Quiltathon

During the past two days of the Quiltathon I was able to finish sewing the blocks for the OFAH. I forgot that I only cut out enough stars for 20 blocks not 24, so I have to pick out my 4 favorite blocks and cut 4 more blocks. I am hoping to get those finished this weekend and get this top put together. Here are the pictures of the blocks that I have finished, I know the picture aren't that good but its the best that I could do.

I also got this top finished today during the Quiltathon, it is a Moda University kit that I got for Christmas and have been working on recently. I really hoped to get this one done because I have started back to school this week and I have very little free time now. This is my last semester of school so for the next 7 weeks I am going to have very little free time, but that is it and I will be done with school. So there we will be very little quilting going on here, but hopefully at the end of these 7 weeks I will have lots more free time for quilting.

Weekly Progress

I have been sewing all week, but it has all been 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there so it doesn't look like much progress. Now that it is the end of the week the little that I did each day is starting to look like I made some progress. I got to start the week by getting a package from one of my favorite stores. The two fabrics on the left were just for fun, the rest of the fabrics are for the OFAH and the scraps that I have I will hopefully make a few purses out of , and the charm pack is for a pattern that I already had but had trouble finding this fabric after Christmas. It's always nice to start the week off with something fun in the mail.

Here is the progress that I have made on OFAH. I have all of the squares done now and I will trim them as I start putting the actual blocks together. I have started on hour 2, but I am having a little bit of trouble getting my units to 3 1/2 inches, almost all of them are coming up a little short. This is one of my biggest problems with my quilting, I have a terrible time with keeping units accurate. So there has been a lot of ripping out, because otherwise I would be putting blocks together by now. Here are all of my squares, so hour 1 is done!

Since some are on track and have already been able to sew their blocks together I had to lay out what mine will look like once I catch up to where I should be. I have a three day weekend with not much planned so I hope to be able to catch up to where I should be. In the last post I posted a picture of the other quilt that I have been working on, I don't have any pictures but I have almost finished sewing the borders together which means that I will be able to get this on finished sometime during the long weekend.

Quiltathon

I did get to participate in the quiltathon this weekend, even if I am late in posting. I didn't get a chance to work on anything on Saturday since it I had to go my belated birthday lunch and dinner with some of my friends. I did get a new kit from the fat quarter shop, which I can't wait to get started on. Sunday was when I had a chance to get quilting. I spent most of the my time cutting for the QFAH project. On the weekends I like to get my cutting done for the week, because I have been know to do some strange things when I have to think too much after coming home from work. Here is the proof that I got everything cut. I just got a couple of different colors in the mail today that I will have to add to the pile. Now that hour 1 is posted I am getting very excited to get this one started!

I also was able to get the rest of the borders cut for a University of Moda kit that I got for Christmas and I was able to start to get them sew them on. I am hoping to have the rest of the borders sewn together and get the rest of the border sewn on this week. After I finish the border that I am on there are still 2 more to add to this one. I was hoping to have this one finished this weekend, but that will now be added to this weeks goals.

Hand Quilting

One of my goals for the summer is to finish a quilt for my soon to be mother-in-law. Last year we went shopping together for her to pick out what she wanted for her quilt. She picked this kit and I got the top together very quickly, but getting it finished is a completely different story. Between school and work, the top got set a side and now that spring semester is over I finally got started quilting it. I plan on quilting lilies into the border and a simple meander in the center. For now I really enjoy the hand quilting, but I am sure that I will soon have too many tops to be able to hand quilt them all. I have the first bit of the lilies marked and I will now have something to do during Grey’s Anatomy. I need to come up with a name for this quilt, but that is something that I am working on as well :)

Quilt For An Hour

I am so excited to be able to participate in the new QFAH on http://www.patchworktimes.com/. I just picked out my fabrics (as an early birthday present) at my local quilt store. It was so much fun going to look at all the different fabrics and this time I had a great experience. I went to two different stores today and one I will not be returning too. I am a young quilter and I look young for my age so when I go into some quilting stores the women who are working there make me feel like I don't belong. This one particular store that I went into first, I have visited a few times and everytime that I have gone the people who are working there are not friendly and give me looks the entire time I am in the store. Today when I came in the store the women up front just looked at me and didn't greet me they just stared. The second store that I went into today the ladies were so helpful and gave me great advice. The difference between the two stores was that the first one I felt so uncomfortable I wouldn't have asked for help and the second store they came up to me and made me feel like they wanted my business.

Now that I have vented lets see the fabric. Since I don't have the stash like many other quilters because I am fairly new to quilting. I still have to go out to buy fabric for new projects, darn :)

The green fabric is going to be my dark background, the dots will be the light background, and the stripe will be the binding. My stars are going to come from these six fabrics. I have to order some fabric online and I may pick 1 or 2 more fabrics for the stars.

Quillow

This is a quillow that I made for my little brother for Christmas this year. The blanket part has that bright orange (so bright it hurts your eyes) and the bug/beige print. This is one of the first finished projects that I have and it was also my first attempt at quilting with my sewing machine. I think that it turned out pretty well considering and he loved it.