Met my goal for today on the Guild Challenge Quilt

Today's goal was to get words on the quilt. I met that goal and even surpassed it. That makes me happy!

I put freezer paper on the back of some muslin, put a printout of words on the back of that, and borrowed Princess Sunshine's light box so I could trace

 the letters onto the muslin. 

Yes, I'm still in my robe, I was just so excited to get working on this that I started before 

I hopped into the shower.

I also put the name of the poem in the first border as well as the author's name :) It was a little bit harder to trace those letters as I couldn't see what I was doing. The letters were visible through the brown fabric, but I couldn't see the ink I was putting on the fabric.

Out came the bag of ACU fabrics. The Army Guy breaks down his old uniforms when they get too worn out and gives me bags of these fabric pieces ... and I work on finding creative ways to use them ... and this is a perfect quilt to use some.

I trimmed up some pant legs to the right size and then sewed them to the sides of the quilt. This is where I ended up not so happy. I miscut two of the sides and they are a smidge too short, causing the center of the quilt to bulge *sigh* As long as the borders need to come off, I think I'm going to ditch the black corner blocks, they just seem like black holes in the corners of the quilt (and they just beg for a special quilting treatment and I am not sure I want to go there).

Tomorrow's goal will be to fix the borders and then to applique the boots on the quilt.

I'm getting excited about the quilt! It is starting to come together as I saw it in my head. Now quilting designs are dancing in my imagination, lets hope they gel soon so I can apply them!

The poem, Daddy's Boots is by C.J. Heck and can be found HERE. The author has graciously given  permission to use the poem for this quilt.

Guild Challenge

My quilt guild has a challenge for us ... and I've had an idea rattling around in my head for months. I've been gathering photos for inspiration, found just the right words to add, looked for the embellishments ... and procrastinated.

The challenge pieces are due next Monday. So TODAY I started sewing ...

The challenge is to make a 35" square quilt with a minimum of 5 jewels on it. The theme is Shoes.

I wanted to do Combat Boots. So I have took a picture and analyzed it for shadows and made the picture big :) Then I used the techniques from Vicki Pignatelli's Quilting Curves book to draw up my pattern. I didn't dig out the book, so I had to work from memory and thus did some backtracking a time or two.

Here I have one boot sewn and then next one plotted out. I don't have all of the marking done on boot two, but you can get an idea of where I am going from the picture :)

 

The "fun" part of this quilt was the lacing system. I was unable to find the right stuff to make authentic looking quick lace and eyelets. I had a choice of shiny gold or shiny silver eyelets. I chose the silver ones as they were less obnoxious than the gold ones. 

The longest part of getting these boots done was preparing the pieces for the eyelets. Cutting the tiny little holes for the eyelets to go through with little scissors was time consuming (is there an easier way? If so, let me know in the comments!).

The second boot is in process. I use a lot of pins to hold those curves in place :) I don't want them to shift while I am sewing them!

Here are the finished boots - well, there are some more things that need doing, but the basic boots are now finished. I will work on getting them ready to applique on the quilt and they will get laces after the quilt is quilted (authentic laces right from the Army Guy's old boots!).

I'll try to remember to take more process photos as I work on other steps this week.

DWM - BOM with Jennings Copmmunity Church

This week on my Design Wall there are some more blocks from the Block of the Month I am doing with the Sewing/Quilting group in Jennings, MI.

Last month was the church and this month we worked on three houses and two stars.

The print in the center of the star with a green background fabric is my inspiration fabric. All of the other fabrics were pulled from that one. Thus, I let Princess Sunshine and The Boybarian choose fabrics for two of the houses (knowing they would all coordinate). That way my buildings didn't all end up looking alike :)

The Townhouse block showed rick-rack in one of the views, so I pulled some lace to make gingerbread instead (I liked the lace a smidge better).

For even more Design Wall Inspiration check out Patchwork Times (one of my all-time favorite quilting blogs!).

 

A Detour to a Finish

With various other things happening this week, I took the lonely block from the quilt I was planning to make for Project Quilting Challenge 4 and I made a 

throw pillow cover :)

 There was no way that I could get the larger project quilted in time ...

One of the things I did for this smaller project was to miter my corners. I wish I had done that on the larger project.

 I chose to quilt a modified McTavishing in the light areas of the quilt with some leaf shapes in the corners. They just seemed to be the right soft touch against

 the spiky points of the star :)

 When I finished quilting the top, I found that I had picked up a straggler - quilted right into the back is a leftover 4 patch from the Easy Street Mystery. I am SO glad that this is a pillow cover and this oops will not be a design feature seen by many people!

 I finished off the pillow by putting a buttoned back on so I can take the feather pillow form out and

wash the pillow cover.

I'm so excited that there is a finish for this challenge!!!!

A lot was accomplished!

Yesterday, I got a lot accomplished on my 

Project Quilting Challenge 4 quilt!

When I designed my challenge quilt I went to EQ - 
love it :) And I put my stars in a setting I thought I would like - though I think I will hang the quilt above my bed in a horizontal setting ...

Once I got the blocks on my design wall, I realized that three blocks were enough and I was happy to not include the sashing (more work and they didn't seem to add that much to the design).

So, the quilt top is complete -

 and I've even got some markings for quilting :)

Yes, the blue border is WAY too big, but I like that. When the border is too wide, it gives me a lot of room for squaring up after quilting and blocking and before the binding goes on.

I have pieced a back :) As you can see, I have to square it up before I start quilting!

How are your projects coming?

A Good Start on PQ Challenge 4

I'm working on Challenge 4 of Season 4 of Project Quilting; Wish Upon A Star. I had two different ideas running around in my head, one more traditional and the other an art quilt. Since the art quilt was going to be more involved and I knew I had to run children here and there this week, had a dentist appointment and hope to go sew on my BOM with the Jennings Community Church sewing group on Friday, I decided to go the traditional route.

And after I got a good start, the snow picked up and cancelled the Drama activities for the children today, so I got to stay home and accomplish something on my project!

I started off making a bunch of four patches - I know, they aren't stars, but they are part of my design. I have a few more to make to use in the setting of my blocks.

Then I cut all the pieces for my triangle in a square units.

The triangle in square units are all sewn, but it is getting on to suppertime and the Boybarian thinks he wants to eat, so I just have a few trimmed up. Below is a mock-up of the block:

This small quilt is going to be scrappy as I think it will hang on the wall in the same room as The Stars Sing and that is a scrappy quilt!

FINISHED! Challenge 3 - Trust

This piece is for Project Quilting Season 4, Challenge 3 - Annie's Vision. I started talking about my design process HERE and HERE. Today I completed the challenge by quilting and binding it.

This was a huge accomplishment as I came down with an intestinal issue this week and have not been firing on all gears.