A Mystery Solved

Last night, I finished the last side of the binding of my Quiltmaker 2011 Mystery quilt. It’s so beautiful!

The binding is a fun touch to bring out the other green that’s in the quilt. The feather quilting on the back is such a lovely pattern! 

Hope your short weeks are off to a lovely start!

Put the Lime with the coconut.

Unless you've been kind of out of the loop, this past week was the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day (week). I spent all of my free time entering all of the giveaways that I could. It ended yesterday and hopefully you all are starting to hear that you won wonderful things from wonderful people!

I won this giveaway from Heather at Crafting (dot dot dot) and I am very very excited to use that giant cone of cotton thread. Thanks Heather!

I also won a lovely stack of 2.5 inch squares from Blue Crab Quilting! I can't wait to sort through all of these and see what little pieces of goodness it contains! Thanks Elizabeth!

But back to our regularly scheduled quilting updates. Yesterday (in addition to sleeping in and getting an oil change) I managed to finish up all the courthouse step blocks and get three more swirly star blocks done.

I also managed a quick trip to the quilt store and got border fabric for my shoes quilt and then a little bit of orange-y clearance fabric just for fun.

I'd also like to share that my lil' ol' blog has surpassed 10,000 views! Whoa, Nelly! My disappearing 9 patch tutorial has been shared in a number of different forums/websites and I guess people really like it! Thanks!

A little bit side-tracked

I can't believe that it is Wednesday already. I actually spent a lot of the day Sunday working on my black, green, and white quilt, and intended to post about it Monday when I got home from school. But then I had to cook dinner for Park Ranger Boyfriend who came to visit and so things got pushed back until today.

I didn't get any stitching done on the binding of my mystery quilt (rats!) but hopefully I can start on that tonight while I watch some TV.

When last I posted, I had just paired up all of the sets of three squares for the 9 patch part of my courthouse steps. They now have all of their "steps" completed, except for the last "rung" of the black for most of the blocks. Here are all 18 chillin' on my living room floor with the first set of rungs:

I had to stop because I didn't have enough black fabric to finish them entirely. Whoops. But I started on this anyways because I was so excited but I did get the rest of the black fabric in the mail today!

Here are the two courthouse steps blocks that are completely finished:

The other blocks for this quilt are swirly star blocks that you make by a (what I would describe as a) stack, cut, and swap method.  Here are the three that I have done:

Kind of wild! But I definitely like it. I also got the charm pack that I won from Marcia today in the mail! It is so pretty!

I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced to share my progress!

FNSI: New Projects

I was worried that I was going to be too tired to participate in Friday Night Sew-In last night, but I ended up making myself go to bed at 2 AM because I had to quit at some point so that I could be a productive member of society today.

I sewed the binding onto my Mystery Quilt and now need to work on the hand stitching on the back. My chair does an excellent job of holding up the quilt while I am working.

I also started cutting and sewing for my MI-OH 2012 shop hop quilt. It is looking pretty good thus far!

I'm off to a barbecue to celebrate three of my lab mates graduating with PhDs!

Bloggers' Quilt Festival 2012

For the Bloggers' Quilt Festival, I decided I would share my most recent finish, my self-designed scrappy X's quilt.

This throw-sized quilt was made from the scraps left over from my first quilt because I was just a wee bit over-enthusiastic about using the rotary cutter. I started this quilt back in August and it was my first foray into designing my own blocks and quilt. (More posts about this one here, here, and here.) 

This quilt was a scrap buster project that I was actually very unsure of at several points, but am so happy with the results. This finished quilt is going to be a present to my grandmother, who saw it this past weekend and liked it immensely.

In addition to making this quilt almost entirely from scraps (other than the backing and the darker brown sashing) it was a fun experience to not work from a pattern and to let the creative juices flow.

To those of you visiting from the Bloggers' Quilt Festival, thanks for stopping by!

Blogs and Binding

I'm currently working on the hand binding on my X-quilt. The binding is the same fabric as the backing but cut along (rather than across) the stripe.

Here is a close up of the machine quilting on the back:

The binding for the mystery quilt is all cut out and is also the same as the backing fabric. And is also waiting for me in the living room.

In other news, I'm going to be a part of Plum and June's Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop!

This blog hop is dedicated to all new blogs, started in 2011 or 2012. There will be four blogs to hop to each week (two on Tuesday, two on Thursday) starting May 22nd, running all summer. 

I will be hosting on August 16th, so mark your calendars, because I'll eventually get around to planning something awesome. 

Back to work.

First and foremost, I'd like to thank everyone again for their patience and support while I went on a little sabbatical working on my comprehensive exam.

That I PASSED with flying colors. Yay! (Other  than that I am supposed to take a junior-level electrostatics physics course sometime. No big deal?)

So now it's back to work: in lab and at the sewing machine. With a quick detour this past weekend in NYC to visit one of my besties from college.

We stopped at Purl Soho where I purchased this lovely tree fabric from Robert Kaufman's City Centre line.

So now, I am getting close to being ready to start on my next project! I decided that I want to do my white, lime, and black quilt next, but after I make a few stuffed chickens and work on my many, many WIPs.