I Did It! It's Finished!! Sparkle Punch Improv

 Last January (January 2012), I started Elizabeth Hartman's Sparkle Punch Quilt-A-Long thinking it would be the perfect gift for my daughter's 9th birthday. I finally finished it for her 10th birthday this year.

This WIP became a fixture on my entryway wall for over a year. Everyone who came by for a visit during the past year could watch my slow process of putting this baby together. It was all worth it, I'm so happy with how it turned out, and I know it will be a gift Charlotte cherishes for years to come.

Spoonflower & Wonky Stars

I've been wanting to join the fun of the Spoonflower Weekly Fabric Contest ever since I heard about Spoonflower. Have you heard of Spoonflower? It's so cool — custom printed fabric! You upload your own designs and have it printed on a variety of different fabrics. AND there's so many talented people uploading their own incredible designs on a daily basis. Inspiration overload! So anyway, they do a weekly contest where they pick a theme and ask people to submit designs based on that theme. This submission is for "Outdated Technology". They specifically said "think cassette tapes" and my mind went immediately to all my old mix tapes! Mix Tapes - I loved them (I also had an obsession with recording Rick Dees Weekly Top 40s every Sunday too)!! And then I remembered my high school BFF who was pretty fond of creating fun mix tapes and adding her own dose of quotes and worldly wisdom in between songs. She was wise and quirky beyond her years in high school. Fun memories.

Other than that I've been cutting and cutting and cutting..... and cutting. I cut over 600 3.5" stars for the Sparkle Punch Quilt-Along. That took me most of a Sunday. I actually watched 3 movies on my computer while I was working on the cutting. Then I started cutting my negative space squares last weekend another 300+ to go. Fun times (mostly).

After a while I decided to try and make a few stars. They are trickier than they look. Elizabeth mentions testing out the technique on some scrap fabric before starting on your quilt fabric. I thought "pssssshhh" that doesn't look too hard and started on my precious squares. Turns out she was right. Figuring out that wonky angle and getting the angles to line up for a straight cut when you square up the edges is tricky! I had a few oppsies and a few seam ripper moments (after I learned to stop cutting the fabric BEFORE measuring to see if the angle worked), but I think I finally got the hang of it. I have five stars done and A LOT more to go.  I'm learning quite a bit along the way on this one. Quite a bit indeed.

WIP - Mom's Bright & Beautiful Quilt

Here's a quilt I'm working on for my mom. She loves bright colors so I went a little wild with this one. All of a sudden I'm noticing orange in a lot of my projects. Maybe it's the season for orange?? I have been drinking a few pumpkin spice lattes and wearing my orange sneakers lately too. Hmmmmm....

Anytime I try and lay fabric on the floor Sparky (full name: Cinderella Sparkle Rose Barrett Roth - the kids named her) likes to help. Or maybe she just has a wicked sense of humor and enjoys running through my project on the floor for laughs. I can't tell what she's thinking, she's got a good poker face as you can see in the photo above. Here she is right before she starts doing her trademark "Tasmanian Devil Spin" through the middle of my block arrangement.

And speaking of orange in projects, this is my new favorite fabric. The photo doesn't do it justice, the colors are amazing! Orange, purple and cyan all mixed together with a lime green. So bright (OK, like my mom I love bright) and beautiful. I just keep staring at it draped on my couch.  It's Pom Pom Dahlias by Philip Jacobs for Rowan. So pretty!! I'm headed to International Quilt Market in Houston next week and I've been thinking about making a skirt out of it. I think it might even pair well with my orange sneakers.

Here's my other little project. I've been doodling away with my new Painter app. Isn't it cool? It looks like I doodled that little jack-o-lantern on paper with water colors. I'm finding that I'm really rusty with my doodling skills though. It's been awhile since I've just drawn a picture without going back and adjusting nodes or combing shapes and adding gradients etc, etc etc in Illustrator. I'm really enjoying practicing again, I forget how much I enjoy drawing until I get back to it. Hopefully I'll pick up my "style" soon with the Painter app. 

I finally finished my first quilt!

Ta da!! I finally finished my first quilt. I started this quilt in May with a class I took at a local quilt shop. I zipped along on the quilt top, I even got the back and borders put together pretty quick. Yep, I was thinking this quilting thing was no big deal. I had a local longarm quilter do the quilting for me. I chose a teal thread which blended nicely on the front and contrasted really neat on the solid brown back. It was looking lovely and going so smoothly and then came the last step... hand sew on the binding. WHAT?! Hand sew?!

Really, hand sew on the binding. This quilt is big (well, only twin size but that seemed big to me thinking about hand sewing on the binding)! I didn't really pay much attention to binding "talk" before this little step popped up on the instructions... How come more quilters aren't complaining about hand sewing this thing on at the end? *Sigh*... So I set off on hand sewing the binding on in late June. I would work on little bits of it here and there and it was so SLOW going. In late August I was still working on whipstitching this binding on (yep, I said whip stitching *shudder*), then along came this smart new gal at work who let me in on a little secret - YOU DON'T WHIPSTITCH THE BINDING. Oh man!! I'd already gotten half way around this twin size quilt, diligently whipstitching along when I could find time (have I mentioned I sometimes have up to 5 kids running around the house and I work full-time?). ACK! What was I thinking?? I'd seen quilt backs and hand sewn binding, and now come to think of it they never looked whipstitched.

I just thought those other quilters were better and stitching than me (which they probably are) but they were actually just using the right technique *sigh*. Well, I decided to just start doing it the right way "blindstitching" the rest of the way around. I guess it makes my first quilt a little more special with the learning mistakes making it uniquely mine.

 In other news... I need to convert these bottles into my world famous, fancy "birthday label" bottles. Stay tuned for before and after pics.

AND!!! Look at this sweet new program I just purchased. Corel Painter Essentials 4. It's like painting on the computer. I'm super excited to learn all of the bells and whistles and hopefully master it soon for my 2011 Christmas Card.
Thanks for stopping by to read my rambling blog post.