mini eight: colors

I showed my Mom and Dad the Snippets quilt I did a while ago with two turnovers. My Dad especially liked it - the even geometry of the layout appealed to him as much as it had to me. So, I had to make a mini version for my tea table.

It was actually a bit easier - I find half square triangles from squares nicer to deal with than starting with triangles to begin with.

My mom helped me out and hand stitched the binding on this and one other quilt. She got attached and has claimed this as hers!

I have the big tablecloth quilt done, but need some non-gloomy weather to get good photos. I know I'm nearing the finish line, besides the fact that I am totally unable to come up with a good name for this little quilt, I went out and bought a bunch of fabrics and patterns for some new projects! I'll share those later this week, too.

(I turned off these comments since I keep getting spammed on this one message!)

mini seven: gnome

Gnomeling pattern by Sonja Callaghan

Why, hello there! A sweet little gnome and his mushroom

Snail pattern by Jennifer Ofenstein

Visited by a friendly woodland snail.

I wanted to do at least one paper pieced quilt, and with the gnome thing I had going so far, these cute guys were the obvious choice.

Once again, Figgy Pudding (with a linen mushroom stump and random stash white) I created the creatures, then played around until I could get them to look like a quilt. I really like the little windows-onto-the-woods thing I ended up with.

It's about 14"x16.5" and I don't know if I'll be able to give this one up!

Shhhhh don't tell the kids

I ate five of their Halloween candies this afternoon.

I had to. Really.

After the near-instant gratification of quilting ten minis, this large table cloth feels like it will never end. I am not above bribing myself.

Besides, the Reese's were totally calling my name.

Soul-filling inspiration (and mini six: windows)

I think that captures how I feel about what Jacquie, of Tallgrass Prairie Studio, shares with us. For the blogger quilt festival she gave a wonderful peek into her creative process. Go check it out if you haven't already, also read the end to that story, then come back.

The second quilt I ever made was inspired by her wonky log cabin tutorial. The greens didn't turn out quite as I expected, but I love all those happy pear blocks.

I am constantly inspired by all her amazing improv quilting - so it's a bit ironic that I'm totally copying that which I love for being so original. I'm hoping that as I go along, I'll gain the basic experience necessary to start improvising on my own. Actually making all these minis in such a short amount of time has even helped a bit.

I wanted to create the windows of pieced strips that I loved in Jacquie's 'Snippets' quilt. I think she would be proud of all the chopping and rearranging I did to make these windows work on my tiny 13"x17" quilt.

I really like the texture of linen on the past quilts I've made, so I used some natural linen here. And the pattern of the fabric I chose to bind the quilt seemed to compliment the stripey red and teal windows.

I worked in one more creative soul with Aneela's adorable spoonflower creations - a snow globe

and snowman ornament.

mini five: Snow Fun

The big star and the fabrics made me think of a snow fall.

Add in super cute Munki Munki snow men, and you have 'Snow Fun'!

I wasn't sure about his one, but once I added those red pieces and framed it with the red binding, everything seemed to come together wonderfully!

This one finished at 14 x 17.5" and of course I used several Figgy Pudding honey bun strips, along with a few larger cuts, and some random white that was in my stash.

My husband is wondering if I'm ever going to do anything but sew in the near future. That would be AFTER the November 15th event, or when I'm done (which is hopefully before midnight on November 14th!)

Table attempt

I spent the day at my parent's house yesterday, trying to finalize how my tea table will be set. My mom and I had a grand time.

With an aisle's worth of Hobby Lobby decorative glass and other random crafty bits, we piled and moved stuff for several hours.

We ended up using several things from around my mom's house - like that turquoise Scottie planter. I may accidentally lose that one!

I ended up leaving with a pretty good list of needed finishing touches. One of which was a red, square pincushion. So that's what I did today.

He's about 4" square, and an inch high. Stuffed with ground walnut shells again. I love them! They give a wonderful weight and form that lentils do not.

I obviously had to add a little gnome. Now that I've tasted the kool-aid, I am going to need serious restraint to keep from turning everything into a fabric covered button.

Thought I'd show the cute back - I really do love that Figgy Pudding!

mini four: Lines and Circles

I'm cruising along with all my mini quilts and have another completed to show you today. My husband said they should all be the same so nobody is fighting over one or the other. But what fun would the be?!

I loved making the strip-pieced, applique candy corn this summer and wanted to try something like it again. When I came across an awesome doll quilt by Amber from One Shabby Chick , I knew it would be perfect for the honey bun strips I have.

Her straight line quilting really made the design! I hardly ever do lines, so this was a great chance to practice that skill as well.

I used the same light weight, fusible interfacing as before. Once the circles were turned, I just ironed them in place and top stitched right inside the edge.

For the circles that are not whole, I just made them whole - quilted as they hung off the edge - then chopped off the extra after adding the binding.

I couldn't resist adding a gnome to this one as well. Thank you Amber for the awesome inspiration - this was a blast to make and will look wonderful at our advent tea!

mini three: Ice Star

My Ice Star is complete!

The star is from my book by Judy Martin "Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts" - this is the Virginia Star. The book is wonderful and gives a bunch of sizes for a whole ton of cool blocks. But this one should not have been made smaller than 10" - so trying to change it up for 6" is why I had to do the quilty math...that was obviously a little wrong!

This mini is again about 13" x 17" I'm using lots of the 1.5" Figgy Pudding honey bun strips making boarders and improvised pieced strips. Trying to use them up is driving many of my design choices on all these minis!

My quilty math issues that ended me with a non-square star worked out perfect for the finished quilt shape! I was dieing to use that super cute Munki Munki skier and thought he could go through the snowy woods. So I have that snowflake star, two strips of the tree print, and lots of white (muslin on this one).

I don't know how I'm going to give all these little quilts up!

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

That has nothing to do with my post, but I saw "Where The Wild Things Are" this weekend and that's my favorite line from the book. LOVED the movie, but I sobbed off and on through most of it (partly PMS induced I think).

This one is nearly done...

And I made another star - this time from honey bun strips.

But my attention is wavering and I'm getting wishy washy on what to do next. So I've started on the votive holders for each place setting. These little cuties are Bon Appetite from Fig Tree.

Gnomes in the Forest

Peeks at three more minis. I can't tell you how happy I was with the way the print landed on the coat of my little paper pieced gnome!

one star

That's all I got done in two hours.

It included unpicking 4 seams and recutting about half the pieces.

I should have a 6.5" square, but it's oddly 6.5x7

At least I like how it looks and only have to make one! Precision piecing is not recommended when you're tired.

Cave Adventure

No quilting this past weekend. I and the two older boys TENT CAMPED - **26deg** overnight temperature - in Iowa.

Amazingly, we had enough warm stuff and didn't die of hypothermia. I had to keep the camera in my pocket with two hand warmers for the batteries to work. We were with their boy scout troop. Lots of boys having fun in the wilderness.

If the weather didn't kill us, the claustrophobia nearly tried to do me in. They convinced me to turn off my head lamp...I lasted about 2 seconds in the complete darkness. I pretty much blinded them with my flash for this picture.

One of their favorites - the way in and out of this one was perhaps 10 inches. Kind of like birth - had to turn your head then roll your shoulders and hips out before belly sliding out the other end.

Kenton said it was the best weekend ever - even better than Hawaii.

edit: My husband was trying to be supportive and praised all the nice comments that came in over the weekend for the Fall Quilt Festvial. He said he also liked the "little gnomes and the Hunky Pinky fabric". Umm - that's Figgy Pudding dear.

Fall Quilt Festival

These are two of the 10 mini quilts I will be making between now and November 15th as decorations for my advent tea table. I'm excited to share them with you for the Fall Quilt Festival!

I have been wanting to try a spider web for some time, so that was the first thing I did. I used this wonderful tutorial - and decided to arrange the triangles like a star. More Christmasy that way. It's about 15.5" square.

I left the paper foundation on until the whole quilt was pieced - I think I successfully avoided some crazy bias waves and it was all nice and square in the end.

The 1 1/2" honey bun strips were perfect for this! Then I added in a little bit of Munki Munki sledders for fun. I LOVE 'Drop Off Hill'.

The idea is that each of these mini quilts will hang on the back of the banquet chairs, like my own little quilt festival! Then each woman will get to take home her little quilt as a gift from me. All of the quilts will be made using Figgy Pudding, but I'm hoping to make each one different. Hopefully I don't run out of steam or get too sick of all that Figgy Pudding before I'm done!

Next were some basic log cabins, again using the honey bun strips. This time two little Heather Ross gnomes slipped out of the forest and into my block! This one finished at 13" x 17".

After I finished the first one, I realized I probably would never label all 10 minis if I waited until the end like I normally do. So I will piece a little label right onto them all like this.

I'll use this as a fun way to try out new techniques, perfect blocks I already know, and recreate some of the amazing inspiration quilts you can find around flickr and blogs.

Mini peek

Thanks for all the nice comments on my tablecloth quilt!

I've started the minis (now I need to make 10 of them!) and have a couple of peeks for you.

I should get one or both bound by the end of the day and they will be ready for the Quilt Festival! I am loving how fast these go together.

Mega Quilt Monday

This weekend I finished my Figgy Pudding tea table quilt top. It's about 77" square, and made to dress a 66" round banquet table. The idea is that the center will help ground my centerpiece, then the place settings sit within the white area, and the crazy stars should make a nice bottom edge.

I think I went about this a little backward in assembly. I did sketch it all out and do the quilt-math first, but had a few execution problems. First I obviously missed a seam allowance on the star size, as they were all smaller than I had expected. Of course, I had precut all those other white pieces, and they were wrong now. You can see the couple of strips that had to be pieced in to fill the space. I plan on doing the standard all-over stipple, so I'm hoping they will just kind of blend away.

And I lost a bit in squaring up the double hourglass centers - resulting in the decision to add all those boarders around them! I'm glad though, I really like the way it turned out.

We made an outing to Ikea today - Becket loves to start the trip with french toast sticks and bacon! I picked up some of the flat sheets that Amandajean recommended. (Have all the area quilters been there already?! They were totally out of twin, flat sheets!) The queen size should work well to back this quilt in one big hunk, I'm not in the mood to piece it. I just have to convince Becket that the troops need to move out, so that I can use the large sun room floor to make my sandwich!

Clothing Crisis!

Even though it was a cool summer, we are all adjusting to what seems like late fall already and need pants and coats every day. Somebody seems to have been feeding Becket, as all his pants are several inches too short! So yesterday was spent sewing 5 pairs of pants and a pair of long, flannel PJs.

And here are the last batches of stars - nine through 16

I may assemble the quilt top tonight, or may continue planning the nine mini quilts I need. I'm having tons of fun planning - I'll probably try a different or new technique on each!