Pin Tip

I thought I'd share this with you: I've tried all kinds of ways to deal with pins, especially the problem of taking them out while sewing, but then needing them in another room on a more comfortable space to pin things together again. I got really tired of having to put them all into pin cushions, because the orienting and directing just took too much time. I ended up figuring out this trick by accident:


The needles all stick to a magnetic strip that I used to keep the table clothes in place on the filing cabinet that I have my sewing machine set up on (my quilting room is really really make-shift!) This is really convenient, as I can throw the needles on any which way, then I just pick up the strip and move to my comfy pinning place, somewhere in the sunshine, preferably, and start all over again!

Any neat ways of keeping pins organized other than normal pin cushions? Or maybe some really cool pin cushions?

Stashalitis

I've decided that I should not have kids as long as I'm still a quilter - I would be a horrible mother and spend all my money on fabrics instead of baby food. Hmm.

As planned, I went fabric hunting today, to collect more theme patterns. It worked, and I added these fabrics to the character quilt pile:

Fish in a stream
(he's a salmon biologist, I don't think these are salmon, but I think he'll forgive me...)

Classical Music/Instruments

(this is, unfortunately, the best I could do after visiting 5 fabric stores in two provinces... it's a bit too kidlike for a 30+ year old, so I'll keep looking, but since I had so little luck before and this is the 45-min-away store, I decided to bought a quarter meter just in case. I did end up meeting a lady at the fabric store, which happened to have a quilt show on this afternoon, and her quilt had the perfect fabric in it: sheet music, simple black and white. She has a 3.5x3" scrap that she will send to me, so maybe maybe that'll be enough)

While in the store, I added two more interests:

Countryside Landscape

(because he always finds going to the countryside very peaceful and mentally refreshing)

Hardwood Forest
(loves going for a walk in the woods, especially when there are leaves on the ground)

In addition, I also ended up picking up a lot of other fabrics, OF COURSE!

These will probably be part of the borders around each theme panel. The one on the left has really cute tomatoes on it, if it matches the cook fabric, it'll be the border for that panel.

Totally random other fabrics:

This will be the funnest (I know, not a word :} ) kiddie quilt ever! I need to go find a toddler to give this quilt to (once it's made). My first thought was to make a four-patch out of the fabrics on the left, and put larger suares in between with the kite fabric (I bought more of this one). The red will be great binding. Maybe I'll try something more difficult though...

I've never tried, but I think I will love working with batiks. I'd like to make a quilt by this one (third one down, the blue one) by MelanieMade. I should venture into the world of triangles, instead of always doing squares. I'd still be doing straight lines, but the corners will be a bit more of a challenge, I expect.

With at least another colour to connect these two fabrics, it'll be a cute neutral baby quilt of frogs and bugs. I have a friend who's a frog fanatic, hopefully she'll have a baby in the next decade ;)

And now there are piles and piles of fabric to be washed and ironed...

A Lot of Pink Sewing

I have a lot of pink-square-triplets waiting to be sewn into 9-patches...


I will be eternally grateful to the lady in my quilting course that tought me to feed one fabric pair after another through the machine and string string everything together. Saves time and thread! I'm all about conserving (in fact, tonight I politely told a lady that idling her car for no reason is bad for her pocketbook and the environment, but it didn't work... she just got snippy with me, even though I was quite nice about it, I thought).

I'm probably 1/3 through the patches, but today was a crappy day, and despite quilting being my refuge-activity, I just didn't feel like it anymore. The reason the day was crappy is that last night at 3:25am, I was woken up by a beer bottle crashing through my bedroom window. What an aweful way to wake up! I live on the 2nd floor, so whoever threw, had really good aim, if they did aim. The place where the bottle crashed through the pane is the most unlikely spot, I mean, look at it:

This is the actual position of the window at the time of impact. What are the chances of hitting that small space between the window panes???

Anyway, enough non-quilting related ranting. I hope this never happens to any of you, because it really feels like my apartment is not mine anymore - if anyone can just chuck their garbage in, really...

I did go fabric shopping though (see blog entry above) :) That was a sure mood-change-success!

Character Quilt - Part 1

My newest plan for a quilt - gosh, I'm good at PLANNING, when will I ever be DOING? - is one for a friend. I'd like to incorporate his main interests in life and am busily collecting fabrics, which is a lot more difficult than I thought.

What I have in mind is something similar to these two quilts by HandmadeByAlissa: Sparks Baby Quilt and the Land and Sea Quilt.
I might arrange the framed panels randomly, though that'd be a lot more piecing of the background, but it might have a nicer, less rigid look.

The fabrics/themes I've brain-stormed so far are:

• Reading/Books
• Salsa/Latin Dancing
• Snooker/Pool
• Fish/Salmon
• Skiing
• Seashells
• Reggae/Music
• Beer
• Cheese
• Windmills
• Tulips
• Cooking
  
• Corals
• Classical Music/Pianos/Instruments/Notes
• Beaches (tropical)
• Coffee

Here are my finds to date:

Corals

Reggae

Skiing (two fabrics from the same line)

Coffee

Seashells

Pool

Cooking (aren't these cooks awesome??)

Red for the background (he likes wine red and black in combination,
luckily I bought lots of black for the oriental quilt)

I'm pretty happy with this so far, and it's very exciting to hunt for these particular themes. I have two more local fabric stores on my list, and two that are 45 min away, make it a day adventure, because unfortunately, they're in opposite directions.

Pink Quilt Progress - Part 2

I've made some progress on the pink quilt, despite this being a slow-quilting-week. Last night was really the first evening that my machine was used this week, but I did spend a couple of nights quiltifying my new fabrics (washing/ironing). I admit that I have stopped using the dryer for the fabric. I don't ever dry clothes in the dryer, so my own quilts will never shrink in one. I guess I'll warn whoever I give a quilt to, that it might shrink in a dryer, but since I wash the fabrics hot and iron them on the highest setting, I'm hoping that won't happen.

Anyway, here are 144 triplets (three 4x4" squares sewn together, or mostly sewn together as you can see on the bottom photo), which I will transform into 48 nine patches (hopefully this weekend or tonight), to then be cut up into quarters and mixed and matched for the final quilt. I really can't picture how this quilt will turn out, I'm good with shapes, but not colours :) Let's hope all this sewing, cutting and re-sewing will not be in vain!

Fabric Sprees

As mentioned before, I visited a couple of quilting/fabric stores over the past week.

One was the Avonport Discount Fabric Store in Nova Scotia - a tip from a work colleague and what a gold mine it was! Besides having a fantastic clearance sale on (I got most materials for 2-4$/m), they had an excellent sellection and really nice and helpful staff.
Since we're having a horrid, cold and icy winter here in Atlantic Canada, I ended up buying quite a few summery fabrics :)


I've been collecting greens since the beginning. I love love love greens and will make an all-green-quilt at some point. I was thinking about a log cabin, but maybe something more complicated.
Some of these next fabrics are the same as in the first photo, and I agree with other bloggers that colours can come out very differently on digital photos... The fabric on the right, for example, is actually a beautiful combination of warm (and some colder) purples, not quite as blue as shown here...


My second stop, and I'm loath to admit it, was the local Fabricville Store. The only reason I buy there is because it is on my way home from work and their discontinued fabrics are only 2$/m year-round. Also, they've started selling fat quarters (I know, they didn't before, and they won't cut them, only by the meter, and they have no clue about fabrics or quilting, with one or two exceptions... the staff there is treated like crap and every time I go, someone else works there, not an intimate store where employees know what they're talking about. Alas, affordable fabric will continue to make me stop in...). The fat quarters are usually of the more expensive materials, so it's quite a bargain (about half price of the same amount of fabric cut by the meter).

I had been admiring the butterfly material and matching blue-with-yellow-flowers fabric for a while, but wasn't willing to spend 14.99$/m, so this was a good deal for me.


Again, colours are totally skewed in this photo. The fabric on the right is much more yellow/ochre in colour. It's a colour I have and likely always will love, because the living room of the apartment I grew up in was painted that colour, so great childhood memories are associated with it. The light pink fabric will go into the pink quilt I'm making, as I was short fabric to complete all the nine patches.


My boyfriend is now scared of the amount of fabrics I have, so I guess I should start using them up for a while (means there'll be space for more).
I don't know if any of you has ever done this, but I was brave enough to tally up the $$ I've spent on fabrics so far (since September 2008, that is). I'm still below 1000$, so maybe that's pretty on par in the quilting world? :)

I Love Comments!!!

I was so excited this morning to find that I have my first bunch of comments on this blog! Yay! This gives me a huge boost, because now I know others are looking at my work, which is so exciting! I love that I might have already inspired one or two of you - that alone makes this blog worth it. I really want to give something back with this blog, because I've been inspired by so many wonderful blogs out there! If you're a quilter with a blog/website, please leave the URL in the comment section, as I'm always on the lookout for interesting sites.

I went on a couple of fabric sprees last week and am busily washing and ironing. Photos will be up soon, hopefully! Some beautiful finds!

Thanks for reading!!