Therapy

Sewing is a therapy for me. I love it. It is so relaxing to me to sit and put something together. Then I feel so accomplished when it is done. I used to sew a lot at night when my little girl was a little smaller than she is now. She would have a new dress almost every Sunday for church. I would sew it Saturday night after she went to bed. Then came my little guy that's not so little anymore and I was still able to sew after bedtime. Now I have a smaller little guy that is becoming not so small anymore either and when night time comes I just want to sit and do nothing at all. So my sewing has had to move to the daylight hours and the kids know not to touch anything I an sewing. However, that does not stop them from taking as many scraps as they can and string them all over the house. But I don't mind that so much. They know I love to sew.

So when I moved I forgot a vital piece of quilting equipment at my parents house. Actually 2 things. My cutting mat and ruler. I bought a new mat because mine was getting pretty beat up anyway. But I couldn't bring myself to buy the rulers to cut next to (you the kind I mean) because I have not one BUT 2!! And I left them both! So I finally got around to borrowing one from someone at church that sews and quilts as well. (Sigh) The kindness of friends. So I was able to get some material cut and somewhat finish my quilt i started at my parents house. It took me 2 months to get around to doing a 15 min. job. Oh well. Its done now and I just couldn't wait to finish it before I show you. So yes it is not done. I just have to add batting, backing and machine quilt it (still torn between trying it myself or sending it somewhere else) and then the binding and this baby will be up for SALE!! As for the price I am not sure yet. I have to take into consideration how much the materials cost along with all my time and energy making it. And depending on if I machine quilt it myself or not will go into the price as well.So without further delay...

My heart quilt! Isn't it lovely. I wish I could take credit for the design but I can't. I saw one on etsy and decided I wanted to make one. I had to draw everything out and do all the measurements. It really was quite the process. But now that its almost done it was all so worth it. Maybe I will have to keep it for my own. Who knows. But if anyone is interested let me know. I am not sure yet how I am going to go about selling this, maybe a local quilt shop or I just might have to open something up on etsy. Who knows.

Should I name my quilts??

I know I promised a quilt along for August. The thing is, life happened. We moved about 2 months ago so I am no longer living with my parents. We have been spending those 2 months with a Daddy that hasn't started school yet. And I am homeschooling this year for the very first time. And still trying to adjust to all of the above. Oh and not to mention we are a bit poor. Therefore hubby thinks I can just make any old quilt from my preexisting stash of fabric. I CAN'T!!! I need fabric that matches and color coordinating! Not to mention good quality, at least better. And of the material I do have it was bought mainly for dresses or skirts or some other project i just haven't gotten around to. So really I need to just do those projects. But I do have a great idea of what I want to do for my quilt along. Well, really I have 2 ideas. But it will need to be put off. In the mean time I will be finishing my other quilt soon and I will post a picture of it. I do plan to sell it. So if you know anyone interested send then my way!!

Quilt Along with ME!

I think in August I will be starting a quilt along. But because I like things to go fast it will be a weekly quilt along. So start gearing up for colors as I figure out what I am to be doing on the blog and what blocks we will be doing. I have a few in mind. Since this will be my first I am just a bit nervous. So get out those coupons and go look for some cute fabric!!

The Scoop

So here's whats happening (in other words why I have been away)...
* Just did Girls Camp last week, that was exhausting.
* Had Family here before that, they stayed and extra week or so, it was great!!
* Schools out now.
* Hubby is done with his school now (so less me time).

Now I am packing and getting ready to move this weekend. It shouldn't seem like so much because I live with my parents. The only real places that need to be packed are my room and the kids room. Everything else is already packed from our move here in the first place. I guess it just seems like it is taking me so long is because i don't want to take trash with me too. So I am in a way De-junking and organizing as I pack. Not to mention we have no truck to put it all in yet and I have kids that want to "help" and that can really slow a person down.

So onto why I am posting!! My Mom and I took that lovely sunflower quilt to a quilt shop. Sounds like a good plan right? Well, here is what I have learned.
*Just because someone has a shop open does not mean that are the best at quilting.
*Look at the work hanging in the shop. Are there freehand pieces done or are they all automatic patterns the machine does?
*Get a solid price BEFORE you leave your work of art in someones care!
*Find out before hand what steps are taken if you do not like the work that was done.
*Have a number that you can be reached at all times if the quilter decides to change something.

We took our quilt in with the confidence that the quilter knew what she was doing. We were so wrong. She turned that lovely art work to trash. We were so sad and disappointed. There were places where changes what was supposed to be done and we did not like it. She had problems with her machine and got that fixed but then changed the color of the thread so that was not matching all over. Her stitches were uneven, x's off center because she doesn't like the uniformity or something like that, it was just and all over not so good of job. We took it back and talked about how to fix the situation. She even admitted she should not have tried it freehand. I really like the lady so I knew I was not really having hard feelings toward here, I was just disappointed. Well, in the end she gave us a refund and bought the quilt from us for the price of the fabric. Later we realized she gave us even more than that. We lucked out I think, that she was very compassionate about it and wanted to make sure her costumers were happy.

So beware when you entrust someone else with your quilt. I will go to here again but with something not so precious to me and make sure she is not doing it freehand.

I do have a piece that is a work in progress, but will not get finished until after I move. But I will post a picture later of one that some teenage girls helped make that we gave to someone. It might take a few days to get that posted because like I said I am working on moving at the moment and this has been a long break for me. Back to work I go.

Happy quilting. Feel free to ask any questions and I will answer as best I can.

Sunflower

This is a quilt that I first wanted to do I just didn't know what exactly I wanted to do. So then my Mom wanted to do This particular quilt with me. So she took the initiative to decide on a pattern and design on the quilt. I did all the measurements and math for ALL the little pieces that needed to be cut out. Our dear friend and fellow quilter has a whole room (no literally a whole room) full of material (she used to own a quilt shop) and lets us come over to pick out material for this quilt.

The main reason for this post is to show you a little of the process to do sashings. Once you have your blocks put together into block form and have all the sashing pieces cut out it is vitally important to lay out the quilt and figure out how you are going to put it all together because there are a variety of methods, one of which I show you here.

So here we are laying out all the pieces.

Now it is all sewn together.

Be sure to measure both sides to get the correct measurement for the border.

Can't say I'm never in the pictures.... that's my arm!!

Do you have little on lookers? Well a good pass time for them could be play dough.

Disappearing 9 Patch

This is the first "real" quilt I made. I say "real" because I have made other blankets that I just took one big piece of material, batting, and backing and rolled the edges for binding. There was no patchwork to them whatsoever. I have made many of those.

The magic to the disappearing 9 patch is it looks like a lot more work than it really was. I love that about this quilt. It was way easy for a beginner. If you want to start off with a little more than the traditional 9 patch this is the one to do. You will not be disappointed. This was one of the reasons I got hooked on quilting. I am sure you will be surprised to hear I just made this one back in August last year. That's how long I have been quilting. A mere 8 months. Not very long. That is one of the reasons I started this blog. So we could learn together how easy this is!

No I did not make this quilt a tutorial. I had already made this quilt before I ever considered a quilting blog. Maybe one day I will do another similar to this and show you just how easy it is. Plus I thought if I did all tutorials it might get a little boring. But I do plan to show you a lot of good ideas.

Shortly after moving in with my parents (that's where I am living at the moment) I was helping my Mom organize her craft room. It was in shambles with the preparation of me and my 3 kids moving in (different story alltogether, another time). In the process of the organizing we got to go through her material. She was real big into making really cute pillow cases and collecting material for that (which has come to a halt for a while...maybe I will show it to you someday). But in her stash of many magnificent materials I stumbled across these wonderful fabrics that all went so well together. This was of course after my Mom introduced me to the idea of quilts and the disappearing 9 patch. It just looked so easy to do. And my daughter already has a lady bug pillow pet! It just worked. So I did a little arm twisting and she said I could use the fabric. YEA!! So after many a nights and days cutting and sewing (it really didn't take long for that at all) I produced my first patchwork quilt top. The embroidery work on it is a whole other story! That did take a while. My little girl opened this up on Christmas morning. She was THRILLED!! I had been telling her it was going to be my quilt when I was done. And many times she asked if I would make her one when I was done with mine. I love making things for my kids!! So with out further delay...

I hand stitched flowers in white thread with black circle centers on all the ladybug squares. That is what took the longest!

By the way... SPRING IS HERE!!!! LOVE IT!!

Easy Pinwheel

Here is a sketch of what my finished product should look like. It is always a good idea to sketch out what you are planning your quilt to look like. It helped me with figuring out how many squares to cut and what order they would be sewn together in.

Here are the colors I picked out for this quilt. It is for my husband and he wanted one that would not look girly at all. So I tried to go for darker colors and nothing with flowers or swirls. I cut these at 10 inch squares.


So the main idea for this quilt was order since I am still starting out and not brave enough to extend my ability in more colors or in how to mix and match. So my main, what I thought was background color, is the black. Every block sewn was with a black piece and a colored piece. So layer a black square on a color square with right sides together. The next step might not make sense but trust me it works.


Next sew all 4 sides at 1/4 inch. In quilting it is always 1/4 inch seams. You do not back stitch. Inevitably all those seams will be sewn again with another seam. (Side note: Normally people would chose a thread to match or blend with the colors they have chosen for the quilt. Well, I was so excited to do this I forgot till the end that I did not change mine to black. So try to match your thread.)


Now take your ruler, cutting board, and rotary cutter and cut diagonally for all corners. Now you have 4 triangles.


When you open up the triangles you will have 4 squares.


The general thing with quilting is to iron the seam toward the darker side. Lay the triangle on the ironing board the the darker side up. Open the triangle and iron from the lighter side to the darker side. That will then put your seam to the darker side.



When you have all the triangles ironed you are ready to play with the pinwheel. So this is the square all opened.


Now you just turn the pieces to where you want them.


I like to sew in bulk. So I had all my pieces cut out before I started sewing. Then I sewed all the squares. Then I cut all the squares. After that I ironed all of them one color at a time. So this is my stack of half square triangles ready to be put together into pinwheels.


I start off with sewing 2 squares together. And like I said I like to sew in bulk. I only worked on one color at a time. Sew 2 squares together being sure they are pointing the right way. I will explain that in a few pictures. So with this step and the next you can just chain stitch the pieces together. Then again iron the seams.


Once the seams are ironed you can then sew 2 rectangles together. Again I will show you what I mean by making sure they are facing the right way. In this step just be sure all the points come to the center to form the pin wheel.


Also note if all pieces were ironed the right way you should have a seam in this step that "nests" together. That just meant the seams butt up against each other almost like a puzzle piece. Click on the picture to make it larger and that should give you a good idea of what it looks like. You can also feel with your fingers if it is put together right, with a little practice.


Again iron the seam. I know a lot of ironing but it is all worth it!


So this is the square all put together. With 10 inch squares being sewn this way it comes out to be about a 12 inch block. So yes, this quilt is over 8x8 feet. Lots of these and you will have a quilt in no time. See wasn't that easy? But I'm not done yet!


Here is what I was talking about with making sure you turn the pieces the right way. If you are not careful in turning the pieces the right way you will have pinwheels going in the opposite direction.

So now I am going to skip ahead a bit... sort of. A few options for this kind of quilt would be just sewing all the squares together or you could put sashing's in between all the squares which helps in making a bigger quilt without having to make as many squares. I chose not to do sashing's this time around. In a future quilt I will do sashing's and post on how to do that.

So here is a basics on how I put my quilts together. I think this way is a lot easier to avoid future mishaps for not fitting pieces together. Normally people will sew one row at a time and then sew all the rows together. Well what if you mess up on one of the rows? The when you go to sew the rows together it will not match up right. Then for all the rest of the rows it will not match up right. So I feel my way helps to eliminate a lot of those problems.

So we are going to start from the bottom of my pictures and work our way up. I did the same steps for the top just in the other direction.


So on the bottom row I start with sewing two squares together at a time. Not in and up and down fashion but in a side by side type of thing.


So I know this takes a bit more time but it is worth it. And kind of no fail. So have flipped over one square on top of the other and sewed it then again and again until I had all the row done in 2's. The I did it for the next row too.


And yet again, iron the seam. So now we have rectangles again. I just realized I skipped a step in my picture taking so I will just tell you. Next you will sew 2 sets of rectangles to form a square again. So it will be from bottom row to the one above it. Again, iron the seams. And I would just go to the room, get my 2 pieces I was going to sew together then return it to the layout and then do the next set.


After sewing into squares make rectangles again, see the pattern.


Then sew those rectangles together side beside, while ironing seams throughout.


We now have 2 big pieces and one really big piece. Sew the smaller two together.


Now sew the 2 big sections together trying to match as many seams as you can.


Now your quilt top is ready for a border. That is a step I completely left out because it was the first time I was attempting it. I wish I had taken pictures because it was really easy. But there are many video tutorials that can show how to do it. But I do show you how to do the binding for the most part. And the borders are a lot like the binding. Except you sew the border on one side at a tine. So if you sew the top border first then do the bottom of the border next then the sides.


So I am going to move on with the idea that you have either found another place to learn to do the border or you are not going to do one. I highly recommend doing one.

So now I have the backing laid out with batting on top and then my quilt top. I will show how to do that in a future tutorial. This quilt was way big and would be easier to show you on a smaller scale. It is nice to have the backing and batting a little bigger than the top so you have some moving room.


This is such a big quilt it wold no longer fit in the living room and it barely fit in the dining room. We moved the table out of the way and hoped it would fit here. If it didn't I would have had to take it to church and used the gym.

My Mom helped me and pointed out if you look at it in different directions it looks like a different pattern. So in this picture we see the squares with pinwheels.


In this picture from the corner it looks like a bunch if hour glasses facing in different directions.


So because this quilt is so big, there was now way I was going to pay to get it machine top quilted. So I am tying it instead. So we pin through all the layers of the quilt with safety pins. This holds every thing in place to it can be ties without things shifting.


Yup, its that big! So you start from the middle and work your way out.


I pinned at the corners of the squares.My yarn tie went in all the centers of the pinwheels.


After pinning you can then cut off the extra on the batting and backing.


3 year old's like to help too.


Note to self: Try hard not to get hurt in the process of making a quilt. It really slows things down. I had hurt my foot the Sunday before this picture. It was just getting better then on this day, the Thursday after, I slipped on the first step to go upstairs to put m 5 year old back in bed. Hurt my ankle all over again. Thankfully we were done pinning the quilt and I was going to work on tying it that night. So I sat in bed with ice on my foot while I tied the quilt. It wasn't too bad.


About twice the size it should have been... ouch.


So after tying the quilt I was ready to put on the binding. I do believe here I cut 3 inch stripes which after all is said and done I think they were too wide. I would go more for a 2 inch strip. You will also cut off the white selvage part at the end of the fabric.


So to make the binding sew like the picture shown below. Looks confusing. I am not sure how to explain it in words. It is the ends of 2 different strips with right sides together. Sew diagonally starting with the corner closest to the top of the picture. Then you connect the next strip to the other end of the previous strip. Make sense??


You can chain stitch these too.


Cut off that extra corner. (Check that your strip is straight before you cut) If you sewed the wrong corners the strip will be an L shape.


See? Straight. And again... iron.


While you are at the iron doing the seams you will then fold that nice long strip in half to make it thinner.


Now you can pin that sucker to your quilt with raw edges together. Almost there!! Start somewhere in the middle of one of the sides of the quilt leaving about a 10 inch tail on the strip. When you get close to the end stop with another 10 inch tail from the end of the other tail at the beginning. Take the quilt out of the machine. Match up the ends to where it will fit the quilt. Sew the ends together with a straight line. Cut off the excess quilt and finish sewing it down. This is the tutorial I followed to learn how to do binding and mitered corners. She also has a nice and easy math equation to follow when trying to find out how much material and how many strips of fabric you will need to bind your quilt. Trust me the math works!


Flip the binding over and stitch it down by hand (again same post here further down shows how to stitch a binding down) with a blanket stitch.

Now you are done and have a beautiful quilt waiting to be snuggled with!

Not all my posts will be this long. After this I will refer to this post a lot since it covers a lot of the basics. When there are other tutorials it will be more on just putting together the block and not the whole quilt. Thanks for sticking it out. I hope to get a lot of quilts on here to show you. Not all will be tutorials. In a few months I will be starting a quilting Bee of sorts and hope to show you all the fun things we create. And who knows, I just my try a quilt along or two. We will see!