Secret Kiss Quilt

At the 11th hour, this quilt finally gave itself a name.  I wish I'd known it from the start...it would have turned out differently, I think. 

 Excuse the slippers and hair bands in the background.  I really need to work on places to take pictures...it's hard to find a place that both looks nice and isn't covered in pet hair.

 Close up of some of the hearts.

 More hearts...some are more hidden than others.

 I love the Love Birds fabric. 

 Hearts on the back, with the "secret kiss" in the corner, top right.

 Stack of ready to ship items up for sale right now!

 One perfectly placed heart.

 Crumpled shot.

Next up: strips with a twist, using Martinique I bought ages ago.  Should be a twin to full size quilt when I'm done.  I'm loving it already. Might call it "Twisting Martinique" or something.  Ideas?

Superhero Near Disaster

Long story short, don't keep candles in your sewing room.  I got the bright idea that I could put candles on my space heater and melt them to get the scent, so they wouldn't be lit.  Good thing, or else this puppy would have gone up in flames Friday night.

Yup, one was even red.  Yikes.

After a couple of runs through the wash, it's fine...turns out highly-scented candles are mostly oil, so the wax comes out a lot easier when water/drier temps are high.  I haven't decided if I'm going to donate or sell this one yet. 

Here are a couple of glamor shots:

Seriously, I love this one.  I didn't do much in the way of quilting (I used the button function to "tie" the layers at each vertex), but the fabrics just make me smile.  There has to be a little boy out there who's meant to have this one.

 In other goings on, I made a little wine glass coaster...because I could.  It's quilted, and the other side is blue.  I'll get a picture of that later.  You may recognize the scraps from Abbey's Road.

 I finished the backing for the Valentine's Day quilt, and just now finished quilting and trimming it.  Tomorrow I'll slap some binding on it, take some glamor shots, and throw it up on etsy. 

 Kini's latest trick is telling me via window when she wants to come in.  Or just spying on me, I don't know which.

 MOTU has been recovering this week, so the Lego space shuttle (courtesy of my grandparents) came out to play. 

 Fun Lego dudes.

 Seriously, we had no idea there were SO many pieces, and that they were all in baggies in an as-of-yet undiscernible order.  But that's the fun of it.  :-)

Quick FNSI Update

Just a quick post to say I did get stuff done but my camera battery is dead so I'll have to get pics in the morning.  The superhero quilt top is done, so maybe sometime this weekend I'll get a chance to quilt and finish it.  And maybe I'll get a chance to baste the Valentine's day quilt so I can quilt that too.  And maybe I'll get a chance to sleep.

Tomorrow morning I get to spin with my new shoes!  I can't wait to try real cycling shoes!!!  Should be a trip.  Off to bed!!

Mostly Just Pics

Just a few more pics from the week.

Lisa, quilting her first line of quilting.

Done!  How great a job did she do??

She used blue for the ditches, the pink and green down the respective diagonals.  Love it!

Such straight lines!!

The two quilts together.

Again.

I added this quilt to the mix.  The front is flannel, the back is fleece.  After putting it in the box, I started wondering if I was allowed to use those fabrics.  Hm.

Hopefully they can use it.  I loved the fabrics, and I thought it was cute...but I may be biased.  :-)

Up next, the superhero quilt. 

Close up.

Wide angle.

That's about all I've accomplished in the sewing room this week. Between my grown up job and my new, evening job (did I mention I'm a Spin instructor in training?? LOVE IT!!), cooking, cleaning, and MOTU starting school, it's been a long week. Oh, and I've been sick and work has been seriously nuts. Hopefully tomorrow night will change that. What are you working on?

New Member of the Fold

Quilty bloggers, I'd like you to meet Lisa. 

She's been indulging me for months now, oohing and ahhing over endless pictures of projects from wedding stuff to silly little quilts.  I kept telling her I'd teach her to quilt if she wanted me to, and she always said she'd love to...when she had time.  Well, she finally had time, and I think we have a new member of the quilting fold!

I ordered a couple of kids from Quilts for Kids, and they came in on Wednesday.  We decided she'd come over on Saturday, to learn how to quilt.  Here's her first design wall layout (minus the two blocks she was actively sewing together):

Isn't it adorable?!  Basting the quilt:

She was a great student and picked everything up super fast...not that I expected anything less.  :-) 

This was my kit.  I'm waiting to put the binding on until tomorrow, when Lisa will be back so I can show her how to do hers as well. 

After all the girliness of yesterday, I needed a little break...I found this hilarious fleece (far right) and some super hero prints, and now I'm channeling my inner super hero by watching Daredevil and making a totally superhero themed quilt.  I have a new design in mind for this, so we'll see how it turns out.

I also picked up the backing for the Valentine's day quilt, which I'm hoping to be able to baste at some point tonight.

Small Projects

 It was pretty nasty out yesterday, but Kini kept wanting to see what it was all about.  This is my sewing room window.  She's figured out that, if she jumps up and looks in, she can make eye contact with me and run around to the back door so I'll let her in.  Smart dog.

I'm also playing around with some space-themed flannels I had lying around.  It won't be big...maybe 30x40 tops, but it's cute.  Maybe I'll add some borders to make it a little bigger, I dunno.  Anyway.

Design Wall Monday - No clever title this week sorry.

Just a few things going on. 

The first quarter (upper left) of the wedding quilt is done.  It's pretty chaotic, but I like that it tells a story only two of us know to completion.  I've decided to get it professionally quilted, when the time comes.  I really want it to turn out nicely, and I'm just not sure I can make that happen on a quilt so big (96x96 finished, in theory) on my machine (not to mention skill level). 

 I finished the pink lovey, then found a flaw I didn't like, so I hid it with some appliqued hearts.  Can't say I'm a fan of how they look now, but whatever...it's done. 

 I like it overall, just not really a fan of any of the parts that took real skill lol.

It's listed in my shop for $10 because I know it looks kind of amateurish, but I needed to practice somehow. 

Detours

I got one more block done for the wedding quilt last night.  As much as I'm enjoying putting this together though, I needed a quick fix...I needed to put something together that would be done withing a couple hours tops.  It's not quite done, but it can be tonight if I make it so.

 Pink pinwheels lovey!

The backing is fleece leftover from my mom's quilt eons ago.  The quilting is practice...I'm not terribly good at free motion, as you can see (actually it looks ok if you squint). Mostly this is just practice.  I'm not sure what I'll do with it...either throw it up on Etsy or put it in the package with the QFK quilts I'm hoping will come any day now.

I wasn't sure if pink and black would be too dark or not, but I think I like it.  It's a little edgier than pink and, say, brown would've been.  I could see this working for a young tomboy.  

Quick Pics

Just a quickie post to throw up some pictures of the progress on the wedding quilt.

The first 4 are the "special blocks" with centers made from material I couldn't slice into 2.5 inch strips. 

My grandmother made this one herself! It's from Mardi Gras 2008, when we went as Ghostbusters to their "departed spirits", complete with handmade proton packs and everything.

From my coworker Maryrita, a shirt from the company  we worked for before being bought out by...

...Pega.  This one is from another coworker, Lisa, who cleverly got this from a mouse pad.  Love it.

And last but not least, from a former coworker and dear friend, Jen, a bookshelf.  :-) 

Sorry for the poor lighting on this one.  This is what all the rest of the blocks will look like, more or less. 

5 down, 31 to go!