Overambitious Novice Quilter

(Reserving this space to eventually document Dear Jane and allow it to consume my life)

[megalojania]

Susan Gatewood's site is back up after giving a bad security certificate for several months which means I downloaded allllllll the PDFs for Dear Jane and printed my little test square (which is indeed exactly an inch wide with a quarter inch border! victory!)

Now I just gotta finish all the quilts I have planned for my friends and then. it beginneth

[megalojania]

Aughhhhhh I think the last 2 1/2 lines of quilting I laid down are. Wonky. Like wonky enough that I can SEE how wonky it is and it BOTHERS me. Deciding whether I should flip the quilt around and do the other wise before returning to this one when I’m emotionally ready or if I should rip them out now

[megalojania]

Okay I think the strat here is to rip out the offending rows but then to quilt the other side so I can return and redraw these ones after I’ve had time to calm down lol

[megalojania]

Aughhhhhh I think the last 2 1/2 lines of quilting I laid down are. Wonky. Like wonky enough that I can SEE how wonky it is and it BOTHERS me. Deciding whether I should flip the quilt around and do the other wise before returning to this one when I’m emotionally ready or if I should rip them out now

[megalojania]

Starting to figure out quilting the jelly roll race quilt and I’m using 80/20 instead of 100% cotton and eeheeeheee I have a whole 10 inches of maximum quilting distance to play with

[megalojania]

It’s DONE! And there’s a story to this one!

Back in December, I met my friend @natural-blogarithm IRL for the first time, and they asked if I could find a use for this pink bird fabric they’d picked up from a secondhand fabric store, since it was juuuuust about a yard, which was too small for either of us to use for clothing as plus-size sewists.

As it stands, when I looked up the details from the selvedge it’s pretty evident that it is, indeed, quilting cotton. More specifically, it is from Michael Miller’s “Tweetie Pie” collection.

Lucky for my friend, I did in fact have an almost immediate idea for this fabric. You see, I lost my cool a little during the great Joann clearance sales, and among my frantic purchases was this almost luminescently-bright 108” Kona cotton Candy Pink.

Why did I buy that??? It’s so bright! There was so MUCH of it, at over a yard and a half of length! What was I thinking????

But it turns out that pink was in fact the PERFECT solid to marry the orangey-pink birds and the more cool-toned wavy pink 1-yard cut that I also bought from Joann. I will learn nothing from this experience.

This was another first for me in that I did not use any pre-cuts! I looked up Sew Can She’s 3-yard quilt patterns and picked Dream House, since it, too, was pink. I futzed with the cutting instructions to allow me more control since both of my patterned fabrics were directional, and between the tree branches and the waves I wanted to give an impression of upward movement. This also meant modifying the block piecing instructions so each block’s long edge was “flipped” compared to its opposite-hued neighbor. The current effect is less “structured staircase” and more “dancey avant-garde windowpanes.” I REALLY like how it turned out in the end!

I did learn that I need to get better at precision cutting and piecing, but I am letting myself down easy. When I was almost done with my block piecing, I realized my sewing machine needle was a millimeter and a half off the center of the needle plate, which meant I was giving all of my seams a fat quarter inch seam. So I just. Continued doing the fat seam bc I didn’t wanna go back and seam rip like 80% of my blocks. Definitely taking it to the shop to see if they can fix that for me now that this one is done.

I am also delighted to say that one of my friends saw my progress pic of the quilt top and asked if she could claim it, so it’s already got a home to go to! After she called dibs, I used the leftover scraps from when I cut the binding to make a little heart label/hanging flap for the back. 💖

[megalojania]

Iiiiiii don’t think I can reasonably say I *made* this quilt.

Certainly, I bought the Goblincore by Rae Ritchie fabric (*cough* over a year ago when I hadn’t even sewn a stitch with my machine *cough*).

I also bought the wool batting. And I paid the longarmer, who recommended an xl meander instead of the denser pattern my husband initially picked out to allow the fabric to stand out better.

Uh.

I mean. I did do the binding myself, so let’s talk about that.

First off, this is the first time I cut the fabric for the binding myself instead of just using some jelly roll fabric. I definitely didn’t align it with the grain bc this stuff frayed like no one’s business.

Second, I REALLY like how 2” wide binding lends itself to a uniform look front and back without too much overhang. I will almost certainly still use jelly roll strips when I have them available, but if I’m going from scratch then 2” is evidently the way to go.

Finally…I’m so mad to discover that everyone was right. Hand-stitching really does look *that* much better. How dare you.

Anyway. Finished this in time for Valentines so yay! This gift is not remotely a surprise but I know he’s been looking forward to having his own blanket.

[megalojania]

Hmmmm. Mug rugs for both mine and my husband’s coworkers, based off Kelly Hanson’s p straightforward pattern. Which I finished around like. 1:45 this morning.

I learn more with each project I do and for this one I learned:

• if your husband buys you a nice pack of Moda sunburst batiks it really can elevate an extremely simple design to something special

• while it’s not true FMQ, puzzling out different quilting patterns with the walking foot attached was genuinely fun and gives me more hope for when I make my QAYG Alice’s Wonderland

• I will genuinely bind a thousand tiny mug rugs before I force my poor Viking Emerald to chew through doubled-over felt again. Poor baby is getting the lint vacuumed out and a touch of oil and some rest before I use it to bind my husband’s quilt now that it’s back from the longarmer

• the other problem with the “no binding” method of mug rugs for me was the thread ends I left exposed after topstitching and quilting that I then had to bury. Making 30 of these meant that task took like 4 hours, especially because it took til very near the end before I figured out how to better reduce the number of ends I was leaving

• I should probably not give projects like this a deadline, and I shouldn’t tell a bunch of coworkers who are then excited about it, and I DEFINITELY should remember that I typically lose my marbles around January and need to account for the two week slump

[megalojania]

Still working on some very late new years mug rugs for my coworkers and currently taking a break to let my back heal up, but in the meantime, my in-laws gifted me Tula Pink’s City Sampler book and I kinda wanna make it to give to them. I know she has plenty of configurations in her own book, but I kinda like this “shaky,” dancey layout. Looks messy now but I suspect will look better once the color comes into play.

Also I have this one yard of 108” wide yardage and wanted to see if I could reasonably get 100 6.5” and 8.5” strips out of it, and the answer is: JUST. So between that and the scraps I’ve set aside I’m hoping to make the quilt top without buying any new fabric for it.

[megalojania]

If we count the date I planned this quilt as the start of “making” it, my second Nibling Quilt comes out to an even one-month project.

My piecing is noticeably better with this one than the last, though I also accidentally sewed ONE purple HST near the “bottom” of the quilt inside-out and didn’t even notice until the whole thing had been quilted. Might reinforce that seam with some thread for the sake of security.

Fabric is Geo Bright Batiks by Robert Kaufman, which I had on hand as both a charm pack and a jelly roll. The quilt top is the traditional “jewel box” pattern, and the quilt back is Riley Blake’s Pre-Cut Party (which you’ll notice I failed to align properly but. Eh. Whatever lol)

[megalojania]

Unfortunately once you make one baby quilt double sided it kinda feels like you gotta do the same for the next one especially when they’re both kids of your first cousins

[megalojania]

Mmmm had to rethink the back. I may not need a longarmer’s 4” overhang but I certainly want at least 2 on each side

[megalojania]

Unfortunately once you make one baby quilt double sided it kinda feels like you gotta do the same for the next one especially when they’re both kids of your first cousins

[megalojania]

Progress pics of my finished jelly roll race quilt top (plus the bonus block I made from the wonky HST offcuts). I used a Hi Fashion fabric roll that was mostly in rainbow order, but had 3 black strips that felt out of place.

Took the time to cut each of those into 12ths and then diagonal seam them to rest between the rainbow strips. Absolutely worth it despite diagonal seams being a challenge for me; the way it breaks up the strips is pleasing to the eye and, since it’s a diagonal strip rather than a triangle, does not betray the orientation of the original strip.

Now considering practicing a rainbow bargello to perhaps use as a quilt backing to this (or perhaps the other way around?)

[megalojania]

Super dinky process pics of my first quilt, which was basically just me learning to sew straight lines using a cheap Joann fabric roll. Now a bed quilt for my parents’ dog.

[shoutyourporpoise]

@this-is-izy you said you wanted to see my quilt when it was finished and now it is!!! Messily edited my nibling’s name out of the quilt tag on the back but otherwise this is what it looks like.

There are a ton of mistakes here but tbh I am so dang proud of this as my first pieced crib quilt :)

[megalojania]

Y'know what this can also be my general quilting blog!!!

[megalojania]

Creating this as essentially a placeholder so I have it when I wanna document my Dear Jane