Story behind the name and a birthday quilt

It's been a very busy week for me! I've spent almost every night this week researching and shopping for a new car. I'm really excited about finally making a purchase, but it doesn't make for a very interesting story, so I'll just summarize by saying that I haven't been doing much sewing!

Okay, how about a mini-story that is quilting related? Like, how I came about choosing my blog name. When I made my first quilt and everyone in my family found out, all of a sudden I was hearing a lot of, "Make me a quilt!" And that's pretty much it. :)

One person that wants a quilt that I haven't gotten around to yet is my sister. I've been putting it off because I want her quilt to be perfect... Her birthday is coming up in September, and maybe it's crazy to take on a new project with a month left until my wedding, but I'm going for it!

I LOVE this set of fabric,  I mean.. I really love it. I have been staring at it for a week, folding and stacking the fabrics, thinking about what I want to do with them. I can't take credit for how well these colors go together - ahhh, I totally stole this color scheme from Rachel, (Stitched in Color), who put together an awesome "blogger bundle" called "Berry Picking" for Pink Castle Fabrics. Go buy the bundle because it's perfect! :D

I would have bought this bundle, but I had to stop myself... I decided to look through my stash and see if I had anything that would work, and then use the gift certificate I won to purchase additional fabrics to complete the set as best I could. I still might snap up that Berry Bundle - I just need to cool my jets on the ol fabric budget for a minute!

Now I know why everyone loves Flea Market Fancy so much.. the fabric is even prettier in person, and I'm sure I'll be buying some more of the brown in the future, it's gorgeous!

So back to the quilt I'm going to make from these fabrics. My sister is a more "traditional" type of person. She really likes vintage stuff and "old-fashioned" decor. I don't think she'd like anything wonky or really modern. The colors in this fabric set might even be a little too bright for her taste, but I've picked out a really cute block pattern that has a "classic"/traditional look to it that I think she'll like.

In my next post I'll show you the block and a step-by-step on how to make it. Here's a preview!

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Thrift store scores: Fabric, Batting

Once upon a time I was a thrift store snob. I thought the stores smelled so bad I never wanted to set foot in them, let alone wear a strangers worn out clothes. The smell still makes me gag and feel like I need a shower, but a few years ago I smartened up and realized you can find some really nice stuff in there! At times I've found clothes with the tags still on from upscale retailers, score!

I don't make it out to thrift stores often enough, but when I do I usually find some at least one interesting piece of fabric I could use for quilting. A lot of the fabric from this quilt was thrifted. The salvation army near me has a rack dedicated to fabric, so I always check there first. Then I move onto the bed linens area and look for pillowcases and sheets. If I have extra time I'll check out the crafts section, and sometimes even scan some of the clothing itself. Mens dress shirts, womens skirts and kids clothing can sometimes turn up a treasure, but I try to be really picky in those areas. Well, I try to be really picky in general, because otherwise I would probably end up with a massive tower of sheets that would never get turned into quilts!

Yesterday this pillowcase caught my eye...

Not a show stopper, but the colors were saturated and paired with the right fabrics it could work. I thought the orange and yellow could be played up. Bonus, it felt like cotton, not a blend.

Then I found a huge yellow pillowcase with a vintage-y floral print, also cotton.  I also found a queen sized yellow sheet that will work great as a backing material.

When I get this stuff home, I wash it right away and "prep" it by cutting off all the seams. If it sits in my closet as a pillowcase or a sheet, or whatever it started out as, I won't want to sew with it later. 

I pulled some fabric out of my stash to see how it would look. I'm not sure brown and yellow alone would cut it for me, so I'm going to just tuck these finds into the stash and keep looking every so often at the thrift store for some potential matches.

Possible color scheme.. 

Another really neat find - this craft-sized batting package, brand new. The original price was pulled off, but I found it here on amazon for $16.99 - I bought it for $1.50. Hopefully I like it! Has anyone tried using a bamboo blend?

In other news, I finished a quilt top and am very close to finishing a second quilt top - OHMYGOSH. More on that next week!

New Fabric, New Quilt

I received a very large box of fabric this past Thursday - ahh!! Exciting! I think you all know the feeling. :) I wanted to start working with it right away, but we had visitors stay with us over the weekend, so I didn't get to do anything until today. It was so hard to wait!! Lol.

I have quite a few WIPs going on right now, so I didn't really need to start anything new.. but the lure of new fabrics sucked me in! I sewed some improvisationalish blocks today. My plan was that I knew I wanted to use the new fabric, and I wanted it to be a rectangular "half log cabin".  I'm sure this block exists, and has a real name, but I don't know what it is, so I'm going with half a log cabin. I sewed four blocks, without measuring the strips. The only thing I know for sure is that I'll have 24 blocks measuring 12"x16", to make a quilt that is 64"x72".

I started to realize that I accidentally created a color scheme that I really liked! The first two blocks shown above have purple, orange, grey and an aqua color.

I can't decide if I should go for a scrappy look, and use all the fabrics, including my stash - or go with a dedicated color scheme. I pulled some fabrics and I think they look really good together, but I really love the scrappy look as well!

Decisions, decisions.. :)

Fabric delivery from overseas.. :D

Still no time to sew! My house guests are currently occupied, so I thought I'd sneak some eye candy in for ya. I went ahead and bought some Liberty! I feel like a total nerd trying to like, fit in with cool kids, because there is so much hype about this fabric. I had been lusting after it for a long time, and after I saw what Ashley (from Film in the Fridge, one of my fav's) did with hers, and seeing some other cute stuff around the web lately, I knew I had to buy some myself. I'm so glad I did! I absolutely adore it, I stare at it, I think about it at work, dream about it at night - okay I'm getting carried away. Now I really do sound like a nerd!

I purchased the fabric through, Pick Click Sew, which I recommend. The fabric shipped on a Wednesday and arrived Monday - so fast for overseas! And it was affordable, about $20 shipped, and if I had to estimate I have about 2/3 to 3/4 of a yard total. Very small pieces though! I am going to have to think about my quilt design for a while so as best to use all the fabric. I've also put a rule on myself that I can't sew anything with this until my wonky squares quilt, and Dresden Challenge quilts are done! :-O !!!

I've been doing my best to visit your blogs when I can sneak some time in! Sounds like everyone around my house is ready to be social now, so off I go. Happy quilting! :)

Quilting on a budget

I love this scene in Bridesmaids. (If you haven't seen this movie, ya should!) Whenever I click lustfully around the fabric shops online I hear myself saying "Help me, I'm poor!" LOL! I'm not really poor. But if I'm not careful, this quilting hobby can get to be very expensive!

Let's think about this for a second! (Ew math! Ahh..) A 60"x60" quilt might use..

• 3 yards of fabric on the top @ $10.00/yard for designer beautiousness
• batting @ ... maybe $10 bucks if you're like me and just use warm n white with a Jo-Ann's coupon
• 3 yards of fabric on the back @ ??? Maybe you go cheaper on the back, let's just go with $5.00/ yard
• 1/2 yard for the binding... I'll go with $5.00/yard again
• thread...

That's $60. And yeah, this is just based on my experience and of course the numbers are different for every quilt. But it's pretty easy to spend big moolah on one single quilt. If you want to make a few quilts a month you are almost making a car payment. Okay I'll stop being annoying now. :)

This is what's been going through my mind when thinking about what my next quilt should be. I've recently bought some really pretty fabric that I can't decide what to do with. I can't cut into this stuff until I'm really, really sure I won't change my mind! But I'm still itching to quilt, and I don't have a huge fabric stash, so for now I've been working on cutting up the rest of the quilt top I showed you guys the other day that I bought for just a few dollars at an antique store. I bought it so long ago it's like quilting for free. :)

I've sorted the fabric into colors and found that there is a lot of red, and a lot of blue.

I really like the way the reds and blues look together, and since summer is quickly approaching my plan is to start a scrappy "picnic" quilt, you know, for BBQ's, naps, and of course, fourth of July fireworks! :) haha That sounds so nerdy.

Anyway, I think I'll cut each one into two rectangular pieces and chain them all together, then sew them into random rectangles sizes and then sew that up with some blocks of white. (Phew!) I really want to make it completely random and very modern. And cool.

I also ended up with a lot of browns. I'm going to save these colors and use them for inspiration in the fall.

This print made me think about a certain set of prints that I want, I really, really want...

Seriously, who doesn't already have flea market fancy or want it? Sigh... so pretty! I think the brown print above looks like it could be part of the fall bundle.

Some other prints I cut out of the the top...

And last but not least, the pile of rejects - yuck. Maybe I can use these somehow, but I'm really not sure. I'll save them just in case. :)

So anyhow, how do you guys afford the habit?

Fabric Haul! Pat Bravo

I love getting things in the mail! Who doesn't?! So when my package of fat quarters arrived the other day, I was happy dancing. :)

{fat quarter shop}

I went with the Pat Bravo Poetica collection - I love the color combination of purple and green, and the softness of the florals. So pretty!

I originally found the collection while browsing through the fat quarter shop, but ended up purchasing it on etsy through five monkey fabrics. The price was great and the shipping was super fast.

I have to admit, I don't know a whole lot about fabric designers. (All you cool people are like, what, you had never heard of Pat Bravo? What's wrong with you woman?) I'm familiar with some of the the big names, but I mostly just buy what looks good to me. So since I liked these prints so much I went to Pat Bravo's website - it's pretty sweet. She has some free sewing projects and tutorials. I found a tutorial for a quilt.. I haven't tried a hexagon quilt yet - I'm thinking about it! Of course the design phase of quilting is the best part, and I always change my mind about a 100 times!

{tutorial}