WIP Wednesday: Ready to Sash

It's Wednesday, and I've finally made some serious progress on my Romantic Garden quilt to share with you!

I finally finished up all of my block Bs and here are all of my block As and Bs laid out.

I realize how that I maybe should have switched up some of the fabrics in A with some of the fabrics in B -- the A fabrics are small prints and tonals, the B fabrics have both larger scale prints from the bunch. Oh well.

Here's the whole center sewn together:

I do think it looks better in person, and of course it's was seriously cloudy when I was sewing so the lighting isn't great either. C'est la vie!

The center of this quilt is actually only 60 inches square, but there are 7 borders that go on this baby. S-E-V-E-N. One of them is a pieced border with square in a square units. I'm going to do all of the cutting for the other borders and then do all of the piecing for the square in a square units with all of the fabric that I have left.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday!

Puttering along

Lately I've felt like I have been puttering along with my projects and not getting very much done. I've been working a lot in the evenings and on Saturdays at my second job so this seriously cuts into my sewing time. 

I have finished all of the centers of my Block Bs for my Romantic Garden quilt and started adding the outer parts to the centers.

Lots of stitch and flip triangles going on here. The pattern actually calls for two HSTs plus a square of the large light floral, but I didn't want to chop up the pattern, so I did stitch and flip corners on larger rectangles instead.

Here are the last sets of side pieces ready to be sewn on to my Ohio stars.

I also finally got started on my Halloween Mini Swap quilt! My plan is to make a mini row quilt wall hanging about 18" by 24". Here's the first row -- lil' candy corns! God bless my 60 degree ruler.

I have lots of ideas for the other rows -- witch hats, black cats, bats, headstones, more candy, frogs -- but I'm not sure what to do yet!

In other news, yesterday was my 27th birthday and my husband took me to the Maryland Zoo for the day and I got to feed Caesar the giraffe! Next to bunnies, giraffes are my favorite animals.

Here's the action shot:

And here are Park Ranger Husband and I hanging out with the penguins!

Happy stitching! Linking up at Fabric Tuesday, Linky Tuesday, Building Blocks Tuesday, and WIP Wednesday!

WIP Wednesday: Garden is growing

I was able to finish up the last of my Block As for my Romantic Garden quilt over the last few days. They really do have more contrast in real life!

Thirteen is an awkward number of blocks to photograph. C'est la vie.

I also was able to finish up all of the QSTs that I need for Block B!

Here's the start of the trimming...

Here's all 48 trimmed in piles of 4...

And here are the centers of the Block Bs laid out...

And ta da -- eight of my twelve Block B centers completed!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday and Let's Bee Social!

Romantic Garden Progress

Lest you think that all I do is work on QAL stuff, I finally have some other progress to share!

I've been working on my Block As for my Romantic Garden quilt and now have nine out of thirteen completed! 

Strangely enough, I'm missing three of my pink and green HSTs. I suspect a bunny might have stolen them. If I don't find them, I will have to remake them -- boo!

I've also been working on my next two monthly wall hangings and making serious progress! July is all ready to be satin stitched! I plan to outline the white squares in either red/light blue/dark blue for contrast from whatever block it is in. I plan to outline the red flowers with yellow.

Since it is much easier for me to get the fusible applique part done these days, I also started working on my August beehive. The pattern for this one also had a blue background, but I decided to go with purple with this one. This was actually one of the first backgrounds I had put together way back when I started working on these! Those stems will eventually have some pink or orange flowers on them.

Linking up (late) at WIP Wednesday, Fabric Tuesday, and Linky Tuesday!

QST progress and block building

Since I got both sets of my HSTs done for my Romantic Garden quilt done (YAY!), this weekend was the time to start working on getting my QSTs (at least the first set of them!) built.

I had gotten the pairs sewn together the same time as all of my HSTs and got them cut apart. I didn't trim just yet so I had as much wiggle room as possible to properly center the "X" of the QST block.

When I make QSTs, I do not cut corner to corner -- if you do this, you might end up with triangles that aren't right angles at the center! I make sure to cut perpendicularly to the seam and align it with as close to the opposite corners as possible without distorting the cut from being perpendicular to the seam.

Here's all of my QSTs pressed but before trimming.

I trimmed all of these while watching baseball on Sunday. One of the nice things about HSTs vs. QSTs is that at least some of the time you can get away with only trimming two of the sides if you have one "square" side to start. With QSTs you have to trim all of the sides and worry about making sure that your block center stays in the center once it's trimmed.

I don't have a 3 inch square ruler to easily trim, but I was able to line up the center of the block with an "intersection" on the ruler and then line up the diagonal of the QST with the diagonal of the ruler. And ta da --- 52 QSTs!

I went ahead and cut the 3 inch squares for the rest of block A (this is a two block quilt) and laid out one entire block to see how it will look.

I think it looks a little bit like a four leaf clover in the center with the dark greens. Now to sew all of them together!

Linking up at Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, and WIP Wednesday!

Don't forget that we are nearing the end of our Row Quilt QAL! There's still plenty of time to participate!

WIP Wednesday: The One With All the HSTs

In the wake of finishing my Lazy Sunday quilt, I thought I might as well start on another queen sized quilt for myself. Sound logic, right?

I actually received this fabric as a birthday gift a long while back (aka before I started this blog!) and spent a long time looking for the right pattern for it.

(I will update this with a better picture when I get home -- this is an old, old picture!)

I decided on using this "Inside Out" pattern from Quiltmaker magazine. 

So rather than being nautical, mine will be a romantic garden quilt. I did realize that the red in the fabric set I had was too true red -- all of the rest of the fabrics have a ruby red/dark pink and so I'm going to go on a search to find something to replace it. I will probably look for another tonal, but I don't think I am going to use it in the "body" of the quilt.

So this is where I am with my progress:

In the effort of trying to be a good wife, I decided that I would do all of the initial cutting and sewing of my HSTs and QSTs this past weekend while my husband was at work and that this week in the evenings I would iron and trim them and not have to interrupt Criminal Minds with the sound of the sewing machine. (Priorities.)

Really, no matter what order I make the HSTs, they all need trimmed and pressed. I was able to cut all of the starting squares for all of my HSTs (almost 200 of them!) and my QSTs and get them sewn into their pairs.

Last night I got the first combination (pink + green florals) cut apart and pressed.

There's 104 HSTs between those two piles! (And for me to trim tonight and tomorrow!) It's funny how the first part of the pile is neatly stacked and then as you get further and further along the pile gets more and more disastrous.

I'm fully intending this to be a longer-term project just so that I can pace myself with all of the HSTs and QSTs. Since this is for me, there's no deadline and so it'll take as long as it takes.

Linking up with Freshly Pieced!