september gypsy wife quiltalong giveaway link party

it's my turn to host the gypsy wife qal monthly giveaway! this month's winner will receive a $25 gift certificate from the fat quarter shop. free is always nice, but free fabric of one's own choosing is extra nice.

how are your gypsy wives coming along, anyway? mine is looking something like this:

 the pile of fabric i pulled to use for my quilt, taking up room on the couch in my sewing area . . .

and a much smaller pile of finished blocks, removed from the design wall to keep out of the light until i can get back to them. i had to put my gypsy lady away at the beginning of the summer because there was just not going to be time for her. i thought my month for the quilt along post was november and i'd have time to catch up, but here we are and i'm caught.

according to the schedule, the blocks for september are

Puss in the Corner (2)

Square in a Square (7×3″),

9

i was able to complete the 7 - 3" square in a square blocks, aka: economy blocks, which is much faster to write and currently more trendy.

here's my first tip for making these: follow the pattern cutting directions. i got through 4 squares before i realized i was cutting the center square at the finished size rather than at the size the pattern told me to cut. that was painful because it took me a long time, and now the smaller squares are useless because the pattern only calls for one of them and since i cut the smaller corner squares at the size the pattern called for, my center squares are extra tiny. i was wondering why so little of the center fabric was actually showing! the blocks look much better cut the way the pattern called for.

a few other tips i discovered along the way follow.

tip #1: don't use your default 1/4" seam guide foot since you are stitching on the drawn line rather than at a 1/4" out from anything. i noticed my guide foot was causing a little bunching as i sewed. just the regular old foot works best here. (this may only apply to me who can't sew without her training wheel foot on.)

tip #2: if you are using a print for the corners, you can determine which half of the print will show in the corner by placing that half on the inside of the square rather than along the edges. if you look you can see my drawn diagonal line that directs where i sew. this forms two triangles. the lower triangle on the bottom right is the portion of the print that will show up after all is cut and pressed in place. i wanted as much of the green vs the navy showing in my block so i put most of the unwanted navy in the upper corner along the edges so it would get trimmed.

 this is the above piece after it's been sewn, cut, and pressed. the triangle to the right is the bit cut off and the small square on the left is the piece for the other corner. (it's not helpful that i switched the block around when i photographed it the second time, but hopefully you follow along anyway.)

 now i've laid the last corner piece on with the corner i want showing facing in toward the center of the block. (wrong! actually, if you look, i've got it turned around. this is a sample of how not to do this.)

 as soon as i began sewing i noticed what i was doing. see how my upper right and lower left corners don't match like i had intended? time to unpick.

 take two: the triangle that is going to look like the piece i cut is now placed along the outer edge so we are lined up properly for matchy-matchy corners.

and now you see why sewing takes me so long. i only seem to learn by trial and error.

 tip #3: when trimming up your block, if you tilt it on an angle, sort of "on point", you can trim two sides without having to move your block or ruler. just zip up that lower right side and then back across the top.

 then just flip the ruler to the other side and you can trim the other two sides without moving the block at all. just make sure you are making the correct size block or none of this will matter at all. (3" finished, not cut!)

 tip #4: instead of drawing a pencil line, you can also just fold that triangle in half and finger press it to get a guide mark. the amount of lighting available as you sew will determine if this is actually helpful or not, so you'll have to try it first.

 tip #5: when cutting the seam allowance on the first two corners, you can gain yourself the tiniest bit of wiggle room by cutting the seam at a scant 1/4" rather than a true or generous 1/4".

wrong

if you put the 1/4" mark to the right of the seam, you'll be cutting it generous. don't do this. and let's just all pretend we don't see that my corner block shifted and isn't perfectly lined up with the other corner, okay? who needs accuracy, anyway?

correct

by placing the yellow cutting guide mark to the left of the seam, you've now got a scant 1/4" seam allowance, which means you have given yourself just a bit more fabric for when you sew the next two corners on. this seemed to help with my accuracy.

as for tips for the puss in the corner block, you're on your own. i haven't done it yet. also, anyone know where that name came from? i just don't get it but i'm sure there's a fascinating story behind it.

if you have any tips at all for either of these blocks, please share in the comments!

for participants who did complete your blocks for september, please join the link up to enter for the $25 fat quarter shop gift card giveaway.

An InLinkz Link-up

girls weekend quilt

 this year for my family's annual girls weekend, i volunteered to spearhead a humanitarian project for the ladies. there were several ideas running through my head, but the easiest idea won out for me: make super-simple quilts for project linus. i culled a pile of of fat quarters from my stash for 4sq blankets and brought along my box of lime/aqua/black&white fabrics i ordered months ago so we could all work on one quilt together. then i loaded half my suburban with the required gear to work on said quilts. and my son opened the back window and my little brother machine fell out. and we had so many great things going at girls weekend that we never really did much sewing at all. isn't that just how it goes sometimes?

however, on sunday afternoon, the final hour of our event, two of my seesters and some of the middle girls made four patch blocks for the quilt. the blocks are composes of 5" squares and i plan to alternate the blocks with 9.5" squares for an easy top. since we currently only have 6 completed blocks, this weekend the girls will be getting together again while the men attend the priesthood session of general conference and everyone should get a chance to sew their block at that time. all those fat quarters for 4sq blankets will just get tucked away for another day. maybe even next year's girls weekend. at least i now have a plan for all those fat quarters.

when life's too crazy for quilting

antique victorian "crazy quilt"

y'all, i've been frantically trying to live my actual real life the last few weeks, which has left zero time for quilting of any kind, other than a brief stop-in at rachel's angled class every few days to dream and sigh over what i would like to do when i have the time someday. like in about 15 years when i have no more children at home. the fact is, i signed up for 7 children and homeschooling all on my own crazy initiative. really, that requires a certain amount of gutsy insanity, and some focus and commitment as well. no matter how many cool quilting ideas i get or how many wips i have in progress, i have responsibilities that have much farther reaching. longer-lasting effects than my quilting does. so i've sewn a total of three straight lines in the last two weeks. 

just last night while my husband and i were pillow-talking about all the things i can't get done and what maybe needed to be cut out, i declared i hadn't even been doing the "fluff" or "me" stuff since we got home from our summer road trip and i still feel like i'm drinking my life from a firehose, unable to get even the massive list of essentials done. he congratulated me on that and encouraged me to think carefully about my priorities and schedule. and ironically, here i am blogging today.

i have nothing new to share, not even some more straight lines of quilting. but this afternoon i just needed to connect to the blogosphere in some way. i've been wanting to talk about how i finally managed to fabric fast for several months on end (no purchases since april! four straight months!) after my repeated failed attempts (bad february, iffy march and april), but i have no photos to show of something i didn't do. 

so i dug out the few quilting photos i took on our vacation. they aren't of my work, but rather of some cool vintage quilts i stumbled across in a museum on a spontaneous stop in a little backwoods town. seeing as how we visited several historic sites, including colonial williamsburg, washington, dc, and mount vernon, i was puzzled at the lack of quilts i came across. perhaps i just didn't get to the right exhibits. however, a few weeks into our trip we were driving from atlanta, ga to seaside, fl and found ourselves passing through the quaintest, most picturesque small town of eufaula, al. the main street was divided by a large, verdant median, and both sides of the avenue were lined with a completely charming mix of cottages and antebellum mansions. after driving the street a bit i declared we needed a break from the car so we got out and walked.

 please excuse our rough travel appearances as we'd been on the road several hours already and were more concerned with comfort than style or grooming. carseat hair is just about as bad as bedhead.

 this lovely home turned out to be museum, which we decided to tour on the spot. it was a treasure trove of period furniture, clothing, and artifacts, maintained by the sweetest souther docents you ever met. they welcomed my rumpled children with open arms and honeyed southern accents of the most genteel nature.

 bless my little ones, they were enraptured and photographed nearly every inch of the mansion. i handed over my phone and let them go at it. i want to raise photographers as well as quilters and bibliophiles.

 upstairs in a bedroom i found my only encounter with quilts, fabric, or quilting the entire trip. unfortunately, the lighting was very low to protect the antiques, which made for poor photographic conditions. nevertheless, we were allowed to roam through everything at will rather than just view from behind ropes or glass, which makes for such a different experience.

 i love star quilts and this one was no exception. i think the crosshatched box quilting is particularly charming.

 another star quilt, part of a trousseau, was also on display. it's soft, somewhat earthy muted tan and sage color palette was lovely.

the crazy quilt laid out on the bed was a sight to behold. so many fascinating little bits stitched together and embellished with intricate needlework of every sort. as i child, i always thought crazy quilts were just too crazy and chaotic, but looking at this one up close, i can understand the appeal.

that's all i have to share for now; memories from my summer vacation. i hope that another week or two will resolve the pace i'm functioning at right now. getting back into our home life and launching another homeschool year for 6 children has been no small feat. in fact, i feel so busy that i keep wondering if there is a newborn in the house since i find myself with little time to even brush my own teeth! (no newborn, but a potty training 2 yr old demands a large share of attention.) when the dust settles, we'll see if i can get some more lines quilted or a top perhaps finished for that tutorial i was working on. but not while my babies need me.

line upon line

home at last and got to turn on juki come friday night. i was deligthed to see she's still alive and kickin' after the long slumber. what with trying to recover and catch up from the travels, i didn't get any friday morning quilting time in. maybe next week. but i did settle down to some stitching for friday night sew along on instagram. i have quite a few projects on the cusp of being finished, so it was hard to pick. however, i settled on s2's last-christmas quilt, which is in the "needs quilting" que. you can see i managed all of three lines of stitching.

i'm going for randomly spaced straight line stitching for this quilt. also, using two or three colors. goodness, i forgot how hard it is to stitch a straight line! it's even harder when you are interrupted every 3 to 5 minutes by children who need something only you can get, the doorbell, and the telephone. i was on and off the machine for over two hours. by the looks of my output, i'd say i was more off than on. but it was a start.

little quilting chores make for big quilting finishes, right?

perhaps this week i'll get another few inches along.
if the doorbell and telephone stopping ringing.

linking up with lee's wip wednesday at freshly pieced

happy binding

 it's the rare occasion that i try to make the pattern in my bindings match up. this was not one of those times. however, as i was ironing out the strips after joining them, i couldn't help be pleasantly pleased and just a little tickled when i noticed how perfectly some of the strips lined up. pretty, aren't they? hurray for happy sewing moments when something spontaneously goes right rather than awry!

 and now this adorable heather bailey "lottie dot" (which is really more like a concave square) is ready to bind up the florida baby quilt (as yet unnamed). i love this dot and was so disappointed that she didn't make it in the orange from this collection, too. "lottie dot" from "lottie dah" came in purple, olive, charcoal, and cream, but not that luscious tangerine orange. so sad. it would have made a great binding, too.

since this is a baby quilt, i went for machine binding again. following my last happy accident, i purposefully made this binding at 3" rather than 2.5", which works out beautifully for me for machine binding. previously, i used a piece of clear scotch tape to mark where i should be attaching the binding but somewhere along the way since then, someone else mentioned they use washi tape. (sure wish i could remember who to credit!) the washi is easier to see and a lot cuter, too.

 the one little mistake i did make this time around, besides wandering off course in a few places, is i attached the binding to the wrong side. i attached it to the back, which means i'm folding over and finishing off on the front. with handbinding, this doesn't make a difference to me. but when machine binding, the first side has more potential room for showing error, so i'd like the errors to be on the back, rather than the front. not too big a deal, but it's a "note to self" preference for next time.

actually, i probably should have used a thread that blended rather than contrasted. that was just laziness of not wanting to change threads. again, not that big a deal. just a "note to self."

 otherwise, this is a pretty, happy binding that makes me smile!

there is still a smidgen of quilting to go (backwards, i know), because i had to finish unpicking that ugly quilting on the pink strip. i got tired of waiting on the unpicking and completed the binding first. now to correct that quilting. when that's done, i'll have a finish on my hands! and a great story to share.

19 and counting

my epp has been languishing away in a lonely corner for most of the spring and summer, but i've worked at it a few times during d2's volleyball games in the last few weeks. i have lots of other opportunities to work on it coming up, so i pulled out all the finished blocks to see where i stand with the project. i have a combination of approximately 19 wheels - approximately because some are full wheels, some half, and others already joined. add in the one i sent liz for her birthday and that means i made 20 blocks since i started last summer.

as d1 so kindly pointed out, at this rate of production, it will take me 5 years to complete the 100 blocks i am aiming for with this quilt. not such a happy thought. but i was pleasantly surpirsed that my total was as high as it was. last time i checked, i only had about a dozen made. working at it here and there, i managed to make 7 more blocks without realizing it. i should do that more often.

today i was cutting some fabrics i bought to add in several months ago. as i was cutting triangles, i took this photo to remind myself in the future that the perfect measurements for the triangles are as follows: 2.25" strips, cut at the 1.5"/#2 line. this makes up pieces just exactly as i like them.

now let's see how many more wheels i can churn out before summer is over.

photos that just won't

 so, i know a thing or two about photography. i really do. i have a good camera and a fantastic lens. i use natural light whenever possible and often wait until i can get it to photograph something. i know how to shoot in manual. i adjust my white balance and exposure compensation all the time. i know what aperture means and which way to go when i want more light or depth of field. yeah, i know all that stuff. i aim to take pleasing photos "in camera" and don't edit hardly ever, at all. this works pretty well for me most of the time.

however, i am having a hard time with the latest fabrics i've been using. despite the natural light and adjustments, they just don't look good. whenever i take a detail shot, i end up with what looks like a terrible flash photograph. just look at the ugly pictures i got when shooting in the lovely location above:

white balance - shade; too yellow

white balance - sunlight; slightly grey

white balance - sunlight, exposure adjusted +1 for more light; washed out and colors too bright

 and what happens on the design wall is even worse. i really do try to square myself with what i'm shooting, but it's difficult in the room with the table in the middle of everything taking up all the space. i stand behind it or on it when necessary.

  i tried to get a shot of part of the quilt on the design wall in natural afternoon light. it looks like a nasty indoor flash photo to me. is it that the intense colors in this quilt are difficult to photograph or is it me? the reds, in particular, are always off. and i either get slightly grey photos with not enough light in the whites or nice bright whites but the other colors are too intense and/or washed out.

here's the setting where i'm shooting the design wall photos, all natural light only:

white balance - shade; too yellow

 btw, my walls are a buttery yellow color, best captured on the left behind the ironing board in the above photo.

white balance - daylight; greyish, especially in the whites.

white balance - daylight, adjust exposure +1 for more light; washed out and colors are lurid

i know all our screens won't be synced, so this may come across differently from where you sit, but maybe you see what i'm talking about. any suggestions?

fyi - i shoot with a canon 60d body,and canon ef 24-70mm 2.8 apt ultrasonic L series zoom lens.

basket o' quilts

 last summer, i had three quilts happily living in our family room, there for anything (reasonable) the children wanted to use them for. my method of storage for them was to drape them over a couch arm. it worked well at the time. fast forward to early this summer and i have 5 quilts who reside in the family room. the old arm-hanging method wasn't working so well anymore.

so i found a basket at target that rounds them all up nicely - and quite literally seeing as it's a tube-shaped basket and i roll the quilts to put them in there. this is a smith and hawkins basket that matches the large baskets i have housing kids' shoes and sports balls in our central hallway. i like that the basket matches but is unique in it's shape.

until becky gets busy with her mad woodworking skills and makes me a quilt ladder (pretty please?) like the one she just made for herself, we'll be using the basket for quilt storage 'round here.

my crew - 2014 update

in addition to being a hobby sewer, i'm a mother of seven and wife of one. i've been dragging my kids right along side me in this sewing/crafting adventure begun late 2010.

on-line, we guard our children's identities and privacy closely, so although i feature their projects along with my own work, i will not show their sweet faces or use their darling names, as much as i love both. our last name is completely taboo.

also top-secret is our location. let's just say we're blessed to live in the good ole' USA, in one of the hotter regions. naturally, that could be one of several states, some of which i have also lived in during my lifetime.

if we are fortunate enough to know you, pretty please do not reveal or refer to any of this information on this blog.

still, all the paranoia aside, here's a look at the family.

daughter #1, sixteen years old

started her first quilt this year as part of an english project. still waiting on the top to be completed now that her english paper has been written and recieved it's A. lately has been making hairbows for fun. "mom, it's okay that i used your scraps for my bows, right? i just used these strip pieces." actually, no. you need to ask first, hon. but i'm glad you're making something!

son #1, fourteen

can work my machine, has crazy-big ideas (like the patchwork bags he made his littlest sisters at christmas in 2011), and tries a bit of everything. not a committed sewer, but very artistic and always has a creative project of one sort or another going on: baking, paper airplanes, mini weapons, holiday decorations, drawing. he's great for consulting when i need opinions, likes a math quilt challenge, and won't leave my rotary blade alone if there are scraps to be sliced and diced.

daughter #2, twelve

got her own sewing machine for christmas 2012 and makes projects all the time. this year she made two four-square baby quilts for a church fundraiser for camp.

son #2, ten

is mostly just waiting for mom to finish his quilt. "mom, is it done yet?" i can't remember the last time he sewed anything but he does love my quilts and helps hold them for photos occasionally. most of his creative energy is invested in disappearing when it's time for schoolwork and in masterbuilding with legos. on any given day there is usually a soccer ball in my sewing space kicked there courtesy of s2.

daughter #3, eight

loves to read sewing books and is always asking to start something. if only my time could keep up with her inspiration! she is most recently working on a small felt applique scene in an embroidery hoop.

daughter #4, six

is mom's bestest little quilting buddy, my most constant companion in the sewing room. her official jobs are snipping threads, removing basting pins, and cleaning my machine's exterior with the lint brush. she's made her own kitty softie and a mini quilt to go with it.

daughter #5, three!

thinks any quilting tool belongs to her, not me. loves to play with pins, scraps, and rulers. decorates the design wall with her own scrap creations for me all the time. still walks all over any wips on the floor. "helps" me sew by sitting in my lap and placing her hands on mine as i guide fabric.