Happy Hour {Double Hourglasses}

I love to strip piece and I had been stashing two mini jelly rolls in aqua and orange. My mom gave me the two that she had that were the same so I had enough to make a twin sized quilt.

I decided to use Allison's double hourglass tutorial as inspiration for these blocks and went through a pattern of sewing and cutting and sewing again until all the strips were turned into blocks!

Here's when I had finished 50 of the 80 total blocks:

Once I finished all 80 blocks I separated the blocks into 4 piles and made identical "quadrants" for the upper left lower right corners of the quilt. I've spent HOURS on some quilts making the blocks "random" and I just don't have the time or patience to do that anymore. If someone realizes that the sections repeat, I will give them a prize. 

Here's a picture with really terrible lighting:

The other two sections I put together individually without matching because it was easier to make sure that the same colors weren't next to one another or all in a cluster.

Here's 80 blocks all sewn together!

The top is the right width for a twin sized quilt but it is a touch on the short side so I will need to add a top and bottom border to get it to the correct size. 

Once this quilt is finished, I am going to donate it to the sorority I advise to raffle off to raise money for our literacy philanthropy. It's about time I put my quilting addition to good use!

Sharing over at Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, and WIP Wednesday!

Sassy Chevron Borders Tutorial

For my Lazy Sunday Mystery Quilt, I decided that I didn't want to make the borders as directed.

Too many stitch and flip triangles (also known as, too much waste!).

I decided that I wanted to use fast flying geese instead and came up with a really fun border idea. Maybe someone else already thought of this, but I'm super proud of myself for figuring this out and figured I should share.

Scared? Don't be! This whole border is entirely flying geese! The clever part of this whole thing is color placement.

I'm making my borders with goose units that are 2" x 4" finished (2.5" x 4.5" unfinished).

Square cutting:
This can be found all over the internet, but it bears repeating.
Cut one square for your "geese" that is 1 1/4 inches larger than the height (long side) of your finished goose rectangle. (4 inches finished + 1 1/4 inches = 5 1/4 inches square)
Cut 4 squares for your "background" that is 7/8 inch larger than the width (short side) of your finished goose rectangle (2 inches finished + 7/8 inch = 2 7/8 inches square

Draw diagonal lines down each of your "background" squares.

Line up two of your background squares along one of the diagonals of the goose square.

Sew 1/4" away on each side of the line and cut along the marked line. I use scissors so I don't have to walk over to my cutting space.

Iron background triangles away from your goose triangles.

Line up your remaining two marked background triangles, one on each of the cut halves, with the remaining 90 degree corner. Again, stitch 1/4" away from each side of the marked line.

Cut part along the marked line.

Iron background triangles away from the goose triangles. Trim off dog ears and gaze in awe at your amazing four finished flying geese.

For each chevron unit, you need oppositely colored flying geese. I called the light peach my "background" and my orange (or pink) fabric as my "chevrons".

To make each chevron unit, just sew together along your "chevron" fabric so that both geese point in the same direction and the colored background from one goose unit connects to the colored goose triangle of the other goose unit.

I had to use two different fabrics to have enough to have a border all the way around my quilt. For the most part they alternated pink, orange but I had to sneak in a few more pink units because I ran out of orange!

To attach it to my quilt. I just added goose units until it was equal to or ever so slightly longer than the side of the quilt that I was working on and eased if necessary.

Here's the quilt with all of the borders added:

This is one of my first forays into pieced borders and I think it turned out pretty nice! Obviously, accuracy is key in making sure that your borders fit your quilt correctly (and that one side isn't inches longer than the other!). This would be a really fun addition to a medallion type quilt as a skinnier border separating rings of blocks, I think.

Tuck this one away in your hats for a future project!

Sew Kitchsy February Block

February's block for the Sew Kitschy Sew Along with Kristy at Quiet Play is a cookie jar!

I had about a fat quarter left of the navy blue polka dot fabric from the churn dash baby quilt so I decided to use that for the jar portion and to go a little wild and use red paisley for the background.

What I would like to do is either a) find someone with an embroidery machine that can stitch "cookies" in yellow on the jar or b) machine applique on a yellow cut out of "cookies" onto it.

Sharing my block in the monthly link up! Still lots of time to join in! 

Wishes Quilt Along Block #2

The second block for the Fat Quarter Shop Wishes Quilt Along is now available!

This month's block is called "Double Windmill". Here's my block which I made last night!

It's so hard to wait for the next block to come out! Here's to having {lots} of other WIPs to work on...

February A Lovely Year of Finishes Goal

For February, I'd like to finish my Stash Bee quilt from last year!

I am going to keep it square and it will end up 60 inches square.

I ordered this fabric for the backing:

I will probably add in the leftover blocks on the back as well.

As far as quilting this one goes, I think that I will do some sort of large swirls or loops -- certainly nothing like my micro-meandering!

Linking up to ALYoF!