Sew Together (Again)

I made another Sew Together bag, and I think I'm going to keep this one for myself. I made it entirely from Oval Elements in red/burgundy/pink. And now, I've ordered a heavy weight cotton duck to make a couple more of these as took kits for my rowing team. I currently have a tool bag which has just one main pocket, but my 7/16" and 10mm wrenches are very hard to tell apart when just reaching in for one. With this bag I'll be able to separate them into distinct pockets and have the adjustable wrenches in the third pocket. I like when my varied interests can come together - rowing and sewing - since they rarely have any overlap.

In progress shows the interior clipped to the exterior before they were joined.

 Done!

 All red zippers on this one - while it may be hard to tell since I didn't take any pictures side by side, the interior is a darker red/burgundy compared to the exterior. 

Sew Together and a WIP

I first saw the Sew Together bag pattern over the summer on Craftsy, but I didn't get it (it's a little pricey for a bag pattern at $12), but I did purchase it recently, and now it's going to be my holiday gift of choice this season. This first one is going to my mom. When I showed her the pattern, her first thought was color coding the center zippers so that you'd always know what's in which pocket, so this one has three different colors for the inner zippers. The pattern itself is fairly straight forward, although the diagram is a little confusing, and it was easier to read the words instead of looking at the picture (this seems to be the most common sentiment about the pattern). It took about 2.5 hours to make, which included all the cutting and ironing of interfacing.

The other project that I started working on is a paper pieced square in a square pattern. I've always though square in a square quilts looked sharp, so I decided to make one. It's pretty mindless sewing, so I can make a bunch of blocks at a time without worrying about lining up seams or matching things up. I'm also doing completely random color placement with my stacks of fabric, only watching to make sure I don't duplicate any prints within each block. 

On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, one of the DC Modern Quilt Guild members posted to Instagram in the morning that she was going to have a sewing day at home and that others were welcome to join. I went over along with another guild member, Quirky Granola Girl Melinda. We all worked and chatted then had a great lunch at Surfside. I knocked out nearly 30 blocks that day (each block will finish to 6") and I've made another 20 over the last week with more to come today and tomorrow. 

Long Overdue Finish

I made a quilt top and quilted it while I still lived in Boston back in January/February. I finally put the binding on it on Tuesday of this week. Yeah, I was slacking on that one a little. As I've said, binding is my least favorite part of quilting, all you people who say you feel zen as you hand bind, I just don't get it.

Here is the quilt while it was still just a flimsy and I was still living in my tiny studio apartment and hung quilts off my lofted bed frame to take pictures. Have I mentioned how much I love have a dedicated sewing room? This is the quilt I made with the fat quarter bundle I won from Diary of a Quilter during the first week I started following her blog. It's Madrona Road. 

This quilt finished to 54"x66" a perfect throw size. 

And here is the pebbling that I did on all the white stripes.

And here are the finished photos. I embroidered the name of a coworker's child onto it. I rarely make quilts with a purpose, which is part of why I don't get around to binding them. And this Corpsman (enlisted Navy medical person, think like a cross between an EMT and a nurse) took particular interest when I had shown him some pictures of my quilts. His daughter is going to be 3 soon, so I told him I could add her name to this without a problem, and I delivered it to him today. 

 I just did a very tight zig-zag stitch and free motioned her name.

 A peek at the minky back and the gray cross-hatch binding. 

 I love backing quilts with minky, it makes them so soft. 

Scrappy Plus Finish

This must be some sort of record. I managed to bind a quilt (my least favorite part) less than a week after I finished the quilting. In this case it's the Scrappy Plus Along quilt that was inspired by Amy Given Sewist at Blotch and Thrum. I've mentioned the newest quilt shop that I've been frequenting in Northern Virginia before, Quilter's Studio, and they have a long arm available to rent. I quilted it there, finishing on Thursday, and then bound it off today.

This quilt will be going to one of my patients. She was in a skydiving accident where the parachute collapsed on itself ~80 feet off the ground. She has to be in traction, and since it's a military hospital most of the donations we get are geared towards men. I didn't make this quilt with any reason other than I wanted to make this pattern, and I know it will be loved by both her and her family (her mother has already invited me and several of the other nurses to visit their home in Georgia where she's already told me about a quilt museum set up in an old railroad car).

Home right after the quilting. 

 With binding!

 All the corners. 

 Rolled, and all the corners because that's the thing to do (or so show all the other quilting blogs).

 The backing, it's 2/3 dot print, 1/3 white. This shows the quilting well. 

 And this was in my apartment when I realized my living room really shows the fact that I'm a quilter based on what's on all the seating choices. That said, the pink quilt and yellow/green one on the far chair are out so that I can hang them on the walls. 

Bee Blocks in the Mail

This morning I sent this quarter's 3x6 Bee Blocks in the mail. I made the last two yesterday. These are going all over the country: Texas, Oregon, Washington State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Tennessee - I love how the Flickr Bees connect quilters from all across the country (and world).

Here are the last two of the blocks individually: 

And here are all of the blocks up on the design wall. The Blue/Green/Orange one stays with me, the rest went out of the rest of the hive. I can see making a whole quilt of this with sashing between the blocks. There's also the possibility of making the secondary pattern of the squares/diamonds created from the negative areas around the stars. 

Bound and Done

Two days ago I finished up the Asterisk Quilt, but the lighting was terrible for doing photos, so I waited until today. What's great is next to my apartment there's a trail that has a wooden rail fence as one of the borders. This quilt will be going to hang in a local quilt shop in Northern Virginia, where I'll be teaching paper piecing. The quilting was FMQ boxes in the white text areas. The backing is the same as the corner pieces (which was a stash buy last summer), and the binding is a black and white varied width stripe.

Putting Together Bee Blocks

I may not have posted recently, but I have been plugging away. And I've got the countdown on until I'm back to day shift - 6 work nights left! Part of why I haven't been posting is the light is pretty crappy a night. And I will say these pictures are meh, but better than nothing.

Here is the Scrappy Plus Along - 35/42 blocks completed. The only color set left is the gray.

 This one was actually taken during the light of day - it's a bee block that I fully assembled after getting home from work one morning. I had pieced the sections the night before. 

 This is all the bee blocks I received when it was my month for Bee(ful) of Paper. I sashed and added corner stones. The back is the same as the corner pieces with one strip of the black text print running through it to make it wide enough. I'm planning to do double layer batting to make the quilting really stand out on this. I'll be doing FMQ of a yet to be determined design over the white text areas.