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Sew Out Loud QAL – Entry #2

I decided to give another block a try as an entry for the Sew Out Loud contest. My embroidery is not so good, but my block should give the idea.

It is a stack of quilty books that have punny titles.

“Sewing Farm”
“War & Quilting”
“Quilter in the Rye”
“A Patchwork Orange”
“One Flew Over the Scrap Pile”
“To Kill a Y-Seam”
“Of Quilts and Men”
“A Quilters Guide to the Galaxy”
“Gone With the Pin”

Cute right? Or is it just me again?

The block also include a mini quilt (okay really mini judging by the size of the books!!) hanging on the wall. 🙂

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Rainbow Quilt with Blended Fabrics

First off I want to say a big thank you to the two bloggers who joined me for my very first Virtual Sew Day. Leila, from Where the Orchids Grow and Mary, from Mary.Emmens were great fun to quilt with and seemed to get a lot of sewing done, which was the goal!! It was nice to not be talking to myself all day.

If you are interested in joining along next time, I plan to have another Virtual Sew Day on May 20th. This will be the weekend after the US Mother’s Day. It should be a lot of fun, so mark your calendars!!

The project I was working on was binding my rainbow quilt. I finally finished my quilt today. Here it is!

This quilt will be given to a friend of mine.

My friend organizes a luncheon that includes a raffle and silent auction each year for the breast cancer center he works for. Donations help raise money for women getting tested for or having to deal with breast cancer.

The back of this quilt is a floral print that I had in my stash, my quilter thought it might be a vintage sheet, which is quite possible since it was wider than normal. I have used sheets as backing many times and have always had good success.

Even though I have my own longarm, I knew this quilt needed something special done with it. Mary, over at Quilt Hollow was able to quilt my quilt with a wonderful flower pattern.

She fit me into her schedule and had the quilt back to me in record time since the function happens near Mother’s Day, I didn’t have much time to get it done. Here is a shot of the quilting from the back.

I took the quilt to this great park we have near us that used to be a zoo/amusement park. It was fun to get some different shots of the quilt.

As I said, this weekend for the Virtual Sew Day, I worked on the binding for this quilt. I chose some kona grey I had in my stash, I wasn’t sure how it would look, but I think it actually frames the quilt well.

I used my own binding tutorial for this one. I was going to machine stitch it to the back, but I decided to go ahead and take the time to hand tack it to the back.

I finally finished today. Now all I have to do is put a label on the quilt and it will be all done.

I know whoever wins this quilt will love and appreciate it. I will also be bidding on this quilt as, let’s be honest, I would love to keep it all for myself!! hehe

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

**ETA I just found out (like literally minutes after I posted this) that my friend is no longer with the breast cancer center, but he has moved on to Fundraising for the Boy Scouts. So it looks like the quilt will be staying with me for a while. I was only associated with this center through my friend, but no worries, this quilt will be loved, and perhaps one day will find a wonderful charity to help out. I am sad about this, but I have learned in life that all things happen for a reason.

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Sew Out Loud QAL – Block Entry

One of my favorite blogs, Very Kerry Berry, was a participant in the Sew Out Loud quilt along. Due to her postings on her blog, I got interested in the blocks they were making. These bloggers are SUPER talented. I haven’t actually tried any of the blocks yet (intimidated much?), but when I saw they were having a contest where anyone could design their own block, I knew I had to give it a try. I have never designed on my own before, so I was nervous, but I had an idea, so I figured why not try?

So of course you want to see the block I designed right? Well here it is!

The quote says “Live Long and Quest for Scraps” … this is a little play on the phrase “Live Long and Prosper”. The theme of Sew Out Loud is “Quilter’s Wordplay”, so I figured changing up a famous phrase is a pretty good way to have wordplay!! Also, did you notice something else about my phrase?

Down the left side, the larger letters of the main words give the initials “LQS” which is also short for “Local Quilt Store”. Pretty clever right? Oh yes, I was rather proud of myself for thinking of that one!! hehe (maybe it’s only clever to me! :))

The outside edges radiate orange and yellow. These two colors blended together more than I would have liked, but this block would look great with any color combination of scraps. Each ray is made up of lots of scrappy pieces.

Aren’t we always on the quest for more and more scraps as we cut more and more fabric into beautiful quilts? That’s the idea I was going for here. The larger your scrap pile, the more love you have created with all the quilts you have made. Then of course we have to find a way to use all those wonderful scraps, so even more quilts are created!!

Whether I win or not, I will post a tutorial for this block on my blog. I just have to figure out the best way to create the template for the block first. The pattern will actually come with two options for the phrase in the middle, the one I stitched and another one I thought of …

“Life, Love and the Quest for Scrapiness” Again this is a play on another famous phrase. “Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness” and you’ll also see that this phrase also has the initials “LQS” and fits very well with the scrappy theme of the block.

I have entered my block over at the Sew Out Loud’s Flickr page. It is now up to the judges to pick their favorite.

Just the fact that my lonely little block gets to be in the same universe as these same absolutely wonderful bloggers is a huge accomplishment for me. Honestly, this is the very first time I can say that I independently designed a block. I had no specific outside inspiration for this block (except of course the guidelines for entry). The idea just popped into my head one day. I really and truly enjoyed the designing process, and even if I don’t win, just the amount of joy I got from making this block, and knowing what it will mean for my future of quilting and designing, is worth every second spent on this block.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Virtual Sew Day – Lunch Time Update

No pics right now, but I have gotten the binding sewn down. Originally I was going to machine sew it to the back, but since this is for a charity, I think I will go ahead and take the time to hand tack it to the back, so I may be doing just that for the rest of the day!! I probably will take a break in the afternoon though and sew a little bit of something else to break up the monotony.

I will have pics of this quilt hopefully by the end of the day!

How is everyone else doing?

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Virtual Sew Day – Mid-Morning Update

To learn about virtual sew day, be sure to check out this post.

I have been sewing now for a few hours and have gotten a few steps closer to my goals.

First off I started the morning by sewing up a few blocks for my solids only quilt. Which was goal #3. I do hope to get a few more done today, but I am happy to have accomplished at least one goal so far!!

I also got started on the binding for my first quilt. I was reading Mary’s goals today on her blog, Mary.Emmens.co.uk and discovered that she cut binding strips using her Accuquilt Go! I haven’t used my Baby Go! much and I couldn’t remember which dies I had picked up, but I knew I had one strips one. Luckily for me I had been smart enough to pick up the 2.5″ one, which is perfect for binding. Since my cutting board is currently being taken over by projects,

I decided to take Mary’s idea and give it a go (get it a Go!? hehehe).

I folded up the fabric so I could get 5 strips from my first cut. I was cutting through 6 layers of fabric on one side and 4 on the other.

It went through the Go! pretty well, but I could tell things were kind of bunching up.

There was not much scrap leftover from the cut, though i think if I had taken the time to clear off my cutting board and trim everything up and cut it with a ruler, I *may* have gotten one more strip out of it, but for the time saving and space saving aspect, I was okay with that.

The first set of strips were a little ruffley and pinch folded in spots,

but I think this was more my own fault for not ironing and not being careful as I ran it through the machine. The second set of strips was fine.

I had a heck of a time actually sewing mys trips together this time. Usually I never have to unpick my binding, but for some reason half my strips went on backwards so I had to do a lot of unpicking and resewing. I hate doing that, but I sucked it up and everything turn out fine in the end. Hopefully my binding goes on the quilt much easier than it went together.

So that’s what I have gotten done so far. Now I am off to keep plugging along. I hope everyone else is getting a lot done today too.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Virtual Sew Day – Come Sew With Me Today!

I am very excited to be sewing today. I hope that some of you will be joining me as well! If you will be sewing today too, let me know. You can do this by putting together a post on your blog with your goals for the day (and link back to this post so others can join in too!). Then come and leave me a comment with a link to your post so I can see what you are working on. If you do not have a blog, just leave your goals right in my comments.

Then through out the day, be sure to update us on your progress by posting a comment here. We would also love to see progress pics if you have them. Post your pics on your blog, or link us to your pics on Flickr. This is really low key and meant to be a fun way to keep ourselves motivated through out the day to reach our goals!!

At the end of the day, be sure to give us a full update either by a new blog post with pics or by commenting below. Did you reach your goals?

Here are my goals for the day:

1. Bind my charity rainbow quilt.
2. Make 2 Stripe blocks for my stripes quilt
3. Make a few blocks for my solids only quilt
4. Bind pink quilt for my niece

That is a good start. I have a feeling I may only get #1 done, but we shall see. I will have to be careful to spend as much time sewing as being on the computer!! 🙂

You can also travel over to QuiltingBoard and check out my virtual quilting thread there. I will be updating both there and on my blog.

So what are your goals for sewing today?

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Virtual Sew Day Tomorrow – Sunday April 15!

I just wanted to post a quick reminder about my virtual sew day tomorrow. You can read more about it here:

Virtual Quilt Day

I know I’ll have at least one blog reader joining me, and also some friends on QuiltingBoards. I am hoping to get more blog readers, but I know life is busy. Hopefully as the word gets out, we’ll have more friends join us in the future!! Either way me and my one blog friend, Mary from Mary.Emmens.co.uk, will have a lot of fun and get some much needed projects done! So will you join the two of us?

I have made a quick little button to go with our virtual sewing day:

If you want to put the button on your blog, here is the code you need:

Just copy and paste that right to your blog or blog sidebar.

There are no rules for Virtual Sew Day. I call it “sew” day now instead of “quilt” day because you can sew anything you want!! A quilt, clothes, purses, whatever your heart desires. Work on a much neglected WIP, finish up some swap blocks, make a new purse for an evening out, or how about a fun shirt? I love sewing with other people, but dragging my machine around is no fun, so I decided to have a virtual sew day so we can all work on projects and give encouragement along the way. Even if I am talking to only myself and Mary on Sunday, I know that I’ll get so much more done.

If you want to play along, look for my post tomorrow. I will have it up nice and early, so even if you are in another time zone, you can check in and tell me what your goals are for the day!!

Happy quilting,
Rachel

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Let’s Virtually Quilt Together – Sunday 4/15/2012

I love quilting (obviously) and I have always wanted to go to one of those all day sews held by a LQS. I have never actually done it for a number of reasons.

1. I don’t know anyone. I know this seems shallow, but I hate sitting in a room full of women and not be able to chat it up, because half the fun of these things is the social aspect. Now yes, if I actually went, they would get to know me more and be more chatty with me, but the first time is too overwhelming for me.

2. Dragging my sewing machine around does not sound like fun. Nope. Not at all.

3. What project would I work on? I have so many going on, and I very rarely work on only one at a time. So to bring just one would be boring, and to bring more than one would be a lot of stuff to drag around.

It is for these reasons and more that I decided it would be fun to pick a day and virtually quilt with other quilters all over the country. I love chatting with my virtual friends, I don’t have to move my sewing machine, and I can work on as many projects as I want. Win/Win/Win!!

I am going to have a thread on Quilting Boards for my virtual sew day, but I also want to host this on my blog. Who knows, maybe some of you will want to join me too!! I might even have some door prizes to give away!

Here are the deets for Virtual Sew Day:

1. Date – Sunday April 15, 2012 – start any time you can

2. Post your goals for the day on your blog, and link back to my blog so we can get more friends virtually quilting with us! Pick any project you want to work on!! No rules at all about what you can sew on this day.

3. Leave me a comment with your blog post address so I can see what you are working on (maybe I’ll even get a linky thingy if I can figure it out)

4. Throughout the day, check in either by commenting on my post, your own post, or creating a whole new post.

5. Be sure to check out all your friends that are quilting with you!

If you do not have a blog, feel free to leave your goals on the post I will put up on Sunday. We will keep the conversation and accolades going through there. You can even send me final pics and I will do a final post of the day and feature those that don’t have their own blogs.

If I do have door prizes, they will be picked at random among those who participate throughout the day.

So what do you think? Want to spend the day virtually quilting with me?

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

PS. I am going to get some kind of button made for this, but my Photoshop is being very mean to me right now. 🙂

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Seeing Squares – Empty Bobbin Pattern

I have been following the Empty Bobbin for quite a long time. Recently she showed a beautiful quilt that she made for a friend. I have been eyeballing her pattern called “Seeing Squares” for quite a while, and after seeing this version, I knew I had to make it.

I headed over to Pink Chalk Fabrics (another blog I love to follow) to pick up the pattern.

It arrived very quickly, and I knew exactly what fabrics I was going to use for it as soon as I got it. A while back I picked up a few bags full of solid fabric scraps from a yard sale. The pieces ranged from a few inches to half yard. I would estimate there was a total of 7 yards of scraps in all different colors and I literally paid $2 for all of it. I haven’t found a good way to use them yet, and I just thought this quilt would be perfect.

A day or two after I found the pattern, I was reading another favorite blog, Sew Create It. She was hosting a challenge called Sew Into Solids.

This was the perfect inspiration I needed to get going on this quilt. The first step was to get all the squares cut. If I was using yardage, it would be easy to cut the squares, but since I was using scraps, it was more of a project. I had to iron everything out, then figure out which pieces I could cut the larger squares from, then cut the rest from the smaller pieces. The size quilt I am making has 500+ squares.

It took me 2 days to cut all these! It was quite a project, but now I can get to the fun of sewing!! The larger blocks are cut up further and sewn back together so they are multi-colored. I started a few of them.

It’s actually a very easy pattern that is laid out great. It’s one of the easiest I have worked with so far. I am excited to see it all come together. If you are interested in trying out some solids only quilts, be sure to take a look at the Sew Into Solids flickr group.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Boxy Stripes – Quilt Block Tutorial

I have been working on a new project and I thought I would post a tutorial here for everyone. I know I have been blog absent lately, but it was a very busy winter!! We are still homeschooling, but I also have a work from home job now. This is one of the things what led to me having to close down the shop unfortunately. As much as I would like to be able to do it all, it’s just not possible. I have some ideas in the works for other projects, but for now I am happy to just be quilting again!! You should be seeing me around these parts a lot more for a while. Hope that’s okay with everyone!!

I will explain a bit more about this project in another post, but I saw a lovely quilt from Red Pepper Quilts, and I knew I had to make it (that link will take you to the quilt). I didn’t see a tutorial on her blog for this, but it really is a rather old block anyway. I was able to figure it out pretty quickly. I decided to share my steps here so others may have as much fun as me!! Here is the block we will end up with today:

These blocks are not difficult per say, but they can be time consuming. There is a lot of fussy cutting and fussy placement involved to get everything to line up. You will see in my inspiration quilt, that she didn’t always care as much if everything was perfectly lined up, but I am a little bit of a perfectionist so I am going to try my best to get them to all line up just right!! My instructions are my perfectionist way of doing this block, but please feel free to adapt to your level of perfectionism/speed preference. I would not sit down and make 100 of these blocks in one sitting, I might go insane that way. My plan is to do a few at a time as I am doing other projects to break up the time spent and not feel like I am under a spell. 🙂

Please let me know if you have any questions after reading these, I just made them up real quick as I did one block, so I may have left something out.

Supplies
Starch
Striped Fabrics
Scissors
Ruler with a 45 degree line
Rotary Cutter
Sewing Machine
Iron

The first thing you want to do when making this block is to starch your fabric. I know many of you do not use starch, and I am sure these would turn out fine without it, but since we are working with bias edges, I prefer to starch my fabric so there is less pull.

Be sure that you iron the starch really well so the fabric is no longer wet. Wet fabric is floppy fabric and we do not want that here.

Before we get to cutting the fabric, be sure that you have a ruler with a 45 degree line. You can see in my picture that I have highlighted that line with ruler tape.

This is the line we will be using the most for these blocks, so make sure sure you are familiar with it!! 🙂

Now take your ruler and place the 45 degree line on the top of one of the stripes. Since the stripes are all the same size in this block, it makes it easier. I will place my 45 at the top of a red stripe for all 4 triangles. If the stripes were different widths, you would want to be sure to always place your line at the top of the same stripe in a new repeat every time. This way your triangle has the same stripes all the way down to the point.

The next part takes a little practice, but with a firm hand you can do it!! Run your rotary cutter up the ruler to just past that 45 degree line. The right side will be easier, the left side takes practice. I use my right hand and just be sure my rotary cutter is against the ruler. It’s awkward, but it works. Your triangle should pull away easily.

You can see in that pic, that my 45 degree line is not the top stripe on that piece, so what I do is mark with an arrow which stripe is my top stripe and then I cut it later. I will use a rotary cutter or scissors, whichever get me a more precise cut. (For this particular block I used scissors).

Then you just move your ruler down the fabric to the next line that has no cuts in it and repeat. Since you are farther down the fabric, you won’t be able to just run your rotary cutter right off the fabric, so just mark your top line and cut your triangle out with scissors now.

This is what your fabric looks like when 2 triangles are cut.

On this fabric I was only able to fit 3 triangles top to bottom, so I moved next to the first triangle I cut. Since my stripes are all the same, I was able to flip my ruler to save fabric, but if my stripes were not all the same, I would not be able to do this.

Now you have your 4 triangles cut.

You may notice that your stripes are not exactly even (you can tell by the center points).

But that is okay, so long as they are pretty close, we are going to do some more fiddling to get them just right.

For this block, it’s best if you don’t use a quarter inch foot that has the guard. There may be time where some of your fabric goes over that quarter inch, and you don’t want anything to get caught up. I use my regular old foot and I have a good visual on what is roughly a quarter inch from the top of the foot. You do not need an exact quarter inch for this block as we will be trimming to size at the end anyway.

Place two of the triangles right sides together.

Take one side and push the fabric back or forth until the stripes line up precisely.

This will cause a slight gap/overlap on the opposite side, but that is okay. This will be on the outside of the block and will get trimmed away when you square up the block. (This pic shows the other side, the side you are going to sew on should be flush)

Pin your block on the edge where you lined up the stripes. Be sure not to pin with the stripe, your pins won’t be straight that way!! I do this all the time, so if you find you do, just move them. LOL

Sew the triangles together.

Do the same for the other two triangles and go ahead and chain stitch (run them through the machine without cutting the thread).

Once they are both sewn, lay them on your ironing board facing the exact same way.

Iron the seams to set them.

Then iron the block open with the seams to one side. I personally would not iron the seams open rather than to one side at this point as it will make your life easier to have those interlocking seams at the next step.

Iron the next side open the same way.

Now you have both sides open.

Place these two right sides together.

You will see that your seams nest together, make sure they are right up against each other.

Now here comes the fiddly part. Once again we want to be sure our stripes line up. This may mean that your top edge is slightly off set. You will always keep the middle seam nestled, but slide the top block up and down along that “spine” slightly until your stripes are all lined up. You can see in this image that my blocks are offset by less than 1/8 inch, but my stripes all line up.

Pin again, and sew. You will sew a quarter inch from the shortest edge, which is why it’s good to have a visual on the top of your foot for where that quarter inch is. Remember though if you are off a bit on your quarter inch, that is perfectly fine, they will be squared up at the end.

Set your seam with an iron.

This seam can be ironed open or to one side, I always do one side anyway, but it won’t make a difference at this point.

Now stand back and enjoy your handy work.

See how those lovely stripes line up?

Square up your blocks utilizing the 45 degree line on a ruler. (No pics of this sorry!)

I hope this tutorial is useful to someone. If there are any questions, do not hesitate to ask!!

Cheers!
Rachel

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Home again, home again, jiggity jig ….

So time has really flown by in our house lately!! We have started homeschooling and just as we got a good groove going for that, we headed off to a dream vacation in Disney. Our trip started as one week and morphed into two! We are back now though, and we are once again falling back into the ebb and flow of every day life. I thought I would share a bit of our homeschooling and our trip with you today, but be on the look out for many more quilty related things to come real soon!

We started homeschool a little bit early this year for two reasons. First, I knew we would be heading to Disney in mid-September, so I wanted to start a bit early to make up for any lost time. And second, my son was excited to just get started!! We learned about many interesting things, just a few that I took pictures of are ….

Pirates …

Making a homemade compass …

Flying a Kite …

Capillary Studies …

The science of cleaning pennies …

A new hobby, letterboxing …

and a trip to the Art Museum …

We had so much fun with all our activities, and we both learned so much. My style of homeschooling would fall under the category of “Relaxed Homeschooling”. Which to us basically means we do not have a curriculum to follow. I have a general guideline of things I would like to see him learn, but for the most part I am allowing him to express his interests in a topic, and we are building our own curriculum around that. It is really working out very well for us.

Our trip to Disney was simply AMAZING. Having never been there before, I had no clue what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised at every turn. I am in the process of writing up our trip report right now. I took notes after each day, so I could be sure to keep a record of this wonderful trip. I am not sure my family will have the opportunity to travel again for quite some time, so I want to be sure to remember this wonderful family trip. Here are just a few pictures of the trip.

Although the trip was so awesome, it is nice to be back home and back into the swing of things. My goal for the coming weeks is to get some tutorials done, and do some updates to the store. Be sure to keep an eye on my blog for all the fun things to come!

Happy Quilting!
Rachel

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Craft Buds Giveaway

Craft Buds is a wonderful website that has a lot of information for the business side of crafting. Many of us have thought about making our favorite hobbies into a viable business, Craft Buds is there to help us with that. I love reading their blog posts as they provide so much useful information.

Craft Buds is having a linky party on their site for the month of September. They are celebrating craft books.

Throughout the month, they will have loads of information on getting your own craft book out there for the public to see. They are also encouraging crafters to link up to their projects that they have made from craft books. If you do link up one of your projects, you will be entered to win one of many prizes.

Dewberry Lane has donated a prize, The Practical Guide to Patchwork.

This book is written by Elizabeth Hartman. I have been following Elizabeth’s blog for some time, and I am in love with all her patterns and this book.

To be entered for a chance to win this book, all you have to do is link up to a project you have made from any craft book. Just head on over to Craft Buds (here).

I am going to try and make a quilt top from Elizabeth’s book this month. I am going to be out of town for a week, so I am not sure if I will be able to complete the project before the end of the month, but we will see. I have picked the project and the fabrics I am going to be working on.

And I started cutting the strips of fabric I need.

I don’t have the second, lighter solid fabric that is needed for the pattern yet, but my plan is to make the blocks to the black borders, and then pick up the other fabric when I can. I will update the blog as I finish more steps!!

Happy Quilting!
Rachel