Inspired by the Tangerine Tango challenge and some adorable bundles of Lizzy House’s newest line, Outfoxed, I decided to make an orange-and-plum quilt using Jeni’s Plus Quilt tutorial.  I cut the squares on Tuesday and the (not small!) quilt top was done by Sunday! Oh, man, that was super satisfying and fast! Now I just need to order a bit more fabric to make the back, and I may have another finished quilt on the books.

And speaking of fast finishes, last night I got it in my head that I needed a new little zippered pouch for my credit cards. A regular wallet just feels too bulky, I like to be able to throw something small in my jacket pocket when I’m dashing into Target  with three kids in tow.  A quick look at Cara’s tutorial, and about 10 minutes later I had this cute little gray and orange number.

It’s not perfect, but for a quick grab out of the stash and a few minutes at the sewing machine, it’s perfectly cute and functional. Win!

Any quick projects going on in your world, friends?

For those who might be newer to my little blog, this quilt started as something of an experiment way back in October of 2010. I went through my scrap bins one at a time, and cut one 5″ square from as many different fabrics as I could dig out. I had a goal of making 14 sets of half-square triangles each week, and would stop when I made it through the scrap bins.  Turns out, that netted me over 400 blocks from more than 200 fabrics. DANG.

And while there were a lot of starts and stops (and major life events) along the way, it is finally done.  I assembled the HSTs into 20 of these blocks, and then had enough left over that I added another ring around the entire quilt, just continuing the pattern. It ended up being approximately 72″ x 88″, or a pretty generous twin-sized quilt. If it’s not the largest I’ve ever made, then it’s close.

When assembling the blocks and, subsequently, the quilt top, I will tell you that I put as little thought into fabric placement as I could. I didn’t lay a single thing out ahead of time, I just grabbed the next HSTs out of the box and sewed them together. I only vetoed if the two fabrics were too similar to one another. That was it.

For the back, I had a handful of HSTs remaining, and damn if I wasn’t going to use all of them.  For the rest, I ended up pulling a rainbow of solids from my stash.  I meant it too look more “color wheel” than “pride flag,” but hey, it’s pretty whatever you want to call it.

The binding is solid medium gray. Given the complete randomness of the front, I could easily have used just about any fabric. But to narrow it down, I decided to go for something that would compliment the back, and the gray just kind of spoke to me.  In my haste to have this thing finally done, I decided to give machine binding a go. I am happy to say that it was pretty darn successful. I attached it to the back, first, and then sewed it down from the front.  The front, I think, looks really good. The back is a little iffy, but not terrible. Not too shabby for a first effort on a big quilt.

I am really, really happy with this quilt.  But while I’m perfectly pleased with the way it looks, I’m even more satisfied with it in the abstract. This was a departure for me – it was a process quilt. It was always about the process that got me to the end product, not the end product, itself.  I love that the whole thing is like my own personal I-Spy quilt, with bits and pieces from lots of old favorites. I love that the whole thing came from stash and scraps (aside from having to order more Kona Bone), and yet barely put a visible dent in either.

I would definitely like to do another process quilt. Something that pulls from scraps, something that is maybe a little daunting to think of in its entirety, but that I can do pieces here and there over time. String blocks, maybe? A warm-cool HST quilt? Log cabins or improv blocks? I don’t know. I’ve got other projects already started, so I’m going to turn this one over in my head for a while, but I do think I’ll do it again.

It’s frustrating in the sense that I feel like technical realities and limitations are getting in the way of what I would really like to do.  All I’m really doing is outlining the white parts, and all I really wanted to do was double- or triple-lines instead of single. Not a huge difference, I know. But it’s bumming me out that I simply don’t have the patience, strength, or endurance to quilt a little more densely.

The issue is that each traced diamond in the quilt is its own discrete shape. One does not flow into the next, nor does it move easily from one edge of the quilt to another. So I have to rotate the entire enormous thing through the I-thought-it-was-a-good-size-but-now-seems-laughably-small throat of my machine, for EVERY SINGLE ONE.

Truthfully, I seem to manage at most five or six blocks at a sitting, before I have to walk away and rest. I am man-handling this quilt so much, I made it a point to do some of the outer blocks earlier than I would normally do, just in case the spray adhesive gives out with all of this tugging and shoving.

It would have been exponentially faster to just do straight lines from edge to edge, or to free-motion quilt it. And yes, technically, I could have outlined those shapes using my free-motion foot instead of my walking foot, but I didn’t think I could get as clean a corner that way and I didn’t want it to look messy.

At any rate, I believe I’ve passed the halfway point, so hopefully I can buckle down and finish it (OMG, FINISH!) over the long weekend. I’m ready for this quilt to be done and to put it into use, and I’m itching to start a new project or two.

Fingers crossed that my next post will be about my first finish of the year… and that I don’t get completely paralyzed at the thought of choosing a binding fabric.

And, because it’s the first of the year and a good time for goals and lists, here are my my sewing goals for 2012. What are yours?

Finish Triangle Madness and Avian Therapy – These are two quilts that have been in progress for a while that just need to get DONE. Triangle Madness has, of course, been in progress for well over a year. I finished piecing the back today, and will hopefully find some floor space to baste it tomorrow. Then I just need to get over my fear of quilting it.

Avian Therapy has been in the works since the end of the summer, and was meant to be a very quick project. Unfortunately, it just kept getting forgotten. The top is done, I just need to come up with a back and finish it up.

Twin quilts for the twins – My big kids turn five this year, and I suspect will be making the move from toddler beds to twin-sized beds. New beds need new quilts!

Improv scrap quilts with the kids, if they’re interested – I am so inspired by the quilt Amanda Jean made with her daughter, I would love to try something similar with my kids. That is, if they want to.

Crib/toddler bed quilts to sell – OK, this one is a bit of a question mark.  But if my friends and relatives slow down on the baby-making front this year, I might have time to make some extra crib-sized quilts and would like to sell some. We’ll see.

Teacher gifts – My older kids will be in their third year of preschool/kindergarten next year, and will have been with the same teachers that whole time. I feel like a handmade gift is in order, but will I manage four quilts? (Two teachers in each of the two classrooms.) Time will tell. It might just be mug rugs.

Begin Project Forty – Two of my friends whose daughters have been recipients of baby quilts have made comments to the effect that they don’t ever want to give up their kids’ quilts. I think I may have said something about making quilts for them when they turned forty. Well, the first of my close friends hits the big 4-0 later this year… (thankfully, I’ve got a few years before a larger wave hits)

Get printed labels – I’ve been wanting to get some small, printed labels to use for some of my quilts and small projects, the ones that don’t necessarily want or need a full name and date on them.  Well, Amy’s post could not have been more timely, I think I’ll be placing an order soon!

Another scrap/process quilt, a la Triangle Madness – For as ridiculously long as Triangle Madness has been in progress, it has been a really good experience to make a process-oriented quilt.  So many of the ones I make have such a clear purpose and destination, it was a nice change of pace to have it be more about the act of choosing and working with the fabrics than about the finished item. (Though, I admit, I am psyched for the finished quilt, too.)  Plus, my scrap bins are getting awfully full, so it’s time to really raid them. Possibly a scrappy color-wheel plus quilt? We’ll see.

Go back to Sewing Summit! – Seriously, it was so much fun, I NEED to make it happen again. Fingers crossed.

Charity quilts – Project Linus and/or Quilts of Valor – I would like to make at least a couple of quilts to give to people who could use the comfort. Hoping I can do one or two Project Linus quilts, and maybe one for Quilts of Valor, too.

For my big kids, as well as my 3-year-old niece, a little something for the preschool crowd. These are journal covers/carriers, complete with spaces to hold crayons or pencils.

I used this tutorial, minus the applique on the front, and I added a little velcro closure tab. (Except, at the last minute, my velcro disappeared. The first of many holiday crafting mishaps.)  The kids thought they were kind of neat, but they definitely were not the big hit I hoped they’d be. If I made them again, I’d be a bit more scant on the seam allowances. As it was, I could just barely get the composition notebooks in there, and once the crayons were in the slots, it was really straining.

For my dad, stepmom, stepsister, and mom, I made iPad cases. What can I say? Once I hit on an idea, everybody gets one. I’m like the Oprah of iPad cases. YOU get an iPad case! YOU get an iPad case! EVERYBODY gets an iPad case! I used Faith’s tutorial, which was excellent. Picking out the fabrics was fun, even though it meant my sewing room looked like a tornado hit.

These were also thrown off-course. I was sewing them rather last-minute (of course), and the day before we were to leave for Chicago, my back went out. I had to bring the supplies with me and finish on a beat-up machine at my dad’s house. It was a fiasco, but they got finished Christmas Eve – hence the terrible lighting in the photos.

(I may have also made one for myself, after chopping up some pajamas…)

I made my stepdad a Kidlet, at Beth’s suggestion, and it was adorable and he liked it. And I completely neglected to take a picture. It was that kind of week.

For my little one, and for my three-month-old niece, I made taggie blankets. It’s minky on one side and satin on the other – my first time sewing with either fabric – and a layer of batting in the middle. My Ellie was a little skeptical at first, but now she’s a big fan. Hopefully her cousin Penny likes hers, as well. It was shipped off to Colorado.

And my favorite gift of all went to Penny’s almost-2-year-old brother, my nephew, Charlie. I decided to make him a set of bean bags, with the numbers 1 – 10 on them, and if I do say so myself, I think they turned out smashingly. I think #3 is my favorite.

And in the hopes of them not simply scattering all over my brother and sister-in-law’s house, I decided to make a bag to hold them.  I used Jeni’s pattern, which simply exploded all over the quilting interwebz as soon as she put it out. Perfect for holiday gifts. I will admit, I don’t often buy patterns. With quilts, I can usually reverse-engineer something just by looking at it, or at least get close enough.  But Jeni’s was a great pattern and totally worth the purchase. I highly recommend it. I made the “Project Bag” size and it worked out great, though I had to get a little patchwork-y because I didn’t have big enough pieces of the fabrics I wanted to use.

There you have it, two hours to spare until 2012, and I’ve got all of my completed sewing projects blogged. WHEW.

See some other great holiday gifts at The Polka Dot Chair’s Linky Party!

Once I finished my two Mod Samplers, I then did not touch my sewing machine for at least two or three weeks. Not once. I was kind of bummed and missed it, but couldn’t seem to find the time. Or, couldn’t find enough time to really get into it. Maybe I had half an hour here or there, but it was almost too daunting to even get started, when I knew something would pull me away just as I was finding my groove.

Needless to say, I had to completely abandon the Charmed Prints quilt-along. There was just no way that was going to happen. As it is, I have two completed quilt tops desperately in need of backs and finishing. I really need to get those off my plate before I start another quilt, or I’ll simply procrastinate them forever.

I also decided (because I’m crazy) that I wanted to do mostly handmade gifts for the holidays this year. Thankfully, my siblings and I decided last year that we would no longer do gifts for each other, instead focusing on the kids. So that, at least, cuts down on quantity.  But I know that I, for one, am sick of all of the plastic, noisy, Disney-branded crap that finds its way into my house. I didn’t want to just run to Target and get whatever annoying thing I found that was technically the right age range. I’ve done that plenty of times, and I don’t feel good about it. I wanted to feel good about the gifts I gave this year.

Anyways, I’ve got a couple of the handmade gifts done, and a whole bunch of iPad covers in the works for today (OK, once I find something I like, I just make it for EVERYONE). I’ll roll out the blog posts over the next week.

How are you doing with holiday gifts? Are you doing a lot of handmade, or was that simply too overwhelming this year?

Oh, and if you have any (VERY QUICK) ideas for my stepdad, let me know. He doesn’t have an iPad, so there goes that idea…

It was so fun to see the finished quilts, and how proud and almost amazed everyone was that they were able to actually make a real quilt. It was also great for each of them to realize that, while it’s easy to see every single flaw in your own quilt, it’s never as obvious to anyone else.  Seeing them together was also a great example of how different fabrics can make the same quilt pattern look so different.

Kate, like me, got a fat quarter bundle of Joel Dewberry’s Heirloom, but in a totally different colorway.  I think it looks so… I don’t know… kind of modern and mature and beautiful. The dense horizontal quilting looks so great, sort of adds to the modern aesthetic, though it’s hard to see in this picture. I want to live in a house where this quilt is the perfect accent on the couch. I feel like it would be so light and clean (unlike, ahem, my current living room).

Maura called hers “the IKEA quilt,” because something about the fabrics and color combinations reminded her of our favorite enormous Swedish store. I totally agree – graphic, bold colors, with that awesome dark gray sashing. It may have turned out a little wonky in places, but hey, people work hard to get a good wonky look! I think it’s awesome, and need to do this kind of color scheme sometime.

Emily’s included a lot of Amy Butler, and I think it’s so beautiful and feminine. Perfect for a house full of girls.  I think the fabrics were really well-chosen, and I hear it’s already had a few trips through the wash due to plenty of use.  She even did this great embroidered label!

The class was a ton of fun, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.  There has been some talk of teaching a sort of “next step” class with some of the same people, though I’m not sure what I’d do next. What would you teach someone who has already made their first quilt and wants to move forward? Half-square triangles? Basic quilt design? Wonky log cabins? Hmm…

I had a hard time deciding what to do for the second quilt, so I asked my husband if he had any suggestions for color schemes. Smiling and half-joking, he suggested doing a Google quilt. (M is currently employed by our benevolent internet overlords, hence the inspiration.)  Well, why not? Four colors in the Google logo: red, yellow, green and blue.  I had to do some supplemental shopping since my stash is not too heavy on primary colors, but this is what I came up with.

I chose a different layout for the blocks, keeping the different styles together in rows, again just to show something a little different for my class. While I probably prefer the more distributed look of the first layout, I kind of dig this one, too. (As an aside, I had a hell of a time trying to photograph these quilts the other day with my camera propped up and the remote in my hand. These were the best full-quilt shots I could manage!)

The back is mostly a great green and white print I found at Joann’s, along with a yellow solid that I believe is Kona in Corn Yellow.  I quilted it according to Ashley’s Big Diamond, Little Diamond pattern. I was a little nervous when I started out, but it really wasn’t too bad on this size quilt (~50×60″), and I love the texture and interest that it brings. The very middle was a little bit funky, but I still like it.

I thought I would bind it in red, but then I found this great stripe in my stash with exactly the right colors. How could I not use it?

This quilt is, of all things, actually staying here in our house! Though my husband calls it my “ace in the hole” in case I suddenly realize someone needs a quilt…

I decided I would make a quilt along with them, so I could demonstrate each step along the way. This one was made with a fat quarter bundle of Heirloom, by Joel Dewberry. Oh, these fabrics are so lusciously beautiful.  I was working on this top at Sewing Summit, and people literally could not help themselves from stopping and checking it out.

I quilted it super simply, just on either side of the sashing seams, again as part of the demo for my class. I wanted to show them a pretty minimal, manageable option for quilting so they wouldn’t get too overwhelmed.

As gorgeous as the fabrics are, the truth is that I don’t think they were actually so perfect for this project. I think the Mod Sampler is a great pattern, but I think the blocks look a lot better when there’s a more obvious contrast in the fabric pairings. Some of mine stand out quite a bit better than others. I’m still happy with it overall, but a good learning experience.

This quilt is headed to Ohio this week. When I started it, I didn’t have a destination in mind. But then I was reading Barefoot Foodie (check it out if you like your humor crude and honest and generally awesome), and Brittany mentioned that her cousin had lost everything in a house fire. I chipped in via Paypal, but I’m a quilter. Immediately I wondered if they’d like to have this quilt.

Is that weird? I mean, it’s not something useful like clothing or bringing over some dinner. But for someone I don’t know, who lives hundreds of miles away, I just thought it might be nice to have something… nice. Something cozy, something handmade. I know the other quilters are nodding their heads right now. Giving a quilt is what we know how to do. So, off it goes, and hopefully it will serve its purpose and give someone a smile.

Oh, that. Yes, well. Actually, I made TWO quilts for my class. I’ll show the other one shortly.

It’s not like I don’t already have enough projects on my plate, but that has hardly ever stopped me before.  I am particularly excited that I think I’m going to be able to pull this entire project directly from my stash.  Here’s where I’m starting:

The instructions call for a charm pack (or two, if you want a larger quilt), as well as sashing, border, and a flange (something new for me!). I’m going with that medium gray for the sashing, salmon for the border, and what I believe is Kona Sage for the flange. Some of the blocks will require coordinating scraps, which I’ll just pull from my scrap bins as needed.

I initially thought I’d go straight for the lap-sized quilt. But seeing today’s cutting instructions and getting a better sense of how this is going to come together, as well as having some grasp on exactly how many hours there are in a day, I’m going to dial it back and stay smaller.  But because I have a weird thing about preferring my quilts to be rectangular instead of square, I’m going to add one more row of blocks to make it 6×7, and use all 42 charms in the pack. I may use the second charm pack on the back, or I may just save it for another purpose. We’ll see.

I’m giving myself one additional challenge for this quilt. Do you ever have non-quilters ask you how long it takes to make a quilt? I certainly do, and it’s not that they want to know it took me a few weeks (or months) to complete the thing. They are trying to get a sense of how many actual hours of work it takes.  So I’m going to try to keep track.  See how long it *really* takes me to do the cutting, the piecing, the whole nine yards.  I think I might be a little horrified by the answer, but at least now people will understand why I laugh when they suggest making and selling quilts as an actual living. I somehow don’t think that a fair hourly wage and a reasonable cost for the quilt will quite match up.

What about you? Anyone else joining this quilt-along?