Too Good to be True

I knew it. That deal on the Stripey Tiger fabric was too good to be true. They ran out of yardage before getting to my order. :-( I'm bummed, but I'll just have to keep my eye out for another print or the same one elsewhere for my t-shirt project.

Adding to My Stash

Fabric.com is having a great sale. Until midnight tonight they are offering an additional 30% off of any clearance items (use code CLEARANCE323 at checkout). In addition, sales over $35 ship for free. And that is $35 before the discount. I ordered 8 yards of fabric and with the free shipping the whole order was under $30!

My favorite find, Stripey Tiger Paws, is a perfect for a project I have in mind. My high school mascot is a tiger and the school colors are black and gold. I've been wanting to make a t-shirt quilt out of my old t-shirts as there are so many and I never wear them anymore. They are just sitting at my parents' house in boxes. Anyway, I'm hoping to use this as the binding fabric. It is almost too good to be true that I found it. I just have to figure out if it is okay to mix old t-shirts with quilting cotton.
I got some other cute prints too that I will share when they arrive!

Beautiful Blogger Award

Many thanks to Jean at Quiltingranny who generously passed this award along to me last week. Being so new to blogging, I never imagined I would receive anything like this. I am not only thankful, but honored that she would choose my blog. In her post, Jean not only shared the award, but some very kind words that I am equally grateful for. Thank you Jean!

What the award entails:
- Thanks and link my presenter
- Post the award on my blog
- Share 7 interesting things about myself
- Nominate 7 blogs and link to them

Interesting facts:
1) As a child, I never really liked the color pink, but it is now my favorite color and I can't get enough of it.
2) I finished one year of my bachelor's degree and one year of my master's degree in the same year.
3) My favorite food is cheese.
4) I am legally blind in one eye.
5) I don't eat red meat.
6) I love to read, but have to do it in moderation as I tend to pick up a book and read it from start to finish without stopping for much of anything including eating and sleeping.
7) I can NEVER remember the correct lyrics to a song, but love to sing along with my own made up words. It drives my family and friends crazy, but is just so enjoyable I can't quit.

Blogs that inspire me:
1) Quilt Dad - The first quilting blog I began reading. I love to see the great idea's John comes up with to make his quilts modern.
2) a quilt is nice - Like me, Nettie wishes she had more time to quilt, but it is inspiring to see all the beautiful and colorful quilts she is able to produce in the time she has.
3) Because I'm Me - Jody is a mother of 6 home schooled children and still manages to make beautiful quilts. How can that not be inspiring?
4) Film in the Fridge - I love Ashley's use of color and unique block arrangements on quilts like this and this.
5) one shabby chick - Amber seems to always have some fun projects in the works that give me ideas and motivate me to keep quilting.
6) Dawn's Quilts - A recent blog I have begun following. Dawn has some creative quilting ideas and many other fun ideas on her blog.
7) Bejeweled Quilts by Barb - Another recent addition to my blogroll, Barb's blog is full of energy and fun! She has many beautiful quilts, but also has other fun posts about fabric and other misc projects.

Thanks again to Jean for the award, but also to all the bloggers who have inspired me in my quilting journey. I look forward to continuing to follow your blogs and see what amazing new things you create!

A Month Without Sewing

Due to the end of the school year, and the final push to graduation, I am away from my sewing machine for the next few weeks. It is residing at my parents' house while I finish up my papers, requirements, and preparations for moving. I'll get a chance to use it for a couple hours Easter weekend, but then won't be seeing it again until the end of April. Its too bad the end of the year is so busy because quilting is a great way for me to de-stress and would be helpful as the assignments seem to stack up. I will just have to live vicariously through other quilters in blogland as I read about what they are working on. At least I can look forward to more time for quilting once I'm finally done (hopefully forever) with classes!

Now that I've begun quilting, I am finding many different patterns I want to try out. I want to try string blocks, rail fence blocks, disappearing nine patch blocks, as well as a quilt of all squares and numerous patterns I've drawn up myself. I've gone out and bought several different 'sets' of fabrics that I could use on any of these patterns. As enthusiastic as I am to get started, I seem to freeze when it is time to cut into the fabrics. I get worried I've chosen the 'wrong' set of fabrics for a particular design or that I'll mess up when cutting and ruin the fabric I have. I finally had to take a moment to reason with myself that (1) if I do make a bad cut who cares? I can cut another piece or change up the design a little, (2) there is no 'right' fabric for a design or design for a fabric, and (3) I'm still learning and can always make another quilt if the current one isn't to my liking and I'm sure someone will like it. Having done that, I felt much better and was able to piece together the blocks for a disappearing nine patch baby quilt.I've subsequently spent between 1-2 hours arranging and re-arranging the blocks in a pattern that is to my liking, but have finally found a good arrangement. You can see my little slip of paper on the top block indicating its place in the layout. This little pile is sitting and waiting for me to return to it when I finally have some time.

A Little Quilt for a Little Friend

A couple weeks ago, I was supposed to get to spend the day with a little two-year-old friend of mine. I hadn't seen her in awhile and thought I would surprise her with a gift that we could play with that day and she could take home with her. I used some fabrics I had in my line up to start a baby quilt as I knew I had bought a little extra of each print and the scraps of batting from my primary colors quilt. Not only did I hope my little friend would be pleased with a gift, I was anxious to get some more practice (especially with binding!) and a chance to try out grid quilting.

The front: The back:Close up of grid quilting

The gift (complete with a baby doll wearing a nightgown with

matching purple polka dots that I found at the store!):

Unfortunately, I didn't get to see my little friend that day as she spent the weekend with her aunt instead. I passed the gift to her mom and asked her to please give it to her when she got home. Her big sister reports that she loved it and showed it to anyone who stepped foot in their house. I'm glad she likes it and hope I get to see her soon.

Lucky Find

A week ago, while visiting family, I was driving down the road, running an errand, when I passed the local quilt shop. A large banner hanging on the side of the building read "Fat Quarter Sale - Fill Your Stash!" with Saturday's date underneath. I quickly decided to take their suggestion and join them on Saturday in an attempt to fill up my stash.
I got there on Saturday, but not until about thirty minutes after the store had opened. Most every sale priced FQ was already sold and there were many unhappy women milling about the store. It turns out if you were not there when the doors opened, you were out of luck. I decided to look around a little bit and see if there were any other fabrics that caught my, even if they weren't on the mega-sale. While looking, I came across a tiny stack of the sale FQ that had been looked over. There were a few trick-or-treat fabrics, one other design I didn't care for, and this...
I quickly picked up several FQs of each print, debating how many I wanted. I ended up with a yard of the castle background and 1/2 yard of the map background. I left a few FQs on the table, but now wish I would have bought every last one they had.
I'm absolutely loving this fabric - its soft, bright, and so cute - and can't wait to make a little quilt out of it!

Practice Makes Perfect (or at least makes improvements!)

This little guy is my first real quilt. He's my first attempt at quilting (not counting the mess I made in high school!), and though there are more mistakes than I can count...I love it! The primary colors really pop and the random arrangement of the different colors gives it a really neat look. I'm convinced its perfect for a baby boy. My mom, her friend, and a couple of my sisters discouraged me from using the primary colors. I was just about swayed to use different fabric when my sister's boyfriend said that he liked the pattern with the use of primary colors. Well, that was all the support I needed. Primary colors it was going to be. Besides, I already had the red. There was yards and yards of it from a school project my sister had done in middle school. It was just sitting in my stash, along with some batting remnants from a baby book project I had done for a child development class in grad school. I only had to buy a yard and a half of fabric which I got for only a couple dollars. Seeing as this was just a practice quilt, I didn't see a need to be spending a lot of cash. (Sidenote: Once it all came together, everyone changed their minds. Now my whole family loves the color scheme!)
I stitched in the ditch to quilt my sandwich and like the look it gives on the back of the quilt as well as that it isn't visible (at least in theory--like I said, a lot of mistakes) on the front. The binding was a bit of a mess, but pretty good for a first try. Somehow I stitched it on so that the entire width had to be flipped to the back to stitch it down. I've figured out my mistake now and won't do that again. That's what its all about for me at this point--learning. I am so happy to be finally living a childhood dream that I don't mind the mistakes along the way. If they are humongous, I'll fix them, but little ones stay. Trying to correct each one would be tiring and I am afraid might make quilting boring, stressful, and not fun, and that is something I don't want to do!

Starting Out on a Journey

The first quilt I began is still, nine months later, a WIP. My grandiose dreams of quilting let me believe that starting out with a quilt for my full size bed would be a reasonable project. Piecing the blocks themselves wasn't a problem. I had 36 blocks done in two days time. At this point I was just eager to get the blocks together. The concepts of squaring blocks and lining up seams were still foreign. I did attempt to trim all the blocks to similar sizes since they ranged from about 11 1/2 inches to 12 1/2 inches across. Mostly, I didn't care. I just wanted my hot pink and teal squares sewn together so I could see the finished project! As the blocks became rows and the rows became a quilt top, I began to realize that quilting such a large quilt on my little machine was going to really take some doing. And on top of that, I was running out of time. Summer was upon me which meant hours and hours spent each day inside at work. At the end of the day, I wanted to spend a little time outdoors or I was simply so tired I fell asleep as soon as I shoveled dinner down my throat and didn't wake up until it was time to do it all again the next day. And thus, my quilt was yet again put on a back burner. Then came August and the start of another year of grad school. Again, no time for quilting. Days are eaten up by my internship and nights by readings, research, papers, and meetings. My first substantial down time came during winter break. And what did I do? Pulled back out my quilt top...only to realize it was too small, even with the borders I had waiting to stitch to it. Luckily, I had some leftover strips and was able to make six more blocks and attach them. Unfortunately, that is how it still looks. I decided at that point that I needed to practice the actual quilting process before attempting a go at this monster so I yet again set it aside until I was confident enough to wrestle it through my little Singer machine.

Nothing Happens Unless First We Dream

(Title quote from Carl Sandburg)
In elementary school, around third or fourth grade, my teacher gave me a book called "Bess' Log Cabin Quilt." I loved it from my first read. Not only did I love the book itself, but I loved the idea of learning to quilt. It seemed to me that I should be able to make a quilt as I was just about the same age as the girl in the book. I already had learned to knit at five years old, so why couldn't I sew? Well, being busy with many other little girl things and not having anyone in my life that could teach me to sew, the dream of making a quilt was put on a back burner.
Then came seventh grade when my home economics project was to sew an apron. Every student in the class was taught to use a sewing machine and those of us that were interested could come in after school for extra time with the machines. I spent many afternoons in the school sewing room, learning as much as I could about the sewing machines and practicing on my apron. I was so infatuated with all I had learned that I asked for a sewing machine for Christmas that year. Lucky for me, my mom and dad, despite their lack of understanding of my desire to be crafty, are supportive of me and like to cultivate the interests of all their children. Never having touched a sewing machine, my parents had no idea what to look for, but my dad did some research and got me a machine. I was so excited.
My early projects were simplistic, crudely made (I'm not sure I've ever used a pattern when making something. I like to examine an object either in real life or in my thoughts, create a plan to replicate it in my head and then execute that plan.), and few in number. The machine really did not get a lot of use. Most of the projects were random -- a couple of purses, pillows, a set of curtains for my dad, and a few costumes for different shows I was in through high school and early college. Toward the end of high school I did attempt to make a little quilt for a toddler girl I adored. It was a disaster. I used a panel of Disney Princess fabric for the front and tried to piece together three different colors for the back. It was a royal mess. I still have it and might rip it apart and have another go at it one day; Now that I have some knowledge of quilting and am not just randomly slapping fabric together and shoving it through my machine.
Then last year, I found out that a friend of mine was a quilter. He showed me pictures of his work, which was incredible, and I was sucked back into that long ago dream of creating a quilt of my own. After graduating in May, I spent a few weeks at my parents' house reading and relaxing before beginning my summer job. Having quilting on the brain I picked up "Bess' Log Cabin Quilt" from my book shelf of children's books and poured quickly through the novel. When I was done reading, I put the book down and headed to the computer. It was time to find out what exactly a log cabin quilt was and how to make my own. I found some directions, sorted through my miscellaneous stash of fabrics I had collected from people over the years, and set up my sewing machine. After a quick trip to the store to supplement the fabrics I had on hand, I was on my way into the world of quilting.