Figured It Out

I figured out how to fix the TATW quilt. I had swapped the left and right pieces. I haven't stitched it back together yet though. I feel like taking a small quilting break.

Trip Around the World Finished

At least the top of it is finished. What I can't figure out though...is the top is 17 squares wide, and the bottom is 19 squares wide. I can't figure out how I ended up with 2 extra squares on the bottom half. I'll have to take a look at it tomorrow and figure out exactly where I went wrong when I put it together.

ETA: I think I figured out what I did. I think the two bottom halves were swapped, so the one that is on the right should be on the left and vice versa. But I'm not going to rip out the seams tonight, I'll do that later today after I have had some sleep.

TATW Update

I now have 3/4ths of the top done.

I've figured out that if you cut your strips 3" wide, you won't need 4 of each color. Because I'm about to sew together my 3rd set of strips and only have 1/4th of the quilt left to do.

This top has gone together so quick! I'm definitely going to use this "pattern" again!

Trip Around the World Update

I already have 1/4th of this top done! The method I found through a friend's blog is really great! The one TATW quilt I tried to make they had me sew strips together, then cut into the cross strips or whatever you want to call them. Then sew those cross strips together and then unstitch squares as you go to make it like a stair case edge.

As you can tell this is really scrappy, no real coordination of colors or anything. I just used what I have here at my house.

Brand of Fabric?

I was at Joann's and saw some pretty fabric. If I remember right I saw brown, green, purple and blue bolts of it. It has wide horizontal stripes I believe. I think the fabric maker is Cap or Cop something.

It was up on a shelf above my head and Eric couldn't get it down either.

Blocks of the Month

I went to Joann's and wrote down the names of the blocks of the month in the one quilt I like.

I didn't see this one block that I keep seeing in the quilt, so maybe it is in the setting kit?

They had all the blocks except for 1 and 2 so I don't know the name of those.

Centennial-1
Crazyhouse-1
Double star-1
Double wrench variation-1
Grandmother's Puzzle-1
Philadelphia Pavement-1
Queen Charlotte's Crown-1
Sawtooth 5 patch-2
Sisters Choice-1
Sugar and Spice-1

There's 20 blocks in the quilt, the 12 block of the month kits make 13 blocks, so there are 7 more I guess in the setting kit.

He's safe!

Eric got the email this morning that he isn't being laid off! Thanks to everybody who kept us in your thoughts!

Quilt Pattern

I was looking at the floor in Whataburger a few weeks back and I remember what the floor looked like. It was similar to this. Anybody see where I'm going with what I drew? Or know what it is called? :)

Started a new project-bad me!

I started a Trip Around the World quilt following these directions.

Good thing...I didn't have to buy any fabric to start it! I just went through my stash finding pieces of fabric that were long/wide enough to get the strips. Except mine are 3" wide not 4".

Car Update

Our car is fixed. After sitting at Sears for 4 hours yesterday it finally got to come back home! It sounded like they had to really mess with it to even get to where the alternator is. $365 later the alternator is fixed and the car is running nice now.

ETA: Eric told me that decision time is 8:45 CST. So we'll know by 9 am tomorrow morning what is going on with his job.

Looking to read more blogs :)

I'm looking to read more quilting blogs, so leave me a comment!

When It Rains It Pours

Oh boy.

We're still waiting for the apartment complex to come fix the hole in the wall they had to make to get to the pipe and fix it. They also are supposed to put new tile in the bathroom and kitchen.

Today we went to Coldstone Creamery and got some ice cream, then decided to go to Borders to read books instead of going to Barnes and Noble. I told Eric that was a good idea since I feel I've pretty much read all of the one Barnes and Nobles quilting books. Or at least looked at them.

We go to Borders, we read, we go out to the car, get in like normal and Eric tries to start the car. Click click click. Lights, dashboard and the radio all come on but the car won't start. So Eric calls his mom so she can come get us and take us home (it's 10 pm at night) and then Eric calls his dad to see if he could come look at the car tomorrow. His dad will be here at 9 am tomorrow to get us so we can go out to the car and try to figure out what is wrong with it.

Hopefully it is just something like the battery doesn't have enough juice to start the car, or there is just corrosion on the battery cables.

I can't remember the exact month but we went to Kroger's once and got groceries and then when we came out and tried to start the car it wouldn't start. Got it towed to the nearest mechanics place and they said it was just that the battery connections were dirty and they cleaned them and the car was working fine. Got it back that same day.

Then June...car was doing a hard shift out of first (it's an automatic) car had been heating up whenever we had the a/c on so we drove around with the windows down. If we had to idle too long we'd have to shut off the car otherwise it would start to heat up too much and we didn't want it to overheat. We took it into the dealership and $2200 later it was fixed. Had to get Eric's dad to put it on his credit card and we are making payments back to him.

And now this with the car.

Not to mention that Eric's company is doing layoffs and they find out on Tuesday who gets laid off and who doesn't. If he gets laid off he gets 8 weeks of severance pay and his 2 weeks vacation, so 10 weeks total.

And then just the other night I had Eric take me to the ER because I was using my albuterol inhaler and my asthma attack wasn't going away. The Dr there gave me a script for prednisone and told me to check up with my normal Dr in a few days.

So we have the old car bill we still owe Eric's dad, this ER bill that will be coming (hopefully that won't cost an arm and a leg!), might possibly have to fix the car again! And Eric may or may not have a job come Tuesday!

I like to blog about my quilting progress but I haven't had much time lately to work on Alex's quilt.

I have finished row #1 of Alex's winter quilt. I'm not sure whether I should actually put batting into the middle or just do a flannel back and leave the middle empty. I live in TX so it doesn't get quite as cold as up north. I've just never worked with flannel before and don't know if it would be harder to quilt through 2 layers of flannel and batting than just quilting through 2 layers of normal 100% cotton fabric and batting.

This is row #1


This is what my living room looks like right now, trying to keep track of which triangle is assigned to what number and letter combo. LOL.



And this would be Alex. He is the one I'm making the quilt for. :) Eric (hubby) nicknamed him Señor Guacamole in this picture since we gave him avocado to eat and he decided to play in it instead and get it all over his face. It's all the way up to his eyebrows in this picture!

Alex's Quilt Update

I finally have all the squares cut. I ran into one whoopsie with the kitty fabric. I accidentally cut my last square 7 by 8 inches instead of the 8 inches it was supposed to be. So I just cut another square of the blue clouds I had and that will take the place of two of the kitty triangles.

It's hard figuring out which triangle goes where because it isn't obvious which one is 1B, 2B, 1G, 2G, etc. Because there aren't necessarily 4 of each color, I just picked which was each one at random.

What blocks are in this?

Hopefully this link will work

Tuscan Sun

I'm trying to figure out what the blocks in this quilt are. It's the block of the month I want to do from Joann's.

I'm thinking one of them is Pennsylvania Pathways? Or Pennsylvania something? I know I looked at the blocks at Joann's but I didn't remember their names.

ETA: I think one is a buckeye beauty block

Rest of Alex's Flannels

These are the rest of the flannels for Alex's quilt. I didn't realize until after I got all 16 fabrics that there were solid colors. So that explains some of the weird fabrics. Like the drunk elephants LOL. Notice the martini glasses in their hands! And then the license plates and the cats on pink.

Sewing Tonight!

There should be some sewing tonight! They fixed the leak in the apartment! The kitchen sink line was clogged. The pipes in the wall are shared between all the floors. They had to call Roto Rooter to come out and clear the pipe and then the maintenance guy had to come fix the leak in the pipe.

The carpet people came and sucked up the water. And Tuesday the maintenance guy will be trying to get the painter people out to fix the hole in the wall and the paint from when our place got flooded in Sept (lady above us fell asleep in her bathtub and all the water came leaking through the ceiling!)

What A Day!

I did work on my quilt for an hour project some. I got the rest of my 1/4 inch seam lines drawn. But I haven't sewn at all today. I didn't keep track of my time though.

Today has been a bad day! This evening I walked down the hallway and felt water on my feet. There was water in the one bathroom and the kitchen. I called maintenance and they checked it out, tried to find where it was coming from, called carpet people to come vacuum the carpet. Later I had to call maintenance again because our disposal wasn't working. My mom tried to use it and water in the sink went down and came back up and more water was on the floor. The maintenance guy turned off the water in the kitchen and he'll come check on us again tomorrow. The carpet people came back out and vacuumed the carpet again because there was more water in the carpet because the water hadn't been stopped by the time they vacuumed it the first time.

The tiles in the kitchen and bathroom will be replaced. Hopefully tomorrow the maintenance guys can figure out where the water was coming from and get it fixed.

With all this craziness today I just want to sit down with a book and a drink and read. So no more sewing/quilting stuff today. I just want to relax!

Quilt for an hour-Hour #1

I am done with hour #1 :) I got 24 HST's done. But I don't have a 1/4 inch seam thing on my machine so I drew on the back of all my light squares with a black pencil crayon.

These are only 5 of the designs for the blocks. I'm not sure exactly how many I have but enough so that each block is the same pattern.

And the lightest light color I could find was a blue pattern. I don't have any white fabric, so blue has to do. Okay I do have white fabric but it has butterflies so it wouldn't do well as a background fabric.

Flannel Pics

Alex's Winter Quilt

I bought half of the fabric for Alex's winter quilt today. I'm just using 16 different flannel prints. I'm doing that trip to the country pattern but with his flannel instead.

I was cutting some of the fabric up tonight and Alex kept running a marathon in his crib and making noise so I went in and got him so he wouldn't disturb Grandma anymore. I'd have finished cutting the 8" wide strips but Alex insisted he needed to help and kept trying to grab the rotary cutter from me and my ruler so I had to put it up for the night.

This quilt is going to take me a little bit longer than the last trip to the country one because I'm actually going to draw the 1/4 inch seams on the back of the fabric pieces.

Winter Quilt for Alex

I'm planning on making Alex a winter quilt to take along in the car to keep him warm. I'm planning on doing the same pattern as in this picture except I'm going to use flannel. I'm planning on leaving the squares 8 inches instead of trimming them down like I did with this quilt.



In other quilting news. I showed my MIL the two quilts I made and the one I am currently working on and she told me I should try to enter my quilts in a contest. I told my mom what she said and she agreed with her. I don't feel like my quilting is quite that good yet though. I'm working on it. :) The hardest part is getting a 1/4 inch seam allowance since I don't have that marked on my sewing machine. The first seam allowance marked on my machine is 3/8ths.

Applique

At some point in my quilting "career" I want to learn how to do applique.

I tried last night but I don't think my machine is good for machine applique. Or maybe I'm supposed to be turning the edge under and THEN doing the sewing. I was just trying it out last night without looking anything up.

Maybe the buttonhole feature would work for the sewing?

I was just trying to look up at the local community college what a basic quilting course teaches to see if it would be about my skill level or not.

Okay I looked up the beginning quilting at the community college. This is what the description says

How to create a beautiful and durable source of
warmth and comfort. Come and learn this traditional
American art. You will be introduced to basic quilting
techniques. Students practice during class and
furnish all materials. You will complete a quilted wall
hanging composed of six different quilting patterns
and techniques.

And that's really broad. :)

Union Square Blocks

I got my 2 3/8 squares cut earlier and cut them into HST's. And then I started sewing them together. I've got 18 of them done, 16 of them ironed.

There's 56 to make and I'm at 18. LOL.

I still have to make up the centers of all union square blocks. And then make the "borders" for the blocks.

Homeward Bound Blocks Done!

I have my 8 homeward bound blocks done! Okay so I have to iron the seams on the back of the last 4 but the hard part is done!

Now I move on to the harder blocks! I hope there won't be a lot of cursing with the union square blocks :)

This is what my homeward bound blocks look like :)

And if anybody can tell me how to use images already uploaded to blogger? When I insert an image it says its uploading it to blogger. Do I have to keep uploading the picture or is there some way to insert it again without having to upload it yet again?

Amy Butler Fabric

I bought some Amy Butler fabric from a co-op a bit back and don't have any plans for it. I had originally bought it to sell on Ebay but by the time I got the fabric I had shut down my Ebay business.

So now I have 4 yards of fabric with nothing to do with it. It's so luxurious, so soft. Feels nicer than the normal fabric I buy! :)

Kaleidoscope Picture

This is the picture I'm working from. Well there are cutting instructions and such but for some reason I just cannot get the pieces to line up right. I don't think I was cutting straight, it seemed like it but I think the fabric wasn't lined up just right.

Kaleidoscope Quilt

I bought fabric tonight to try and make a kaleidoscope quilt but I don't think it's going to work. I don't think I got the fabric just right. And I only need 21" tall of fabric. Guess I could always measure out 21" tall then rip the fabric across.

Joann's Blocks of the Month

We went to Joann's tonight looking for fabric to do a kaleidoscope quilt, and I saw the blocks of the month had finally come in. They've had the clearanced ones for what seemed like forever but they finally got the next set in.

I asked Eric if I could get the first one and then I figured out the price on my phone.

$6.99 for one block, times 12 blocks.

Add in $34.99 for the setting kit.

And that's $118.87 BEFORE TAXES!!! And even at the size it will end up being it still isn't big enough for a queen sized bed. I'd have to buy more fabric to make it big enough to fit our bed.

Maybe I'm being cheap? I've earned enough money from my online thing that I could just about buy it all but $118 for a not even queen sized quilt seems expensive to me.

The quilt I'm making now is supposed to finish at 46x64 inches and the total yardage I need is 8 yards and that includes the backing and binding. At $2.99 a yard that will cost me less than $25 for all the fabric.

4 Union Square partially done

I have 4 of the union squares partially done. I have the center square and then the 4 triangles on each side of that square. I still have to add more triangles around the outside of that newly formed square. Plus I have 3 more of them to make.

I have 4 of the homeward bound squares done. I have the rest of the left and right parts of the block ready to go through the machine, I just have to sit down and do it. Then I put in the center part of the blocks and send them through the machine again and then those will be done.

I have to make a bunch of HST's for the union square block. See instead of telling me to cut them into triangles in the directions it tells me to layer the 2 different color strips together, cut out the squares, then cut them diagonally and sew the triangles and I'll end up with I think it's 56 HST's.

I prefer to do all my cutting first. Unless it's a big quilt or just a lot of cutting. I took a few nights before I started this quilt and worked on all the cutting but since I hadn't read through all the directions I didn't know I'd be doing any more cutting.

Homeward Bound Block

I have 4 of the homeward bound blocks done. Only 4 more to go until I'm done with them. Then comes the harder block, the union square one.

I just laid it down on the scanner to take the picture of it. I haven't ironed all the seams open yet, I just wanted to get it up here. :)

I'm pretty proud of how my stuff lines up! Granted stuff might not be lined up exactly and might be just a smidge off as far as lining up goes, but it looks pretty good! You can tell from the picture what I mean about the edges not being even due to the squares being shorter than they were supposed to be due to the seam allowance I used.

But I'll square them all up after I'm done and get ALL the blocks done, both homeward bound and union square.

Ah Crap!

I was trying to figure out why my squares weren't lining up with both edges of my strip and I figured out why. It's because I cut the strip longer than the square.

I'm not using a 1/4 seam on my sewing machine, it's the first line on the plate to the right of the needle. I want to say 3/8ths?

Steps are as follows.

1. Join 2 of the 2" wide black strips and the 2" wide blue strips to make 2 strip units as shown. Cut the strip units into a total of 32 segments each 2" wide.

2. Join the remaining 2" wide black strips and 2 of the 3 1/2 wide blue strips to make 2 strip units as shown. Cut the strip units into a total of 16 segments each 3 1/2" wide.

So step 1 the strips are supposed to end up 3 1/2" by 2". Except since I didn't use a 1/4 inch seam my strips ended up 3x2"

Step 2 my strips are supposed to end up 6 1/2" by 3 1/2". And since I didn't use a 1/4 inch seam my strips ended up 6" by 3 1/2".

Step 1 creates the white and blue squares that are next to each other.

Step 2 creates the blue strip, white square, blue strip.

All of this is on the left of that red square.

Since step 2 ended up wider than step 1 I'm going to have to trim the squares down once I'm done. Hopefully this won't be too difficult!

Help With Blogger

Is there some way to make like a favorites list so I don't have to bookmark all the blogs on here I like? And maybe also some way to see who has updated their blog and who hasn't?

The Union Square Block is Hard

This is the block I'm making. My directions say to start with that purple square in the middle, then add the 4 blue triangles onto each side. Then you add 4 purple triangles that are bigger than the blue ones.

Except I'm trying to get the blue triangles perfectly lined up with the center of the purple square. So that is what is making it hard. Sometimes I'm not getting it perfectly right. And when I did is I started folding my purple squares to find the center point and I folded the triangles so I could line up the center of the triangle with the center of the square.

It works. And I'm using a bigger stitch so that if I do mess up on lining everything up it is easy to rip it back out.

What to do with quilts?

So once you have made enough quilts for you, what do you do with the rest? My son has his own quilt, I have a lap quilt, I have an Amish like quilt in the making. I like making quilts, but I surely won't need more than just a few around our house, so what do you do with the rest of them?

I guess I could always make one for my mom (she's been wondering lately if I could make her one), one for my MIL just as a gift, one for my FIL and his wife.

But even after those people then what?