Aeroplane Bag #2

After making my first Aeroplane bag I had to try making the regular sized one. My friend Sarah is defending her thesis soon(ish) and moving away (sadness). I saw her ogling my Aeroplane bag and asked if she wanted one. She asked for gray and yellow and I delivered.

 Aeroplane pattern by Sara at Sew Sweetness.

The lining is Modern by Robin Zigone and Tula Pink lazy stripe in sunset. 

The only thing I don't love is that the straps seem a bit too long. On my first bag I felt that the straps were a tad too short. This time I used a home dec print and didn't trim it down. I think I overcompensated because she may almost be able to wear it as a cross-body bag!

I still don't think I am sewing up the bag quite right. The areas where the zipper ends meet the body of the bag look weird. Anyone else having that issue?

I know I have at least one more Aeroplane in me. I want to make one that isn't QAYG. I'm a ginger monkey (Katy) made one with an outside pocket and I will have to try that too.

Blogger's Quilt Festival {Mellifera Quilt}

I am submitting my most recent finish as my second entry in the BQF. I also entered my Happy Pills quilt in the throw quilt category.

I present to you the Mellifera quilt:
Category: Favorite Scrap Quilt

mellifera is the species name of the European Honey Bee Apis mellifera 

Stats-

Size: 56" x 70"

Pattern: Honey Honey by Kate Spain

Fabrics:  Various yellow, orange and neutral scraps. Some vintage prints

Piecing: pieced with 50 wt Aurifil thread

Quilting: FMQ stipple by me on my home machine using a 50 wt yellow Aurifil thread.

I wanted to make a crazy improv pieced back that incorporated orphan blocks, bee fabrics and any leftover yellow prints I had. 

Here are some close ups of the back:

 

1. Orphan churn dashes finally found a home. 2. Orphan star blocks from someone at the Stash Bash, maybe Ali asquredw? 3. Bee fabric with hexagon borders. 4. Birds and the bees fabric.

 Zoooom in on the quilting and the binding. I stipple quilted with a yellow thread. Binding is Spot On by Robert Kaufman.

While making the blocks I created some HSTs from the scraps. A little bit of trimming later (just keep trimming, just keep trimming) and I had a tidy pile of 3.5" HSTs.

I arranged them in a 9 x 6 grid and sewed them up into a pillow sham using the same final dimensions from my tutorial.

These two cheery, scrappy, happys are headed to my sister for a birthday/housewarming gift. Check out the entries here.

Science Fare

I've seen lots of yummy fabrics out lately that cater to the geek in all of us. Science fabric has been available from Spoonflower for a long time but it is nice to see them cropping up in the "mainstream" fabric collections too. I put together a collage of a few of my favorites: 

Atomic dots in white – Atomic bots

Ledger in gray- Architextures
Geekly Glasses in lavendar - Geekly chic
Dark eggplant fibonacci spiral – pants monkey – Spoonflower
Geeky atomic structures blue – zesti – Spoonflower

Spiral bookcase in blue – bookish - Connecting Threads (Not only are these books but they remind me of circular genome maps)

Gene map - aperiodic – Spoonflower

Math in black – Back to school
Robotika circuit board - robyriker – Spoonflower

Avagadros antique math graph – ginanelson – Spoonflower

Atomic orbints orange – robyriker – Spoonflower

Gene splicing – oceana – chris jorge – Spoonflower

Blogger's Quilt Fest {Happy Pills}

I finally decided on my entry for the blogger's quilt festival: Happy Pills.

Category: Favorite Throw quilt

 

Stats-

Size: 47" x 55" 

Pattern: Happy Hour by Elizabeth Hartman

Fabrics:  Indigo oakshott cotton, turquoise ovals (Juggling Summer), paisley in lime (Chicopee), Indigo plumage (Cuzco), voltage dot in black (Chicopee), heatwave stripes in lime (Chicopee), Midnight sky birds (Simple Marks by Malka), dotted leaf in lime (Chicopee), Indigo citadel (Cuzco). The background fabric is Gray tweed texture (Mod Century)

Piecing: pieced with 50 wt Aurifil thread

Quilting: FMQ by me on my home machine using a 40 wt off white Aurifil thread.

 

The back of the quilt features floating pills. Someone also said they look like Gram negative bacteria. I like that idea too.

I used a ripple quilting style I like to call neurotransmitters because it reminds me of the junction between two neurons.

Another special touch was that I continued the pattern on the back into the binding. This gives the illusion that the half-pills are extending forever.

I love this little quilt. It was a wedding gift for some friends. It was a hard one to give away but I know it has a happy home! Check out all the other entries at Amy's creative side.

Charming WIP Wednesday

Not too much to report as I was away over the weekend in New Orleans. Stayed at my brother-in-law's, went to the zoo, went to a reunion (Hubs undergrad lab), met our friends adorable new baby, had an 90s sing-a-long on the car ride home with the hubs sans actual music. He is good at beat boxing TLC and The Spice Girls.

I brought my sister's quilt to bind while in NO. Hubs wouldn't let me bind in the car. He was convinced I would blind him with the quilt as I maneuvered around the sides or that I would poke myself with the needle. That just meant binding on the couch with this not-so-helpful helper cat.

Helper Cat (Tm) comes in marmalade.

I also went to Mes Amis quilt shop and picked up a few things. I got the center fabric (Too muchery by Helen Dardik for P&B textiles) for an absolute steal. It was 45% off and I took the end of the bolt so that was an extra 10%. I can't wait to back something with it.

I worked on Aeroplane II. I bought 1 yard of automotive headliner fabric and 1 yard of heavy sew-in interfacing for my first Aeroplane and I figured that I could stretch it for both easy! I had to do a little zig-zag stitch surgery on the sew-in interfacing.

Again I lined my straps with some leftover headliner material (my substitute for soft and stable).

Lining and pockets ready to assemble once I get my zippers in from Zipit. I am officially a zipit convert. The selection and prices are amazing. That is my honest opinion I bought my zippers fair and square.

Modern by Robin Zigone and a Birds and the bees Tula Pink for the pockets. One of my commenter's recently said Tula Pink goes with everything and she was so right.

And now for the pic that inspired the title of this post. I cut 2 yard of novelty charm squares for my SMS give-a-way. All the folding of the fabrics at the end was no fun.

Meet up with other WIPpers at Freshly Pieced and have a good Wednesday!

String-A-Hex Block Tutorial

Rachel over at Stitched in Color is having a String Fever sew-a-long and she just announced some killer prizes. But don't enter and dilute my chances of winning. Seriously.

I love, love, love using up scraps. It makes me feel like I am saving the environment which brings me an endless smug satisfaction. I wanted to try a strip paper piecing using equilateral triangles and thus the string-a-hex block is born. 

Each triangle has a unifying strip of white fabric that when pieced will make a hexagon. You can vary the position and width of the white fabric to get different sized hexagons or you can choose a uniform design.

1) First make some 8.5" equilateral triangles. Take a piece of printer paper* and line up the 60 degree line of your ruler with the bottom of the paper. Cut along the long edge of the ruler.

* I used an old journal article. Scientist's houses are full of em

2) Rotate the ruler and do the same to the other side. In the end you should have a triangle that is 8.5" on each side. The width of standard printer paper is 8.5" so this is the largest triangle you can make from this particular type of paper. But feel free to make any size triangle you want.

3) Piecing the blocks is almost as straightforward as strip piecing a square. Stack 6 triangles and fold the top point down. Make sure your crease is parallel with the base. This is easy to do when you used lined paper. Then place the white strip along the crease (either side, just be consistent).

4) Place the next strip right side down and line it up with the white. When you are working from towards the center point make sure the next strip overlaps completely with the previous one so that it will cover up the paper once it is sewn. Press the seam.

5) When piecing from the inside to the outside of the triangle you have to pay a bit more attention to the fabrics you chose for the next strip. Let's entertain some options:

This red piece is too short!! If you sew it on there will be lots of visible paper.

This piece is more than long enough. Go for it!

If you forget to center your next strip right and it doesn't fit across the block - DONT PANIC.  

Fold back the paper along the stitch line and cut off the part of the strip that doesn't fit.

            

6) Keep adding strips until you cover the entire paper. Remember that the last 1/4" will be lost in the seam allowance when you sew the blocks together so you may want to use a fairly wide strip for the last piece.

7) Trim that triangle! Simply cut along each edge of the paper to trim it down to size.

Make lots and lots more. Try a solids only, or keep it monochromatic. The sky's the limit with these.

 Here are some of mine. Once you finish all your blocks decide on a layout and then piece each of the rows. Here is a good reference on how to piece equilateral triangles from Freshly Pieced Bloom Bloom Pow-a-long.

I hope you like this tutorial. If something is unclear please ask and I will address it in the comments. If you use this tutorial I would love to see pictures! Now I need to get my ass in gear to finish up mine before the Strip Fever deadline.

SMS Give-a-winner

Thank you everyone for the comments. I truly enjoyed reading each one. I have had the periodic table on the brain lately because I just finished working with General Chemistry students all year and I bought these TOMS to celebrate. I love 'em and wear them periodically!

I also love graphs. I decided to sift through all 345 comments and tally up just what your favorite element is. Here are the results:

Quilter's favorite Elements

Analysis: 24% of quilters are concerned with having enough Oxygen (O) to breathe and water to drink (9% Hydrogren (H)). There is a significant proportion of materialistic quilters out there who want more gold (Au, 10%), Silver (Ag, 6%) and Platinum (Pt, 2%).  Approximately 9% of quilters are level-headed stable people who enjoy a nobel gas or they are into Superman (go Krypton!). Five percent of those surveyed picked carbon (C) and must value important things like life and organic chemistry. Salt in the form of Na (plus Cl to make the salt) is pretty popular coming in at 4%. Several of you go for the elements that don't match their symbols (Lead (Pb), Tungsten (W), Antimony (Sb), Tin (Sn) and way more people than I though remember the symbol for Lead as peanut butter and jelly. Then there are the hipster elements lovers (because you've probably never heard of them, (Other 9%)). If you are interested in learning more about the periodic table may I recommend this book: The Disapearing Spoon. 

And because you may be curious - My favorite element would have to be Mendelevium (Md) because Mendel is the father of the periodic table and I herald from Maryland. I also have a fondness for Carbon  as the basis for organic molecules and the nobel gasses for being way more stable than I am.

And now for the moment you have all been waiting for. Since I got so many new followers I thought I would pick 2, yes TWO winners. And the winners are...drum roll please.... 

and as usual I forgot to screenshot the second one so you will have to trust me that it is #209! Here is what they said:

I have already heard back from one of the winners. If I don't hear back from the other winner by Wednesday I will draw another.