Arkansas Traveler Pillow

My time in Cairo is winding down.  I have less than a month left and I've slowly been sorting things into piles, deciding what will go to my next location and what will go into storage.  I've already put most of my fabric into containers.

All of this is to say that I plan on spending my remaining time here sewing up little gifts to the friends I've developed over the past years.  I've made this pillow using the Arkansas Traveler block and plan on giving it to my neighbor.

String Quilt

I started another quilt from the Practical Guide to Patchwork.  It's called "Valentine," but it's a basic string quilt pattern.  I thought originally that I'd make it with 16 blocks, but I decided to expand to 20.  

Now all I need to do is figure out how to quilt this...

Small Plates Finish

I finished this quilt back in early February but never got around to posting about it.  February was a busy month and I hope to do more sewing this month.  I used straight line quilting along the block edges.  I tried to free motion quilt it, but stopped a few minutes in.  I think I need to start out with smaller projects, like place mats, before jumping into quilting something large.

It still needs to be washed, but since I have no recipient in mind I'm going to wait until it needs to be cleaned from all the cat hairs it's accumulated.

WIP Wednesday: Cairo Snow Day

We obviously don't have real snow days in Cairo, instead civil insurrection sometimes makes it impossible to go to work.  This entire week I've been waking up and immediately checking my blackberry to see if I've been instructed not to come in or whether there's been a delayed opening, which makes me feel like I'm back in school and waiting for word on whether there's a snow day.  I haven't had a full day of work so far this week, which has done wonders for getting sewing projects done.

So far I've completed my strip and flip baby quilt and my grandmother's birthday pillow.

 

I've finished my small plates quilt top and am going to start basting and quilting it later this week.

I've also started pulling fabrics to make my Valentine quilt from A Practical Guide to Patchwork.

photo my colleague took on the way into work yesterday

Linking up with Lee from Freshly Pieced!  Thanks for stopping by!

Birthday pillow

My grandmother's birthday is coming up and I'm hoping this will arrive in the States in time.  I made a pillow based on this flying geese pillow and finished it using the instructions in this post.  It was pretty easy to put together and a successful first paper piercing experience!  The only snag is that I used a pillow form that claimed it was 18"x18" and I think it was really much smaller than that because my pillow cover looks very large.

I think she'll love it!

Another baby quilt

It seems like everyone in Cairo is pregnant these days so I've made a third baby quilt ahead of the baby shower next weekend.  The mother-to-be is a bit picky so hopefully this will live up to her standards!  I used Cluck Cluck Sew's tutorial for the strip and flip baby quilt since I needed a quick pattern due to being out of town for the past week.  Luckily there was an Egyptian holiday on Thursday and I got an unexpected day off today due to all the rioting that's going on near my place of work.  Oh Egypt...I think this is the fourth or fifth extra day off due to unsafe security situations in my time here, not to mention all the countless times we've had an early release or delayed start.

I couldn't decide which fabric to use for binding at first.  I have a ton of brown fabric that I don't go through that quickly, but I thought it made the quilt look heavy.

I think it turned out quite well!  One of these days I'll have to start trying to use free motion quilting...

Open Wide Zipper Pouch

I spent part of my weekend making an open wide zipper pouch from the Noodle-Head blog.  It was super easy to put together, though it always seems like I have to take out at least one seam per bag.  For this one it was forgetting to leave an area open to turn it right side out.

I think it turned out well!  The fabric is Bella by Lotta Jansdotter from Windham Fabrisc.  The pouch is currently housing all my empty bobbins and sewing machine needles. :)

Small Plates

I decided to start the "small plates" quilt from The Practical Guide to Patchwork, though I haven't decided how large I want to make it.  On one hand it's been really easy to piece the blocks, but then if I want to try free motion quilting, it should probably be a smaller quilt to start out with.  I guess I'll put together the current blocks and then decided how big to make it.  There won't be any action on it for a while since I've run out of white fabric.

In other news you'll probably be seeing a lot of Simply Color from Moda in the next few months.  I got a fat quarter bundle and just calculated that it's a total of 10.5 yards of fabric from 42 fat quarters.  Between my new wave quilt and this one I've probably only used about eight so I've got a long way to go before it gets depleted from my stash.  I'm not sure if I'll buy many more pre-cut bundles.  Simply Color is great because it has a lot of colors I don't have in my stash, but if I really love a print, I'd probably want more of it than just a fat quarter.  It also seems like the jelly rolls and other pre-cuts are overpriced for the amount of fabric that you get.  

Kite Baby Quilt

I had originally intended for my new wave quilt to go to a good friend/co-worker who is expecting her first child in March.  When she announced that she was having a baby girl I decided to make a different quilt that involved more 'girly' colors than the wave quilt that seems more gender neutral/boy-ish to my eyes.  I saw this tutorial on the Modern Quilt Guild blog and thought it seemed perfect.

I guess the only thing that really makes this quilt 'girly' is that it has coral-y reds.  I'm not sure I'll ever make a quilt like this again because I found it really tedious.  There was a lot of squaring (or rectangling) up to do and I never felt like any of my diamonds had all of their points match in the end.  Also some of the points were lopped off when I joined together the rows.  I'm still not sure why this was the case since the blocks were perfect half rectangle triangles after I squared them up.

But my biggest mistake didn't come until after I had sewn the binding on.  I saw a tutorial on machine stitching the binding on and decided to try it.  Usually I hand sew the binding onto the back, but I'm always in the mood for a short cut so decided to give machine binding a whirl.  I think it would have turned out perfectly well, except I had already stitched the binding onto the front 3/8" from the edge and the tutorial recommended that the binding be attached a quarter from the edge.  Not a big deal, I thought, and grabbed my rotary cutter and ruler and quickly trimmed everything up to a quarter of an inch.  Then I went to pin the binding to the back and discovered that when I trimmed up the binding, I also sliced through the bias tape so that it was no longer continuous.  I went ahead and stitched the binding on anyways and it turned out pretty well apart from the corners.  After that I went back and hand stitched the corners on so that the raw edges weren't visible.

Situations like these always make me wonder how noticeable the flaws are to people who don't quilt.  

Free Motion Quilting

I took advantage of a recent Egyptian holiday to start experimenting with free motion quilting.  I've mostly used my walking foot for straight lines so far and tried out several designs with my new darning foot, which curiously enough is actually called a quilting foot by Bernina.  The only difference I can see between the darning foot #9 and quilting foot #29 is that the darning foot has a metal circle end and the quilting foot has a plastic rounded rectangular end.  I guess the plastic makes it easier to see the designs as they're being quilted.

bubbles

robot/wavy lines

This attempt to do boxy straight lines didn't work as well with the darning foot.  Perhaps it would be better with the walking foot.

meandering lines

loopy lines

I think the loopy lines needed more loops.  Otherwise it started to look like the meandering lines and sometimes the loops started to turn into swirls.  The meandering lines were definitely the easiest once I started to get the hang of it.

Happy New Year!

Here's one of my recent finishes, the New Wave quilt, pattern by Elizabeth Hartman.  It's intended for one of my husband's colleagues who just gave birth to a boy.  She won't return to Egypt for a couple of months though so it's sitting on a chair right now.  The fabric is Simply Color from Moda.

I had an exciting Christmas and received a walking foot from my grandmother and a darning foot from my sister.  I had quilted the above quilt before receiving these gifts and was shocked to see how much easier it is to quilt straight lines using a walking first.  Of course, before that happened I managed to put the foot on the wrong way and had wondered what all the fuss was about because I couldn't see the huge difference.  The next few weeks will definitely involve a lot of free motion quilting practice.  I also have another baby quilt to finish before a shower next week and need to start thinking about what to give my grandmother for her birthday on February 14.  Maybe a pillow?