Chain Piecing :)

I had never chain pieced before today. I can tell you, that it will be happening a lot more now. It was amazing. I got 24 blocks sewn with their first seams in under half an hour. There are another 24 to go with the first strips, and I can tell you that will end up happening this evening because it goes so quickly.

Here you see the first 24 blocks so far and the stack of other green squares + white rectangles. These are for a baby that's due in March. The back will be lime green minky. 

In other news, I'm participating in a Color Wheel Swap. My assigned color was purple. This is the fabric I'm sending. The rules were it had to be high quality quilting cotton (duh, like I would get anything else), patterned, read as your assigned color, and not be batik. I have sent in my 8 fat quarters as off today, and sometime after Thanksgiving I'll get 8 fat quarters that are the whole rainbow back. 

And remember a week or two ago how I made a field trip to Ikea to get an actual coffee table. While there, I also stopped in the market place to get these .89 metal flower pots for scraps. They are now along the back of my sewing desk. I had never had a good way to organize. There are a few more pots not shown so I can have more color separation if needed (right now yellow and orange are together, but pink and red are separate, so depending on numbers for future projects, I could move stuff around). 

Irish Road Finished

This is a quilt top that I made in August, start to finish in 2.5 days. I had just finished the summer semester of an 18-month accelerated nursing program that encompased pediatric, OB, and community nursing (PS I graduate 38 days from now). At the bar after following our last final, the entire cohort was convinced that we'd all have to retake the semester. The next week turned into lots and lots of quilting to destress. We only got 3 weeks of summer and most of mine was spent with my sewing machine.

Here is the quilt in pictures through all its stages from August until this past weekend when I finished it on Saturday. I was delinquent in blogging because I didn't have light for taking pictures, and my cell phone's camera is severely lacking (and it only works about half the time).

Here are the blocks arranged on my floor before being sewn together. 

This was after the top was fully pieced, and with the backing fabric. 

The beginning of the quilting where I show that I'm outlining each of the big areas - this is my first quilt where I'm not just doing stitch in the ditch - doesn't hurt that I purchased a new, meant for quilting machine just before starting this. 

A close of up the quilting. You can see that each large area is outlined next to the green steps, then I did a line on either side of the all the long seams. 

Here is the full quilt outside my building.

With the back flipped up - pink and green are good complements. I didn't want this to come off as too girly because of the pink, and the green was the way to do that. 

 The binding is a slightly darker green that echoes the circles on the pale green on the top with little, round starburts all over. I also top stitched the binding down when I couldn't find any hand needles. This was a first, as well, and I'm quite pleased with the result. I slowed down the maximum speed of my machine and used the walking foot, and I can see myself doing that again in the future. 

All Squared Up

I have now squared up all the Asterisk blocks. They are currently 8", and then once I set them on point, the blocks will be around 12". In other news, I also acquired an actual coffee table which will also be my cutting surface, it's perfect height to my couch for that and it's 30" square so it's got a nice amount of space. Previously my "coffee table" was a storage tub with a non-flat lid. It was finally starting to bother me, so a field trip to Ikea and $30 later, I've got an actual coffee table. What's great is it has a shelf under, and I can store quilt blocks in progress there, my cutting mat, rulers, etc. In an apartment that's only 284 sq. ft, every little bit of storage is key!

That is 30 blocks right there, and all the trimmings plus a small glimpse at the new table. I'm pretty pleased with how the blocks are right now. Since the rowing season ends after this weekend's trip to Philadelphia, I'll have quite a bit more time to dedicate to this and other projects that are crying out (3 baby quilts for two friends who are expecting - one of those friends has twins on the way). 

A Quilting Tool Kickstarter

Hi Readers,

I have a mac, which is great 99% of the time. But I can't use EQ because they don't seem to like macs (ie they're lazy and don't want to hire programmers to make a unix based system that fits into the OSX kernals). From the last sentence you can see that I'm a little bit of a geek, and I won't deny that which is why I'm super excited for what the people over at Threadbias are up to.

I saw this over on Freshly Pieced, there's a Kickstarter campaign for a WEB BASED quilt designing tool. That means it doesn't matter what kind of computer you have, all that matters is that you can get onto the interwebs. If you have interest, please consider donating to this group.

Donate by Clicking Here

Fabric Additions

Last week Fabric.com was having a sale. It included Minky, which at 60" wide is a bargain when found for less than $10/yard. I now have a few yards of it in my life. I intend to use it as backing fabric for an upcoming baby quilt for one of my nursing school classmates. It will also serve as the back to my asterisk quilt to make it snuggly. These quilts won't have batting as the Minky adds enough heft. I also ordered a bunch of Aurifil thread since the 1300 yard spools were only $8.50, and they are normally in the neighborhood of $10.50-$12 depending on the shop.

The silver will back the Asterisk. The blue is a question mark. The green for the baby quilt. 

Also, for the asterisk quilt, all of the asterisks are done. It's time to square those up so that I can set them on point, but that is a task for after the Head of the Charles Regatta. Friday I'll be a marshal for the visiting crews from 9a-6p, then Saturday I'll be racing, and Sunday I'll be catching up with rowing friends who are in from across the country for the event. 

I have also joined the Pink Castle Fabrics Stash Stack Club, I get a half yard of 6 different prints (which is a half stack, a full stack would be 12  color coordinated prints) with one color theme each month. For October, the theme is lime green. These came yesterday along with the Minky arriving. This photo doesn't do the colors justice, but my apartment is on the 1st floor of a 4 story building facing the courtyard - ie very little good lighting.  

Quiet Week on the Sewing Front, Big Week on the Rowing Front

Last week and this week are quiet on the sewing front. The rowing season is gearing up for its big finish. This past weekend my team went to the New Hampshire Championships, and we came home with some bling. The men and I double rowed (well, I rowed one and drove the boat for the other). They got medals for the pairs racing ( 2 person boat where each rower has one oar: one port rower, one starboard rower), and I medaled with them in the 4+. My other event was in the 2x, a two person sculling boat (each rower has two oars). 

Here we are sporting our Silver medals from the 4+, 

and the guys have their silver and bronze from the pairs, as well. 

This coming weekend is the Head of the Charles, it's the biggest regatta in the world with 9,000 competitors and 300,000 spectators. We will be rowing the same 4+ lineup (that "+" means there's a coxswain who drives the boat, and that's my spot in the line up). Friday, I'll be a marshall on the course for the out of town crews who want to get a chance to see the course before they're racing it. So I'll be on the river from 8a-6p. 

Hello, Wednesday, it's WIP time!

This week has been very productive. For one, I've finished the quilting on the Irish Road baby quilt that I made in August. All that's left is the binding. I already have the fabric, I just need to do the requisite ironing to finish this one out. I was full of fail though and didn't think to take pictures while the quilt was in my new machine which makes the quilting so smooth. A reminder of what the top looks like:

But, aside from that, I started on an Asterisk quilt and have gotten decently far. I've got 20 of the 30 blocks ready to be set on point. I've used the Moda A Stitch in Color in pear and turquoise for these blocks.

This is a big deal that I've ironed ALL the seams open. The blocks are so pretty. There are 15 that are the prints with white asterisk lines, and there are currently 5 that are white with the turquoise/pear dots. There will soon enough be another 10 that are in the plaid and big dots as seen below. All of these will be set on wonky point with whatever the asterisk lines are - either white for the print blocks or the respective prints for the white blocks.

 Can I repeat: SO MUCH IRONING!!!

 Oooh, pretty, the inverse blocks from each other. 

Oooh, look, all three prints from a coordinating line.