WIP Wednesday: Do You Believe in Magic...And Pink?

Howdy y'all! I hope your week is going well. I had intentions to blog about these two WIP's sooner, but sewing time trumps blogging time any day these days. But I finally made myself take pictures and sit down to write out a post and I'm so glad I did. I'm excited to share what I've been stitching lately!

First up, some simple squares. If you've been around here long, you know pink is not my color. It never has been, even since I was younger! But on one of those bad days, I saw some leftover fabric from different baby quilts and decided I needed to cut some squares. So I sliced and diced as many as I pleased, then I put a dent in my gray fabrics as well.

I love those little love birds! :)

Before I knew it, I had a mess of squares! I chainpieced a storm and now I've got rows of pink and gray ready to be joined together. I actually made enough that I should have 2 little baby quilts in the end! It's funny how bad days made fun quilts. :)

Every Harry Potter quilt needs a Golden Snitch!

And next is a long term project that I am so excited to have started! I stumbled across the Harry Potter Project of Doom Quilt Along on Fandom In Stitches. Like most people, I absolutely LOVE Harry Potter and I love the idea of an HP themed bookcase! This quilt combined those ideas into an awesome and personalized quilt. The quilt along is long over, but the patterns are still together and full of so much potential. Even better, the Facebook group is still hopping with quilters posting their progress and cheering each other on daily!

A candle for the night time reading that is sure to occur. ;)

I was on the fence about starting because 'What if I need more fabric?!' After pining for a couple of weeks, I decided to take to the stash! It isn't big, but I've got quite a bit of fabric and plenty of scraps. With a bit of quilty ingenuity, I decided to make this a scrappy quilt and have fun exploring the gems I can find hidden amongst the piles. :) 

Colorful books - a nice easy block to get the wheels turning!

And oh, the fun I've had! Rather than follow the quilt along week-by-week, I decided to pick and choose which blocks to work on as I go. I've got four blocks finished and the fifth one is nearly completed as well!

I knew I had to make a quill from that zebra fabric! And the C+S arrow fabric looks like a broomstick a little bit. :)

Happy Wednesday y'all! I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts!

'When Life Goes to Pieces, Make a Quilt': A Finish

I tossed it in the chair to get ready to label it and turn around to this!

Howdy y'all, I hope your weekend is treating you well. The rain stopped earlier this morning and the sun (and heat) came back with a vengeance afterwards. It didn't take long for things to dry up, letting me take some pictures of my most recent finish.

Texture x 10000000000!

You've seen these scrappy blocks before here and here. They were a part of Crazy Mom Quilts' Scrap Vortex Along (that link takes you to her quilt along page, and the scrap vortex one is at the bottom). I made some blocks in my spare time, but at the time, I didn't have enough scraps to make a full quilt of those blocks. And when I had enough scraps, I didn't actually want to take the time to make a full quilt of those blocks (yet!).

Scrappy happy blocks and rainbow thread. :)

Seeing those blocks laying on my shelf, I knew I had to do something! So I paired them with some lovely Kona Coal to make those colors really pop!

The quilting looks much better on the back than the front.

I had so much hope for the quilting, but it fell a bit flat in my eyes. I dreamed of spirals for weeks as this one slowly came together. I would sew a seam or two when I had the time, the quilt top slowly taking shape. But I could see the quilting so clearly. I think my fabric shifted some though, because things got a bit bunchy in places on the front. But I couldn't make myself rip it out, I was so far along. And, honestly, I couldn't have yet another disappointment. So I left it and just kept going, cringing as I did. I just prayed that the washer and dryer could work some magic and erase some of my quilting sins.

A lot of mistakes are hidden by those crinkles!

And it did! The worst is still there (lower left center area), but many of the little wrinkles and tucks were disguised by the lovely crinkle. Thank the Lord for Color Catchers, hot water, and high heat, am I right?

The happiest little quilt roll I've ever made. :)

I topped this one off with a scrappy binding. I actually made twice as much binding by accident (when you get on a roll cutting fabric, there's no stopping!), so some of my favorite prints didn't make it in. But oh, these little critters lined up perfectly and it might be my favorite part of the entire quilt.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS

And a label. From pretty early on, I intended to call this quilt 'Controlled Chaos' because those scrappy blocks are contained so well in the Kona. But life has a funny way of shifting ideas and perspectives. I won't bore y'all with the details, but for quite a while, it truly has felt like life has gone to pieces. And like the label says, I dig in and make quilts. Because if one thing can bring me happiness and joy, it is making a quilt, even if it is wonky! 

So for now, my heart is content and I'm going to cling to that for as long as I can. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday! I hope to be able to share another finish later this week, I'm just waiting for it to make its way to its new home first! :)

Double Trouble: Two Finishes for the Price of One!

Howdy y'all! Hope this weekend is treating you well! Today, I have not one, but TWO finishes to share with you. I finished binding these two minis last night and despite the forecast for rain, the sun stayed out for me to get them photographed. :)

Double the minis, double the fun!

These two minis are my first two tries at paper piecing and what fun I've had! I love having a new skill in my quilting tool belt, it opens up so many more doors. I definitely got acquainted with my seam ripper, but I never felt overwhelmed figuring these out.

All I can think about is bumblebees when I look at this. Lol.

The first one is the pattern from SloStudio that I shared with y'all last week. I ended up quilting around the edges of the black areas with black thread - I didn't want to distract from the piecing I worked so hard on!

And it was fate to have that black binding because I found a leftover piece of black binding from something I sewed for my Mom. It looks sharp and frames it so well!

Why hello there, Little Mermaid!

Next is my pride and joy. I found the pattern for The Warsaw Mermaid on Craftsy a while back and saved it despite it being a paper piecing pattern. Some day is what I thought as I filed it away. Well some day ended up being this week! As I was going through my fabric, I noticed that I had the perfect colors for a Little Mermaid and I remembered this pattern.

"NOW! RIGHT NOW!"

I absolutely adore her hair!

So I scrambled to print the pattern and get started. On this one, I took a note out of Jenn @ A Quarter Inch From the Edge's book and colored the pattern pieces according to what fabric went where. It was such an easy thing to do, but such a lifesaver!

This one sat and marinated for a little as I tried to figure out what to bind it with. Nothing fit. I was afraid of ruining my hard work with a crappy binding job. Then, yesterday evening, it hit me - I didn't need a binding! I found this tutorial by Red Pepper Quilts and finished it via the birthing method. It's not quite as neat as I wanted, but for a first try, I'm happy with it. :)

A happy little pair to add to the wall of minis!

I already have plans to make some more mermaids (there are a couple of little girls in my family that LOVE Ariel), so I'm sure you'll be seeing more of them before Christmas time!

I was playing with my camera and LBC was cooperative for once! :)

Faux Baby Cherries: A Finish!

Hello Beautiful!

Howdy y'all! I'm so very excited to share a finished quilt with you today! Thanks to a quilting angel, I was able to get some backing material to start finishing up the tops that I've made. It's amazing what a shopping trip for fabric can do for your quilting motivation! I came home ready to sew all the things! I scored a lovely gray on gray 108-inch wide print - thanks to coupons, I paid around $22 for 3 yards of it! I couldn't pass that up! Now I've got backings to hold me over for a while! :)

The sun dipped behind the trees just as I headed outside and led to the BEST light ever!

Anyway, back to the quilt! As I mentioned in a previous post, this was made from a charm pack (Marmalade by Bonnie and Camille) sent to me by a quilty friend and some leftovers from another quilt. I used the Charm Pack Cherry pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop, but I only had 1 charm pack instead of 2. These aren't normally my go-to kind of fabrics, but I absolutely loved how it turned out! :)

First time stippling = SUCCESS! :)

I ended up stippling it on the First Born since I hadn't quilted anything in ages. Also, it may be weird, but I had NEVER stippled anything before this quilt! I tried once when I first started out and it was just bad bad bad. But it seems all my doodling paid off because it was a breeze and I absolutely loved it!

Happy quilt roll!

I tracked down all the aqua bits of fabric leftover from my Miss Kate quilt and put together a scrumptious little scrappy binding. I was a bit uncertain at first about such a bright binding, but it's one of my favorite parts of the quilt!

Love that scallop fabric, but wish I had the brains to cut it the other direction! Grrr!

And of course a little label! I'm proud that (almost) everything I've made this year has had a label on it.

Hanging out on the fence, a signature quilt pose at this apartment. :)

You may think that something is different about my pictures today - and you would be right! My in-law's gave me their old camera, an upgrade from my old camera that broke and a definite upgrade from my phone! I'm hoping to improve my photography skills now that I have a dependable camera, as well as improve my editing skills. I even remembered to put a watermark thingy in the corner for once! Go me!!

Thanks for stopping by and reading! Hope y'all have a good weekend, happy sewing! :)

Look who greeted me at the door! No editing necessary on this handsome hound! :)

Learning Something New!

Howdy y'all! I'm so excited to share what I've learned this past week!

You guessed it!

PAPER PIECING!!

That's right, I learned paper piecing and, even more shocking, I didn't hate it! I was actually a bit scared to try it out. I've read so many horror stories of how confusing and stressful it is and how people spend more time with their seam ripper than anything else. The funny thing is, none of those things happened. I barely had to use my seam ripper! I thought ahead and used solids so there wasn't a 'wrong side' of the fabric to fool with as I learned my basics.

Such pretty little points, makes my heart sing...

I used a free pattern from a blogger I follow, SLOstudio. She has some paper piecing patterns for free on her Craftsy page, you should check them out! I chose this one because it didn't seem too scary but was still interesting. I looked up a couple of videos on Youtube and decided to just dig in and give it a whirl.

Hello world!

And before I knew it, I had a finished block! I celebrated and continued on each evening until I had 4 blocks ready to be sewn together. They aren't perfect by any means, but I couldn't be happier with my first attempt at paper piecing.

I plan to get this one quilted soon, but I have no idea what to do with the quilting. Any suggestions?

I told LBC he needed a picture for the blog so he showed me his good side! :)

Thanks for reading, Happy Hump Day, y'all!