Turkey Trotting

I'm back in Pennsylvania after a fantastic time in Ohio and Michigan. And lots of time in the car in the last 7 days.

But my time at home was pretty relaxing, with lots of time spent hanging with my family and lots of time digging through my mom's scrap bin and sewing and hitting up quilt stores. Look at what I collected for my civil war quilt stash!

I collected the leftover fabric from one of my sister's projects to use for my own project. I bought two patterns from Cluck Cluck Sew on Black Friday when patterns were half off! I got the Seville and Basket Case patterns and I am going to use the fabric left over from her floral wall hanging for the Seville pattern. I am pretty excited.

I also have been making a large pile of snowball blocks of pinks, blues, and purples. I was originally just going to use them as snowballs, but I have been having some other ideas related to what the colors remind me of, but I don't want to give it away just yet. But I think I have almost a hundred of them.

Hope you are all recovering from your Thanksgiving festivities! Less than 30 days to Christmas!

Sunday Fun-day

Yesterday I continued to admire my place mats. I went to a class in the afternoon at the local quilt shop and learned how to make these super cute napkins:

So now I need to get to work making the rest of them (7 to go!)

Last night, I finished all of my star points, finally.

So then I had  to start getting the stars put together. And I finished them all.

Something I'd like to say about this pattern in general. It may look pretty complicated, but doing it step-by-step definitely breaks it down into manageable sections that even a chemistry graduate student can fit into her schedule. You could really get it done in a matter of days if you really wanted. The matching was a lot easier than I expected as well. I've done a number of projects with an excessive amount of matching, and there was hardly any taking out and restitching. And I'm a huge fan of that.

I laid out all my finished blocks out on my floor and have been admiring it since.

Happy Sunday!

Finished Batik Placemats

Finally! The finished product!!

I am pretty proud of my first machine quilting project, even though all I did was sew straight lines next to the seams. Gotta start somewhere. Next up: gridwork!

Look at this magnificent corner:

And do you ever find that even when you try to make sure your binding seams aren't on the corner they end up on the corner anyways? Oh well.

Hope your Friday sewing went well!

Back in the land of the living...

I am working on hand finishing the binding on my place mats.

I am using up stuff from my scrap bag to make scrappy stars for a Christmas garland.

I'm getting close to getting all the points for these stars done.

So, I'm getting there.

Happy Wednesday!

Fall Back

I spent my extra hour sewing.

Duh.

I've made a lot of progress on my Secret Window quilt!

Friday I finished part one and started some of the cutting before I realized that it was way too late to be using a rotary cutter. Yesterday, I made all of my four patch + half square triangle diamond-looking blocks. You start with your four patches:

...and then you make them all fancy-like with the triangles:

Forgive me for not trimming them up yet.

I am halfway done making the star points:

Note to self: Do not like templates and cutting. Must learn to foundation piece.

Although I didn't really want to foundation piece this, as it would use more fabric and I am going to see if I can squeeze out enough of the tan and white print to make the quilt square instead of rectangular. We'll see.

So the goal of the week is therefore to finish up all my star points and put the star blocks together. The uber goal would be to also get the whole quilt top done. Like that's gonna happen.

Happy Sunday to you all!

Cutting at Midnight

Last night on an impulse, I started my Secret Window mystery quilt from Quiltmaker magazine. These are the fabrics that I am using:

The pattern is split up into three parts. I got the entire part one completed last night and started working on part two! Here are the finished blocks from part one:

Corner blocks:

These are the edge blocks:

And finally the four-patches:

I'm really excited with how things are turning out so far. Everything but the green and white print and the peacock print are from coordinates from the same line, but these two fit in really well with the rest.

The next step is making half-square triangles to attach to the four patches to make the diamond-y squares (look at the finished picture, you'll understand) and the star points.

Have a wonderful Saturday!

Batik Placemats

Last night, I trimmed the tops of the placemats. Then I cut my backings. Then I cut my battings. Then I layered all four of them. And basted two of the four.

Tonight, I will baste the remaining two.

This means that once I get a little stitching done on them, I will have accomplished my goal for the week!