More fabric buying

I've been at this quilting shiz for about 3 years now and I am still sleeping under a store bought cover. THE HORRORS. Do not fear, my bed is about to get a new makeover thanks to these:

Ok I am done with my fabric purchasing for a while now. Have a happy Friday. The End. 

EEEK I am geeking out over here. Jeni (In Color Order) chose my string-a-hex as one of her Friday flickr faves. That has been one of my achievement goals ever since I started following her blog. Score!!

Post Memorial Day Fabric Binge

I was strong, so strong, during all the Memorial day sales. My vow to not buy more fabric until I went through some of mine held out for so very long. And to be fair, my recent projects have all used JUST my stash and been scraptastic.

 But I caved. Hawthorne threads has a large selection of fabrics for $4.99/yard. So now I will enable you and share the guilt. Pictures of the lovely fabrics when they arrive :)

String-A-Hex Quilt Top

The Festival of Strings contest by Rachel at Stitched in Color is open. Here is my entry: The String-A-Hex quilt. My design is a twist on foundation paper piecing hexagons and a I wrote up a tutorial for the blocks if you want to make your own.

48 x 52" quilt top

 The blocks are unified by a strip of Kona White but I varied the width and position of the white to add more interest. I think I am ready to quilt it but do I want to add a scrappy neutrals border?? I didn't use many neutrals in the top so that scrap pile is still bursting.

Go check out the other entries at Stitched in Color. I am also linking up to WIP Wednesdays since this is all I have been working on since last Wednesday.

May ALYoF - Melifera Quilt

I finished my goal this month with lots of time to spare (how rare!). I set my goal earlier this month armed with some incomplete blocks and transformed them into this:

I entered the quilt into the Blogger's quilt festival scrap quilt category (my post is #24). Check out my full post here. And go vote for me if you think mine is the best :)

Oh and check out all the other May finishes here.

TGIFF - I Spy a Polaroid Quilt

Hello readers, old and new! My name is Marla and I am excited to host TGIFF this Friday and also VERY thankful for Friday and the upcoming three day weekend (here in the US at least!). If you are new to my blog I encourage you to take a look around. You can find all my finished quilts in the tab above.  This week I finished up a quilt that my very talented friend Kim started. Kim blogs over at Crafternoon delight but she is currently trying to finish her PhD thesis and asked me to finish a baby quilt project for her. She designed the quilt and pieced the top and the back. I quilted it and added the binding. 

Final size is 36" square

This quilt is brimming with adorableness. Kim fussy cut lots of great novelty prints and turned them into Polaroid blocks. Each one was set at a wonky angle in the navy blue background fabric. The navy frames the polaroids so perfectly.

Then I quilted it with some free motion figure 8 loops using a light blue Aurifil thread. Anyone who is a regular reader of my blog will not be surprised by the addition of DNA fabric to this quilt. This kid is going to be so nerdy smart.

Kim is so thoughtful that she even added a great picture of the parents (printed on fabric) as one of the blocks. That way the kid will remember what they looked like when they were childless and not tired all the time.

Kim requested my machine stitched blanket stitch binding. This is a great way to really tack down the binding on a quilt that is going to get a lot of love.

The back is equally fun with lots of solid blue/greens and some sea turtle action. I love the way the quilting shows up on the back.

Now it's your turn! Link up your Friday finish. Please link back to TGIFF or add the TGIFF button to your post. Please visit a few other links and leave a comment or two! Time to party like its 1999.

WIP Wednesdays - Scrap Fever

First order of business are some recent finishes if you missed them. I sense a scrappy yellow theme here:

Aeroplane #2

Mellifera Quilt and pillow which I entered into the BQF at Amy's Creative Side.

The scrappy theme continues. I am consuming my scraps before them consume me. I still need to make more string-a-hex blocks. I don't feel like these are eating up my scraps as fast as I would like. Solution: Make more blocks! PS. don't you just love it when you lay out a quilt onto another quilt?

I just noticed my pup in the window. Silly boy. He is waiting for the repairman to arrive.

I am doing some tiny paper pieced letters for a mini quilt. These will finish up at about 2" high.

Some possible endings to this quote "Love... 

...it makes the world go round"

...the one your with do do do do do do do do"

....is a battlefield"

...it's what makes a Subaru and Subaru"

And a sneaky peaky at some wonky star action. Isn't he adorbs.

Lastly, I wish I could say I made this little chickie pincushion but I didn't. She is however a lovely gift from Hawaii. My friend knows of my love of chickens and brought her back to me. I love the lei. I have named her Luau and she sits on my sewing table (aka dining room table).

Check out the other WIPs at Lee's and have a fantabulous Wednesday!

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!