Two man quilts in progress - Urban Energy and Dragons!

Completed this quilt wall-hanging (just the top so far) to thank one of my favorite local DJs for accepting a very special request to spin at a friend's newly purchased home and birthday party this weekend. But this wasn't just any DJ, this was DJ Ishe, an great DJ, a great guy...

"Urban Energy"

Ishe's set was unbelievable. I woke up the next day with a renewed relationship to the bass music I love. I love the music he plays, but his abilities on the decks and passion and presence are like no other. He was channeling, and I am blown away with gratitude and wows. Anyway, I am also honored to have him interested in a quilt and can't wait to gift it to him once I get the binding complete. This is the first time I've improved with half square triangles (HST), and I can't wait to do it again. I got inspired by reading an post on Owen's Olivia blog about HST wall art (that was supposed to be a laptop cover for her husband, lol).

Speaking of man quilts, I just started another one. This will be a baby boy quilt for my friends' nicknamed the Moogies who are expecting a little man in early July. There is no set theme, so I went all out with dragons and stars and pinwheels.

I am really enjoying quilting for guys. There's something really fun and creative about using what most people think is a girl craft to make something a guy would love. I have another one for my coming nephew in the works as well. More to come on that. Have a great week!

Kids Clothes Week Project Complete and Broken In!

Kids Clothes Week has come and gone (and was so inspirational). I completed this project for my little man, and he broke it in on the same day, spilling on it, getting lots of hugs from friends during a music event we attended yesterday, and giving it some good little boy wear and tear. I knew I had to make the shirt when I saw this fabric. And this is the first time I've sewed a shirt; usually when it comes to clothes, I do vests, so this was a great learning experience.

There was a lot of technical learning here, including shirt yokes, placards, and gather stitching and easing to sew the sleeves, not to mention basting for new reasons I had not done before. It was nice (and fun) to learn a lot of new things doing a small version shirt before a big one, which I'd like to do for my husband some day soon. Already took him to the fabric store to see what fabrics he liked. Hehe. Looking forward to sewing more clothes in the future.

Sugar Block of the Month Quilt Club – work in progress (With improved pictures)

Here’s the April block I completed as part of the Sugar Block of the Month Club and even better, how all four completed blocks look together. So colorful and cheery – these are so fun to put together, and I am learning a lot every month.

Note: This is a second post with improved pictures. To see the original post from a few days ago, go here. 

Kids Clothes Week - Work in Progress!

Just a quick sneak peak of my Kid's Clothes Week progress...and tracing the pattern! Too fun!

Fabric for a woodland animals baby quilt for my coming nephew

I have a nephew coming early July and am planning a baby quilt for him with the following fabric. They live in the mountains and are decorating with woodland animals.

I just loved the “Mind your Ps and Qs” fabric, and it matched perfectly with some fabric I already had from “Camp Modern.” I also discovered how a couple colors of a pattern from the new “Glimmer” line was very woodsie and complementary as well.

Kids Clothes Week - Getting ready to make an Oliver +S Sketchbook Shirt

I am participating in Kids Clothes Week, which is a really fun way to be part of a community (online) focusing their sewing on making kids clothes for a week. The challenge occurs once a quarter and crafters link up their ideas, tips, progress, and completed projects online using blogs, facebook, flickr, instagram, and more.

Here's the fabric I am using. It's from the "Timber and Leaf" collection, and I'm not sure where the flannel is from, but I plan to use it for the placard and yoke of the shirt.

And just cause it's fun to share, I got myself some fabric from the same collection, which will be a skirt for me. Gotta make yourself something once in a while!!

A sunny block for a wintry day (I mean week) in Colorado

This is the forth block I've made as part of the Sugar Block of the Month Club. I love that a sunshine design was the block for April, when we are getting so much snow in Denver, Colorado. 

I also love how nice and easy it is to do one quilt block a month. Although I have a couple baby quilts to make, I will plan to take a long time when making a bigger quilt. I hate it when sewing gets stressful, because it's supposed to be my stress release. 

But as with everything, I've notice it is easy to get overextended, so anyway, being part of a block of the month club has demonstrated to me that one block a month is a good overall strategy for future quilt planning.

Another time-management strategy I've put in place recently is to take pictures with my iPhone for immediate upload and wait to take pictures with my professional camera for bigger project or until I really have time for the downloading, processing, saving, and uploading that's required with a larger camera. The quality of the pictures aren't as good, but I'll trade that for the extra quality time I get in other areas of life, like watching my 20-month-old grow like a weed, spending time outside, etc.

Quilted tote – first experience with bag-making and English Paper Piecing quilting

Finally finished this birthday present for one of my favorite people. This is one of the most fun and favorite things I’ve made, and it was so great getting to think of my friend while making it.

It was my first time with bag making and English paper piecing (the hand sewn hexagons, which are possible to do on the way to the ski area in the car not to mention during a hot bath while listening to a book on tape (talk about multitasking)).

I really loved the combination of sewing something useful like a bag with quilting to make it unique and decorative. I even already started another one, and I can’t wait to get into smaller, zippered pouches.

I used a charm pack of Jay McCarroll’s Center City fabric collection for the hexagons. I just love this line of urban deliciousness. I am thinking about picking up some larger pieces before it is all gone—some of the prints would make amazing summer shirts and skirts.

I learned how to make the bag by watching the free Bag-Making Basics class on Craftsy.com, and I learned about English Paper Piecing by watching one of the lessons that’s part of the free Block of Month 2012 class also on Craftsy.com.

Oil pastels are better than regular crayons for toddlers

A toddler specialist (http://www.patiencebleskan.com/) suggested buying oil pastels for the younger ones to draw with, because you don't have to push as hard as crayons to get bold colors, and they were a huge success. Our 20-month-old not only created something great, he also colored longer than usual! Here's a link to the ones we bought: http://www.crayola.com/products/28-ct-crayola-oil-pastels-product/. 

My little Picasso loves his oil pastels., a photo by SincerelyStacy on Flickr.

Emerald Quilt Challenge entries - my first challenge

Happy St Patty's Day! I'm entering two quilts in the Emerald Quilt Challenge, which is a quilting challenge based on using mainly the color Emerald. Emerald is the Pantone color of the year. (Prior to quilting, I would have never know what that meant to the design industry.)

You can enter up to three quilts: a mini-quilt, a quilt topper, and a fully completed quilt. I am entering two. Here are the quilts and a ton of what I learned making them.

Mini-Quilt 12.5 x 12.5 (The colors are bolder than the picture displays, but it's close enough)

 

What I learned:

1. My sewing machine is cheap and old with bad tension I don't think I can ever fix. That's why I have thread problems sometimes, which can impact the smoothness of the fabric. But I am learning how important tension is.
2. I also got more experience with paper piecing, as the mini-quilt was fully paper pieced. I used one of the October patterns (and video tutorial) from the 2012 Craftsy Block of the Month, and made a slight alteration to make the star a little larger. Paper piecing is really cool but not something I can do very quickly yet. I'd like to do it again but make sure I have more adequate time. I kept cutting the pieces of fabric too big. That's why the center circle has two different fabrics when I'd prefer it have one.
3. I also trimmed some corners when I should not have, so I had to sew the block together with a larger seam allowance, impacting how several seams line up.
4. I had a lesson in color choice--I actually like how the colors turned out more than I thought I would, but I might rethink some of them like making the center circle a lot darker or lighter next time and perhaps switching the ice cream fabric with the bold solids. However, that's part of what makes this block unique.
5. And finally, I thought I had totally ruined this block, so I just had fun with the quilting and like how it turned out. I want to take a free motion quilting class as soon as I get a new sewing machine that can handle it.

Quilt Topper 33"x33"

 

What I learned:

1. I learned that I can use Microsoft Word to design a quilt pretty easily. See prior post here.
2. I am going to read more about the best ways to sew together a quilt with so many squares. After this one and the paper piecing mini above, I can't wait to do a more free-form quilt where I don't have to have so many perfectly matching seams. I don't know if free-form is more my style or if I'm just experiencing needing to increase my skill set level on square quilts, but this quilt wasn't east.
3. This is the first challenge I've done. I felt a bit limited both due to time and having design requirements. I kept wanting to add more color and wanted more time to do new things, but such is life!