Sleepless Sunday - Day 27

Today I worked on piecing the backing and basting together my quilt for the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I had planned to finish it today and post the link soon after I was done. It took a lot longer to get things moving today since I was running on four hours of sleep. (Dealing with a 14 year old dog who is not sleeping well through the night. She's still my lovey bear but this morning was pretty rough.)

Evie on her birthday quilt

 

       

Halloween Doggie Treats
Evie loves 'em!

It's going to take a while to get this done but I will have it posted by the deadline this week. I'm off to get a little bit of it done now before I pass out from exhaustion.

This time next weekend, I will officially be on vacation and able to create and quilt without a care in the world. I can't wait.

Hope you had a restful weekend.

Counting down... - Day 20

In 14 more days, I will officially be on vacation! I'm so excited that I can just burst.

I know this might sound odd but I'm using a big part of my vacation to work at home on projects that I never have time to complete. This is work that I actually want to do because I am getting rid of some furniture, sorting out my sewing room, and making a waist level cutting station and a proper design wall. No more bending over on this low table for hours of cutting need to make some quilts. I've been using the dining room table as a "design wall" for more years than I can stand at this point. It's something I've dreamed of doing for many years but now am taking the plunge.

Sunday's Sew Time

It took a lot longer that I thought it would but I finished my quilting on the table runner I mentioned in yesterday's post. I really love how it turned out and might just make another one for myself to keep.

(Echo quilting on this beast.)

Now, on to binding it!

Continuous Binding - My Nemesis

I spent some time today working on binding. I still haven't mastered the art of continuous binding so I wanted to practice before finishing up some bigger projects on the horizon. I made some little Halloween pot holders that would be the perfect size to work on this skill that seems to elude me. (I recently lost one of my favorite pot holders to a stove incident. I can laugh about it now but it really hurt.)

The rat's nest I kept getting when the fabric
got stuck in the feed dogs.

I kept getting it twisted up once I sewed it down.

After sewing and unpicking the same seam 3 times, I finally turned to Youtube for some sanity and found the most wonderful video. I've bookmarked this gem for future reference. The directions here were so amazing and simple. (I was almost to the desperate stage of just chucking the pot holders and ordering one of those fancy binding tools I've seen online for ten bucks.)

 I ended up with two pot holders and a few hours of frustrating attempts to make the binding line up on the diagonal and lay flat the right way so I can sew it down. I do feel that I am getting the hang of it and am not so scared to do it again next weekend.

 Hope your weekend was super fun and productive. Wishing you a great week ahead!

Simply Sunday - Day 13

Today I thought about doing a lot but found myself daydreaming more than actually working. I was pretty tired from a long week and my mind just didn't want to work too hard today.

I did finish my November BOM for OMQG and had some fun with it. I ended up with two blocks because I didn't read all of the directions and cut more than I needed. It was relaxing to just sew blocks together.

I also made some progress on my Tetris quilt but didn't have the gusto to finish the whole top yet. I still have time so I am not too worried about it.

I'm calling it an early night and will K.I.S.S. today by ending this post here.
Wishing you a productive week!

Sunday, Fun Day! - Day 6

I love rainy, quiet Sundays. I was able to get in a nice walk before the rain started and spent the rest of the day in my sewing room.
I finished my design of the Double Wedding Ring for the DWR Challenge. I spent a good part of the day cutting and organizing my colors so I can start sewing them next weekend. I'm pretty excited about the outcome and can't wait to show you when it's all done.

All 194 of my little "A" pieces!

 After all of that cutting I wanted to get some sewing done, too. I am working on a gift for my dear friends who will celebrate their ten-year anniversary next March. They are both gamers so I had many designs ideas. I wanted to give them lots of color and still keep it simple, too. I promised her a queen-sized quilt a few years ago so I have to get it done soon.  (I still don't know if I can fit it in my tiny machine. I may have to take it to the long arm!)

I decided to make them a Tetris quilt! It's squares that I can make really large and piece together really easily. I decided on 5.5 inch blocks then got to work on graph paper to make up a design. I haven't played with my Sharpie colors in a while so this was a lot of fun.

                                   

Once I had the design I wanted, I counted up the number of colors and background blocks I would need. (Somewhere along the way, I changed up the final design so please don't copy these numbers if you want to make one, too. It would be best to draw your own and count them up to work for you.)

I had to do more cutting which took no time (or any fancy templates!) to get this little baby going. 

 If you have a design wall (or clean floor) handy, lay out your blocks and start sewing them according to your design. I usually chain piece for faster sewing but had to take extra care to keep all rows organized. I started from the bottom and worked my way up the following my graph paper pattern.

Crossing out the row as I went, helped me stay organized.
I almost duplicated a row which would mean picking threads out and starting again. Yuck!

I used Post It Notes to keep all rows in order as I moved up the line and when they were all done, I lined them up to make sure I had my design just right.

My secret for lining up squares perfectly is to use pins. I stuck a pin in the opposite end of every other row to keep them organized for ironing. (I don't have a good pic but simply: Left side pinned in rows 1, 3, 5, 7 etc. Right side pinned in rows 2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) Then, I ironed each row using the pins as a guide for which direction to press the seams.

I iron from right to left.
I place my pins on the ironing board on this side so I can just press in one direction.
Make your preference work for you.

When you bring your rows together to sew, they nest perfectly every time.

I finished sewing my rows together and will be adding a border with some other finishing touches in the next few weeks. Here's what I have so far:

Quilting this will help emphasize the individual blocks that make up a Tetris piece and help this design pop. Since each color has a distinct shape, it's hard to tell the separation when looking at just the quilt top. More pictures to come!

I didn't plan on writing a tutorial but I saw the "Process Pledge" on another blog and think I should share how I create my quilts as I blog more this month.

I hope this gives you some inspiration for making your own pixelated design of something you'd love to see. I'm thinking about making a shades of black and green Tetris quilt next to make it look like the original Gameboy version I played when I was a lot younger.Then, there is Galaga, Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man [I would have called her Pac-woman but I digress]...I can make a long trip down memory lane using the old 8-bit or even 16-bit games we used to play.

Did you get to sew today?
(Hope your Sunday was a fun day!)

I am officially tired and heading to bed early for a change.