Civil War Blocks 31-39

Most of these were done on Marathon Harry Potter/Quilting Boxing Day Extravaganza!

31. Empty Spools

Simple dimple.

32. Carolina Lily

If you remember, I Y-seam like a boss.

33. Indiana Puzzle

I can definitely own curved seams as well.

34. Rosebud

Pinwheel flowers!

35. Star of the West

Stars. Again.

36. Kentucky Crossroads

Another quick and easy block. Other than mine turned out like 10 inches wide. Hmmm.

37. Confederate Rose

Love the colors on this one.

38. Ohio Star

More stars, more awesome color combos. No big deal.

39. Hovering Hawks

If you squint, you might see birds.

Hope you all are recovering nicely from your hectic holidays!

Civil War Blocks 26-30

So I've actually had most of these done since I left for Cleveland on Thursday. More blocks tomorrow, and progress on epic Harry Potter/quilting day.

26. Barbara Frietchie Star

This quilt has tons of stars. Tons.

27. Irish Chain

More green and red...tasty.

28. Next Door Neighbor

I"m getting to a point where I've used up a lot of my original stash.

29. Railroad Crossing

I love the ones where I can use very small pieces!

30. Peterson's Stars and Stripes

The applique ones slow me down in a major way.

Hope you had lovely Christmases!

Minor Detours

So I've been posting my Civil War blocks that I have gotten done over the last few days, but I had to stop and take a quick detour for two things.

First.

I finished the Cheery Quilt! Yay! The custom quilting on it is beautiful. I basically said that I wanted whatever, and its perfect. The large blocks have large leafy flowers. The strip sashings have loop de loops and the sashing squares have swirls. The border has some sort of an ivy-type leafy/feathery vine. So sue me if I don't know all the proper terms for all these patterns.

So I got the binding done yesterday and here is the finished product!

So magical.

So back to my other detour.

Second.

I have a concussion. I slipped and fell on the ice when I was brushing my car off Sunday morning and hit my head (as well as the rest of my body) on the cold pavement of the parking lot. I had my first ever trip to the ER, and I've been practically useless in lab for the past three days. Oh well. These things happen.

I'm currently in the process of packing up the necessaries to go to Park Ranger Boyfriend's tomorrow and then back home to Michigan! Of course that means I'm taking some of my projects with me as well, because my sister and I scheduled a 20 hour, 8 movie Harry Potter marathon for Boxing Day. If you try to interrupt us, we might be vicious. So starting at 6 AM on the 26th, I'll be thoroughly occupied. But, we will be sewing during our marathon so the next day, after I catch up on sleep, I'll hopefully have something exciting to show!

Merry Christmas to you!

Civil War Blocks 21-25

I can't believe that I am almost halfway done with all the Civil War blocks! I have to take a quick break from Civil War blocks to get a binding finished before this weekend.

21. Underground Railroad

This one would be a fun quilt on its own as well.

22. Blockade

The red, green, and yellow paisley is one of my favorite fabrics ever.

23. Illinois Roads

Easiest one so far! I didn't even have to cut the 2.5 inch strips.

24. Ladies Aid Album

Another with fabrics destined to be together.

25. Calico Puzzle

Not the most traditional colors, but pretty nonetheless.

Civil War Blocks 17-20

Too many Christmas parties = not enough time to sew.

17. Comfort Quilt

I'm starting to run out of my cream/white fabrics already...yikes.

18. Union Square

Another with fabric from my charm pack prize.

19. Missouri Star

These fabrics were made for each other.

20. New England

This one let me use a lot of the little tiny pieces that I have.

 

I also got a machine quilted project mailed to me from my mom, so I am going to sew the binding on that and get that all ready to show off in the next few days. Merry Christmas!

Friday Five #17: Civil War Blocks 12-16

FIIIIIIVE blocks today = Friday Five. So there. I'm going to be busy reading Harry Potter this weekend, so how much sewing I can get done remains to be seen.

12. Louisiana

I wish I had more of the green leafy print.

13. Little Blue Basket

Of course my basket is also blue.

14. Fox and Geese

This one would make a fun quilt on its own.

15. Fort Sumter

I'm also working in some of the charm pack that I won.

16. White House

Red, white, and blue. That's 'murrica. (translation = America)

Happy Friday, everyone!

Civil War Blocks 9, 10, 11

These ones are fancy.

9. Birds in the Air

The only bad thing about some of these simpler blocks is the huge pieces they require, which I don't have very many of. So I make due.

10. Lincoln's Platform

I'm in love with the colors in this one.

11. London Square

This one is another that would make cool designs on its own.

Civil War Blocks 6, 7, 8

More blocks! In real life, I have 13 (!) completely finished now and 3 cut and ready to sew tonight. I'm starting to wonder if I can catch up to the current block (through 50 is on the blog currently, and I have completed 13 in three days, at this rate, I should be done by Christmas day!)

#6. Richmond

This one is pretty bold, but whatever.

7. Log Cabin

There might end up being more than one of these in the final product because these are so easy.

8. Cotton Boll

I'm not really a big fan of the directions on this one, I think making partial snowballs might be easier.

Have a great Wednesday!

Civil War Blocks 3, 4, 5

More Civil War blocks!

#3. Seven Sisters

Mmmmmm, applique.

#4. Texas Tears

Finally, one that isn't green, gold, and red!

#5. Kansas Troubles

This one is one of my favorites so far, even with all the tiny pieces.

Can you understand why I'm so addicted? Happy stitching!

Civil War Blocks 1 and 2

Sunday, I started from block #1 from Barbara Brackman's sesquicentennial Civil War Quilt Blog. I intended to do one or two or three blocks, but I ended up doing 10.

While I was home over Thanksgiving, I went through the scrap bin of glory and picked out a bunch of fabrics that I thought would work well in a Civil War-style quilt. I mostly picked things that were the right styles of prints (or close enough if I liked them a lot).

This project is awesome/addictive: it is super easy to get to a "stopping point". Lots of projects get put by the wayside because you get to a point that makes you say "ugh. I have to iron 288 half square triangles" or "blech. I have to sew sashings to match up to the 8 star points for 12 blocks." Maybe that's just me.

For this, I just looked at the block, picked out a stack of fabrics I thought looked good together, and cut the pieces for that block. Not a ton of any one thing at at time.

And they go together so fast! This is probably why I got so many done. It definitely has nothing to do with how much of a professional procrastinator I have become in the last 6 months. Grad school does terrible things to your brain. Seriously.

But you get that high of "I-got-a-block-done-now-I-need-to-start-another" and then you've done 10 of them but maybe that's just me and because I didn't start this thing until nearly all of the blocks had already been published. And now I'm a really big fan of some of the blocks and want to make entire quilts out of some of them. More projects to put on the quilting bucket list.

I started making the blocks in order and so that's how I will show them off, with a few each day this week.

#1. Catch Me If You Can

This block would make an awesome scrap quilt and went together rather easily.

#2. North Star

Paisley is one of my absolute favorites, so I am going to use as much as possible in this quilt.

Productive Saturday!

Now, not only did I sew all of my x blocks together yesterday, I also finished the top to my Mystery quilt!

So the pattern doesn't call for squares in the outer border and with my stripe, I didn't want to spend hours trying to miter the corners, I added the pink squares (as I had and still have a lot of that fabric left.)

So one top completely finished and another probably finished (I just need to decide if it needs another border or not, but I'm thinking not so much) in one day. What a productive day!

Now I just need to be productive with all of the other parts of my life. Sigh.

Christmas countdown

This week I finished up my scrap potholders:

Today I took these:

...and made this:

Which is a pretty good accomplishment for the girl who starts 5 new projects for every one she finishes.

I'm not sure if I want to put a border on this or not yet, it is decently sized without one. The most important thing about this is that I designed this block and everything myself! It is pretty great to see how this turned out from where I started. I still have scraps left over, but after three quilts, I'm ready to be done with them.

Hope your Saturdays have been fun and productive!

Friday Five #16: My Un-Material Christmas List

So I like many have started Christmas shopping for others and started window shopping for myself. And I realized that there are some things that aren't quite wrap able that I would absolutely accept.

1. NSYNC REUNION TOUR.
Seriously, get your acts together and start practicing "Bye Bye Bye" and "I Want You Back". Please and thank you.

(thanks Amazon)

2. Getting rid of daylight savings
It is dark o'clock before 5 now. This is not ok. I know its less than two weeks until the days start getting longer, but this is really painful right now.

When it gets dark, my body says, "Alison! It's time to go home and eat dinner."

But this doesn't work when it's 5 and you normally go home at 6:30.

So whomever is in charge of this, make it go away.

3. Laundry fairy
Tinkerbell comes and does my laundry while I'm in the lab every day. Simple as that.

Except I wouldn't be able to put all of the clean clothes away at one time, so one load a week? Even that would be awesome.

4. A tiny sewing machine camera
This would be to help determine if your seams matched up or not. It would be awesome. Then you would already know that you need to take them out before you open it up in hopefulness and get disappointed. And stop sewing as soon as you know its not matched up and you went and sewed another 6 inches on each side of the seam.

But maybe that's just me.

5. 4 more hours to sew every day
Really, I need this time to just CATCH UP on all of my in progress projects. Geez Louise, I have a lot of half-way started/completed projects. We're not going to go there.

What do you wish Santa could put under your tree?

Making headway

Thursday night I got all of my cutting finished for my Seville quilt.

But, as I'm slowly realizing, I have ten zillion other projects that are already all half started. So I put all the pieces of this in a box until I get at least two other things finished.

But it's so cute I can't handle it. Hmph.

Friday night I actually didn't do any sewing (gasp) but I did get my Christmas tree all decorated! 

Disregard my sweatshirt on the floor, please.

Yesterday I made a quick trip to Joann and got a few fabrics on clearance for stashing and some variegated thread to quilt some potholders. They turned out pretty cool, the colored thread doesn't show up quite as much as I thought because the fabrics are the exact colors as the thread for the most part. But something different to try and to practice machine quilting. They definitely aren't thick enough to use for uber hot things, but I can at least use them to put my TV dinners on. Just the hand binding to go!

I also started on my pink/purple/blue snowballs. That is, I took some of them and whacked them into quarters:

So once I get a few finished, I will show you what the plan is! Stay tuned!

Other than that, I've just been enjoying my electric blanket and finishing up my Christmas cards to send this week.

Happy Sunday sewing!