What to do with scraps?

There's the million dollar question! My scraps have been accumulating and at one time I bought some scraps so I could save them for a strip quilt. I've made some blocks here and there but it's still a WIP. I'd like to eventually make a picnic quilt out of it. There's tons of bright and cheerful prints.

Then there are those pesky little scraps so I thought - why not cut them into 2 inch squares? I was shopping in the States this past week and saw Accuquilt's 2 inch square die....now I know it's being lazy, but I bought it! I was in Joann's, they had a sale, need I say more? :)

This afternoon I decided I would take a handful of scraps, run them through the Accuquilt and voila, here they are. These are literally just a handful - paying no attention to colors, patterns, nothing.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on what kind of blocks/quilt to make. I do love a postage stamp quilt using a solid (I like white personally) to break up the patterns. That's just one thought....and then there's the color scheme to think of. I am partial to red, pink, orange and yellow....then there's always red and aquas and I've even seen red, light pinks and aquas which is pretty. What are your thoughts?

I leave you with one last question...can you identify this fabric for me?

I think it might match the crib sheet I just bought my little one from Dwell Studio (Paperdoll line). I'd like to make a matching crib skirt and thought the pinks might match because they're very light and subtle. I've also thought of a shot cotton or Moda Crossweave to change things up a bit. What do you think?

6 Months

My wee one just turned 6 months recently so I had my little photo shoot with her and her sister the other day. I dressed them up and they had lots of fun on Miss G's big girl bed! I am always amazed with the connection they already have. Little Miss P completely lights up when she sees her big sister and makes all kinds of sounds to get her attention. Then they look into each other's eyes and laugh and giggle. Already!! It honestly makes me melt....and in those moments I remind myself that I am soooooo lucky to be their Mom:) It's these moments that we must cherish!

A Day in the Life....

Well it's been a few weeks since I've blogged last and a lot has been going on. Unfortunately, it hasn't been all that interesting re: sewing and quilting! We've had two sick pets, some wisdom teeth removed, strange rashes and car repairs! Kinda crazy - but the pets are now on the mend, the teeth are gone and my stepson's mouth is healing and the car is in the shop. All is well, but I do think it was kinda weird/funny that I was syringe feeding almost everyone in my house last Friday!

As for projects, I whipped up this little hat for Miss G recently. I've had the Lazy Day pattern for quite some time now but finally pulled it out and made a "test" hat using some Ikea fabric I had laying around. This one turned out a little too big but my three year old will eventually grow into it. What I love about it is that it's reversible. She's asked me to make her another one using Hello Kitty fabric:)

I've had one last block to make for Shea for the Pieced Together Quilting Bee II. I honestly don't know why I haven't finished it before
now because I've never been this late before for anyone!! I really need to apologize to Shea but I think that with all of the changing rooms in my house, some worries about family and taking care of my little ones - well you know the rest. I hate when something is nagging at you and you avoid it....well I guess that saying is true "the more you resist, it persists!"
So, I made Shea's block this afternoon using Moda's crossweaves. Shea's color selection is bold and beautiful in my opinion. I really like how my block turned out because it really was made improv style!

Her only request was that the block was made with 90 degree angles, no wonkiness....squares, rectangles, or strips. I hope she likes it!
I have to run right now because my little one is not wanting to go to bed and my husband and I would like to watch a movie together (which is a rare thing these days:)
More tomorrow!

Blogger's Spring Quilt Festival

It's that time again...yeh! It's the Blogger's Spring Quilt Festival!! I personally love the opportunity to peruse the many blogs out there and see everyone's work, not to mention gaining inspiration for future projects! (like I need more of those:)

My submission for the Blogger's Quilt Festival is my Drunk Love Quilt that I made for my stepson. I had been promising him this quilt for some time so I was happy to complete it this February. It's already well loved as he sleeps with it under his duvet every night!

This work was a combination of blocks from my virtual quilting bee, Pieced Together II, and my own. I can't thank the women enough because all of their blocks were wonderfully made! As you know, the Drunk Love Quilt pattern is a Denyse Schmidt (my fav!) design - some of the blocks are taken right from her pattern and some of the blocks (near the end of my block making:) were improvisationally made.

I really learned a lot in making this quilt. In an earlier post, I summarized my "lessons" or "things to consider," but I think they're worth repeating here. I hope you find them helpful.

Concentric Square Quilting

I started off with quilting these squares working from the centre of the block and outwards. My biggest mistake was in not rolling my quilt tightly enough while quilting and maneuvering it. I found I was stuffing the quilt through the arm of my machine and it was take an excessive amount of time to quilt each block with all the twisting and turning - especially working from inside the square and outwards. What I realized after struggling with over half of my blocks in this manner was that if you rolled your quilt tightly it was a lot easier to pass it through the arm of the machine. Duh! It seems obvious but I think it's worth repeating for those of us out there who have done the same thing!
Once I started rolling it more tightly, it became a lot easier to quilt the actual blocks. The second thing I changed was that I began to quilt from the outside of the block and worked my way inward. I preferred this method much more as it was easier to maneuver around the block at first and you could envision your overall concentric square quilting (hope that makes sense). I found I started to not quilt as densely and left the centre block (especially if it was a big square) unquilted so that the pop of colour was left untouched and you didn't see a bunch of white thread. Again, just a matter of personal taste, not necessarily a right or wrong thing.

I wished that when I began quilting it I had left some of the centre blocks untouched. Having said that there are some blocks that I think really look cool from the back - ones that were densely quilted.

I also think it's important to consider what effect you're wanting to achieve in terms of the concentric square quilting. I decided not to free motion the squares and used my walking foot so that I could achieve a more straight line effect. One is not better than the other - again just a question of personal taste. Since I decided on straight quilting lines, I wish on some of my initial blocks that I quilted parallel to the seam lines. When I look at some of the first blocks I quilted, my eyes are distracted by the quilting instead of some of the last blocks I quilted.
Wow, I must sound really picky:) Don't get me wrong! These are just some of the things I felt that next time I wanted to think about first before I tackle concentric square quilting again. (I do have another drunk love quilt in the making...)

Machine Binding Tips

My two "go to" tutorials for bindings are CrazyMomQuilts and RedPepperQuilts
Rita at RedPepperQuilts actually talks about not only bindings, but tackling machine bindings. I too am not a fan of sewing anything by hand. That's probably taboo of me to say (haha) since I know a lot of you enjoy the process of sitting down and hand sewing a binding. I admire you! I have tried both methods of: 1. First attaching the binding to the back and machine stitching the binding to the front and 2. Attaching the binding to the front, pin the back and stitching in the ditch in the front (which attaches the binding to the back-Rita at RedPepperQuilts' method). I thought I would try Rita's method for this quilt and I love the result! I used my Accuquilt Go Fabric Cutter to cut out the 2.5 inch strips (my favourite is 2 1/4 strips but heh, I have the cutter and it's nice and convenient). Once I had my binding strips attached using Amanda's methodI then pressed them in half and using a 1/4 inch seam, attached the strips to the FRONT of my quilt. Once I ironed this, I then pinned the back so that the fold of the strip just barely overlapped the sewing line that you had just sewn. As Rita suggests, I then stitched in the ditch along the binding on the front. Now, I have to say there were definitely some spots that I didn't always catch by stitching in the ditch so I had to go back and attach....but that was just a matter of paying attention to how I pinned it. I found that at first I was folding back the binding to much and then once I stitched in the ditch, the sewing line was almost in the middle of my binding and not at the outside edge. I ripped this out, made sure that I didn't over fold my binding to the back and voila, a much better result!

The corner were sometimes tricky but I know that once I'm able to practice a bit more, they will become easier. The trick to corners are to pin, pin, pin.

Piecing the Back
Can anyone say....make sure your back is big enough before you pin and quilt! Sure, I know this is quilting 101, but I ignored that little voice inside my head that said, I think it might be a little too small and proceeded anyway! Ah...those voices are there for a reason aren't they!! haha While I didn't do this before on any of my other quilts, I did on this one - and let me tell you what a pain in the you know what it was to correct. I won't bore you any longer with this story...enough said:) I'm happy to say that after all of that correcting, the end result is still really nice and you can't tell as I simply added a few extra seams here and there of the same fabric so it's pretty continuous! Lucky!!

So, there you have it. Thanks for visiting - hope you come back soon!

Big Girl Room-It's a Start!

We've been working hard all week with all of the room changes in our house. My husband finished painting Miss G's room on Tuesday afternoon and her furniture arrived that same day. Miss G was so excited to say the least! We've been trying hard to "talk up" her "big girl room" because as most kids she was pretty attached to her old room (her little sister, Miss P has now moved into it). Even before we moved the furniture in her room that night, she had Miss P on her blanket reading her stories - it was very sweet!

I wanted her room to be bright and cheery so went with a purple, pink and lime green ("celadon" by Benjamin Moore") combination. I love her duvet...I love how modern it is and it pairs up so nicely (which was by accident) with her Hello Kitty sheets:) I bought the duvet at BouClair.

Miss G loves to colour and have tea parties so a trip to Ikea was in order for her new table and chairs (Kritter series).

Ikea also has great inexpensive curtains so I bought some white and green polka dot ones - I think they're so cute. We also have a spot to read to her as I included this little club chair (which used to be perfect for breast feeding by the way).

Here's a pic of my little Monkeys, husband included (haha) pretending to be asleep in the big girl bed!

We still have to put up Miss G's decorations on her walls and move in some of her toys (so we can get them out of "toy central" which used to be our living room!), but I wanted to show all of you what was happening so far...I'll take some more pics soon.

Winners

I think Blogger has been on the fritz this week because I did a posting about the winners of my Mother's Day contest and it since has been deleted. So, here goes again:

1. Amy Butler Daisy Chain fabric - TwinFibers who wrote: "I hope you had a great Mother's Day! :) Thanks for the giveaway! "

2. Amy Butler Martini Dots fabric - Stephanie who wrote: "Happy Mothers Day! And thanks for the giveaway :) "

3. MoMo Wonderland fabric - Alison who wrote: "Oh, I've always wanted some Wonderland. I've never seen it in person. I just had a baby in January and so Mothers Day was extra special this year. She is so precious! Thanks for the giveaway opportunity."

I'll email you ladies for your addresses....thanks again everyone for stopping by my blog and entering the giveaway!

Giveaway Winners

Sorry for the late posting, but I do have some winners!

Winner of the Amy Butler Daisy Chain fabric
TwinFibers,
"I hope you had a great Mother's Day! :) Thanks for the giveaway!"

Winner of the Amy Butler Martini Dots fabric
Stephanie,
"Happy Mothers Day! And thanks for the giveaway :) "

Winner of the MoMo Wonderland fabric
Alison
"Oh, I've always wanted some Wonderland. I've never seen it in person. I just had a baby in January and so Mothers Day was extra special this year. She is so precious! Thanks for the giveaway opportunity."

Ladies - please contact me with your addresses!!

Thanks everyone for stopping by and entering my giveaway!!