Quilt Along Wednesday

My Hearts and Feathers whole cloth is finished!!! I am very pleased with it. Blocking was a little more challenging than I thought it would be. In my haste and excitement to get finished, I forgot to measure before I soaked it in water:P OOPS!  I had already blocked it before I realized this, but I hadn't cut it yet. So, I decided to get it wet again, and re-block. This time, I tried to pull it tighter. I tried to stablize the center with pins, and then measure and pull out each side make it as even as possible on each side. Ummm, I was off a bit.

I didn't have any elastic, so I made due with what I had. I used a piece if foam poster board and cut it down to about a 1/2 in. bigger than the cloth. Then used binder clips to hold it. I was unsure of how the paper layer would hold up. It did fine, but the whole board buckled. I had a picture of this, but I lost my camera in my sewing room. I actually at this point, think the camera walked off. I searched high and low. It's gone. IPhone photos will have to do until I get a new camera. :(

I used biased binding. I have not had much luck with straight of grain binding.I didn't use as many pins as Leah, suggested for my binding. I just went slow, and it was fine.I LOVE putting the binding on!! I also put in a lable, and corner holders instead of a sleeve( I'm not sure what they are called, but I have seen them around the blogs.)

After the binding was attached, It was a little wavy on the edges. To fix this I used a squirt bottle of water to wet it. Then laid acrylic rulers on top of it, and put my acrylic extension table on top of it for a little weight. It did the trick. Not quite sure how I would fix a big quilt, though.

Question for Leah: If you forget to measure before soaking the quilt, is all lost. I couldn't seem to get past that, because if I measured from the outer feathers to cut, I wouldn't get a perfect square. If I measured from the center out, to get a square, the distance between the feathers and outer edge was not equal. I opted for the perfect square, since the distance was not to much off.

What I learned. Take your time with blocking and follow directions!! Accept that quilting/blockin/cutting cannot be perfectly accurate and jsut do the best you can;) And don't sweat the small stuff!!

Busy Weekend!

Happy Easter I haven't been blogging much on this 3 day weekend! I have been busy in the sewing room and of course, visiting with family today.

When I came home from work Thursday, I had a happy surprise in the mail! I won some goodies on a giveaway! I signed up for a newsletter from the Bake Shop Desserts here ! Thanks Relva Farnsworth. She has a monthly giveaway. Go sign up, you may win next! Here's my goodies.

I have an upcoming baby shower to attend in May. My friends daughter is having a baby girl. The Vintage Modern charms I won are perfect, so I quickly went to work. Sorry for the next few pictures. I took them with my IPhone. I lost my camera in my sewing room(or it walked off!!!) I got the baby's crib size top finished, and I used 38 of the 42 charms. I may use the last 4 on the back. 

 I super sized the Granny Squares that are so popular right now. Hmmmm, should I name the quilt Granny Squaring Up??  ;)

Hope you Easter was great on this beautiful day!

Craftsy BOM

I finally got caught up!! Her is my Chunky Chevron Block!

I made to String Blocks.Here is my first. It came out to small. ARGH!

Here is my second. Honestly, i like the first one better. I didn't think about the strips I was grabbing as much and it had a more random look. I may recreate the first one later, but I this point, I am ready to move on and I want to make sure I have enough fabric!

Here is the broken spider web block! Liking it! I am using all 1930's repo FQ's. I really liked them when I bought them, but now, I wish I had bought something else. Waste not, want not! I'm sure it will look great when I have it all together.

Here are the ones I had already done. I am ready for April's Hexies! It will be a new technique for me. So far, they have all been new techniques and or blocks!!!!

fabric giveaway!

want some fabric? go here! Good luck!

Quilt Along Wednesday

I finished up the mini quilt for Quilt Along Wednesday. I found micro stippling a little challenging. I took me approximately 4 hours to do the micro-stippling. i only worked in one hour increments. I found it easier to keep my stippling small in the little areas, like the heart. On the outer edges, the stippling got slightly larger. I had to " reigh it in" a few times on the outer edges. I would start out"micro" but then my shapes would start to get larger. Also, doing such precision work caused my hands to start to cramp up a little bit. Did any one else experience this? All-in-all, I am pleased with the results! Even the the stippling size varies a little bit, it is slight enough that it still looks consistent.

This is my warm up piece.

I can see the need for blocking the quilt. there are quite a few waves. But I did manage to not get any puckers, front or back, on my quilt!! :)

front

back

I had a hard time figuring which was the front, and which was the back. All the chalk has rubbed off. When I go to bind it, i will have to look at it extra hard to find the front. I should probably mark it next time. That's a good thing, right??

Here is my mistake on the front. I'm not sure what happened. I think it's where I stopped and started again and had a little  excess thread .

Mistake on the back. Not sure what happened here. These mistakes are staying! I'm not even gonna attempt to rip out those teeny tiny stitches.
Just for the record, I did have other mistakes! Ha! But they were so subtle and un-noticable, that they aren't worth worring about!

Questions for Leah: 


How long did it take YOU to micro-stipple this??? Did your hands get cramped? Do you quilt micro- stippling at a VERY slow speed? I forgot to mention earlier that while quilting this motif, expecially in the shaped areas, my speed was super slow.


Here is what i learned. While a little challenging, Micro-stippling provides a beautiful texture to your quilt. It's not the best motif if you are in a hurry! I think I will  reserve it for art, or wall quilts, but I think it would be cute to add little border to a home-made quilt label! I can't wait for BLOCKING!!

March FMQ Challenge, Barely!

I barely cracked this one out for March. I still have February's to do:O, but I wanted to get this one in on time!!! I like you can have random uniformity if you quilt in rows. I kind of lost that on the last pattern I quilted which was the flowers( even though it's up top). I think that happened because I started quilting this 20 minutes ago! My speed almost got away with me a few times.( I was in a bit of a hurry) Note to self, don't try to rush quilting. It's 11:43 here. I better go link up or I may turn in to a pumpkin!

Blog name change, again

So this is the second time in a few days I have changed my blog name. OK, I can be a bit indecisive at times. When I first opened up my blog, I couldn't think of a good name. I just wanted to get it up. So, My Quilting Journey is all I could come up with. Boring. So I really wanted to change it. Then all I could think of was Luvin' Quiltin'....better. Then, I was in bed last night. It came to me ...Fresh Off The Spool! YAY, I love it! hope you do too :) Let me know what you think!!!