AccuQuilt GO!

Barb from Bejeweled Quilts by Barb has the honor of hosting a giveaway for an AccuQuilt GO! Before heading to Barb's, make a stop at the AccuQuilt website and choose your three favorite diecuts so you'll be prepared for Barb's giveaway instructions. If you head over from here, be sure to tell her AlwaysaPieceofMe sent you. Thanks and Good Luck!

Let's Make a Deal

I want more fabric. I love all the beautiful designs, colors, and textures I find when fabric shopping. I happen to know myself though and know that I tend to buy and hoard things and never end up using them. So I negotiated a deal with myself. I would set a goal and when I reached it I could buy more fabric. Then came the difficult part of setting a reasonable goal. Something not too hard to reach, but also not too easy just because I wanted to go shopping. I've thought about it for a couple of days and here is what I have come up with:
1)Make and attach binding to disappearing nine patch.
2)Iron and cut Camelot fabric.
3)Piece Camelot top and back.
4)Make Camelot binding.
5)Iron and cut Princess fabric.
6)Piece Princess front and back.
7)Make Princess binding.

Its sort of a lot to do, but I don't think it is unreasonable. I'm hoping to work on ironing and cutting this week which should be a good start.

A Couple Little Problems

Bit by bit I managed to get the disappearing nine patch quilted over the past couple days. I absolutely love the texture the diagonal quilting adds to the quilt.
Although I think my quilting has improved a tiny bit from the last quilt, there were a couple little problems I discovered. First...
in two places I got these loops of thread. I think it had to do with the tension on my machine. I'm going to rip these sections out and re-do them next week.
Second... these little folds in the quilting. It didn't happen in too many places, thankfully. I'm not re-doing these areas. I believe it has to do with my basting and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I need more pins?

Overall, I'm quite happy. I'm crossing my fingers that with more experience I'll be able to eliminate these problems.

Hopefully I'll be able to find some space this week for the cutting table and ironing board so I can get the binding ready to complete this quilt.

My Stash

With all my unpacking and organizing I have managed to create a tiny little crafting space for myself in my bedroom. There isn't too much room for growth at the moment, but I'm hoping there will be in the future. The top three cubes hold my stash. The middle three have (from left to right) finished quilts, finished knitted baby blankets, and WIPs. The bottom holds knitting needles and a tiny fraction of my knitting supplies (the rest are in the basement in containers), my scraps, and apparel and other misc. fabrics. I am quite proud of my neatly folded and sorted stash and look forward to adding to it. There are a few more things that don't fit in the shelving unit that I have to continue to work on finding a home for, like patterns, thread, rulers, etc., but I plan on continuing to adjust and organize until it all fits.

Re-basting

While taping my disappearing nine patch for straight line quilting, I noticed that the basting was full of puckers around the safety pins on the back. Not wanting so many puckers in the finished product, I took it all apart and tried again tonight. I am happy to report that I don't see anymore puckers in the basting. Hopefully I'll get a chance to quilt this pretty little thing later this week.

Show Props

My crafting time yesterday and today was spent making some props for a show my sisters are in this Friday. They needed six money bags for a western bank robbery number. My mom was going to hot glue some fabric together to try and make them, but I knew I could do it much quicker and cleaner with my sewing machine. I had some poly-fil left from an old project that I used to stuff them and I used a permanent marker to draw on the money signs. The fabric was already cut into pieces and they needed them quickly so I did what I could with it. They aren't anything special, but I hope they will work for the show.

I spent the weekend in Georgia for a friend's graduation party and on Sunday we got to see an old plantation. I was excited to see quilts in a number of the buildings, but didn't have my camera. Luckily, one of my friends took some pictures for me. As soon as I get them from him I'll be posting them here.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Oh my...it has been nearly three weeks since I last posted! In that time I have accomplished many things, though few are quilting related. First of all, I finished school. Then I moved. Then I helped my sister's boyfriend move. Then I helped a friend with her move. Finally, this...
Graduation day. On Sunday I graduated with my Master's degree. I can't tell you how happy I am to finally have it completed.

Amidst all the papers, boxes, and hours in the car I was able to get a little quilting done. My red and black string quilt is coming along.
Some in progress blocks:
And some of the completed ones:
And I managed to baste the disappearing nine patch yesterday.

Oh! And when I arrived at my new address this was waiting for me...
My winnings from Robin. So many pretty fabrics and a great pattern she wrote herself.

I'm anxious to get some more done, but have a lot more boxes to unpack and commitments to fulfill before I'll have time to make much progress. We'll see what I can squeeze in here and there in the next few weeks.