Happy Pills {A Finished Quilt}

April LYOF. Relevant links:  goal setting and and an update with the top finished.

Happy Pills

Stats

Size: 47" x 55" 

Pattern: Happy Hour by Elizabeth Hartman

Fabrics: see below

Piecing: pieced with 50 wt Aurifil thread

Quilting: FMQ with a 40 wt off white Aurifil thread.

 From top to bottom: 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)

Here's the front:

Sewing curves for each of the blocks was time consuming but really not too bad. The blocks were pretty forgiving and once the rectangles were assembled it was trivial to put together the top.

And the back:

I changed up the pattern for the back. I wanted it to look like floating pills. I couldn't resist throwing in the one backward block. I love the mod century tweed fabric. It is the perfect neutral.

Here are some details on the quilting and the binding. I got fancy and made it look the half pills on the back are continuous by piecing it into the binding.

Free motion quilting with the 40 wt Aurifil was so fun. It really shows up nicely on the dark fabrics. The texture from this quilting is so yummy.

This is a wedding gift for some friends who are getting married. I hope they will like it as much as I do. This is a hard one to give away!

There was a lot of fabric leftover which is great because I am not done with mixing lime and blue. I'm slowly making my way through EH's Modern Patchwork book. I made her roller rink quilt last year. 

Linking up with A lovely year of finishes and Crazy Mom Quilts.

What Hubs really thinks of my hobby.

After making fun of some song my hubs was listening too (One More Time by Daft Punk for those of you interested) he got in the shower and told me what he really though about my quilting. Read the next segment in a crackly old lady voice (or if you watch Metalocalpse in the voice of Doctor Rockso).

I quilt like an old lady. I'm an old lady quilter. I'm gonna patch the world together. I'm gonna save the world with my quilting. 1000 thread count of love. If you have a problem you just bring it to me and I will just flock of geese that shit up. I'm gonna stitch in the ditch that bitch up.

Can't have a post without a picture. Here are some half rectangle triangles of love!

WIP Wednesday - The next wave of projects is upon us

I'll get to the sewing stuff in a mo' but first a story... I went to the zoo on Saturday with my hubs because that is what we do. Plus there were dinosaurs. Did you know Basilosaurus is the state fossil of Alabama? Well apparently Mississippi claims it too, losers. But I digress... I had my drivers licences in my pocket (you can see where this is going) and then I couldn't find it by the end of the day. I was 100% sure it was somewhere in the zoo. I called lost & found on Monday and Tuesday but they didn't have it so I braved the Alabama DMV. I sat for 4 hours at two different DMV locations (didn't have my social security card the first time around). Finally got it - VICTORY! I get home and the zoo called. Guess what they found... The End.

And now for the quilt-related business.  Last week I finished a slew (one slew = 2 quilts and 1 aeroplane bag) of projects. I'll get around to blogging about them soon. I promise. Or you can see them on instagram @sewhungry. 

Time for some fresh starts:

The Birmingham MQG got some leftover Madrona Road. Since we are late to the challenge game we decided to make a few blocks for a charity quilt. I'm going to play with rectangles and dig into my MR stash to fill in some gaps.

I've also been organizing my scraps and then cutting into them. I am working on a quick tutorial (aka tutoriolito) for the patchwork on the front of my Stash Bash pouch.

Link up with Lee to see what everyone else is working on at Freshly Pieced. Did you ever realize that buisness is a mash up of busy and ness. As in, I full of busy right now, seriously. Man, I am in a weird state this morning. I leave you with a cuppa HSTea.

Briar Rose Quilt Design Contest

Threadbias is hosing a design contest using their Quilt design tool and Heather Ross' upcoming quilting cotton line Briar Rose. 

Playing with the quilt design tool is loads of fun. There is a tutorial to get you started but I just played around with the shapes. It is really easy to learn the basics.

Here is my entry On the Fence. The Briar Rose collection brings to mind picnics, and lazy sunny days. I wanted to create a gingham-like pattern by playing with color value. This is a variation of my Across the Square block.

Over at Threadbias you can check out the other entries or create your own. You will need a (free) Threadbias account to enter but you don't need to pay for the design tool. You have until May 5 to enter.

Le Pouch for The Stash Bash

 or should I say...

I participated in the pouch swap for the Stash Bash. It started with a little drawing

Which turned into some pretty patchwork

That morphed into a gradated panel

 I hand picked some of my favorite prints and low volume fabrics. Lots of the grays are from the gray fabric swap I participated in a few months ago. I fussy cut a few pieces including the needle/texty fabric (you can see it better 2 pictures down).

I lined it with this fabulous coordinating print. Here I go again lining up prints like a boss. This was purely coincidental. I couldn't have lined them up better if I tried.

I'm embroidered the front of the bag with the name of the retreat trying my best to match the colors in the logo. I also hand quilted around the stars. Green thread for the blue star and gray thread for the green star.

The panels were used to make a medium sized Noodlehead open wide pouch. I cut the bottom solid color so that when I made the gussets it would just show. Here is the front:

And the back. You lose the gradient effect once it is a pouch but that is OK with me. I love how my big star wraps around the pouch.

   
Open Wide!

And then I filled it with all sorts of goodies. Sparkly pencils, small notebooks, fabric scraps and CHOCOLATE.

Suzy of Szyhomemaker won my pouch. I have to say she was pretty thrilled :) Let me know if you want more details on the dimensions I used for the panels. I am happy to share.

WIP Wednesday - Happy Pills

Happy Wednesday! I made lots of progress in the last week. Here are my current WIPs:

In early April I set my lovely year of finishes goal to make the Happy Hour quilt by Elizabeth Hartman. I knew it was a lofty goal but that I would be able to get lots done at the Stash Bash. I talked about my stash bashing experience here.

I brought some cut rectangles and translated them into this:

You can see my rockin' pants and slippers in this photo.

Sewing curves is a real b*tch but its oddly addictive. Once I got them into rectangles things went much faster. I finished up the top and the back at 3:30 in the morning on Saturday. 

 Here's the back. I modified it a bit from the EH design. I wanted it to look like floating pills. I couldn't help throwing in one oddball block.

And then I started quilting on Sunday. Chris (THE frecklemama) and Kelly (Kelbysews) helped me pick out this perfect quilting design. Doesn't it remind you of the synaptic cleft between neurons?...oh no... just me?

I hope to get this finished by the end of the week. Our guild has a sewing day this Sunday.

I also started making Sew Sweetness's aeroplane bag. I decided to QAYG because Elizabeth did. Pretty good reason.

I pulled my color palette from the velocity print. Tako da octopus is the star of this side.

I think the colors in this picture are more true to life.

Here is the other side. I wanted to see what it would look like with a triangle. The piecing is a little crazy and busy. Is this way too busy? I dunno. I think I will like it better once it gets fully assembled.

Linking up with the rest of you crazies at Freshly Pieced. Also, I joined Instagram. Follow me @sewhungry. And is anyone else still stubbornly just using google reader? I am using it until the last second.

Stash Bashed

We came, we sewed, we bashed.  Being at The Stash Bash brought back all of my fond camp memories. It was wonderful putting faces/personalities to all the blogs I read. Here is a rundown of the weekend. I will post about the pouch I made for the swap and the projects I worked on during the weekend in another post.

Oh and PS. I joined instagram from the peer pressure. You can find me @sewhungry. 

The bashing took place at the beautiful Calvin center outside of Atlanta GA. This is the view from the right outside the conference room

Kim, Katie and I got there early Friday morning and set up in the back corner with Elizabeth,  Ms. Don't Call me Betsy herself. 

The table to the right is ours. This is the state of the room late Friday night. Kim and I stayed up until 1pm on Friday and until 3:30 on Saturday. We worked right next to the crew of spunky older ladies. They are serious retreat veterans. They even brought their own chairs - which was really smart. We stayed up until 3am talking to them and sewing on Saturday night. One day Kim and I will grow up to be just like them - can't wait.

Sweet pouch swap organized by Ella. So glad to finally meet her btw. I got the polka dotty one in the lower right-hand corner. I'll post later about the one I made.

On Saturday we took a trip down to A Scarlet Thread fabric shop. It was huge and full of the latest fabrics. I bought a little scrap of ants fabric from Michael Miller's Backyard Baby line and some 40wt Aurifil thread. If you are ever in the area, check out this shop. You won't be disappointed.

On Saturday night, Amanda from the craft junkie had a screen printing demo and we got to print on some tote bags. I went with Dr. Who. She really spoke to my inner outer geek.

Here's what I brought home:

Serious swagitude!

Stash bash logic - I came back with more fabric than when I left. This is all the fabric from the swaps and giveaways. There were so many giveaways - everyone won at least one thing.

Thank you so much Chris (aka Frecklemama) for putting together such a special weekend. And thank you to everyone else who was there. I am going through serious withdraw now. Guess I will employ sewing therapy. I can't wait to bash again in 2014.

Simple Perfect Pillow Sham

I made a pillow sham to accompany the Whales and Sails quilt. It only took 2 hours from designing to finishing. Here are a few photos and a tutorialito (not quite a tutorial) I didn't take photos along the process. This sham will fit a standard bed pillow (17 x 22")

The top: I started by cutting 24 charms (5 x 5" squares of fabric) and sewed them together into 4 rows of six. That's it!

 I made a quilt sandwich with some muslin on the back and quilted along either side of the seams and diagonally across the blocks.

I made an envelope closure for the back. I cut two pieces of fabric 19 x 19" and assembled the pillow. If you are new to making pillows with envelop closures may I refer you to Katy at I'm a ginger monkey who has an excellent 5 part series on making pillows. Here is her tutorial on a envelope closure.

Now my happy quilt has a happy pillow to go with it. Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF on Friday. 

Also, OMG OMG OMG I am going to the STASH BASH tomorrow!!! Three days of nonstop sewing and meeting lots of bloggers! Me and Kim (Crafternoon Delight) and Katie (Katie's Korner) are driving down together tomorrow morning. Watch out greater Atlanta area, here we come!