More Pure Happiness

So I forgot to take a picture of the quilt getting sandwiched, but at least I can tell you what I used. See that spray can below? Good stuff. I'll lay out my top piece on a large flat area and then carefully put my batting on top of it. I'll peel back sections and spray this stuff before meshing back together. Repeat for your backing layer.

I don't like pinning. I think it tends to pull fabric around, and well...I'm just uncoordinated with the stupid little things. Plus it's much faster to spray than to try to put five hundred safety pins and all those holes in your fabric. Other nice thing about this stuff is that it lasts a while. I've had this can for years and years and it's not spraying a clumpy mess - still that nice clean (well not really, but you get what I'm trying to say) sticky mist.

So, the other thing that I do vastly different from the normal quilters, is that instead of starting in the middle of your quilt and working outward, I like to start at a corner. The reason for this is that I've found it much more efficient to quilt a little, readjust your fabric so that there are no creases in the sandwich, and quilt a little more, rinse, repeat. Every time I started in the middle, I got a crease in either the top fabric or the backing fabric, no matter how many times I tried to adjust. When you quilt, even in free motion where your machine's feeddogs are down, you're still pulling some of those layers more than others. There is ultimately going to be adjusting...or creases which look awful unless you have a long arm machine or know a secret I don't (which is very possible).

Here's a picture of the machine during free-motion quilting. You can't see them as they're under the quilt sandwich, but the feeddogs are lowered so there is nothing directing the fabric but my hands. I wanted a fun tighter pattern to kind of punch down the neutral fabrics so that the blue bows stood out just a bit more. So I'm doing an echo shell pattern on everything except the blue fabric and borders.

The top has a really pretty variegated thread in brown tones, though I'm keeping things neutral on the back. You can see the quilting pattern more clearly in the photo of the back below. 

*Lots* more quilting left to go!

Misc. Creativity

So I forgot to take a photo of it before I left it over at Mom's house, but the inside of the quilt top is fully pieced together and I'm waiting on fabric to come in for the borders and flower petals that will be put on. I do have my image of the pieces on the design board though so I'll put that up. Borders and flowers will be the same width as the squares and in the cream with dark polka dots fabric.

I also thought it would be fun to post photos of the Christmas cards I did for the families this Holiday. All are done in water colors with some bordering in micron ink pens.

This first one is for Dad. The block of the building on the left there is his current hangar. Dad used to be an architecht and contractor and is planning on doing some remodeling to the building to include office space as well as extend some of the shop space. He gets a big kick out of illustrative renderings so I thought I'd do a quick sketch up for his card.

Mom's is this next one. Mom is slightly obsessed with miniature donkeys. This one is way cuter in person.

Brother Chris has a little Toy Daschund named Sydney who is just a complete Diva. So, she is sprawled on her favorite white leopard fleece blanket with her bling color and her sparkly presents.

Chris is roommate joined us for Christmas as his family is in Missouri. He just bought a boxer puppy this year named Dyson. Chris insisted I should have put the hat in his mouth.

The next round of family cards is for hubby Matt's side. His sister (who's name happens to also be Jennifer Lee, only she spells her middle name Leigh) has a fun black lab who always is eating things. Hence ornament in mouth.

 For Mother-in-Law Karen, a cute little snowglobe. Matt used to have a tradition of buying her snowglobes for Christmas before she finally demanded he stop due to her lack of space for any more. So, next best thing was the paper version. Very spacially friendly.

And last but not leat is Jenn's daughter Trinity. That little girl is all about her pink and princesses.

My Other Hobby

Most people are content with one hobby. I'm not one of them. I'll admit to being guilty of having many. Probably too many, but at least I can't complain of ever being bored. I may actually open up a second blog for this hobby I'm about to share, but until then I'll post here and see if anyone's interested in it.

I tend to be interested in hobbies that I can express myself creatively in. Sewing is one of those. My mom was the one who got me into it as it's her big thing. She used to sew my brothers and I clothes while growing up. While I've not tried any clothes yet (though I'm just about to make the plunge), I've been quilting for several years now. There is just something about a quilt made by you or someone you love that just makes you happy. Definitely one of those "feel good" things. Here's a couple of projects I've made in the past:

A bag for a friend's baby shower in her colors of pink and brown.

A "raggie" quilt for our friends' first baby.

His theme was cars/airplanes/motorcycles in primary colors.

The blue fabric is old jeans cut up into squares and the red plaid is flannel -

nice and soft for baby's skin!

(By the way the quilt is perfectly square. My photography not so much)

This one was made from a Bunny Hill kit for another friends' first baby.

This was my first attempt at applique and I love it!

There are others, but maybe I'll make another post out of those. I mainly wanted a little lead in sampling. You all get the idea. My next project that I'm working on is for my Mother-in-Law's Birthday coming up at the end of January.

One of my favorite designers are actually a local Colorado company consisting of Mom and two daughters - Sweetwater. I like there stuff because it's not so "floraly" like most fabric out there. It's lots of gender neutral prints and geometrics. They have a pattern called Pure Happiness that was designed for fabrics of their "Pure" line. I don't have yardage of the fabrics, only what's called "fat quarters (which is basically a 18" x 24" piece of fabric) so instead of using only three colors, well, I'll be using them all.  Aren't they pretty?

So I want to create a gradient effect, going from light in one

corner to dark in the opposite corner. I'll use the blue fabrics

for the bow ties. You can see the guide I made in the

lower left of the photo below.

I've got the top half of the quilt top just about fully pieced together.

Just that one last row, which you can also see in the above photo.

Below is a close in shot.

After I finish the quilt top, I'll sandwich the quilt back, batting, and top together and start the quilting. When that is finished I'll add the flowers and buttons and quilt binding. I think I'll do some blogging on those steps in case anyone was interested in the step-by-step making of a quilt.