Lucky Stars Attempt #2

In January I joined the Lucky Stars Block of the Month club by Don't Call Me Betsy. I started strong and had a vision of jeweled colored stars used only from stash fabric. After a month or two I was almost dreading it. My vision was falling very, very, very short and I was running out of fabrics I wanted to use. And did I mention I wasn't liking my blocks at all?

Fast forward a few months and a fair amount of paper piecing experience later and I had a much better vision. I wanted really warm and bright tones, something that would fit in with the summer, when all we need on our bed is a light quilt, and keep me happy in the dark doldrums of winter. "Luckily" my stash had grown by then and I only needed to add a little bit here and there to round it out.

So far I'm loving this series. Not every one of them is a hit of course, but when it's all assembled I think it will really come together.

I have dreams of having this done by Christmas, but only have 4 out of 24 done (I signed up for both 2013 and 2013 patterns). Oh and then I plan on hand quilting... so maybe Christmas 2015??

WIP Wednesday

I feel like I've gone and overwhelmed myself again. As predicted, I put my goals out there and then get crazy and feel like I "must" complete everything I assigned myself. So when I start working on random projects that strike my fancy I feel bad, as if I'm not accomplishing the correct things. Sewing is my outlet, it's my fun thing, it's not supposed to feel like work!

I do have a couple of projects that I've been working on:

The most recent in my Sugar BOM Club (stitched on a lovely snowy day while listening to She & Him on Pandora... very relaxing!):
 

Center diamonds for the Maple Rag Quilt from Material Obsession. These are the perfect project for those times when I just want to sew and not think about it. I need 128 of them to make the size in the book so I figure it's a good small project to pick up here and there to keep me from getting overwhelmed.
 

The beginning of a Gardening Busy Book page for Goose:

Recovering bolster pillows and making a slip cover for the nursery rocker (no photos, it's not particularly fun to look at!)


But then there's my major distractions...

-I just found Threadbias and have spent an inordinate amount of time there. What a wonderful group of supportive sewists! And of course now I have a million more ideas in the vault.

-Discovering pictoral paper piecing. Of course I've seen it around, but for some reason it just recently sank in and I may have spent a good hour on Flickr this morning oohing and aahing over the talent of these artists. And of course all wouldn't be right in the world unless I jumped in with a ridiculous difficult (and probably impossible) design of my own. Now just to get some quiet time to test some scraps on it.

-Waiting, most impatiently, for some very special fabric that is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I'm going to use it for my project bag and have been trying to plan every detail before it comes so I can cut right in. Of course, I'm just realizing that I'm supposed to be hosting book club here tomorrow so that will seriously cut into my sewing time. Blah!

I've been putting off...

-My cousins' Sunshine Half-hexagon quilt... For some reason I'm wishing I could just jump to the hand-quilting part. I need another dose of spring like weather to tackle that.

-The squirrel embroidery for my woodland quilt. It's all traced on to the fabric and in the hoop, I just can't seem to pick up the thread.

-Lucky stars BOMs. I'm no longer in the groove with the fabrics I started with so it's feeling a little "off". The colors are so rich and jewel like which was totally the mindset I was in at the beginning of the year (in the dead of winter) but now I'm drawn to lighter fabrics as I obsess over nicer weather.

Hopefully next week will show some work on the "Putting offs" just so I keep moving on them!

WIP Wednesday: Sunshine Quilt

Can I join the million others and start with: It's Cold. Wah.

I'm not a big fan of complaining about the weather (noticing it is just fine, complaining not so much). Especially when people complain that it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Especially when you live in the Northeast. That's just the way it is and always will be (hopefully). However, this year I want to complain. 

I'm an Upstate NY girl. I can deal with snow. I can deal with cold. Usually I don't get the spring itch until mid- to end-of February, but this year I'm over it. It's too cold for Goose to run around outside and that boy needs to get out some energy in the worst way. I am constantly cold in my house and non of my sweatshirts fit over my too big belly anymore. Spring seems so far away!

I'm craving heat and summer almost obsessively (I'm going to blame hormones for some of this too!). My solutions? Go to the coffee shop that has huge glass windows with a greenhouse effect. Make non-alcoholic margaritas (best mix ever) and sit next to the heater. And work on this sunny quilt for my cousin and his wife.

They are due a month or so after I am (and our first babies were born on the same day!) and I was waiting to make this quilt until I knew if they were having a boy or a girl. Not sure why, as I'm not much for gender specific quilts anyways. But the moment I got the word that they were having another boy I grabbed my Olfa. 

Laying it out on my dining room table might have been the catalyst for my winter blues. It warmed up the entire room and seemed to just glow!

I used this template found on Flickr. Downloaded in the Original Size and printed a full size, it was a perfect finished 4".

So the big bummer with this is that all the fabrics... okay, most of the fabrics... were straight from my stash. After stocking up on fabric earlier this year, I thought it best to try and de-stash some with this quilt. Here's the problem with only working from your stash... then the stash is gone. Or at least the yellows and oranges. Hubby couldn't quite understand my disappointment at cutting up the last of my yellows, since that is technically why I purchased it in the first place.

Plus I have since found that there aren't a lot of yellows I love in the market right now (I guess that's a good excuse to gobble them up if I find them!).

I've updated (or will shortly) my 2014 Finished Projects page to reflect my goal list for 2014. I got a little distracted this week with the purchase of new fabric that called out for a bag that I'll share in a couple of days. But I'll get back on track!

Lucky star

I'm still cruising on the blocks to catch me up for the January Lucky Stars 2013 and 2014 blocks. I wasn't psyched with the light turquoise vs dark turquoise points when it was all said and done. And I also realized that, with my love of the gold cotton ball fabric I'm about to run out of it. Might have to break my fabric diet and get some more gold fabric...

Still loving how the colors are all going together!

As with all these blocks, I'm realizing how very off the finished sizes have been. After doing some good old fashioned Googl-ing, I realized that my method of 1/4" seams, using the side of the presser foot, is very off. Maybe fixing that will make these a little more even!

Sugar Block Club: January BOM

Before I found the Lucky Stars BOM, I joined the Sugar Block Club BOM. I was hesitant at first since it promised lots of pinwheels and I always associate pinwheels with more traditional quilts. But I loved the Flickr photos from the 2013 BOM club and thought I'd give it a try. To avoid the flying geese colorway fiasco I went to one of my favorite color palette design sources, Design Seed, to find inspiration. Looove me some Design Seeds. Nothing does more to start me planning an excessive number of projects than those palettes! 

I went with this one:

Color Celebration by Design Seeds

And naturally had to buy some fabric to support this.... which, on the first weekend of the New Years, made it my second purchase of the year. And I have since put myself on a fabric diet (kind of, sort of).

My current favorite source is Quilt Home. I've window shopped for a couple of months but this was my first purchase and they didn't disappoint!

Fabric (top to bottom): Kaffe Fasset Shot Cotton Latte, Heirloom Dandelion by Joel Dewberry, Midwest Modern Rust by Amy Butler, Kaffe Fasset PWGP140 Gold, Dowry Jade by Anna Maria Horner, Ocean by Kaffe Fassett, Aviary Granite by Joel Dewberry, Aviary Vintage Yellow by Joel Dewberry, Kaffe Fasset PWGPP135 Grey, Kaffe Fasset PWGP129 Brown

 

 I also had a chance to organize all these quilts I'm working on. I knew those gift boxes would come in handy a some point!

Confused Flying Geese

I have two typical approaches to designing quilts. First requirement: it must be small, lap or crib size. I typically get burnt out on larger quilts and they lay half finished in my studio for years (there may still be one or two up there hiding in corners).  Second requirement: they involve the word "drunk" or "wonky" in the title or directions. I'm not the best at fine (or even approximate) points or squaring blocks up so if the end goal is something a little crazy then I'm in my element.

But it's a new year and I have some new goals (actually I have a LOT of goals, but more on that later). I'm going to attempt some sharp points and exact piecing. Gulp. We'll see how this goes. It's not going to be perfect. I don't need my quilts to be perfect, but I do want to challenge myself.

Enter the Confusing Flying Geese quilt. Inspired by this quilt by Lindsay Sews (take a minute and swoon a little bit). I wanted to attack a Geese quilt of my own that was a little wonky and drunk but in a different way... and it's full size.

I picked a palette to work with... I have no idea now what that palette was. I can't imagine my original plan was to have coral and orange and olive and gray and a bunch of blues??

 I pride myself in being able to visualize how things will look together in the final product. I also pride myself in coming up with combinations that others may not immediately think of but enjoy once it's in front of them. I think I missed the boat here.

I love all the individual color combinations. I'll put together a set of geese and adore it, then attach it to the rest of the quilt and wonder what the hell I have done... again.

So to start, here's the layout I'm working loosely off of (I was so darn proud of myself for coming up with a layout first!). Each block outlined in black works with the same fabrics.

Goose (ha, Goose) took a super long nap yesterday and I was able to finish the first quadrant of the quilt. I was hoping that seeing the whole quadrant together would be inspiring, but I'm feeling a little deflated. Woof.

So with a camera photo (let's be honest, all my photos are camera photos) and a little photoshop "magic" (I'm still very much learning) tried to see the greater picture and came up with this...

Yep, my photoshop skills are lacking... and the photo is blurry... and I should point out that the original block is actually square but photographed very wavy. Anyways, I don't plan to have exact repeats of the first quadrant, but do want to make sure each fabric is represented at least once in order to have some order so this gives me a general idea.

I loved the dark teal, olive and light gray (shows as white) while I was sewing it but now it really sticks out like a sore thumb. Blast. On a whole, this image gives me some hope that I can pull it off, but it's not the quilt I originally imagine! Maybe I should break up the teal/olive/gray strips into something smaller and put more concentrated color in there?

Time to clear my head and work with some different colors and fabrics...