Pieced Nutmeg

WIP Wednesday: The My First Swoon Edition

This week on my life Monday Meg gets a lesson in the days of the week! Oops...It's Thursday and I'm just now writing this. However! I have a super good reason....Remember that new job we talked about last week? Well...I got laid off after my first week :( Apparently they had been thinking about putting her in daycare and were waiting for a spot. Well one opened up so out the door I went. So this week has been a whirlwind of stress and job applications and resumes and did I mention stress??? I really hate job searching! Luckily I have found a new family and will be starting there on Monday! I'm super excited for this one as it seems like an absolutely amazing opportunity!

Hey Meg! Wheres the fabric?! I know right! So anyways, back to the important stuff! This week I've been working on my Swoon blocks! I will admit that I wasn't sure that this day would ever come. When I started quilting this pattern was everywhere. Camille really hit it out of the park on this one in my opinion. Everywhere I looked I saw this pattern and I wanted it! I read every post I could about it and looked and hundreds of photos of different peoples versions. My favorite two are this amazing jeweled beauty by Lulu Carter, and this all AMH one from the Camille herself! So....what's taken me so long? Well. This quilt was huge in my mind. I loved it sooo much. I was terrified! I wanted one SOOO badly and I wanted it to be AMAZING and it just had to be!

Enter my wonderful amazing and extremely patient friends. My two besties sat with me, on the floor in my sewing room. FOR HOURS. On more than three occasions. We made piles and tore them apart and made pairs and tore them apart. We must have chosen fabric for this quilt 200 times. We would have it all set and then....I would decide that I didn't like it and change it..over. and over. and over. I threw fits too...and fabric. I'm not proud! But it happened..

(oh man! I did that top right corner wrong! I'll fix it!)

Then,..all of a sudden...magic! Brenna came over and we were talking about the mythical swoon quilt. At the time I had decided that I wanted an all Anna Maria Horner swoon like Camilles but I was having trouble choosing the prints (because all I wanted was the good folks that Camille used and it's out of print!) and just like magic....Brenna did it. Girl was wearing her super woman cape or something! She came in like a fresh rain and washed all my anxiety away. She just started pairing fabric and somehow had me calm enough that not only did I not throw fabric at her but we pulled fabric for TWO swoon quilts! In one night! We have been trying to pull fabric for this quilt for TWO YEARS! It was amazing. Seriously...you should have seen her.

So I have started working on this first one with the gray background. After I got the first couple blocks done and had a good rythm I've started chain piecing. It's looking so good and I'm SO thrilled to be finally starting on this dream quilt!

Do you guys have any quilts like this? Amazing favorites that you couldn't even start? Or fabric you can't bring yourself to cut into? Hope I'm not the only one!

See you later lovelies!

Meg

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Wip Wednesday!

W.I.P Wednesday: The Quilt That Never Ends

My wip this week is actually a super late Christmas gift! I know right? So lame. Luckily my sister loves me anyway!

Here is a look at my original fabric pull. I added one more fabric to fill it out (some Lizzy House pearl bracelets that were the perfect purple!) but none of these original fabrics changed, that's a big deal for me..just ask my friends who help me with fabric pulls! Can we just take a minute for that background fabric? I don't feel like you really understand the amazingness of the fabric from this picture! It's this super deep rich grey that reads closer to black when you're farther away. I'm in love. It's Michael Miller Cotton Couture in Charcoal if you're wondering!

I took this amazingness and made a giant star quilt. I'm SO proud of how it turned out! Then why is it still a wip you ask? Well, I loved it SO much that I knew I wanted to do it justice when I quilted it!

Enter Meg's crazy brilliant idea!

The crazy was underlined for a reason people. Lets all ignore my less than stellar photo editing and get to the facts mmkay? This was my start plan. Looks ok right? Easy enough? Well it would have been except that the metal guide thingy for my walking foot kept getting pushed so I was having trouble keeping everything even. So I decided to just use the actual foot as my guide.....that means the lines are all less than a half inch apart. LESS THAN A HALF INCH!

This square alone took me like forty five minutes! And it's not even finished! That is just way too long. Admittedly....by this point in the quilting Olympics I was bored and slow but I already started! ....how long would it take to rip it all out?! TOO LONG!

Let's not even talk about how long these take k? I'm not ready.

Then we get to this point. There's NO WAY. That I am going to do that same crazy thing in here! But I can't find a good marking alternative either! I know that I don't want to use a frixion pen because I've had dodgy luck with them in the past and I don't apparently know how to use a hera marker properly (I can't see the lines when it's under the bright direct light from my machine!)

I recently got this roly chalk marker thingy that I have liked so far so maybe I will try that!

See you later lovelies!

Meg

Linking up to WIP Wednesday with Lee over at Freshly Pieced and Lynne From Lily's Quilts

My Life Monday: New Job, New Car Edition

Hey guys! It's Monday and I thought it might be nice to pop in with a hello and some of the stuff that's been going on over here! Maybe I'll do this every Monday! It could happen!

So what's new with me? Well today is my first day at a new job. The family I was with before is taking a long vacation to India so I am working for one of their cousins now! I'm glad that it all went smoothly for the transition and I didn't have to job search again! I am now with a 1 year old and she's adorable!

Also! I got a new car! I am absolutely in love! Or....I was...Until I got rear ended a couple weeks ago :(

Yeah..that was a big bummer and super duper no fun! I had to take some time off of sewing and I'm still not able to do much or my back starts to ache. I've been doing PT so hopefully it will get back to normal soon!

Luckily I've had this little mop to keep me company on the couch :)

I've been slowly getting more done for my Cotton+Steel mini quilt swap and I am in LOVE! Can't wait till it's been received so I can show it off!

I finally got around to finishing this project! My wonderful Grandma new I needed a better chair for my sewing room and picked one up for me from the second hand store and it was the perfect hight! too bad the cushion cover was aweful! SO I dug out an old dress that the zipper had broken and TADA! Sparkly sewing room chair! Sometimes it pays to be a hoarder ;)

The best news of all?! My best friend is getting married in August! I am soooo excited for her! I've been busy planning her bridal shower!

Thanks for stopping by!

See You later Lovelies!

Linking up to the small blog meet up with Lynne at Lily's Quilt

Three Finished Christmas Gifts

Well hello!

I don't know if you remember my grand plan to make SIX quilts for Christmas. That I came up with only a couple months before Christmas last year? Yeah, I'm famous for that round these parts. If I have a gift completed before midnight the night before it's due my husband thinks I'm sick. True story.

Well, Christmas last year was no exception. But guess what? It's pretty hard to finish that many quilts right before Christmas. So I only managed to get three of them done in time. BOO!

Here's Little with her Penny Patch, holding it sideways.

Here is Middle with her Giant Vintage Star.

And here is my beautiful Mama with her Piece Of Cake 3!

They all loved them and that makes me VERY happy :)

Luckily I still had the bags I was making for the other three for Christmas 2013 sitting around so I finished those up and gave them to them... I know..super lame..I don't want to talk about it.

But now I have two of those three quilted and one of the three is all bound while the other is almost. Hand binding was super fun for the first quilt and a half but then lost it's luster. Oh well! too late now! I'll finish soon...ish.

See you later lovelies!

Meg

Confessions Of A Scrap Hoarder

Guys. I hoard scraps. I LOVE scraps! And I can't Bring myself to toss them! Even the smallest of pieces I can't seem to get rid of!

I tend to like really scrappy looking quilts. When I shop for fabric I buy mostly quarter yard cuts because I can get a lot of variety pretty cheaply. I use a little bit of a ton of fabrics and that means I end up with a lot of small leftovers.

When I either get somewhat sick of the fabric or I have a small strip that I just don't think makes sense to keep as is anymore I cut them into 2 1/2 inch squares.

I sort all of these into two sets - warm colors vs. cool colors. I will be making one quilt from each set.

Then I arrange them into these scrappy trip around the world blocks.

Now, because I'm meg, and nothing can ever be simple in my life, there are rules. Yes, more than just the warm color vs. cool color rule. Then, also because...it's me people...I broke basically all my rules at one point or another! Let me just say one more time thank you to anyone who has sat with me and helped me make blocks. Also that I'm sorry for any yelling or...fabric throwing...that might have happened while we were making these.

Rule No. 1! There are two sets for a reason....they do not co-mingle! These blocks are all organized and ready to go. I keep the bags close to my sewing machine to use as leaders and enders :)

Rule No. 2! Each block should have two colors (This one is blue and green)

Rule No.3! Whites, Grays, and Blacks are considered neutrals and may be used in any block.

These are the only really official rules. Then I would arbitrarily make decisions during the process. I'm not sure how my friends and family have been putting up with this behavior but some of them have voluntarily done this with me more than once!

Oh hey look....I cheated in this one...it only has one color.

Oh and look....This one ended up looking like pink and green....you know...a warm color and a cool color....playing together?! I have trouble with authority...even if it's my own.

So here are some of the finished cool blocks

And the warm ones.

I had originally thought to do two lap size quilts. But the piles are growing rapidly so who knows how large they will end up!

See you later!

Meg

Christmas is Coming!

I'm not sure if the exclamation point in the post title is meant as excitement or panic....how about you guys?? I cannot believe that It's already December! Sometime last monthish I decided that this year I was going to make quilts for all of my siblings........There are FIVE of them people! FIVE! Now I'm thinking that this was a bad idea but I'm committed and so it's happening...hopefully.

Here's Where I'm at so far!

My brother is 13 and when asked about favorite colors told me Seahawks colors....I am not exactly a Seahawks fan and I didn't want it to be a couple years from now and he's got a new favorite team and won't use the quilt anymore (ok that's probably just me being paranoid he would never dream of that...he's super sweet to me!) So I made it Seahawks colors but no Seahawks fabric and added in the black to make it even a little more different. This one turned out awesome! There are mustashes and lions and i'm seriously in love!

The next two are for my 16 year old sisters. They are SUPER close so I decided to make them matching quilts!

This one is for the older of the two girls and I LOVE this background color! In person it is so dark it is almost black.

The second sister is a bit more whimsical than the older one so she has those cotton and steel lions from before. (my brother got her leftovers hehe) I really really hope that they all love them!

The next two quilts are not quite coming along as quickly as I had hoped.

For my two eleven year old sisters I am making two penny patches. I had a great/way easier/way faster idea for some really big HST's placed in cool designs but one of them saw the fabric I had picked and when I explained my vision to her she said "meh...it's ok" So I let her help pick different fabrics and a new direction (This was maybe a bad idea)

Here's the basic color scheme and some of the blocks for the older of the two. I realized after piecing all the blocks (really quickly too...just saying) That I LOVE to piece penny patch blocks! I also realized however....I HATE sewing the rows together! It's boooooring! It takes FOREVER. and you have to pin a lot! Oh well. I've made my bed as they say. So all of the blocks are ready for this one it's just waiting on me to get my act together and finish sewing the rows for the other one so I can get this one up on the design wall.

I couldn't get a very good picture of this one up on the design wall so I settled for this detail shot of the Horses that started it all. Once my sister saw these cotton and steel beauties nothing else would do for her quilt. So we built her colors around them. :)

Now I'm super proud that I have three tops done...but I'm sure you're thinking...uh Meg, you only have three weeks to get all of those finished...and you I say Don't You Think I Know THAT! Then I throw fabric at you. Later I will come back and say sorry and bring chocolate though.

Oh! Since I know you're DYING to know....here's the original fabric pull and idea for her quilt!

I was going to do 18" HST's and arange them probably in the mixed up diagonal lines second down on the left. It was gonna be kinda cool...Oh well. Maybe I'll just make one for me!

See You later lovelies!

Oh Hello!

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. That meant that I didn't have much to post about. I've been thinking about what I want this blog to be and how I want to manage it. One of the things that has become very clear is that I need to have better pictures. The phone pictures suck. Unfortunately I don't own a better camera and on top of that I was having A hard time taking pictures that weren't at night!

My awesome friend came over (well quite awhile ago but whatever!) and helped me take some good ones with her camera. So I do have a bit of something to show you today!

(You can tell how long ago this was since i'm in a skirt and a t-shirt at 6 at night! Right now as I type it's only 43 degrees out...I know this might not sound bad to some of you but i'm COLD!)

But mostly this is a post to tell you that I might not be blogging for a little while again while I try to work out what needs to be done. This is my way of trying to be accountable. I'm writing this here in hopes that it will keep me motivated to get it together!

I wanted to get some good pictures of the finished quilts that I've made and still have at the house with me. So here are a few of those with a bit of story. Most have their own post and I'll link those here too :)

Here is the WSU quilt that I made for my husband. I learned a lot about what NOT to do when sewing with minky! I haven't tried another since but I think I know some different things to try next time! Maybe I'll do a post sometime about my struggles. I should probably find some solutions first though!

Here is my finished Penny Patch quilt. I realized when we got back inside and I looked at all our photo's that I hadn't gotten a good shot of the full quilt for this one! GRRR. Oh well. I got some cute draped ones on this bench so that's fun :)

This is the first quilt I ever made! The picture could use some editing buuuuut.....I'm really super awful at that. So maybe if someone wants to come and teach me?! K thanks!

I've been making a TON of these bags lately! Mostly for family (The one in back moved in with my mom) They are super great and super fast and AMAZING scrap buster projects! I started with the thimbleblossoms Rainy Day Sewing Patern and then changed the dimensions to fit my scraps and the sizes that I wanted. The pattern is wonderful! I've been sorting and ironing all my scraps the last couple days because I have the urge to make a TON more!

And here's a picture of me and the Husbeast. You can see that he is very impressed to be dragged into quilt pictures. (Don't let him fool you. He actually loves helping out!)

Until Next Time!

Older Posts Home

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )