My I Do and Heartstrings Quilts Plus a Finished Top

This is the I Do Quilt from Cherry House Quilts that I had taken a class on like 3 years ago.

I have all the pieces cut and have started to applique the circles. I had decided that I didn't like the look of the 6 min circle on Cherry House Quilts blog because the circle didn't "poof" out of the fabric just sunk below the fabric. I don't care for machine applique either. So I decided to hand applique all the 40 some 4" circles. I asked for the pain and I got it. I love the look of the hand applique and I only have about 8 circles left (Yeah!). I hope to have the circles completed by the middle of January. 

Here are the pieces laid out by row in stacks.

I have also been working on another class quilt called Heartstrings by Black Mountain Quilts. I changed this quilt by changing the background to a dark red and making it a queen size. I think I still have 10+ blocks to make.  This is another quilt I need to dig out and work on. I put the quilt up on the design wall at my quilt shop to see if I like the dark red background. It looks okay. It is actually a Kaffe Fassett shot cotton with red and purple threads so it has an iridescent look to it.

This is a finished top from a class I took in October. It is a beginner foundation piecing class taught by Carl Hentsch. The class was very good, but my fabric choices were HORRIBLE! I didn't think about which pieces would be dominant in the finished project. I really wanted the brown stars to stand out in the yellow. My main quilting teacher gave me the idea to quilt the pink fabric with purple thread and quilt the purple fabric with pink thread. It might tone both fabrics down enough to make the quilt tolerable. I have several small quilts I need to sandwich and quilt, so we will see if it works then.

Here is the not so pretty quilt

One Flower Wednesday

I have 2 flowers this week to post.

So I double checked and I have 3 more flowers to do before I do my layout of the Red Hot Garden quilt. I also checked out my fabric and my favorite one is big enough for the back! I have decided to do the binding in the green fabrics, but I don't know how many hexagon I will need just yet. One step closer, yeah!

I have also dusted off my other grandmothers flower garden which is a 3/4" hexagon with 30's fabric. I am hoping to make it a queen size, but I may not have enough background fabric. I have some pictures in my older posts. When I switch over working on the 30's flowers, I will repost the progress on the quilt. Marking things off my list feels good!

The Saga of the Snowball Nine Patch

So if you don't know much about me and my quilting, I have to change something about every quilt to make it mine. I usually make it larger, change the coloring, change the layout, add difficult borders, etc...

To sum up the Snowball Nine Patch quilt photos so far...

Blocks

Center

On the snowball quilt I decided I would add 2 borders. One small inner and one larger outer border. I found the Jo Morton Ladies Head fabric and had to use it so I decided to fussy cut it to add this super special zing to the quilt. Great plan right? Here is the up close photo of the border corner.

So the fussy cut side border worked great, but I had to fudge the top and bottom because it didn't quite match up, which looks okay to me. My problem is that when I put the smaller red 3/4" border, the girls weren't long enough and I didn't have enough fabric to re-cut them. My quilting teacher came up with the corner stone idea and I think it works pretty good. It is not what I planned, but it turned out okay. I don't think it is the best thing I have made, but it works. 

Here is a picture of the entire top.

One Flower Wednesday

Here are my flowers for One Flower Wednesday this week. I have done 2 this week and I 

only have 4 more to go on this project.

I have finally found a way to finish off and bind my project that I like. There is a tutorial about making a hexagon binding that looked really cool. You make a ring of hexagons that go all the way around the quilt just like binding, then flip it over and tack it to the back. You can see the hexies on the back of the project, and the front still has all the hexie corners. Here is a link to the Hexagon Finishing Tutorial. I am really excited about trying this technique. 

Here in the next few weeks I am going to post some pics of unfinished projects that I am dusting off and trying to finish them up. Most of them have little problems that I haven't fixed yet. Here's to getting my sewing room cleaned up!

Super Nova and My New Look

I have been working on my blog the last couple of days to update it. I wanted to put up some information about my projects so I will continue to work on my problem ones instead of shoving them in the corner. Part of my plan to help motivate me.  Seeing the step by step pics of the projects are already giving me the drive to finish them.

The main project I am working on in my sewing room is a large foundation piecing project. I took an advanced foundation paper piecing class from my local quilt store (Harper's Fabrics). Carl Hentsch from 3 Dog Design Co. was teaching his pattern Super Nova. I would like to finish it by the middle of January, but I don't think I am going to make it. It takes a lot longer than I thought it would. I knew it would be time consuming, but geesh. I work on it about 3 hours a day and I am not giving up yet.

I decided to do the coloring a little different on my quilt, so I had to recolor and recalculate the fabric usage and cutting. I ran into a snag because one of the blocks had an error in the piece size on the pattern. I have to resize and recut some of my pieces, so it has stalled me a bit. I skipped over that block and moved on to the next set. 

This is a picture of the block A pieces about ready to put together. The pattern has blocks A-I with a total of 40 blocks.

This is a picture of blocks A and B layout. 8 blocks down.

One Flower Wednesday and A New Project

I haven't posted in a very long time and I have decided I needed to start again. I read recently that if you set aside time everyday to do what you want, you are more relaxed and have a more positive outlook. Sounds simple, but is actually very hard. 

One of the things I used to do was the One Flower Wednesday. I love English Paper Piecing and it is very relaxing to me. I have several projects going and 2 of them are grandmother flower gardens. The original one you can see pictures in older posts below. I have started a new smaller one for a wall hanging. So as of today, I am making a commitment to start One Flower Wednesdays again. Here is my Wednesday flower (sorry it is fuzzy).

Here is a layout of the new wall hanging that I started. It is made with 1/2" pieces and the centers are small circle dots, petals are batiks, and leaves are 2 Jo Morton fabrics. None of the flowers are sewn together and I am still trying to decide if I want the final shape to be a diamond or hexagon. If I do a hexagon shape I will have 5 extra flowers. Maybe have a hexagon wall hanging and another small rectangle one  with the left over flowers? I have decided to name the project Red Hot Garden.