Paper Piecing with the NEMQG

Phew! It was a lot of work to put together, but yesterday's meeting was a success. Summer is a really busy time for everyone, so we only had 3 other NEMQG members plus my mom and I in attendance at our paper piecing class at the Sewing Diva. (I begged my mom to come just to increase our numbers, fearing that the shop might want to cancel if we didn't have enough people. At one time I had to tell my mom, "It's not torture" because she really was hesitant given that it was going to cut into her Saturday yard-saling time).

Anyway, the lady who taught us was really nice and this was definitely not something I could've learned without personal instruction. My favorite part was when she emphatically asked me, "What are you doing?!" after one of my many mistakes. At one point, to explain my difficulty in grasping the upside-down/backwards methods of paper piecing, I had to say to her, "Did I mention that I am a mother of a 10 month old son?" (Baby brain!)

My mom grasped it pretty quickly and was one of the first ones done. After making the blocks, we did a quick show and tell.

I am in love with Rebecca's zig-zag quilt made out of mostly Modern Meadow fabrics. Modern Meadow is a fabric line I have very little of. To my dismay - I am finding online fabric sellers to have very little of it lately. I put off buying any because Joel Dewberry is so popular - all his older stuff is on sale everywhere, so I figured I would buy some when it was at a lower price.... but maybe this is one of those collections that sells too fast for clearancing!

This is a block Jill made for an online block bee that she is participating in. I think it looks great!

I didn't finish my block at the class, and afterwards I went with my mom to her home to meet up with Gregory and Nick. Once I got there, I promptly setup a sewing area on her kitchen table and finished up my block. I really like how it turned out and can say I would do paper piecing again.

I do have to say that I am really glad the guild purchased fabric for the block kits. Paper piecing is hard and tedious, and I think we really would've had no energy/motivation to keep going if we had hated the fabric we were using. The shop wanted to make a "fall-themed" kit - which is not exactly a keen idea to a modern quilter. The only thing that really stunk was that I was given an incorrect measurement for one of the pieces, so the shop provided the little heart print.

When I got to my mom's, I took this really good picture of Nick and Gregory. It was so nice to have an afternoon away and just get lost in sewing with good friends. Our family has been under a bit of stress (anyone know of any entry-level legal positions in the Boston area?) - so it was nice to forget all of that for a little while.

Nick took this picture of me with Gregory - I have to say he's getting better at taking pictures!

Thanks again to Lisa, Jill, Rebecca, and my mom for taking time out to come to Saturday's meeting. Traffic was terrible and it was a gorgeous day to sacrifice for sewing - but I think it was worth it!

A bib, a little sewing.....

I just had to stop working on my long term, boring-ish projects and make something quick today. This evening I am meeting up with some friends, the occasion is to say goodbye to a friend who is moving. She is expecting a baby and won't find out the gender for another week or so, so I had to go gender neutral on this one. Here's a look at my hexagonal flowers - I am going to start sewing them together pretty soon.

Tomorrow is August's NEMQG meeting - I am running it because Monet is out of town. We are expecting a small turn-out, due to the craziness of summer schedules. We are meeting at the Sewing Diva in Derry - I met Christine about a month ago and was impressed that her fabrics were affordable and she was actually nice. (Brick and mortar quilt shops probably hate the popularity of online shopping, but can you blame us when so many ladies that run quilt shops are simply grouchy?) She is having a teacher come and help us make a paper-pieced block.

Christine offered to make/sell us pre-made kits, but we declined. Modern quilters can be picky about their fabrics, so I offered to make kits for everyone. It wasn't exactly a fun task to make all of these but I am excited about the color scheme. It's pretty bright and let's face it, totally my taste. (sorry!)

Tomorrow we are going to talk about ideas for doing a bee/block exchange as well as getting going on a charity quilt. Our guild was approached by Horizons for Homeless Children, asking us to make a Boston sports team themed quilt for their organization. This is kind of outside the box for our guild given that we generally shy away from novelty fabrics - but we agreed to give it a shot. Here is the backing I got from Joann's:

I decided on Celtics because I definitely have a lot of green fabric as opposed to navy and red for the Red Sox. Our guild wouldn't even consider the Bruins - given the gross color scheme of black and gold.

I will let you know how the meeting goes!

Busy Summer.......

Sorry if you are sick of seeing these hexagon flowers - but it's the only thing I have been able to consistently attend to lately (as far as sewing goes). I decided I needed flowers with red and yellow, so here you are. The stack of flowers is looking quite rainbow-ish lately. I am making SLOW progress on the border of the Pop Garden quilt. This is the first time I have tackled applique - unless you count the tie onesies I have made. I can't say I am a big fan of it - it's kind of boring and tedious. The pattern for the quilt claims you can make this quilt in a weekend, but I don't believe it!

Tuesday Morning Stash

This little guy has been keeping me away from the sewing machine. I also haven't sewed as much lately because my sister Emily had been visiting for a while recently. It was a perfect distraction for me to have her around, as my husband has been MIA studying for the Massachusetts bar. We spent a lot of time at our parent's house in NH (we only live 30 mins away) going swimming. When Gregory took his naps, Emily and I would watch Law and Order while I made these hexagonal flowers. I have decided I might want to put a medium shade of gray between all of the flowers but I am still not sure......

A few of my friends received an email when I discovered this picture on flickr (it's a picture of a woman with a tattoo design modeled after a Tula Pink fabric). Now I am not a big fan of tattoo's to begin with - - but I had to investigate more: who is Tula Pink and why would you want one of her fabric designs permanently on your body? I already had a FQ bundle of Plume from a giveaway that I won.... I went to see what her other fabric collections were like. Let me just say that she does have a very unique style and I am excited to see what her next collection will be like for Free Spirit. I became obsessed with her collection, Hushabye, and shockingly found a whole fat quarter bundle at a local very traditional/thimbleberries type of shop. The mustached lady gave me a great discount and I used my birthday money. I also just completed a fabric swap for some of the elusive Full Moon Forest (the other FMF, haha) and I while I don't think I would go ga-ga for all of her collections, I think I can say that I am officially a Tula Pink fan now!

I always have stacks of fabric on my nightstand - I love how they look folded all together. Plume is on the left, Hushabye is on the right. (Is it terrible that they are crowding out a little framed picture of my baby? aackkkk.....)

I wanted to share two of my most favorite fabrics I have ever received from my online fabric swap group: a Japanese fabric of Snow White (I am dying over the little apples and 7 dwarves) and the sneaker print. Way too adorable!

July NEMQG Meeting

I promised I would share more about our most recent NEMQG meeting.

A few weeks before the meeting, several of us met to try out bleaching fabrics - and here are some of the best results with strips/pieces of fabric showing what they looked before. My favorite is the AMH cathedral print - it is definitely better after being bleached. Monet showed us a quick and easy way to make flying geese blocks:

And then we all showed our doll quilts to each other, here is the one Monet made for Rhea:

Rebecca made this one for Pippa:

Meaghan received this one from Rhea:

Katie made this one for Lisa:

Here is the extra special back that Katie made for the quilt:

Meaghan made this one for Katie - it was the only exchange that actually got to occur in person:

Here's a picture of mine, that was given to Kelley:

And finally, the one that Lisa made for me:

Overall, it was a great meeting! Can't wait till August 7 when we meet again!

Flowers and My Birthday

There are a lot of flowers popping up in our house lately...... These are the beginnings of the appliqued border on my Pop Garden quilt:

And my birthday was on Thursday - this is what happened to the cake right after I had iced it. It still tasted yummy!

This is an "action shot" - right before the pile of presents fell on top of Gregory.

I really got spoiled for my birthday and it made up for having to be on a "fabric diet." A friend recently told me that she hoped I wasn't "starving" on this diet.... I should've told her that when it comes to fabric, I could be considered "morbidly obese."

My friends and family got a lot of help when I gave them ideas for what I wanted. Especially with Nick being consummed in studying for the bar, I made it easy for him and actually ordered a lot of the presents myself. Of course, there were still a few surprises.

The collection of Tufted Tweets, does not disappoint. The colors are very bright and gorgeous and the images on the fabric are so crisp. I thought that I might not like the one with the couches, but they are all awesome.

On my birthday, Nick and I went on a little date in the morning and went to the Fabric Corner. Using my 40% off coupon, I got a yard of the Echino print you can see in the picture (the 3rd one). I hate that I have such expensive taste in fabric, but 40% off makes it very affordable. I plan to make myself a new bag.

I was really excited to receive just over 1 yd of the out-of-print chocolate Joel Dewberry woodgrain fabric. The possibilities!

All of this fabric in this next picture is Japanese and I think I could just roll around in it. It is SO soft and cute. The one on the far left is "Mary Poppins Boo" - a fabric I have been dying for! And all of the little elephants! They are so tiny and are a perfect addition to practically any project.

And finally, I convinced my sister to order some fabric for me from a recent amazing sale at fabric.com All of this yardage averaged out to $3.70 per yard! Plus free shipping! I even got several yards of Kona Cotton Snow- this will help me complete a lot of projects considering that I have A LOT of prints and hardly any neutrals.

When you order fabric online, it's almost guaranteed that you will receive at least one thing that you weren't expecting or that you didn't like. That would be this print:

It's just too large scale for me and way too baby-ish. But I am sure I will find a way to use it anyhow.

So it's okay to be spoiled once in a while, right? It seriously was an amazing birthday filled with a date with Nick, swimming with my sister and Gregory, and lots and lots of fabric. What more could anyone ask for?

Doll Quilt Swap - Revealed

So I already showed you part of the back, but here it is in full: This is a close-up of the African wax print fabric I used, a design that I composed the whole quilt around.

I learned how to do English paper piecing with hexagons - totally addictive!

I have been working on this doll quilt for about 2 months, for the NEMQG doll quilt swap. I had the privilege of assigning partners - thus I got to choose who I would make my quilt for. I decided to choose Kelley. In scanning her blog, I learned that she is in the process of adopting a child from Ethiopia. Having lived in Africa twice, I have quite a bit of African fabric. I thought that the heart print was a very sweet and appropriate choice for this quilt. The colors are bright and kind of crazy - but no color pallette in Africa is very subdued, especially when it comes to fabric for garments.

The heart print is made in Nigeria. The green and black print is also from Africa. The colors are so dense in these fabrics, it is difficult to tell the front of the fabric from the back. I chose the dominants colors within the design to compose the rest of the quilt. It is purposely wonky. I think one of my favorite parts was making the hexagons. I really hope Kelley likes this!

Hexagons

I usually don't like to have more than one project going on at a time, but I decided that I really need a good "hand sewing" project for when I watch a movie, have a long car ride, etc. Call me crazy, but I think I am going to do a Grandmother's Hexagon quilt. It's something I have always wanted to have and I am going into this while constantly telling myself, "This project is going to last a decade."

I am excited about the prospect of doing it in modern fabrics but I want to still make it "timeless." In other words, I don't want a lot of trendy fabrics that I might get tired of later. Do you ever over think your fabric choices for projects? I know that I do.

This evening I brought Gregory into his room and let him play while I rummaged through my fabric (it's all stored in his room). The flowers will look like the one you can see completed in the picture. I am thinking about choosing fabrics with no more than 2 colors (not counting white) and trying to stay away from real primary colors (bright red, kelly green, etc.). I love a scrappy look and want to use what I already have. Any thoughts?

P.S. I want to have a solid color throughout the whole quilt- hugging all of the flowers. Mint green? Is it supposed to be yellow? Should I go with my favorite shade of pink?

Doll Quilt Received!

I have so much to post regarding our latest NEMQG meeting we had on Saturday. It was a busy meeting - I learned a lot, ate some great cake, and took lots of pictures. It was a lot of fun! I will be posting about the meeting periodically within the next week.

Literally five minutes before I left my house for the meeting, the mailman delivered my doll quilt that I received from Lisa! I was so excited to open the package and find this:

I am so jealous that Lisa knows how to stipple so well. We really need to do a class on this for our guild!

I have never received a gift from another quilter - so this is just awesome. It is now hanging up in my bedroom, very near my other mini quilt (Girl in a swing). Do you think my husband would mind if I decorated every available wall space with mini quilts? He's already used to seeing fabric and half-finished sewing projects everywhere.

Another Sunday "nap" project....

This is an extremely simple rail fence quilt.... the real show-stopper is going to be when I complete the border.... think lots of applique and ric-rac.

Happy sewing!

Busy week!

The fabric diet has also helped me rediscover fabrics that I LOVE but haven't made the time to get to, like my all-time favorite collection, Heather Bailey's Pop Garden. I am doing a very easy quilt from a Quick Quilts magazine right now and I am loving the yummy colors: And it's made me try to do projects I can easily do from my stash. This quilt is from the beautiful blog: Comfort Stitching, girl on a swing mini quilt. It's one of those projects that has been on my mental "to-do" list for quite some time and this past week I completed it in only 3 days.

The hardest part was "drawing" the picture with the black thread stitching. She recommends free-motion embroidery stitching, but I wasn't that brave. I sewed it while using the feed-dogs of my sewing machine.

I did wonky line quilting with a pieced back.

One of the best parts about this quilt was that I had the binding already made from when I made this quilt. I only had had a fat quarter and it wasn't enough for the quilt (not surprising but so frustrating!). But it ended up being a happy mistake because it matched this quilt perfectly.

Sewing on the 4th

Oddly enough, I had 4th of July plans on everyday except Sunday. After church, everyone needed a nap except myself (surprisingly). I happily picked through fabrics until I came up with this combination: I originally was going to just do all Nicey Jane fabrics, but it is so much more fun to do a combination from different designers.

All in one afternoon, I made these blocks, for Oh Frannsson's 9 Patch Lattice Quilt.

Here's the problem in finishing it- I do not have 3 yards of any solid for sashing or backing. I rarely buy solids and never in a very large quantity - I am too obsessed with all of the designer prints that get produced once and go out of print too fast. There is always decent plain greys, whites, blues, etc.... I may make my sister get me a "boring" (in her opinion) present for my birthday. This fabric diet is no fun but necessary.