Failed finish

Hi everyone!  Is it getting colder where you are?  It certainly was chilly here this week.  I shouldn't be surprised, though, because it's November, right?  Winter is coming, whether we want it to or not.  I'm actually looking forward to some cold and some other things about winter, but I know there will be white stuff falling from the sky soon, and I'm not looking forward to that.  I have seen how badly they clear the roads here, and it's just not pretty.

Also not pretty?  The little quilt that I wanted to be my finish for this week:

This little quilt is cute, but it counts as a fail for me, at least for now. I finished this a long time ago and chose the backing and everything. It's time for it to be completely finished! I tried two new things on this quilt and messed up both of them.  I should stick to just one new thing at a time.

It all started with this:

Yikes!  What can that possibly be?  That, my friends, is all the quilting work I've been putting off for at least the last year.  Okay, maybe a little longer.  Some of these were tops from before we moved that I never got around to, so I just folded them up and packed them away, but most are from the last year at the condo, when I had no space to actually quilt them up.  Now that there's room, I have both of my machines set up *plus* a table just to quilt on, so I thought I would spend much of the next few weeks quilting these up.  I thought I would start with the smallest ones and work my way up from there.  Great plan, right?

Here's where I went wrong--I almost always thread baste the old fashioned way.  I only use pins on tiny things where it doesn't matter that much, like mug rugs or very small wall hangings. Thread basting goes so much faster for me and works really, really well. It holds everything together nice and secure and I haven't had wrinkles in the back. But I thought I'd use pins here and just try it.  Yeah, here's what happened:

A big wrinkle!  Stitched in! There are a couple of smaller ones too. Before you ask, yes, I used a walking foot,  I smoothed everything, I checked the back all the time, and I used lots of pins.  I should not have wrinkles! What to do now?  Ripping it out seems to be the only solution, but the very thought makes me tired.

Here's my other mistake-- the spiral quilting.  It turn out looking pretty nice here, but I think I made it too close together.  It took forever and the top is very stiff. How far apart would you make your spirals?  These are about a half-inch apart, which seemed to be right for a small quilt. I was wrong about that. Again, ripping seems to be the only solution.

So, I was going to admit defeat and start on another one, doing something completely different (and more fun), but then this happened:

Siiiggghhh.  How does this even happen?  It's just completely unspooling. Time to pack it in for now.

So, that was my big fail for the week!  I did mean what I said earlier, though--I have to work my way through those tops.  Seems like a good project for the holiday period, doesn't it? We'll see how it goes!  I'm going to spend the weekend piecing together some batting and cutting some backings.  Hope you have something fun lined up!  If you have any good suggestions for my failed little quilt, let me know!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday.

An upcoming event

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for all the comments and compliments on the Autumn Jewels quilt from the Autumn Abundance blog hop!  The hop was fun and I still love how the quilt turned out.  Congratulations to Lori and Mary, who won the giveaways. 

I am sniffling on the couch with a cold today, so no sewing (cold medicine and sharp objects do not mix), so I wanted to spend a little time letting you know about something that I have coming up later this month, the week of Thanksgiving.  Here it is:

Yes, it's a sale!  But not like any other sale.  Let me explain:

As most of you know, we moved a long distance last year and then had most of our belongings in storage for a year while we lived in a tiny condo and got used to our new life.  During this year I had a very tiny stash and had to sew in the dining area (which wasn't even a room), which meant a lot of restriction on my projects.  When we finally bought a house and were able to get our things out of storage it was like Christmas.  I cried when I opened some of those boxes, especially the ones with fabric in them.  Really.

Yardage! Wrinkled but still great!

Very quickly, though, I started to be overwhelmed.  I have too much!  Plus I am acutely aware that some people have far too little of the real necessities, and I am really, really grateful for everything that we've been blessed with. So I started putting aside many things --books, notions, and fabric--that I know I won't use. (It's amazing how much more objective you can be when you haven't seen any of it in a year!)  I came up with an idea that will get these things out of my sewing room and will do some good for others who are in desperate need of things other than fabric. I am going to sell these things, but the money does not go to me.  Instead, I want to "sell" these things in exchange for a donation to one of three charities.  That is, you won't pay me, but instead you'll make an equivalent donation to one of the designated charities, then send me proof (like the receipt) that you did so.  That way you get to choose where your money goes and are sure that it went to the charity of your choice.  I'll tote up the postage, you'll pay that through Paypal, then I'll send your items.  You get some nice things (that you choose) plus a tax deduction, I get a cleaner sewing room, and some very deserving charities get some donations.  Wins all around!

Books and notions!

I've picked three charities for this sale, all of which are highly rated and use their donations very wisely.  We have donated to them many times and are confident in their integrity, but you can check any of these out for yourself on Charity Navigator or other evaluation sites:

Partners in Health, a global health organization. Right now they are dealing especially with the after effects of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti. If you want to know more about their work, click HERE.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the primary research center for childhood cancer.  No child is turned away because of inability to pay.  To find out more about their work, click HERE.

Fisher House Foundation, a "home away from home" for families of military personnel or veterans receiving treatment.  There are 71 Fisher Houses in the US. To find out more about Fisher House, click HERE.

This sale will run the week of Thanksgiving here in the US, from Sunday through Black Friday, November 20-26. (You'll have your things before Christmas!  It's like a gift for yourself!) Anything left after that will be donated to various charities.  I'm willing to ship anywhere, but keep in mind that you will be paying the postage.  I'll have complete details when we start on November 20. I'm stocking up on flat-rate boxes and envelopes, along with some padded envelopes and tape.  Plus I'm photographing all of these fabric bundles, books, and other things!  Did I mention that there are some freebies also? 

Unopened fabric bundles!

I know this is a little weird, but let me know what you think!  If you think this is a good idea and would like to do something similar, I'm willing to consider a link-up, or at least adding a link to your blog to the sale page. My head's a little fuzzy (maybe a lot fuzzy), so I hope I explained it all okay.  And I hope you'll come back on Sunday, November 20, and get yourself some treasures! 

Sharing at Linky Tuesday and Let's Bee Social.

Autumn Jewels

Hi everyone, and welcome to my turn on the Autumn Abundance blog hop!  The temps have fallen dramatically (really! It was 40 degrees last night!) and it's time to think about cuddling up on the sofa, drinking hot chocolate, and buttoning up because winter is coming.  This celebration of the season was organized by Bernie at Needle and Foot and is sponsored by Paintbrush Studio.  We each received some lovely fabrics from Paintbrush, and here is what I managed to do with mine:

An autumn-themed Jewel Box quilt!  Aren't those fabrics really great and rich-looking?  I'm really thrilled with how this turned out.  The fabrics are from the Into the Woods line, and the solids are also Painter's Palette Solids from Paintbrush.  (There are free patterns all over if you follow those links, so check it out and see what you can find!)

This picture is the closest to the true colors of the fabrics. 

I was seriously worried about this background color, which is the solid in Curry.  Jewel Box quilts are traditionally made with either a black background or a white one to showcase the fabrics, so I wasn't sure how the curry color would turn out.  I think it turned out great for a fall quilt!  It's such a nice warm color and complements the others so nicely.
 

Making this quilt is really easy.  My quilt turned out at about 60 by 68, a nice cuddle size, and used 42 8-inch blocks.   Each of the blocks used 2 4-patches and 2 (gigantic!) half-square triangles.  Use 2-1/2 inch strips to make the 4-patches, which should measure 4-1/2 inches before they're sewn into the block.  If you want to make a quilt the same size as mine, with 42 blocks, you'll need 84 4-patches.  (Strip piece them and they won't take long!) I made the hsts using the Magic 8 method and cut 10-inch squares of each fabric.  You'll also need 84 of these.  Arrange the 4-patches and hsts like this:

Then it's just a matter of turning the blocks in various directions and laying them out to make the pattern in the quilt.  I tried to be as random as possible without having the same colors meet.  Somewhat more difficult than it sounds! Join the blocks into rows, and the rows into a finished quilt center.  For my borders, I cut the curry color at 1-1/2 inches to finish at 1 inch, and the larger leaf border at 5 inches.  Layer, quilt, and bind!

The giveaways are now closed!  Thanks to all who entered, and congratulations to Lori and Mary, who won the fabric sets.


And now for the giveaways!  I am giving away two sets of fabric:

First, there is this set of fabrics that didn't make the cut for the quilt.  They are lovely, though!  I received a fat quarter bundle and just didn't use all of them.  There are fat quarters of the yellow solid and a patterned yellow, neither of which showed up well with the curry, and also fat quarters of the leaf print and a nice brown, both of which have some pretty metallic accents.

For the second fabric set, I followed Bernie's lead and cut these into charm squares, plus added some leftover 2-1/2 inch squares.  I didn't count them, but there are plenty!  These would make up into something nice for Thanksgiving, if you're inclined to do that!

To win either of these fabric bundles, leave a comment on this post with a suggestion for something you like about fall.  I will draw for these on Halloween, Monday, October 31.  This giveaway is open to all, but if you are overseas (outside the US and Canada) I will ask you to pay for the shipping.  These don't weigh much!

Be sure to visit everyone else in the blog hop!  Not only are there some really lovely projects, but there are more giveaways to be had, including at least one brand new stack of fat quarters.  Here is the schedule:

October 24th – Bernie at Needle and Foot
October 25th – Janine at Quilts From the Little House
October 26th – Mari at Academic Quilter  (that's me!)
October 27th – Tish at Tish’s Adventures in Wonderland
October 28th – Sandra at MMM! Quilts




Hope you're enjoying the fall!  Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finish it Up Friday, and Finished or Not Friday.  See you there!  And thanks so much to Bernie and the other hoppers, and to Paintbrush for their generous support of this project.

Grandma has all her blocks

Hi everyone, and welcome to the politics-free part of the Internet.  It's nice here, isn't it?  So many nice people, so many pretty things to look at, and no name-calling.  Ahhh.

This week I managed to finish up the last 6 Grandma's blocks for one of my RSC16 projects!  Here are last month's:

Maroon and red, plus a deep gold.  I think this would be a great color scheme for an entire quilt, especially if you're a Harry Potter fan.  Here are the ones for October:

Sunny yellow and orange!  That gives a lot of life to any quilt.

Now that the blocks are done, you know what I had to do:

Yep, play with the block layout!  This was the most fun I had all week.  I think it's possible that this is the final layout, but I might play with it some more.  That one lighter green one bothers me a little bit, but I think I'll keep it. In the actual quilt it will blend right in, even if it looks like a hole in the quilt in pictures.

So now I need to figure out some border options.  Any ideas?  I'm thinking maybe piano keys, but there is also my recent "modern" favorite of just a small, clean border, maybe with a colorful strip in between two lighter layers.  I guess I'll have to play some more. Won't that be awful?

Doesn't this look peaceful?  Ahhh. . .

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  I had a lot of stress this week, so I'm hoping to relax a bit this weekend.  Next week the asphalt guys are coming to fix the driveway, which won't be stressful at all, I'm sure, and the kitchen guys are also coming back.  Piece of cake, right?

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and soscrappy for RSC16.