This or that? Opinions wanted

Hi all, it's been nice and quiet around here. Spending my time loving this little guy.

And of course his silly sister too.

I have snuck into the sewing room for a few minutes here and there. Managed to do a quick rearrange of the QST quilt. So here are my two options.
Color wash:

Or random:

Now, keep in mind random was done in about 2 minutes. I kind of just slapped everything up there as fast as I could. I would definitely tweak it before sewing.

But I've looked at these too long. I think I'm leaning one way, but I'd love to know which version you like best.

              

Guess who...

decided to make an appearance this morning after all? I'm so proud to introduce my little boy Evan.

 

I set up my wip post yesterday to auto post. Then last night my water broke and we were on our way. Evan joined us at 9:07am. He's 7lbs 4oz and perfectly healthy! 

We are both resting up and I'll respond to comments when things quiet down. Just wanted to let everyone know.

WIP Wednesday 2/8 - still waiting around

Well, another week and still no baby. That means I've still been plugging along in the sewing room. It's a good distraction and a lot easier on the body than cleaning. :)

Here's what is new this week:

I started a Retro Flowers wall hanging for Samantha's room. I have loved this quilt pattern since I first saw it. And we just got the 'big girl' furniture for her room which left some bare walls. I have a bit of fabric left over from her bed quilt so I'm using them to make a small version of this quilt to hang in there. These blocks are fairly time consuming with a lot of cutting and squaring but totally worth it!

Still in progress:


I decided to end the X block creation and pieced all of them together. This is probably the busiest quilt I've ever made. I want to do a solid double border on this to calm it down. I probably won't get out to the LQS until after the baby though so this is temporarily done.

I also started piecing my scrappy hourglass blocks into larger blocks. That way it won't be a nightmare of hundreds of little blocks when I finally finish the individual blocks. And I can also get a sense of how big it is becoming. The trick is making these blocks random. I seemed to be pulling all the same colors!

I finished putting together all the quarter square triangles for my version of this Red Pepper Quilt.  I used all the charms from Kati's Color Wheel Charm Swap.  I'm sure mine is going to be much smaller than the RPQ version. Now I need to decide on the layout. Here's my first pass. What do you think? Should I mix up all the colors? Right now it's just hurting my eyes.

And lastly, I've been attempting machine applique on my Dresdens. It looks okay, but I might still give hand applique a try and see if I like it better. Once I get a few done I'll do a few layouts of sashing options.

Waiting for quilting:
Double Wedding Ring
Kitchen Windows



I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced. Go join in too!

Free Motion Quilt Challenge February

Well, we must be getting closer to baby time because I'm starting to swell like a tick! Doctor says all is normal though so I'm plugging along.

The Free Motion Quilt Challenge has been perfect for me at this point. Small sized projects that don't take a huge amount of time. So I decided to attempt February's Challenge at Sew Cal Gal yesterday.

First off, the changes I made in my machine. I put my tension all the way down instead of up.

And I had heard from several sources (Pink Chalk Fabrics, Bunny Hill Designs, Sue Nickels - thanks Pat for loaning me the DVD!) that Microtex needles were the best to use for quilting. So I hopped over to Joann's and picked up a pack to try.

It seems to have made a difference. I started with some stippling to see what my stitches looked like.

The verdict was good! The stitches are much nicer. I think the microtex might be my go to needle for everything. Once I use up all the quilting needles I've stocked up on during sales - whoops!

So then I decided to try the feather challenge for February. Here's my first attempt.

Kinda wobbly, and some of my petals look more like whale heads than flower petals! I also have to work on my stopping and starting. I had some jumps where I thought the machine was stopped by it hadn't quite stopped yet. But overall, I'm okay with this as a first try. I will definitely give it another shot.

The feather tutorial from Diane Gaudynski was very good. I don't know how often I'll use this motif in my quilting, but I appreciate having the knowledge to make them. Definitely need to practice more. Go check out the tutorial and try it yourself!

WIP Wednesday - February 1st

Wow, February 1st?!  Alright, let's get to it.

Finishes:

I finally got my backing done for the Double Wedding Ring. Though I won't be doing any quilting until post baby (basting is a problem!). I may send this off to the quilter.

I also finished the Kitchen Windows top. You are only getting teaser pictures though. I couldn't get it to hang temporarily for photos and it was too cold, I really didn't want to go outside for pictures!


I could use some quilting ideas on this one. Right now I'm just thinking wavy line quilting across the short side?


In progress:

I managed to get done all 12 of my dresdens for the Scrappy Plate Club. Now I'm just waiting for the next set of directions. :)

Finished some more of the quarter square triangles for my color wheel charm swap quilt.

Lots more hourglasses for my scrappy quilt. I'm having a problem with all these scrappy quilts. The scraps never end, how do you decide when to stop? Right now this is still a pretty small quilt, but I feel like this one could be never ending!

And a whole bunch of blocks for my x-block quilt. This brings my total number of blocks to 72 so I'm going to start piecing them! I think I'm done making the blocks - woot woot!

I also did my 3rd free motion quilting attempt (I followed Leah Day's 2nd Quilt-a-long). My motion was a lot better on this one.

But when you look at it closely, I still have some tension issues. You can see how spikey it is. I have my tension at 10 (as high as it goes). So I guess I need to start playing with my needle and thread combos. I have a couple more resources to watch/read so hopefully that will help.

As usual, I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced. Head over and add yours to the linky party!

do.Good Boats

I went to the doctor on Friday for a routine baby check up and things are under way. Even though I'm not due until February 18th, I could go at any time! So I wanted to get my 'commitment' sewing out of the way this weekend so I don't have to worry about it.

We had a couple people leave our Bliss group at do.Good Stitches and some new join in. One of which i our Bee Mama Chris who assigned our February blocks. We are doing boat blocks of our choosing. The only requirements are the unfinished size at 10.5 inches and the background fabric of white. She requested a patchwork sail if possible. Our inspirations were this and this.

This was totally out of my comfort zone to just make up something. So for my first block I found a paper piecing pattern for a boat here. And then used a blanket stitch in aqua on my machine to attach it to the 10.5 inch block.

I decided the second one should be totally different since I guess all the blocks will be different! So I totally made the second one up as I went along. 

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out (despite the blurry photo!). I hope you like them Chris!! I can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with.

WIP Wednesday 1/25/12

First off, I have to admit there was not a lot of sewing done this week. I was cleaning and prepping the nursery and had a lot of my scrapbooking stuff stashed there. I found a whole stack of photos that I never did anything with.

Since I've started quilting I now use regular photo albums that have space to write in rather than scrap booking.  These photos somehow were in the middle time wise of all the photos in my albums. So I couldn't put them in the photo albums chronologically. They would however fit in my scrapbooks. So I hauled everything out and actually did a whole bunch of pages (about 20!).

I have to say, I think quilting has helped with my scrapbooking. I was much more confident with my color choices and design decisions. And since I was only going to use what I had on hand it was much easier to put together pages. I also think I had a little of the stash/hoard problems with paper that I now have with fabric. And it felt good to let go of that and just use anything!

Yesterday, I finally got to put it all away and get back out the sewing machine. I was definitely itching to sew! I started with another attempt at free motion quilting. After all the tips and tricks I was given after my last post and visiting The Free Motion Quilting Project I was ready to try again.

The pink thread was what I started with and I still had tension issues. Thankfully the bobbin ran out because I wound up re-threading with Aurifil and had much better success. I had to put my tension all the way to 10, but it looks much better. Here's the close up.

Still need to work on my movement, but at least part of the battle has been helped.

So before I put away my sewing things early in the week I did get a few things done. I started laying out my Kitchen Windows quilt.  I'm excited to get this one put together!

I also got done 8 of my Dresdens done for the Scrappy Plate Club. I think I've decided to back them with Moda White and then use this raspberry color as the sashing. Thoughts?? The centers will be pulled from the fabrics in the plates I think.

And I also joined a small I Spy swap being hosted by Kati. We each send in charms from 4 fabrics. These are my initial four. I've got some others pulled in anyone is unhappy with these!

I think that is everything I got done this week. I'm looking forward to pulling out my other projects today.

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday with Freshly Pieced. Head over and add your projects to the list.