Design Wall Monday Week 11 - March 15, 2010

On my wall this week are the 1st two hexagons for my new quilt.  I took a One Block Wonder class on Saturday. The 2nd part of the class in in 4 weeks. We have to have all of the hexagons sewed for the class. I have 108 sets of triangles.

 Here's a picture of the original fabric.

Still on the wall from last week is the first Jelly Roll block (I think the 2nd one will be out today)

 and the label for my niece's T-shirt quilt, which I'm happy to report was quilted yesterday. WAHOO! The binding is ready and I'm  hoping to sew that on today.  I'm still hand sewing the binding to the M. Compass so no finished pictures yet.

Today

Meghan and I are going to a baby shower.  I posted a picture of the quilt I made before. 

I was reading Amy's lastest post and my eye caught the burp cloth tutorial on the side of her blog page.

 yesterday I sewed all day long and ............are you ready

The 2nd T-shirt quilt is together.......wooohooooo.  It measures 64 x92.  The first was 67 x 92.  Not bad for "winging it" with no pattern. 

Design Wall Monday/Feb. 22 (week 8)

The start of the 2nd T-shirt quilt is on the wall. 

I have the binding on the 1st one and should have that done as well this week.  I bought backing fabric for a Mariner Compass top that I made several years ago and never quilted, I want to load and quilt that this week as well...I don't have a picture, will try to remember to take one before I load it. 

One T-shirt quilt

I quilted #1 t-shirt quilt today.  I loaded it last night, but was tired, wanted to watch the Olympics and frankly was a little concerned with how it would quilt. 
I had no trouble with it at all!  I used
Superior's King tut thread on top and Sew Fine in the bobbin. I just did a big meander on it.  A few of the blocks, I outlined around a motif but not much of that.  The only problem I could say I had was some of the seams were so bulky, I did have to really go slow and push down the top at the seam to get the hopping foot over without causing a wrinkle.  I tried to press all the seams open but some of them flipped during loading (or I sewed them wrong when I was assembling top).

On the snow front, well it finally seems to have stopped. And the sun has come out.  I think it has made the top of the snow nice and crusty and Otis can walk on it, Annie too, but she sinks a bit. 

 It was the first day in weeks that Otis ventured off the deck.  Annie checked out the entire yard and discovered that the snow it piled higher than the fence.  UH-oh.  She tried to jump out but I was watching and growled at her so she backed off.      

Block-a-Day's and BOM

I got my block-a-days caught up.

These are from Feb 10-20th.  I really like all of them. 

I also made the 4th block in the BOM that Shannon is hosting at pieceful kwilter.  I cut the 30.5 background square for the applique center for the quilt; so I don't use it for background in the blocks and end up short. I haven't started on the appliques yet.

Tomorrow the T-shirts..woohoo!

Quiltathon Weekend, Day 2

One down, one to go!   It measures 67 x92.  I think that is good size--better be since I'm outa t-shirts.  

I also finished the block a day blocks I had cut out, I'm still behind. The block in the center of the top row; I added the border strips to-to bring it up to 12.5 inches since I made it out of Christmas fabrics.

The block in the bottom row left---that's the one with the 1" finished HST. 32 of those teeny weeny things-it was just a very time comsuming block....never thought it was going to be done.

 (such drama!)

Quiltathon Weekend

  I decided to use this time to really try and get one of the 2 t-shirt quilts I'm making for my twin nieces for graduation.

 I've been working since 11:30am (1 hour break for lunch, coffee and to watch a little of the olympics).  I did sew one of my block a day blocks first (but forgot to take a picture of it). I sewed that up as it was laid out and ready to go and I didn't want to have to re-arrange it later.  It was an easy block so after it was done, (drum roll, please) ...

I got out the T-shirts and started----woohoo! 

 Here's a picture of the wall after about 2 hours. 

It doesn't look like a lot of progress but if you can click on the photo and get a closer look, you'll see that the center section has a lot of t-shirts that I sewed in randomly (sorta like making a crumb block!)--who knew learning how to do crumbs a few weeks ago would come in handy with this project.

Here is my faithful helper Annie.  She can not be comfortable sleeping on the ironing board leg---but she was there for at least an hour!

Here is where I left the wall for tonight.  I have the vertical rows sewn together.  It's measuring 81" long. I'm pretty sure it's going to be about 70-72" wide.  I think that's ok.   I hope it doesn't pull my flannel wall down tonight. It's quite heavy with that interfacing on it and the blocks won't stay up by themselves to I have to pin them...which is a pain. 

This is all the leftover t-shirts.  I'm thinking after I sew the top together I should be able to add then across the bottom to increase the length to maybe 86-88".

 I'm so happy with the progress so far. Part of my hesitation in starting these, (besides the fact that I am a procrastinator) was that I've never made a t-shirt quilt before.  It's been a learning experience that's for sure and that's a good thing.

 

Block-a-Day Week 2

Here are blocks 8-14!  I just used the same fabrics for the week.

 

Last night I finished fusing the last of the t-shirts. Wait! Doing a little happy dance here!!   And just for the record, I used 1 bolt (yes Bolt- that's 25 yards of fusible interfacing.)  I know this because I bought a brand spanking new bolt (still in shrink wrap)and it's gone--save for a few scrappy pieces.

Anyway, I knew in my head how I wanted to piece them-no sashing like a collage. It's also possibly the only way to get them all on the front of a quilt and "collage" was the word used by my sister-in-law. However, I'd never seen a t-shirt quilt like that; all the books and patterns I have  show quilts with sashing or theme fabric related to the t-shirts. And none showed a quilt top with 40-50 T-shirts used! So I Googled 't-shirt quilts'-  I found a website Too Cool T-shirts --I think that was the name.  And there were picture after picture of quilts that look just like what I was planning in my head.  (Whew! It will work and look good.)

  *oh thank you "lord of the internet" or whoever you are that gives us Google....the search engine of extreme time wasting...except when you find just what you need!*   

Design Wall Monday Week 2

The block is January 11th's Block-a-Day . I cut it out last night so it's already to go.  I'm going to try to use fabrics that 'go together' for each weeks blocks.   It will help when I go to make a quilt from all these blocks.


And here is the 'cut and ready for fusing' t-shirt pile for the 2nd quilt!  I'm real happy with the progress made on them.

And here is my strings quilt that was last weeks DWM post. I put the border on yesterday; just squeaked by with the 1 1/2 yards of this fabric that I had in the stash.

T-shirt start!

The pile on the left are cut "oversized" and need interfacing fused to the back, the smaller pile on the right are cut and fused. That's 2 hours + of work time, whew! (doesn't seem like a lot to show for 2 hours)
I started cutting and fusing but the process was so slow that I stopped fusing and just cut.   Yep 2-twin nieces=2 quilts.

The table runner

The table runner Winter Welcome is getting there.  I hope to have it sewn together today and maybe quilted.  I haven't done any embroidery for a  l-o-n-g time, in fact when I was ready to do this one, I couldn't find a little hoop to put it in...I looked everywhere. Well, everywhere I thought they might be....  Before quilting,  I cross stitched. I know I have several of those hoops, but where?  I had to run to the local craft store and pick one up (I got 2 just in case). 

 The 2 t-shirt quilts are starting to nag at the back of my mind.  For the past two weeks I've said to myself, "ok, next week we start...get 'em cut out, interfacing fused...one quilt at a time.." And the week ends and the boxes, full to the brim, sit and mock me from the corner of my sewing room. Just getting them cut out will probably cut the boxes in half (there are 2 for each girl!)  So that should be enough reason to get me going. My room is not big. I could be piling lots of other junk  important stuff in that corner!  Ok next week I start...