so since i've really gotten the quilting bug, but don't always want to have to make a finished product right away.  so i signed up for a quilt block swap, where i get assigned a group and make 3 or 4 of each of their blocks in exchange for them to make 3 or 4 of mine.  this will probably end up being the project that i work on in colorado, so that will be fun and small to do instead of heaving a beastly project with me on a plane.

donner mine music camp week 1's quilt raffle prize - triangle quilt along

this is another quilt that i'm super excited to share!  after last year's two quilts raised a decent amount for the donner mine music camp, i was asked again to do another two quilts this year.  we still had pieces and parts left over from one of the quilts that could be repeated, but the second quilt still had to be decided.  i stumbled across a cute little quilt using just triangles called "alphabet blues" by waggonswest on craftster, and i had to run with the idea.  initially, i had a different color scheme in mind, but after a trip to beverley's in rocklin and mom cruising through their fat quarter collection combined with other fabric chunks we had in the great stash pile that is our house, we formed about 10 or so different prints.
the pattern used was from the "triangle quilt along" put on by the sassy quilter.  granted, i didn't do this with them in true quilt along style, but it was still a great set of directions that was super simple to follow.  6" wide strips, then cut down to 60 degree angles with a 1/2" trimmed off one tip to help with lining up the pieces.  204 triangles later, it was game time.
17 triangles across, 12 rows down.  the trickiest part was laying them all out in various ways to keep certain prints away from repeating to give more of the "scattered" look i was hoping for.  and then keeping them in that same order as i sewed them together row by row.  i ended up taking a picture from my phone and printing it out full page to have as a visual, then crossing each row off as i finished things.  i only had to redo a few pairings, so that was pretty exciting.
i tried something a smidge different for the quilting versus what i have usually done.  it was the same way waggonswest quilted her "alphabet blues" and i just loved it.  i aligned my foot with the diagonal seam and just sewed down the row.  then, i aligned it with the opposite side of the foot, and did the second side.  i love how it looks versus stitching in the ditch for this one.
to keep with the overall look of the quilt, i did a scrappy binding of the fabrics used.  which was a good choice, since it really helped me get the fullest out of each of the fat quarters purchased.  as you heard in one of my weekend wips posts, i spent the time in reno really busting out a good portion of the binding on this quilt while kicking back and relaxing.  win, win, win situation.  i finished this quilt in it's entirety late tuesday night with minutes to spare before midnight... you can't really tell in these pictures, but i swear i de-furred quite a bit of it.  between our house of cats and amy's house of dogs & cats, this black backed quilt was doomed.
pretty sure velcro is partially to blame...
he's pretty much failing as an assistant.
i just love detail photos... it makes me swoon. the cat fur is just the bonus gift for the recipient.
and there's that official tag meaning it's done!  it's become my officially unofficial tradition to post "tag" photos the moment i finish sewing them to the quilt on my instagram feed.  which is always entertaining since it acts as a sort of time stamp for people to see that i'm crafting at all sorts of obscure hours of the night.
this quilt was for week one of camp, which ended last friday night and got raffled off.  not sure how well it did, but apparently someone from the camp wants to pay me in cookies in order to have me make a quilt like this for her.  i might just make that happen... i do love chocolate chip cookies!

365.2014 - week 30