Friday Projects Update
Hi, I hope everyone has had a good week. I thought I would share a Friday Projects Update.
I have been slowly but surely working away on my half square triangles for my Sea Stars quilt pattern testing. I should put the emphasis on slowly. The sewing part is no problem, it is getting them all pressed and squared up that is so time-consuming.
(The pile of trimmings make pretty confetti. See my pretty new rotary cutter. Zebra striped. )
I have tried a couple different techniques for squaring up the half square triangles. One is to press open first and then square up on all four sides, if needed. Then I tried where you trim before pressing open and it trims off the little ears in one swoop. I am not going to say yet, which one was better for me.
Has anyone tried this specialty ruler for creating Half Square Triangles? It’s by June Tailor and there is a video online how to use it. I bought it with a 40% off coupon at JoAnn’s. I have been using the 4 1/2 inch square ruler with pink Post-It tabs taped to where I need to cut my HSTs. I used the full size on the Mod Gears quilt blocks, and will move it smaller and smaller to make the sizes need for Sea Stars and WoW-E quilt blocks.
I always like to have a non quilting sewing project to work on for some down time. I have been wanting a new purse to carry and I like the cross body styles of bags as they cause less stress on my shoulders.
I am looking at Noodlehead’s Trail Tote or Swoon’s Ramona Mini Hipster bag. They both are free patterns that you can download. The Trail Tote closes with a magnet, and Ramona closes with a recessed zipper. I really am more comfortable using a zippered purse. So I am thinking of applying the recessed zipper technique to the Trail Tote???
I love this text and postage stamp canvas print. It has ridges or ripples in it. It is a remnant left of the fabric my Mom made a purse out of. It was the purse she carried up until the day she passed away in June 2013.
This is a very intricate machine embroidery of the Eiffel Tower that my Mom made as a sample. It is on a piece of white cotton that measures 6 by 11 inches, and the embroidery is 2 by 5 inches. I have had this set aside for something special and thought I could use it on an inside pocket of a purse so I would have a daily reminder of my Mom with me.
I have also come across another free pattern for an awesome tote bag that I would like to make. It is the Day At the Beach Bag with Rope Handles at Sew 4 Home website.
These are two gorgeous quality canvas fabrics that were some of the last fabrics I knew my Mom purchased. She had purchased them online. My Mom loved to make all kinds of bags and purses. And she loved France and everything French. It was her dream to travel to France. I took three years of French classes in high school many moons ago. It has not been used much after marrying into a German speaking family. lol
I have numerous bag making supplies. I have some painters canvas tarp material left over from other projects that can be used for the plain top portions of the Day at the Beach bags. I all ready have grommets and roping in the supplies as well, so it is a sign that I need to make these bags.
Hope all the Moms had a wonderful Mother’s Day. I had a great day with my husband and kids. My kids went all together with my husband and got me a new camera for Mother’s Day. I have not had a chance to truly play with it yet this week. It’s Wi-Fi enabled so it is supposed to upload my photos to my email or possibly Facebook accounts.
It is a Samsung WB380F camera. It has white simulated leather finish, so it should be interesting to keep it clean??
I hope to make some more progress sewing up all the blocks and pieces to make Sea Stars and Mod Gears quilt tops this weekend. I have not touched WoW-E yet, other than cut out all the pieces and bag them up in a ziploc. I am redressing which way I want to make my HSTs since the little ones in WoW-E finish at 1.5 inches (you want them accurate on the first try.)
I will be linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts.
Have a great weekend.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Sew Mama Sew May Giveaway Winner
Hi, I am announcing the winner of my Sew Mama Sew Giveaway prize package of the set of charm packs and winner’s choice of three Meadow Mist Designs’s quilt patterns.
For an entry comment, I asked which quilt pattern was or has been your favorite to make or use. It was very interesting to read everyone’s comments. There are numerous quilters who love paper piecing and English Paper Piecing. Lots of traditional block patterns listed, Disappearing four patch and nine patches as well. It was great to see that there were others out there that loved plus and cross blocks as much as I do and the Swoon quilts.
I had 375 entries this time around, a jump of 125 more than December’s giveaway. This produced a healthy increase in email, Bloglovin and Facebook followers of my blog. My blog is set up with an internal comment counter and did not number each one as 1-375 as I would like. My contest comments were 1403 to 1789. I entered those numbers into Random.org and it picked the winning comment of 1768.
Tamie Herin is our winner!
I’m working on a Swoon right now and enjoying how it’s coming together.
Tamie has been contacted and replied back with her mailing address. Her fabrics will be in the mail tomorrow.
Thank you again to everyone that entered. I hope many of you choose to stick around awhile and see more of what I am quilting. I look forward to researching some of the favorite patterns you all listed as there were some that I never heard of.
Hope to have an update on my HST sew-athon in a couple days.
Happy Sewing until then,
Shelley
HST Progress (2 out of 3 quilts)
Hi, I thought I would give a quick update on the progress I have made on working on my 3 kid size quilts that have the half square triangle palooza going on with their creation. I have sample blocks created for two of three quilts (Sea Stars and Mod Gears). I have all the HSTs made for Mod Gears and Sea Stars is still in production.
I am making HSTs in 8 bright colors for the Sea Stars quilt which is being pattern tested for Meadow Mist Designs.
I have 4 different focus prints that I will be making the plus blocks from and I plan on mixing up the 8 potential HST colors amongst the prints to get a good mix for each block.
I have all the HSTs made for Mod Gears, but only have 4 out of 16 blocks sewn up. I did not make any additional progress on this quilt top this week yet.
It has been a very somber week at our house as we had to make the decision on Monday to have our beloved Australian Shepherd Mattie to sleep. She was 15 years old and had cancer. I have had numerous dogs in my lifetime but this is the first one that I had to experience this with. It is not a good feeling and we know our 10 year old Black Lab, Abbey is noticing that Mattie is missing. Mattie was my husband’s dog and he has taken this extremely hard. We will leave it up to him to say when he is ready to get another dog. We got Mattie three weeks after our first dog, Freddie passed away.
On a happier note, I would like to remind everyone that I am participating in Sew Mama Sew’s Giveaway Day this week. The contest is open til Sunday May 1oth evening, and the winner will be drawn by the morning of May 12th.
I am giving away three charm packs of fabric and the winner’s choice of 3 of Meadow Mist Design’s patterns (pdfs).
Thank you all for stopping by and I hope all the Moms out there have a great Mother’s Day weekend.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Sew Mama Sew May Giveaway Day
Welcome to Sew Mama Sew’s Giveaway Day for May 2015! (This contest has ended. Our winner is Tamie Herin.)
Today I am participating in Sew Mama Sew’s Giveaway Day for the second time. I have been a long time follower and reader of Sew Mama Sew’s blog. It is a wonderful source of the lastest and greatest of sewing and crafting. I love seeing all the new tutorials and meeting new designers and reading their blogs.
For those of you who maybe new here today, I am Shelley, The Carpenter’s Daughter and I have been quilting on and off for over 20 years and started this blog back in July of last year. I make alot of my quilts as gifts for graduations, birthdays, anniversaries and weddings. I have been fortunate to be able to pattern test for some great quilt designers in the last year. I have learned a lot of new techniques and had a lot of fun along the way.
Here is a photo of one of my current work in progress:
(Mod Gears by Don’t Call Me Betsy. It will be a baby quilt for friends who love Harley motorcycles. )
Up for grabs today, I am offering three fun charm packs of fabric and a set of 3 quilt patterns from Meadow Mist Designs. Cheryl Brickey with Meadow Mist Designs is donating a set of 3 of her patterns for my contest, (the winner’s choice from any on her website.)
Denyse Schmidt’s Hadley (set of prints and solids)
3 of the winner’s choice of patterns from the pattern collection of Meadow Mist Designs
To enter this contest, please leave a comment telling what quilt pattern or design is or has been your favorite to create? (I am obsessed with all plus and cross quilt patterns and am currently working on a tremendous amount of half square triangles.)
For old and new followers of my blog, you can get another entry in the contest by leaving me a comment on how you follow my blog. There are links on the front page to email, Bloglovin or Facebook.
Please leave your email, if you are a non blogger so we have a way to get in contact with you.
This contest is open to both US and Overseas. The contest will be open through May 1oth. And the winner will be drawn by May 12th.
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Fresh Sewing Day: May 1st
Hi, It’s the First of May and on the first of the month we review what we accomplished the month before and share our blog posts over at Lily’s Quilts Fresh Sewing Day and Small Blog Meet.
I finished quilting my Old School NFL football jersey print Adding Up Nicely quilt. It is a gift for my 1 year old nephew Casey. I appliqued his name on the back of the quilt.
I dug out of storage one of my oldest flimsies (from 1999), a quilt top for my son. I am working on designing a back for it and will be quilting it in the near future.
I have two quilt tops made from pattern testing for Meadow Mist Designs. A queen size Plus Plus and a twin size Grande Scrappy Tiles.
In the last days of April, I have pulled fabric and cut out all the pieces for three small kid’s quilts. One is a pattern test for Sea Stars for Meadow Mist Designs. The other two are made from patterns I purchased at the end of last year. One is Mod Gears by Don’t Call Me Betsy and the other is WoW-E by Sew Fresh Quilts. You can read more about these quilt projects on my last blog post. All three quilts have a major amount of half square triangles to create.
Last week, I purchased some new fun fabrics, the twenty fat quarters set of Katrina Roccella’s Skopelos fabric line. I am not usually drawn to overly flowerly fabric lines, but this one is quite beautiful and I love all the coordinating prints. The Art Gallery fabrics have such a nice feel to them.
I purchased one new quilt pattern in April. I got Star Crossed by Color Girl Quilts. I purchased Jumping Jacks by Color Girl as well a month or so. I have seen the designer make up versions of her quilts in Skopelos fabric line so that was what sparked my first interest in the fabric. I do have Katrina’s other line of fabric, Indelible to play with yet too.
I also purchased a new clothes pattern. I have not sewn any clothes for my daughter or myself in quite awhile. We have collected some cute new knit fabrics and I found a neat top that does not take a whole lot of fabric. The Spoxxy Top by StitchUponATime.com and it’s sold on Etsy. I purchased a men’s under armor type material shirt on clearance that I am going to upcycle some of the material for the back to go with the jersey knit we have to make this shirt hopefully. I need to rethread my serger as that will make easy work of this pattern and help manage the knits better.
I do have an update on one of the kid’s quilt patterns that I started sewing this week. I got all the half square triangles created for the Mod Gears quilt top. I need to finish pressing and squaring them all up. There is 64 HSTs in this quilt top and I squared up 8 of them so far to do a mockup of the two block versions to show what it is going to look like.
What do you think? Should I put the orange pluses with the gray or with the black gears?
I will be participating in Sew Mama Sew’s May Giveaway Day on May 6th -10th. I am giving away some pretty fabric charm packs and a set of quilt patterns. Be sure to come back then and enter the contest.
I am linking up this post with Lily’s Quilt Fresh Sewing Day, Crazy Mom Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? and Prairie Sewn Studios’ Crafting Comment Karma.
Hope everyone has a great weekend.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
HST Palooza: 3 Baby Quilts at once
Hi, I am sharing my newest works in progress this week. I am pulling fabrics for 3 baby or kid size quilts. If you are a regular follower, you would know that I am known for making larger quilts when ever possible. I am working on making three special smaller quilts.
I am pattern testing Sea Stars by Meadow Mist Designs and will be making the lap size quilt as my test quilt. It is supposed to finish off at 60 inches square. The blocks finish off at 15 inches and there are lots and lots of half square triangles. I think 192 in this particular quilt size. This will be for a 2 year old girl cousin.
I pulled a set of 5 fat quarters from my stash that I have had since before my 3 year old grandson was born. I purchased some girl and boy fabrics before we knew what the baby was going to be. Our family has 8 boys in a row from 2 months old to 17 years old. It will be fun to play with girly colors for once. I picked my favorite 4 of the five fat quarters. The missing print was an orange with white flowers and it was not bold enough to go with the rest of my fabrics. I found the eight bright solids at our Walmart. They brought fabrics back last year and these fabrics are from Waverly. I was very pleasantly surprised on the quality of these new fabrics. They are $2.97 a yard and I purchased a half yard of each and cut in half to make two fat quarters as I am making a coordinating quilt with the other half pieces.
I am going to make a coordinating WoW-E quilt which is a pattern by Lorna McMahon of Sew Fresh Quilts. This version of the quilt is supposed to finish off at around 41 inches by 52 inches. This quilt takes upwards of 320 half square triangles and half of them are quite tiny. This should be a cute coordinating quilt to go to the 8 month old sister of the 2 year old recipient of the Sea Stars quilt.
To balance out all the girly cuteness, I am making a Mod Gears quilt by Elizabeth Dackson at Don’t Call Me Betsy. This is a really cool modern take on the churn dash and adds a plus block center. I thought it would be great for a special little boy, whose both parents like Harley Davidson motorcycles. There will gray and black gears with the orange and red plus centers. There is 64 half square triangles in this quilt, which is the least of the three quilts and also the largest triangles to make. I am making the throw size quilt which supposed to finish off at 56.5 inches square. This quilt divides up the needed plus blocks between two colors and adds one accent plus. I had the idea to add one Harley print plus block, but I was not able to find any fabrics that were Harley related in my area. I looked on Ebay and a single fat quarter of Harley fabric was going from $13. to $22.00 a piece, so I decided to just use an even amount of red and orange blocks. I purchased enough fabric that I am going to incorporate the little boy’s name on the back of the quilt.
So you can see that I will be really busy sewing and creating half square triangles in numerous sizes and in abundance for my three smaller quilts. Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs wanted the quilt patterns tests turned in by June 17th so I will be starting on the Sea Stars first. I have finished off two other pattern test quilts for her this month, Plus Plus and Grande Scrappy Tiles. I am working on creating backs for both quilts.
I am participating in Sew Mama Sew’s May Giveaway Day during the week of May 6-10th. I am giving away some fabric and patterns so be sure to come back and enter the contest.
I am off to sharpen some pencils and sit with a ruler and mark off the diagonal lines for my half square triangle palooza.
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
The Cowboy Way: Grande Scrappy Tiles Flimsy Finish
Hi, I am excited to share today my finished quilt top made from Grande Scrappy Tiles that I am pattern testing for Meadow Mist Designs. I completed it before midnight, so that still counts as a Friday Finish, right? (Hard to take photos that late, if someone is sleeping in the bed. lol)
This is made with 30 different prints from stripes, plaids to cowboys, horses and boots. I was worried about combining all of them together, but I think they all mesh together nicely. Nice flow of color as well. I like it the pattern so much, that I can see it in possible patriotic prints which I have a ton of or all different plaids as I have a ton of homespuns. Some of the focus prints are upside down or sideways, but that is just the nature of the block. This quilt is just One Block and you flip it this way and that. I would think about cutting certain prints differently, if it was important that they be upright. The pattern uses fat quarters or 1/4 yard cuts. I used both, so it make it just a little more tricky cutting out. But Cheryl has a great chart telling you exactly how many of each block segment you need. So you can cut this top easy from your scraps and stash of fabrics.
This is a twin top on a king size bed. It is 72 inches by 96 inches.
Turned sideways on bed. There are so many of my old favorite fabrics in this quilt. I can not wait to start quilting on it. I am hoping to draw out a plaid type quilting on it. Use the arm extension on the walking foot and painters tape?? I have to figure out what to use on the backing. I still have lots of the same scraps. My daughter wants to save back the black background cowboy face print as we have had that set aside to use as lining in a leather purse we are designing to make.
I love this cowboy print and Mr. PoleCat is in the center of the block. He is my favorite. It makes me think of Doc Holliday.
I also love the cowboy boot print fabric. I had to use this fabric in the quilt. My daughter loves her cowboy boots. She has 7 pairs of Tony Lamas.
It is fitting to get this top completed this week as my daughter starts her internship at the horse farm on Monday.
I will be linking up this finish with Crazy Mom’s Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?, TGIFF, Oh Scrap and Prairie Sewn Studios Craft Comment Karma and Scraptastic Tuesday.
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Plus Plus Flimsy: Fri. Finish
Hi, It’s Friday and I have a Friday Finish to share. I have finished putting together my queen size Plus Plus top that I pattern tested for Meadow Mist Designs.
I have never been more happy to see all 121 blocks finally come together. I really like how it turned out.
This is a queen size top on a king size bed. It is 99 inches square. It covers the bed from pillows to floor, and almost covers both sides of entire mattress. (One more row of blocks or a 6 inch border strip added to both length sides would finish off the size of top we like on the bed, but this will work nicely as well. )
There just is not enough room in our bedroom to get the whole bed in the photo from this angle. I was standing in the closet, maybe next time will push the clothes aside and go further back and it will finally get the full bed in the photos.
I tried turning the quilt top around the other direction of bed to see if that would work better??
I plan to use the accent plus’ fabric (Amy Butler’s Midwest Modern) as an accent stripe to back of the quilt. I am also looking at quilting it in an allover checkerboard grid which will call for adding the spacer arm to the walking foot.
The Plus Plus quilt pattern is two complete patterns in one. Today, Cheryl is showing her versions on her blog, Meadow Mist Designs. She is today’s stop on RJR Fabrics What Shade are you? blog hop. Cheryl is having an introductory sale on the Plus Plus pattern on her Craftsy and Etsy pattern pages for $6.00 til May 3rd. Be sure to go check out her posts as her two Plus Plus quilts turned out so awesome!
I will be linking up my Friday Finish with Crazy Mom Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?, TGIFF and Prairie Sewn Studios’ Crafting Comment Karma.
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Sewing and Have a great weekend,
Shelley
WIP: PlusPlus Half A Flimsy
Hi, I am sharing today how far I have come along on the pattern testing of Plus Plus. All 121 blocks are sewn and pressed. I am half way through assembling the top into rows now. Plus Plus will finally be a quilt top yet this week. Yeah!
This is the bottom half of the quilt top turned lengthwise to show all the blocks pieced so far. Only 66 more blocks need to go into rows…..
This is the right direction and shows how the accent block will lay on top of the bed. It will actually hit the end of the top of the mattress on our king bed. (Still undecided on what bed will wear this quilt, it may visit the full size bed in our guest room.)
These photos show close up of accent block and show where it is placed in the quilt top. Piecing the rows together is going fairly fast since you do not have lots of seams to match up.
Cheryl will be sharing on her blog Meadow Mist Designs her two versions of the Plus Plus pattern this weekend. RJR Fabrics is having a blog hop and her blog is a stop on April 26th.
Thanks for stopping by. I am looking at having this top pieced for a Friday Finish this week and hope to have more progress to show on my cowboy and horses themed Grande Scrappy Tiles quilt top as well.
I will be linking up with WIP Wednesday over at Fresh Pieced and Let’s Bee Social.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Grande Scrappy Tiles/Plus Plus Testing Updates
Hi, I would like to share my progress on pattern testing Grande Scrappy Tiles and Plus Plus for Meadow Mist Designs.
I got all my fabric pull for Grande Scrappy Tiles all pressed and cut today. I have decided to make the twin size version instead of a queen size. Grande Scrappy Tiles makes 24 inch blocks so you only need 12 for a twin or 16 blocks for a queen size quilt. The blocks can be easily cut from fat quarters or regular 1/4 yards. All my fabrics were from my stash and I had a good mix of fat quarters and 1/4 yd pieces. By having both, it made just a bit more work for me, to try and keep track of how many of which block I was cutting. The pattern has good chart diagrams to work from.
This is a sample block that I have laid out. I ended up adding a couple more prints. A white background horse print same as the black one, a green cross hatched print, an all over cowboy boot print on a green background and a cream with green/blue plaid. I think this took me up to 31 different prints.
Here is a second possible sample block. By having so many prints I am going to have to take extra time to swap them out to get a good overall mix in each block. There is only one style of block to make for this quilt and it just gets turned around in various ways to make the quilt top.
My big pile of fabric is all cut up into the various squares and rectangles. (I may need to add a couple more larger squares of my cowboy focus fabric to the mix.)
I spent a good portion of this week sewing the blocks for my Plus Plus quilt top. I have all 60 of the large pluses made, and am down to adding the last leg or pieced side to the small plus blocks. 50 out of the 60 need their last side.
I purchased a neat tool last night. It is a plastic wall paper seam roller. It is quite helpful in hand pressing or rolling the seams open on quilt blocks. I had looked for one of these rollers when I did my big paper piecing quilt project last year. I know they used to have a wooden roller but this one is plastic. It was only $1.98 at the home improvement store. It was quite helpful with the smaller plus blocks, making for less trips to the ironing board. I will give the blocks a final actual press when they are completed.
I hope to finish up my plus blocks this weekend and start assembling the 121 blocks into their top. I am thinking this quilt might be for our guest bedroom.
Thank you for stopping by. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I will be linking up with Crazy Mom’s Quilts and Prairie Sewn Studios Comment Karma.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
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