Leftovers

My Giant Swoon left me with 32 nice big triangles.  I've been wanting to make a zig-zag quilt for a while now so I decided to turn these into one.  I ended up cutting them in half to double the HSTs I would have to work with and I came up with this:

It measures 28x33 inches.  I haven't decided what else I will do to it, a boarder I'm sure, but I don't know how big.

When doing the math to make my Giant Swoon block I made a stupid mistake when it came to the squares for all of the HSTs.  I ended up cutting them two whole inches too big.  So after sewing all of the squares together and cutting them apart I went through the bunch and cut those two inches off before I opened them up and pressed the seams open.

I should have taken a picture, but this left me with two 2 inch wide strips sewn together at an angle at one end.  I was able to trim a nice little HST off the end that measured 2 inches square and the rest became the boarder for the Giant Swoon block.  So now I had all of the HSTs I would need to make a mini Swoon block!  I just needed to scrounge up the fabric to make the rest of the block ( I had to piece together a couple of the pieces.)  I ended up with this:

My first mini quilt!  I'm pretty happy with it and now I have something to hang up in my sewing area!

Happy sewing!

Christine

Giant Swoon

Inspired by this post/quilt, I started this giant swoon block back in October.  I love the idea of making an entire quilt out of one block.  It has just been sitting in three rows since the day I started it.  With all of this Swoon-Along motivation floating around I finally got my butt in gear and finished it up.  I played around a bit with the size and ended making the block three times the original size.  The quilt top measures 75 inches square with the 1.5 inch border.

I had planned on just using solid grey for the boarder, but a mistake with the HSTs left me with a bunch of 2 inch strips that worked out perfectly for the job.  I am in the process of trying to piece the back together out of the fabric I have left over and an additional 2 yard piece of Heirloom I have on hand.  It's gonna be tight.

I can't wait to get this one finished up.  It will be all mine!  It's not going anywhere.  I love making quilts for others, but I really want one that I can admire and showoff whenever I want.  And when I finish my other swoon quilt I will have two! Yay!

Speaking of which, I have been thinking a lot about the finished size of my regular swoon quilt and I'm a little worried it will be too long for our bed.  Making 16 blocks with 2 inch sashing will finish at 106x106, a king mattress is 80x76.  Plus it only needs it to hang off the end and not the top, it needs to be wider than tall, not square.  So, I'm considering alternate layouts and sashing options.  I saw this quilt the other day in the Swoon-Along Flickr pool.  She made the original 9 block layout and then just sashed 3 sides.  I like this idea, but I kind of want the quilt to be able to stand on its own so only having 3 sides sashed kind of kills that.  So I was thinking of maybe something like this:



Four blocks wide by three and a half blocks long.  By staggering the blocks and using some half blocks it would eliminate having one row of just half blocks.  It would also be able to stand alone as just a large quilt.  I love the look of the drawing without sashing, but it would finish at 96x84 and I would like it to have a 12 inch drop so it needs to finish at 104x88 (and that doesn't account for shrinkage.)  So I am thinking about adding 1 inch (finished) sashing between the blocks with 2 inches on the top and bottom and 4 or 5 inches on the sides.  That should make it big enough. 

We will see...I like to change my mind.

Christine

Progress

My motivation from the other day only lasted through one Swoon block before my head cold got the best of me.  Since then I have managed to get all of the HST and flying geese marked and pinned for two more blocks.  Once I get them sewn and trimmed up I should fly through the piecing of two more blocks.

Ever since I stared this quilt and knew I would be making it king sized I have been considering my quilting options.  I would love to have it custom quilted, but I have a couple reservations: 1) Cost, it really isn't an affordable option for me and 2) I could no longer call it 100% my work.  Some day I would love to send a quilt to a long arm quilter just to have a beautifully quilted quilt, but that's probably years down the road.

Since I really don't want to try to wrestle a king size quilt through my machine I have been considering the quilt as you go method.  There are quite a few out there and a lot of them involve hand sewing which I really don't want to do.  Then a disscusion was started in the Swoon-Along Fickr group and this great tutorial was posted.  Yay, a QAYG method that doesn't involve hand sewing!

Problem solved.  Now I just need to finish all the blocks...

 

On another note, my mother-in-law asked me to make a quilt for her newest great niece, I've just been waiting for the fabric to arrive.  I'm using the pink, purple and green colorways from MoMo's Just Wing It.  I have all of the blocks done and sashed (not pictured) and the binding all ready to go.  I just need to piece the boarder and attach it and I will be ready to quilt it...once I find/pick a backing fabric.

Well, I'm off to do some sewing...

Christine

Swooning...Again!

Thanks to the Swoon-Along Flicker group I am swooning all over again.  This group has completely remotivated me to work on my Swoon quilt, just what I needed! 

I have four blocks done and twelve to go.  I finished cuting three more this morning and as soon as I publish this post I am going to start sewing them together.

 I'm just excited to be sewing again, I think it's just what I need!

Christine

Sweat and Swoon

The weather has been beautiful, sunny with high 70's to low 80's and nights in the low 60's to high 50's!  So not August weather and I am very grateful. So with it being to nice out we have been busy outside. 

We have these evergreen bushes along the front and one side of the house with river rocks all around them and then just an empty bed of rocks along the opposite side of the house.  Ever since we bought the house four years ago I have wanted to get rid of it all and this week we finally decided to do it.  I'm excited that it is getting done, but I am SO tired!  The bushes in front of the house were small and were really quite easy to dig out, but the bushes on the side of the house were much bigger and much more difficult to deal with.  And the rocks...a LOT of shoveling!  So I've been pretty busy.

However, I did manage to get two Swoon blocks done!  Oh how I love this pattern!

So four down and 12 to go.  I only have enough fabric to make 4 more so I will need to do some shopping here soon.

Now I'm off to bed to sleep like a baby!

Another Finished Quilt and Fresh Sewing Day

I finished Kayce's Quilt!  I think it turned out great and the purple frames it nicely.  It's was sad to give this one away, but Kayce loves it so it was worth it.

Katie's Quilt and Kayce's Quilt together shortly before I gave them to their new owners.  I used my picnic basket to conceal the quilts when I took them over to my parent's house (where the girls are staying while visiting) since Kayce didn't know she would be getting one.

Here are full views of the front and back of Katie's Quilt since I wasn't able to get them before. 

And I finished another Swoon block!!

I love it!  And I really love the two of them together!  I can't wait to see this finished, but I'm worried a finished quilt top will be sitting around forever.  I really don't think I want to quilt this myself since it will be king size.  I've had trouble with the throw sized ones I did for the girls and sending out a king size to be quilted...I'm sure I can't afford it.  We'll see when I get to that point.

So there ya have it, this is what I have been up to this month.  I didn't do much the first half of the month, but I've been busy the last half!

Be sure to check out my next post, coming later today, for Lily's Quilts' Small New Blogs Meet-up!



Swooning

I have loved the Swoon pattern from Camile since I first laid eyes on it, I've been seriously drooling over Angela's blocks!  So of course I'm jumping in. 

I'm going to us my Sugar and Spice and Kona Ash for the background. Here's my first block!

I just love it!  Even though there are 61 pieces in each block I think it comes together in a decent amount of time.  The unfinished block measures 24.5 square.  I like how big it is, only needing 16 blocks for a king size quilt is awesome.  The thought of a quilt that big with this block doesn't seem so daunting!

The fabric for Kayce's Quilt arrived today, right on time, so hopefully tomorrow I can get the borders on and at least get it basted if not start quilting it.  I also got some Ta Dots in the same package. I love them!  I think they are so fun.  I will probably change my mind before I get to them, but I think they might make up my next pinwheel quilt.

Alrighty, I gotta run.  I'm taking my nieces and son to the movies.  We are either going to see the Smurfs movie or The Zookeeper, they haven't decided yet...