November Stash Report

Hi habibis!  Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers – I hope you had a wonderful holiday.  Mine was hectic (several states in three days) but otherwise nice.  Today we’re recovering a bit and doing work around the apartment.  Today is also the first Sunday of Advent, a special season for me.

I’ve decided not to do extra Advent posts this year.  I like the idea of it, but in the last couple of years it ended up taking away too much Christmas sewing time.  However, I might post a little more often this month.  In that vein, today I’m doing a Sunday stash post, for the first time in ages.

I’ll start with the incoming.  I ordered quite a bit of fabric this month, somewhat violating my rule about not buying fabrics that aren’t for specific projects. I also got two yards of Christmas fabric from my guild to make the Christmas stockings I donated a couple of weeks ago.

I bought some fabrics from Connecting Threads’s Lotus in Springtime collection by Kona Bay Fabrics.  I bought one yard of the large crane print, a quarter yard of the iris, and the fat quarter sampler with 14 fabrics.  That’s 4.75 yards of fabric.

 

I bought a fat quarter collection of Riley Blake’s Saltwater fabrics with 15 fabrics, for a total of 3.75 yards of fabric.

I’m thinking about making a yellow and grey quilt, so I bought a few different things.  It started with 2 yards of Jen Kingwell’s Gardenvale Floral Dots in Floral Lily Multi Monkey Magic.  I’ve had my eye on it for a while and I finally splurged.  I ordered a yard each of three greys from the Robert Kaufman Metro Living Modern collection, and a collection of 25 10″ grey and yellow squares.

I ordered a yard each of a couple of art deco fabrics and one yard of this blue and white fabric.  I’ve already started using the blue and white fabric.  I was thinking the art deco fabrics might make good pillowcases.

I have more fabrics on back order, I’m afraid.  I went on a major splurge this month – I had a gift card and I started shopping and never stopped. My rule about only buying things for specific projects went a bit out the window, although I have ideas for a couple of quilts with these fabrics, and I’ve started using a few already.

My incoming for November is 20.25 yards.

Now we’ll go to the outgoing, which is rather less:

A doll quilt that I haven’t blogged about yet: 1.1 yards

My sewing machine cover: 1 yard

The Christmas charity stockings: 2.5 yards

Drawstring gift bags (see here, and others I haven’t posted about yet): 2.75 yards

Wine bags (to come later): .65 yards

My total outgoing is: 8 yards.

So my net for November is 12.25 yards in, and my net total for the year is 112.26 yards outgoing.

You may note that I haven’t included my November stash bee blocks.  November is my month but I haven’t received all of my blocks yet, so I’ve decided to include those in my December stash report.

Drawstring gift bags

The long-awaited baby H, my niece, has finally made her appearance. She is already much-beloved, the first grandchild on both sides. Z and I went south for a couple of days to visit her and I brought along gifts: scotch to pamper the new daddy, a little bag full of nail polish and makeup (all in shades of pink) to pamper the new mommy, and some cute baby things to pamper the new baby. 🙂 I made drawstring bags for each gift.

I forgot to take a picture of the bag I made for the scotch, but it was like the other wine bags I’ve made. I used the green peacock feather print that I made their wedding quilt from.

For my sister-in-law I made this cute pink bag, which fit the small case I’d bought and filled with lip glosses and nail polishes. My sister-in-law, you may recall, loves pink and I’m happy to indulge!

For baby H, I broke out some brand new fabric. This is a far quarter of Riley Blake’s Saltwater collection. I got it from Connecting Threads. (Check out my next Sunday stash post to see that I went a bit overboard buying fabrics, after almost a year of not buying fabric unless it was for a specific project.)  This line is so cute. It has sea turtles, narwhals, mermaids, and little fishes, in delectable shades of pink, coral, sea foam green, yellow, and a lovely dark blue. I bought it on an impulse buy and decided I needed to use it immediately.  (I have a ton left.)

I took the pictures before I put the ribbons in for the drawstrings but you can use your imagination. 🙂

What I like about drawstring bags is that they can be reused. I made myself a couple of shoe bags and I think I should make more. They’re so useful.

Teal and Grey Quilt – Part II

Hi habibis! Welcome to part II of the teal and grey quilt I made for my friend M and her husband H.  I forgot to name the quilt so I’ve just been calling it the teal and grey quilt.

I had to go fabric shopping again for the back and binding. (I know! I was going to do a scrappy back but then I worried – at my guild we had just had a speaker talk about how she doesn’t like when the seams of a darker scrappy backing show through on the lighter top, and I got worried that it would mar the look if there were dark pieces splitting up some of my lighter blocks on the front. So I went shopping.) I bought this grey crosshatch – extra wide! – for the backing.

I got two fabrics for the binding, one teal and one grey, because I didn’t have the quilt with me and I wasn’t sure the teal would work. It was actually perfect, so I’ll save the grey for something else.

For the quilting my initial plan was straight line quilting in which through all the rows. I got bored about two thirds through the first row. So I decided I could change it up. I quilted some of the fabrics following the print. I did some of the end pieces with vertical straight line quilting. I used grey and blue threads.  It took longer but it was more interesting and I think it made for a much more interesting quilt. Every row is different.  In the pictures below you can see glimpses of the binding.

I did a little bit of hand quilting – the bride and groom’s names, in English in one block and in Persian in another. I reached out to the bride’s sister, since although Arabic and Persian use the same basic alphabet there are some differences, and I wanted to make sure I wrote their names properly. She sent me a sample in different styles, some simpler and others more elaborate, and I picked one that I liked and knew I could do justice to. I think it came out great. I did a better job spacing the Persian than I had the English!

Shots of the quilting from the back:

Thanks to my dad, for being such a great quilt model!

Here’s the finished quilt. Isn’t it gorgeous?

Teal and Grey Quilt – Part I

Hello habibis! I have a wedding quilt to share with you, a gift for my friend M and her husband H. They recently got married and I made a quilt to match their decor. They use a lot of dark teal and greys in their tiling and elsewhere in the house and I wanted to mirror that.

Do you remember the greys and teals I bought in August? Those were for this quilt. I wanted a brick-style layout. I cut them into 5″ by 10″ rectangles. I had to use pretty much all the fabric I’d bought, plus a little of what was in my stash. I think in the end I decided one fat quarter didn’t fit with the colors I wanted.

I went semi-random with the layout. I arranged them in piles for each row and then chain pieced, making sure only that each row had a somewhat balanced look.

Then I put all the rows on my bed and spent a long time rearranging them. I wanted, again, for the quilt to feel balanced. I ended up with some of the same fabrics next to each other in adjacent rows, but overall I think it’s pretty balanced. It was the best I could do.

At the time I wondered if I should have maybe staggered the rows more, but thanks to the semi-random distribution of fabrics it doesn’t look overly uniform. When I look at it now I think it’s fine.

Next week I’ll share the quilting!

 

Christmas Stockings for Charity

Every year my guild makes stockings and drawstring bags and stuffs them with gifts for needy children for the holidays. I like to make stockings. Last year I used up almost all of my Christmas scraps making improv pieced stockings, so this year when the charity committee was offering fabric for stockings I took two yards. (I guess I could’ve just used yardage I had but whatever.) I used up both yards and maybe an additional quarter yard of red fabric that I added to make a total of ten stockings. Ten! Eight were cut from the yardage and two improv-pieced, because I didn’t want any scraps hanging around. The only pieces that didn’t get pieced in were the ones that were too small to use – those went into a dog bed stuffing.

I thought I had pictures of all of them, but apparently I only have pictures of number 11, which I made with a piece of green fabric I found in my stash that I didn’t like and some gold scraps.  To add a bit of interest, I sewed a few straight lines in gold around the top.

All 11 stockings went to my guild last week.

Sewing Machine Cover

Happy Veterans’ Day!  Thank you to all who have served.

My blog post today isn’t very thematic.  I’m sharing a quick project I threw together for myself:

In our new apartment, we tend to get some kind of sawdust or something along one wall, I guess from the people upstairs walking around. Unfortunately, my desk with my sewing machine is against that wall and sometimes I notice sawdust on the desk. In October I took my machine to the shop because it wasn’t running properly (turned out a thread had somehow wormed its way into the inner workings of the machine and gotten tangled up) and I resolved to make a cover for the machine when it came back, to protect it.

I decided to use this tutorial from Forth Worth Fabric Studio, with a slight deviation that you’ll see below.

I picked out a gorgeous fabric from my stash – I think the flowers are mums?  I layered it with the grey leftover from my grey and teal quilt (which I still haven’t blogged about – next week!) and quilted wavy lines in white thread. I quilted around the flowers, more or less, but I didn’t worry too much about that. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

For the binding I chose the gold fish fabric that’s leftover from my brother’s wedding quilt. I was just using it for my Quilt of Valor blocks and I still had it out.

I had a lovely royal blue sitting around – I’d cut it up to bind the blue doll quilt but I decided to use it for this instead. The tutorial calls for ties on the sides of the machine cover but I decided I’d rather secure one long tie in the back and wrap it around to tie in the front. So I took three strips and sewed them together, then folded it in half lengthwise and sewed the tube closed. I did pointed corners and left one spot open to turn it. Turning it took awhile but I managed!

This past weekend I didn’t get much time at my machine – we had to go visit my parents to take care of stuff on Saturday, plus my sister was staying with us – but a trip to see my parents means a few hours on the train so I had time for hand sewing. I used it to stitch down the binding and now my machine cover is finished!

 

September and October Stash Report

I’m a little overdue with my stash report.  I’ll start with incoming:

I took two yards of fabric from our charity table at my guild.  I used them to make Christmas stockings that I’ll return at our next guild meeting, so that won’t stay in my stash for long.

My guild had given us charm squares (give or take) for the bee blocks we made, so that’s .07 yards.

I bought two yards of extra-wide backing fabric, plus a half yard and 3/4 of a yard of two other fabrics for the teal and grey quilt that I haven’t shown you yet.  So that works out to 6.65 yards, plus the two yards from the charity table is 8.72 yards of incoming fabric.

Here’s my outgoing:

September churn dash bee blocks: .28 yards

October bee block: .16 yards

 

The trivet for my cousin C: .25 yards

Blocks for my guild: .13 yards

The I Love Lucy pillow for my Aunt D: .75 yards

The teal and grey quilt (which I haven’t posted yet): 4.65 yards

Hexagon doll quilt: .95 yards

Pink Blossom quilt for my niece: 3.75 yards

Quilts of Valor wonky star: .11 yards

That’s a total of 11.03 yards outgoing, for a net of 2.31 going out of my stash.

My total for the year is 124.51 yards out.

Updated Finished Quilts Page

I’ve updated my Finished Quilts page! I was months overdue.  I’ll try to keep  more on top of it.  Next up – an overdue stash update…

Stash Bee: Hopkins Square Blocks

All year I dutifully made my Stash Bee blocks, and finally it’s my turn!  I have spent all year thinking about what block I wanted for my month, and I finally figured it out.  Hive 7 is going to help me make a Quilt of Valor!

Do you remember the quilted napkins I made?  I had leftover pieces, and I decided at the beginning of the year to turn this UFO into a Quilt of Valor for our veterans.  Other projects keep getting in the way, but now I’m motivated to finish them up and I think with all the extra blocks from Hive 7 I’ll have enough to make a quilt top.  I’m using gold and crimson, to match the leftover pieces I had.  If you want to play along, the instructions are here.

Here are some of the finished blocks.  They look good, right?  I’ve made 16 blocks so far.

If you want to do more for Quilts of Valor, they’re having a block drive between now and Veteran’s Day (November 11th).  They’re collecting wonky stars in patriotic colors; you can find more information here:  http://alyciaquilts.blogspot.com/2015/09/qov-2015-block-drive.html

Here’s mine:

We get to ask everyone in our hive a question.  I actually have two questions: What is your favorite quilt or quilted thing that you’ve made for yourself?  What is your favorite quilt/quilting thing that you’ve made for someone else?

For me, the first one is easy.  (I’ve only ever made two quilts for myself.)  I LOVE the twin-sized all-polka dot Drunkard’s Path quilt I made for myself.

The second question is harder.  If you follow my blog, you’ll know that most of the quilts I make are wedding, baby, or special occasion quilts for friends and family.  I love almost all of them, and it’s hard to choose.  One of my favorites is a quilt I made for my grandmother using photo fabric.  It’s in yellow and orange, her favorite colors, and it’s full of pictures of our family.  After she passed away I got the quilt back and it makes me happy every time I look at it.  Another favorite is a quilt I made for my fiance last year.  It’s an American flag quilt and I hand quilted the stripes with patriotic quotes and song lyrics that I knew would have resonance with him.  I spent about 115 hours working on that quilt.  I put so much love and effort into it, and knowing how much he loves it makes it all worthwhile.  I guess I’m cheating in answering my own question, but the truth is I just want to send you to my finished quits page and tell you that I love all of them!  They’re all meaningful to me because I made them for such special people in my life, for dear friends and their children, and for my family.