Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Thread

Sounds boring, I know. But recently I've found out what a difference thread makes. I was trying to make some quilt flowers last night and the thread kept breaking, and the bobbin on the bottom kept coming out the wrong spot, and it kept jamming up and all around made for an unpleasant experience....then i changed to the dual duty thread and suddenly sewing was fun and easy again. Good thing too because I was ready to quit quilting forever.

Monday, July 20, 2009

New Photography Software

Since this blog is about all arts and crafts, I'd like to stray from quilting for a second.

After our hike at great falls this weekend I decided to (finally) figure out how to stitch together panoramic photos and I came across some great software to do it. As you can see from the watermark at the bottom of the picture I still need to pay for it.

Without Further Ado, I present to you great falls in panoramic

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/59587601@N00/3737866586/)

I cant wait to take panoramic shots of EVERYTHING. Watch out world!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Turtle Power!

I followed a pattern for this quilt (except replacing orange with purple), and I think it turned out decent. Its a little crooked, and some of the squares don't line up perfectly, but you can tell they are turtles - so that's a start.



Here is a turtle close up.



Peter helped me pick out this fabric for the back of the quilt and its pretty and really soft.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

People's Choice Award

Out of my quilts and a few other projects not on this site, most people like this quilt the best.

I made this quilt in less than a month when peter was gone for the campaign so I picked up a project kick starting my quilting obsession again.

This pattern I think is called the pineapple pattern because I guess if you squint each square sort of looks like a birds eye view of a pineapple.



You can sort of see the "pineapple" pattern

My First Quilt

I started my first quilt after freshman year in college while I was home for the summer and using my mom's sewing machine. I then thought I could take it back to school with me and I could sew the rest of it by hand.

This never happened.

After I graduated, but before I got a job I bought a sewing machine of my own and finally completed my quilt. There are a lot of things wrong with this quilt such as a few holes, almost none of the patterns match up, and the overall edge shape is nowhere near even.

That being said I completed my first quilt and to this day I still think its the greatest, coziest, sit down on the couch and take a nap quilt.



As you can see its just a tedious series of triangles and hexagons in some pretty fabrics, but upclose it formed some stars where the pattern lined up correctly.


Easy Pillow, Pretty Fabric

When I was at the fabric store the other day looking around in the pink section, one particular pattern caught my eye, but didnt match anything I was making. I tried to not buy it, but after passing it a few times i figured I'd buy a yard and just make a simple pillow case (which proved a little harder than I thought trying to make everything straight)



The fun part was that I got to play around with the settings on my sewing machine to get some fancy (for me) stitching for the lip of the pillow case

Ducks Are Definately Gender Neutral

My good friends Ashley and Tim just had thier first baby Oliva and she's as cute as can be.

The only problem (for me) was that Ashley and Tim decided to wait till Olivia was born to find out if she was going to be a she, so I had to make my baby gift gender neutral. I looked through a lot of patterns of scary clowns and sports patterns and butterflies before I came across ducks!!! perfectly gender neutral. Obviously I'd make it in greens and yellows too, the typical gender neutral colors.

the pattern was initially bath time ducks, but the bubbles proved to be too difficult to appliqué on so I scrapped that but left my bubbles and rubber ducky boarder.



On July 1st when we found out Oliva was Olivia and not Oliver I realized that my bubble boarder made it look a little too "boy" so I added a little pink bow to the duck in the center.



And here is one last one to see the super cute rubber ducky fabric I found (and now have extra of and need a new project)

A Quilt For A Good Cause

My good friend Laurie Sheen is participating this year for her second year in a row for the Susan G Komen 3 day walk. She trains for months and works very hard to raise money for her team The Pink Sprinkles. I figured that the best way I could help was to donate one of my quilts to her silent auction that will be starting in a week or so.

This was also my first venture into designing my own quilt. In the past I have found patterns and followed instructions, but this time i spent a day drawing out different ideas on graph paper until I was happy with a pattern, and I think i like the way it came out.

Arts and Crafts, a new beginning

I've decided to start another blog dedicated exclusively to my arts and crafts. Lately I've been on a quilting kick, but in the future this could also include my knitting, cooking, photography, but probably not drawing or painting, i'm not very good at the last two. So enjoy, and comment and leave me ideas for future projects!