Sunday Stash Report

I was so good for the last few weeks, and it's all gone to pot. I know next week won't be pretty either, since the Cotton Patch Quilt Show starts on Friday and there is a special member preview party and sale the night before. I'm very excited about it--the quilts should all be judged by now and I can't wait to see how mine did! Check back next week; I'll be sure to take lots of pictures of all the quilts.

I used 1.375 yards for the baby quilt top this week.

In this week were some fabrics I need for quilts that are in the works, plus some fabrics that I totally didn't need but that somehow came home with me anyway:

Some Flora&Fauna fat quarters. I think these go nicely together even though they're different colorways, and I've already got a quilt idea to showcase them.

Some brown batiks to make cubes to go with the one-patch wonder I'm working on:

And some assorted fabrics, including more turquoise so I can finally start my octopus quilt, a yummy yard from Dragonfly, and some shell fabric from my mom.

Oh gosh, how did my hand end up in that picture? That sparkly thing is not fabric, and besides, it should have been in last week's stash report!

Used This Week: 1.375
Used Year To Date: 10.125
Added This Week: 5.25
Added Year To Date: 20
Net Used For 2011: -9.875


See how everyone else is doing.

Baby quilt top

Like I mentioned in the last post, I've decided it would probably be a good idea to have a stack of baby quilt tops hiding in my closet, ready to go the next time I'm invited to a baby shower. Plus, I keep finding adorable baby fabric in clearance bins, and I felt like using some of it. So here's the first one, from my own pattern:

I had been hoping to make it a little bigger (it's now 28x28), but then I would have had to buy more medium blue fabric rather than using up a fat quarter, and using up fat quarters is also part of my goal with these baby tops. So, I'm going to put some relatively wide borders on it. I'm not sure I have fabric for those, but oh well. It can always wait until there's an actual baby!

Black and White Quilt

This is my first attempt at a black and white (well, and green) quilt. I really like black and white plus one accent color quilts, and I've been wanting to do one for a while. Some of the squares blend together a bit more than I would have liked, but overall I think it's pretty fun.

Please disregard the weeds in my lawn!

This quilt will be heading off to a new home tomorrow. It's for a dear friend whom I've been wanting to send a care package to, and since she lives in the northeast she could probably use one that will help keep her warm! Green is her favorite color, and since she loves cats and played in the college band with me, there are some fabrics with those themes in there as well.

I'm still pondering the one-block wonders on my design wall, so I may start piecing some baby quilt tops--I'm thinking it would be a good idea to have some tops on hand ready to go since there often isn't that much notice for showers!

Sunday Stash Report

All I got done this week was the binding on a quilt for my friend--see the next post! :)


Used This Week: 0.25
Used Year To Date: 8.75
Added This Week: 0
Added Year To Date: 14.75
Net Used For 2011: -3.5

One-Block Wonder

Yesterday was Quilt Receiving day for the Cotton Patch Quilt Show and now my living room looks very sad and empty because all my quilts will be gone until the end of the show. So, between seeing all the wonderful quilts while helping out at the receiving and not seeing any in my living room, I went straight to the sewing room for my rotary cutter. I'm making a one-block wonder quilt out of that owl fabric I mentioned in my stash report at the beginning of the year. 

Here they are all sewn and ready to be ironed.

And here's a sneak peek at one of them.

They're up on my design wall now, so I'm making good progress!

Sunday Stash Report

I have been very good the last two weeks and not bought any fabric! I'm saving up for the quilt show in March. Also, finding out that you need a new heat pump is not conducive to making you want to spend money on fabric.


This week, I used 1.5 yards for a quilt backing and 2 yards for triangles for a one-patch wonder:

Used This Week: 3.5
Used Year To Date: 8.5
Added This Week: 0
Added Year To Date: 14.75
Net Used For 2011: -3.75


See how everyone else is doing.

Global Warming Quilt

With days to spare, I've finally finished my Show Challenge quilt for the upcoming Cotton Patch Quilt Show! The theme is Hot Threads, Cool Quilts, and the Show Challenge was to interpret this theme and that the quilt have dimensional elements. We presented the tops back in December, but now it's almost time to turn in the show quilts!

My interpretation of the theme was "Global Warming." Here is the finished quilt:

I had a lot of difficulty with it due to the ruffling in the borders. I really like the effect but it made the quilt somewhat uneven on the edges, and it ended up lopsided which I fixed according to the measuring tape but not the picture. It's not my best effort ever, but there are parts of it I'm really happy with.

See? Pretty good in closeup. I used sparkly thread to quilt, so it's all very glittery and icy.

I wanted to make a polar scene because the effects of global warming are greatest at the poles. (I thought of doing the Arctic and having a polar bear, which is the iconic victim of global warming, but the penguin embroidery design just worked better in this quilt. Sorry, polar bears.) This is because the poles are covered in ice and snow. As you know if you've ever walked outside on a sunny day when there's snow on the ground, it's bright--the snow is reflecting the sun's rays back into space. As the ice melts, less of the sun's rays are reflected back into space and the water/land absorbs the warmth from the sun, making more ice melt, and so on. For more about the science behind global warming, here's a good website.

Unfortunately, I was not the only quilter whose interpretation of Hot/Cold was global warming--or whose quilt involved penguins. Out of 16 quilts presented for the challenge, three had penguins on them. Oops, guess I wasn't very original this time around.

Quilt Labels

My fabulous boyfriend practices calligraphy, and he had the idea of doing some for quilt labels for me. We came up with this:

For now, I am using printable iron-ons to make the labels, although I may go the Spoonflower route once I decide on a final layout for the labels (there's a lot of wasted space at the moment).

To make your own, design them on the computer, then print them out using the instructions that came with the iron-ons, which probably includes printing them backwards. They are currently 4x3, so I could fit six on a page. Here are five of them, cut apart:

Then trim around them to get rid of most of the white space:

And iron on!

I turned under the edges and hand-stitched to the quilts, but you could also sew them on by machine before quilting, which is what I think I'll be doing in the future.

I always knew I was supposed to make labels, but it was just always too much trouble--but these look good enough for me to want to put them on quilts!