August accomplishments, September goals

I made some nice progress in August. :)

1. Finish the T-shirt quilt. Done!  And the recipient loved it!

2. Finish the Countdown and rocket pattern.  Done!

3. Cut out everything for the one-up quilt.  Not only did I get everything cut up, I got it all put together.  I just started quilting the first cloud even.

7. Aunt's throw.  I have a design and started cutting up the squares.

11. Charmed baby quilt (October).  I have the pieces cut out and four seams sewn together.

14. Surprise mini (Christmas).  Quite a bit of progress has been made, but I can't show any of it.
15. Baby paper airplane quilt.  Well, I got the fabric for the sky.  I also tried some fabric tea dying because I didn't look at the pattern close enough and realized I needed at least two, if not three, different shades of the same color for the airplanes.  I was really hoping to use some patterned fabrics, so I'm going to try darkening some and see how it works.

And for September...can you believe it's September already??

1. Finish the One-up quilt.  This is my Lovely Year of Finishes goal. So far I have one cloud quilted....and a lot of quilting to go.

Other things I'd really like to try and finish...
2. Finish the Charmed baby quilt.
3. Send out the September Simply Solids Block

And the other things that are still on the list, hanging out:

4. make the wall hanging for office.
5. pretend to work on scrap quilt.
6. finish green coasters.
7. Aunt's throw. 
8. Pillow for family room.
9. Jeweled floors.
10. Picture quilt (finish by Christmas).
12. Lost piece (almost whole cloth quilt)
13. Baby girl daisy quilt
14. Surprise mini (Christmas)
15. Baby paper airplane quilt
16. Baby quilt - undecided pattern/greens
17. Christen's T-shirt quilt
18. Simply solids green quilt

I'm also joining up with Fresh Sewing Day.

T-shirt quilt

Hooray!  Another finish!  They seem to come in clumps.

The T-shirt quilt is finished.

I put a very simple Irish Chain on the back.  I had been expecting to do something very simple, like stripes, but this looked like fun.  There's also a hint of orange around three of the sides.  I didn't have quite enough grey fabric and then didn't center it absolutely perfectly, hence orange on only three sides.  But the orange isn't on the top, so it doesn't feel off-kilter to me.

I'm going to admit; T-shirt quilts aren't my favorite.  I had fun with the borders and the back, but the T-shirts don't hold any memories for me.  I listened to the recipient recall fond memories when I gave the quilt to him though, and it was nice to hear how much it was (and will be) loved.

This ended up being my favorite block after an "oh no!  What have I done?" moment.  I cut the panel way too small.  After weighing my options, I decided to cut another strip from the shirt and put it on.  Well, on the bottom of the shirt was another little graphic.  So I added it and now it looks like it was supposed to be there!

I stippled the T-shirt panels, but didn't quilt over the screen printing.  I put pebbles in the sashing, figure eights in the blue border, back and forths in the orange border, and double lines in the outer green border.  The green and blue borders contained patterns that I hadn't done before and I think they turned out pretty well on the whole.

I did the border quilting in different colors...I thought it would look cool on the back.

My son took a liking to this quilt.  He semi-escaped onto the deck while I was taking pictures and made a beeline to it.  He then made my husband and I lay on it with him.  So we had some fun family time.

I finally packaged it all up (using a folding tutorial from here).   Everytime I made a fold my son put more balls on the quilt.  I think he was trying to say that if his toy balls were on the quilt then it was his.

edit: I realized I forgot to give some credit for the design.  The original was seen here.

This is my finish for a lovely year of finishes! Also linking up with Fabric Tuesday and Linky Tuesday.

Finished - countdown and rocket

I have the countdown and rocket finished and hung!   My son's room as a stars and planets theme.

See the little ball above the hanging?  That's Pluto.  It's supposed to be on the other side of the house, but I wanted to keep all the planets in his room.  (Also, the box that the planets came in said on the outside "new and updated information for Pluto!" but I couldn't find it.  The leaflet still said it was a planet.)

The numbers were paper pieced as a tester for Meadow Mist designs.  You can find them here. The binding job on this was horrible.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, but you can see that there are big lumps in the corners. 

I mostly quilted it with meandering stars, but I also put in a few yellow accent stars.  There are also some red flames quilted in the flame section, but they're harder to see.

Here it is with his star quilt.

I wanted a rocket at the bottom of the countdown, but couldn't find one.  So I designed it myself.  If you're also interested in it, you can get it here.

Joining with Whoop-whoop Friday, Link a Finish Friday, and TGIFF.

WIPping along

I feel like I have made some great progress this week!  Woo-whoo!

I finished quilting the borders of the T-shirt quilt and am finishing up the binding.

In a moment of whimsy (i.e., 10 minutes before bed time), I changed my thread and started the Charming quilt.  (The strips are layered on top of each other...they're really all the same size.)

I continued the 1-up quilt, turning 8-rectangles into 16-patches.  This is one side of a cloud.  My points aren't lining up super awesome, but they're still turning out pretty good. 

 And these are the rest of the pieces.

Joining with WIP Wednesday.

AQS quilt show

Today I went to the AQS quilt show in Grand Rapids.  All by myself.  I'll admit, while it's fun to go with other people it was also a lot of fun to go by myself.  I could go at my own pace...sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly.  Most of the quilts were stunning.  This year I especially enjoyed the guild challenge section and the miniatures that were on tour from a museum in Kentucky.

Then I started going through the vendors.  It's actually rather overwhelming, and I almost saw myself going through the whole area and not getting anything.  But then I reminded myself I had some goals, the main one being to find a good sky.  It's for a baby girl so it couldn't be too blue.  It's going to be paper pieced so it couldn't be too patterned.  It's for a baby so I didn't want it too white.  The clouds I found were too directional.  I found one that I really liked, but the texture was wrong.  I finally found something at a booth that always catches my eye as they have great ombre fabrics.  One of the ombres might have found it's way into my basket.  During my searches I also found some blue snowflakes to match the red and grey flakes that I recently picked up.

WIP: cutting!

I've been doing a lot of cutting the last week or two.  One reason is that's just the step a lot of my projects are at.  The other reason is that we've been visiting with family and so it is a nice thing to do while still being social.

I have cut all the pieces for the 1-up quilt (top left), for Charming (bottom), and have started cutting them for my aunt's purple quilt (top right).

I've also sewed some of the 1-up pieces together...probably about 2/3 of the pieces are now in four patches actually.

Linking up with WIP Wednesday.

Yarn

I haven't done much with yarn, but my sister-in-law makes a lot of things with yarn.  Since she was going to be visiting us during her birthday, I thought it would be fun to get her some "good" yarn.  But, I had no idea where to start.  Luckily, Laura of Little and Lots was happy to direct me!  (We also have a mutual friend, which I think is pretty cool.  The world can be a small place.)

I ended up with some orangish yarn.  I think it's really pretty and I hope she likes it too!