Finished Stair Step Quilt

Drumroll please!

Check out my awesome quilt display: binder clips attached to my closet doors. Winning.

Here is a close up of the blocks and a picture of the quilting on the back:

It feels so fantastic to have this one all done and ready to use when company comes over!

One step at a time...

How is it Monday already?

Saturday I spent nearly the whole day grading and getting my teaching stuff ready for this week, but I did manage to get all of my strip blocks done for the Seville quilt.

Sunday I did all of the half snowball blocks in the evening, which went a lot faster than I anticipated, which was very nice.

And so I laid out the whole quilt on my living room floor on Sunday night and it’s still sitting there. It has to, because otherwise I don’t know how I would be able to get everything just right again.

So the next thing to do is to sew four half-snowball blocks together so it looks like a white x, this will take lots of patience and matchy matching. Then I can start sewing things into rows (with even more matching, of course.)

My stairstep quilt has taken up residence on my couch and stares at me while I eat dinner (tacos tonight, baby!). Tonight is long-distance House date with Park Ranger Boyfriend, so I will work on it some during that. 

Here's to a productive evening and next couple of days!

Also, check out Quilt Story to see other neat-o blogs and get info about a superawesome Valentine's blog hop!

And check out WIP wednesday at Freshly pieced!

Starting on my Seville...

Guilty as charged, I started sewing on a new project this week.

I sewed all of the square in a square blocks for my Seville quilt (pattern here).

Granted, this quilt was already all cut out, so it was technically already started. Most of the fabric is from the Eva collection by Basic Grey for Moda left over from my sister's quilt featured here.

So here are my 30 completed blocks, I am a really big fan of everything so far!

Hope your Thursdays are going splendidly!

Scrap Projects

Many moons ago (before I moved to PA in the summer of 2010) I bought this magical scrap bag from one of the local quilt stores (that has since moved away, sigh.). Since then, I have happened upon much nicer scrap bags, but this was nonetheless an adventure. All of the pieces were width of fabric strips, all of them less than three inches wide. I am still not sure how all of these little buggers were generated.

In any case, the time has come to bid adieu to the last of this wonderful investment.

To start, I took the wider pieces and cut them into the one inch strips used in my Cheery Quilt. This took up the vast majority of the scrap.

Before Christmas I made this scrappy garland to hang in my living room for the holiday season by printing out stars on paper, and "paper piecing" (aka, sewing fabric on until it covered the star). Pretty fun, huh?

And so now, I finished up the end of it with the intent to make tiny stocking Christmas ornaments as gifts. Next year, of course.

Now to figure out how to FINISH them so they aren't WIPs until Christmas...

Check out other works in progress at Freshly Pieced!

New Ironing Board Cover

This project was a quick one, started on Sunday night and finished yesterday.

Using the Moda Bake Shop tutorial as a guide, this is my finished project!

I cut four 5 inch strips (two pink, two yellow) and sewed them together, then cut them crosswise at 3.5 inches and made it into a checkerboard pattern.

To make the drawstring, I cut two strips of fabric 2.5 inches wide and sewed it on like one would sew on a binding, but instead of hand stitching the back, I just ran a cord through the loop in the "binding" and tied it in a bow where the start and end of the binding over lapped.

It is ever so slightly large (you really have to gather it quite a bit to get it snug) so I might trim it down a little bit. But it ended up very cute!

Hooray for completely finished projects!

Knocking things off the WIP list

So this evening I got to business and got all the blocks together for my snowflake quilt. This one I started the day I started this blog in August. I had all of the snowflake blocks done back in October, but I haven't touched them since then. I ended up finishing all of the sashings, and I'm thinking/wondering if it's done! Does it need a border? Tough decisions....

Hope your weekends are going swimmingly!

Civil War Blocks 50-53

50. Grapes of Wrath

I like the ones that have purple in the a lot.

51. New York

52. Christmas Star

53. Union Shield

...and here are all of the blocks!

I need to make a few more to get to a "square" or "rectangular" quilt top and then I need to figure out how to sash this thing. But it's a good feeling to have all of this done and to have bought very little fabric for this project! Hooray!

Happy Saturday!

Civil War Blocks 40-49

Now that I am FINALLY done appliqueing #40, I can show off more of these!

40. Order Number 11

Applique. Slows. Me. Down. Even though I enjoy it sometimes.

41. Red, White, and Blue Quilt

I didn't even think about what the name of this block was until just now and realized mine is blue and white only. Oh well.

42. H is for Hospital

Yay for using more small pieces!

43. Right Hand of Friendship

44. Union

45. Port and Starboard

46. Apple Tree

This one I modified the suggested color layout to look more apple tree-like.

47. Dixie Tea

Classic leaf pattern, I used incrementally darker fabrics as you go from tip to stem.

48. West Virginia

Confession: I hate using templates, so I just figure out a way to rotary cut things instead and trim if at all possible.

49. Yankee Puzzle

I'm getting so close to getting all of these done!

Happy Thursday!