Robot-y Luv!

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up some Robot Factory (by Robert Kaufman) prints ...

... in the hopes that at least one of the four little bundles of joy expected among family and friends would be a little boy.  It turns out that ALL FOUR babies are BOYS!  While part of me is dying to make something flowery and cutesy in shades of pink or aqua, but I'm also excited to dive into this fabric.  I've found two great inspirational projects to make two quilts.

First up is this cute little {scrap friendly} piece called Scrap Jar Stars by Amber @ A Little Bit Biased!

Photo belongs to Gigi's Thimble

Visit her website for a fantastic tutorial!  I'm using the patterned Robot fabric for the checkerboard squares and plan on using some coordinating solids for the star points.  So far, I've finished the star centers:

My other quilt was inspired by this Kaleidoscope Quilt-along by Jennifer @ Sugar Stitches.

Photo belongs to Sugar Stitches

Jennifer has a fantastic tutorial for making this quilt, but since it required a specific ruler called a Kaleidoscope Smart Plate ...

... that does look pretty awesome, but isn't in my crafting budget this month, I'm using my template from Fig Tree & Co's "Salt Water Taffy" quilt and making my own sort of hybrid pattern.  So far so good!

We have a busy weekend coming up, so I'm planning on burning the midnight oil -- ok, the 10:00pm oil -- to make some progress!  Hopefully, I'll have more pictures to share soon!

It's a rather gloomy Thursday ...

... and I'm really in the mood to curl up with Aiden, a good book and a cup of tea!  I have a feeling that it's going to be one of those days where I'm just not going to get a whole lot accomplished!

Yesterday, Aiden had his weekly "Grammy Date" so we decided to venture out to explore a new-to-me quilt shop here in Sacramento:

Shirley, aka "The Knot-y Embroidery Lady" and the gals there are so much fun and their shop looks fantastic!  Of course, we didn't make it out of the store without some new goodies!  I was so thrilled to find Robot Factory by Caleb Gray for Robert Kaufman Fabrics.  I had pinned this fabric last fall but didn't order it from the Fat Quarter Shop before they ran out, so I was thrilled to find them in the shop!

While we were there, the Lately Arrived from London line by Barbara Brackman for Moda really caught my eye.  I'm not sure whether I was attracted to the name or the colors more -- I'm definitely not a Civil War prints kind of gal -- but two charm packs and a couple of fat quarters made their way home with me.  I can't wait to find out what next month's Schnibbles pattern will be to see if the fabric will work!

I have been able to get a little bit of sewing done here, despite have a really busy week!  I was able to finish up two of my Swoon Along blocks -- and I've decided to break my rule of only counting finished projects for my weekly stash update for the Swoon blocks only.  Since it's going to take several months to finish this quilt, I figured that I deserved to show some stash progress each week!

My favorite finish of the week has to be this cute summery dress for my niece's first birthday!

The fabric is Lovely by Sandy Gervais - forgot how beautiful this whole line is!! - with a coordinating lemony batik.  I haven't really ventured much into the realm of sewing clothing, but I found this great free pattern from Oliver + S called "Popover Sundress" ...

Photo from Oliver + S

... and had to try it out.  This is a great pattern (available in sizes 2-7) and is definitely beginner friendly! And as a bonus - there was enough fabric leftover to make a cheery little on-point checkerboard!

My little man just went down for a nap, so I'm off to de-clutter my sewing table and finish up some more projects!  Before I forget, though, here is my stash update:

Stash Update: 1/18/12 - 1/26/12

• Purchased:  11.75 yards including my Flurry fat quarter stash for the Swoon Along, 2 yards of Robot Factory, and 2.75 yards of Lately Arrived from London
• Used: 2.25 yards - 1.5 yards for the Birthday dress, and .375 yards each for my two swoon blocks

YTD: + 11.63 yards  

Wow!  If I hadn't done any shopping this week, I would have been breaking even.  Oh well - I promised the  hubby I'd lay off the fabric acquisitions for a little while, so maybe I'll be able to report a smaller number next week.

Happy Sewing!!

Check out the 'ole design wall!

Happy Design Wall Monday!  Check mine out!

That can mean only one thing!  Robot Roulette is actually finished!!

 Ok, technically, I still have to stitch the binding down, but this baby has left the wall! I tried to be as random with the four robot prints as possible and overall, I'm please with the way that it turned out!  There were some inadvertent color clusters, but nothing that stands out too much ... at least if you were viewing it from the back of a galloping horse!

My inspiration came from Jennifer @ Sugar Stitches, but I used my pinwheel template from Fig Tree & Co's "Salt Water Taffy" quilt.  I love, love, love the pinwheel effect and the resulting circles they create.  Once the binding is all in place, it's off to it's new home with Aiden's newest little cousin!

This afternoon, I'm playing with ...

This line is a first for me - Reproduction fabric isn't usually my cup of tea, but I love the colors and the prints in this line.  I'm excited to step out of my little box with a new project for fall!  We'll see what happens.

Monday Morning Goals

So ... a month of being away every single weekend has resulted in:

A) the whole family getting sick ... right as Aiden started trying to cut his first tooth ... so no sleep for anyone

B) a seriously neglected sewing machine (and sewing blog, for that matter)

C) a dusty house with bathrooms that need cleaning

D) a fridge/freezer so empty that we seriously thought about eating Mounds ice cream bars with Shock Top beer for dinner last night

E) all of the above, plus giant stacks of laundry that seem to be multiplying like bunnies

Did you guess E?  Aside from my New Growth Quilt-A-Long I haven't gotten much accomplished in the last few weeks, so I really enjoyed having some time over the weekend to regroup, reorganize, and make some sewing plans for the upcoming week!

Thanks to little man's awesome afternoon nap yesterday, I was able to finish the quilt top that uses Gigi's Thimble's Scrap Jar Stars tutorial.

I used Robot Factory by Caleb Gray for Robert Kaufman fabrics in my not-so-scrappy version - I'm calling it Scrap Metal Stars!  I'm loving the way this baby turned out and can't wait to start quilting it in the morning.

With luck, it'll be bound tomorrow evening - probably out on the back patio drinking Shock Top and eating ice cream bars - and ready by Wednesday to give to my friend, Christina, at her baby shower for little Elijah, due in early June.

If the quilting gods are smiling upon me, I'll manage to sew down the binding on Southern Belle as well, and finally get the quilt photographed for my pattern cover.

Hopefully that'll be ready to go by the end of the week too!  Once that's done, maybe I'll still have enough time to clean up my sewing table, and post my stash and five boxes update too!  Hopefully that's not being too over-ambitious!

I'm linking up with these sites this week - be sure to visit them to see what is on the agenda for the week out in blog land.

• Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times
• Fabric Tuesday at QuiltStory
• WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced
  

Happy Sewing!!

Baby Season!

Our family has two little bundles of joy that should be arriving in the next couple of weeks, which means two little quilts are in the works!

"Robot Roulette" is currently on the design wall.  It had been sidelined for a little while, but now all of the blocks are cut and just need a little bit of assembly! 

Quilt #2, name TBD, is actually only missing the binding.  Luckily, Spain {my hubby's people} and Croatia {my people} played each other in the EuroCup this morning, so hubby and I have plans to watch them face off tonight, which will provide the perfect opportunity to finish things. :)

Be sure to stop by Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times to see what else is cooking this week in blogland. Happy sewing!

Finally - some stash busting!!

Yay!  I'm happy to say that not only am I a third of the way through my goals for the week, but I have some serious stash busting to report!  That's right - two finishes to share!

First up is Scrap Metal Stars, using some of my Robot Factory stash.  As I mentioned yesterday, I used Gigi's Thimble's Scrap Jar Stars tutorial for the pattern.

 Instead of going for a random, scrappy look, though, I went for a more planned, symmetrical layout.  Since I was working with only a couple of prints and solids, it was easier for me to plan it out, rather than worry about having enough "randomness" in my random layout.

I finally opted for a simple, pieced back.  I didn't have quite enough fabric left to do a full solid or patterned panel, and with all the white on the front, a solid white back just seemed a bit overwhelming.  Plus, I'm a relatively new parent of a messy, messy boy - white is SO impractical! :)

I used a low-loft, cotton batting and decided to go with very simple, straight line outline quilt, but used orange thread for a pop of color.

The quilt is finished with solid red for the bindings - I've totally been on a  solids-as-bindings kick lately! - and is all set for tomorrow's party!


My other finish was actually a project for Aiden's Easter basket ... which we were incidentally feeling too crummy to put together!  Of well - he's enjoying all the goodies and will never,ever remember how they came packaged!

The quilt top is actually a pre-made panel I found recently at Jo-Ann', that I paired with some coordinating blue Farmyard Animal flannel for the back and brown Basket Weave flannel for the binding.

I've never used the pre-made panels before and they definitely have some pros and cons:

Pros: You can't beat having the quilt already pieced for you - and all the edges on the back are sewn together and serged for durability.  I put this baby together in under three hours, including the time that it took me to hand-stitch the binding to the back.

Cons: Unless you get the first cut off the bolt (like I happened to), or the person doing the cutting is patient enough to undo all the serging and then rip the seams out and then cut (which they absolutely never are), you'd have to buy more yardage than you need, and take the cut home and rip the seams apart from the previous cut edge just to start with the extra 1/4" seam allowance on both sides that you'd need.  Also, the fabric is super, duper stretchy, especially on the edges.  It was a little challenging to keep the fabric tight enough to quilt it without wrinkles without totally distorting it.

Bottom line, though - little man loves rolling all over his new snugglie!

I'll be back tomorrow with my official stash numbers, plus more information about the Northern California Quilt Rush running this week.

Happy Monday!

Just wanted to pop by and share a quick photo of my Monday morning design wall:

My Robot-Roulette was the only quilt that saw any action recently since we were busy celebrating my hubby's birthday over the weekend.  We have quite the busy schedule for the next couples of weeks ... so I might have to change the name of my blog to "The Naptime Quilter."  Luckily, Aiden seems to be slowly coming out of his four month sleep regression phase, and has been taking some hefty naps lately, so fingers crossed!!

This week I'm going {to try} to link up with these sites.  Please drop by to check out all the fun projects happening in blog-land this week!

• Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times

Happy Sewing!

Laissez le Robots Roulette!

Ok - I've seriously been procrastinating on my Robot Quilt!

March 2012

This quilt has been in the works since January!!  

April 2012

If Chandler Bing were here, he'd ask me, "Could you BE moving any slower?"

June 2012

The little man this is intended for made his grand entrance into the world Tuesday ... and we have the chance to swing by and visit next weekend!

July 2012

So, no more time for excuses!  It's time to finish the last two columns and get this baby quilted!!  I have three more episodes of the Bachelorette to catch up on, and my little guy missed his nap this morning and just conked out ... so I have my fingers crossed for a productive afternoon.  No more excuses!!

Fabric Tuesday

Well, my design wall didn't stay empty for long!  

This is the first block for my new quilt tentatively named, "Shiloh" - more on the name soon.  I can't wait to share, since it's a beautiful story!

This block is a traditional 1930's Dogtooth Violet block.  The historian in me really would like to know more about the pattern and how it originated, but there just doesn't seem to be any information out there on the web.  Does anyone know of any good sources?

I'm really enjoying working with Barbara Brackman's line, Lately Arrived from London.  As I mentioned yesterday, this is the first Civil War Reproduction fabric I've ever purchased.  Originally, I toyed around with making a quilt with a classic 19th century block to really showcase the fabric, but I just kept returning to this block.  I'm really pleased with how it's turning out!

When I originally mapped the pattern out in EQ6, I had planned on using two of the lighter background-ish type prints in the line for the sides of the setting triangles ... but then I spent all my fabric allowance for the month on a beautiful fat quarter stack ... so I decided to throw caution to the wind!  I used my go to white-on-white print that I already had on hand.   It's definitely not traditional, but so far I'm loving how the white just makes the dark, Victorian-ish colors pop! 

After struggling with all the triangular points on my Robot Roulette quilt, I decided to give foundation piecing a shot with the setting triangles, and boy, am I in love!  Granted, the fabric waste is much higher with this method of piecing, but man - absolutely perfectly pieced blocks are so worth the waste!!

Ummm ... quick tangent for a minute: has anyone else experienced difficulties with foundation patterns printing from EQ6 in the WRONG SIZE????  After making several test blocks, I just couldn't figure out why my block wasn't working out.  I checked my math several times, because surely the error was my fault ... and not the fancy computer program's fault.

Sure enough, my math was right, thank you very much ... and the foundation pattern printed directly from EQ6 was over 1/4" too small!  Unfortunately, I already printed the foundation pieces for the entire quilt already and had to reprint them in the correct size ... so this pattern will be responsible for the death of not one, but two small trees.  Won't be making that mistake again!

So, now that everything is all worked out - and little man and his Dad are happily enjoying some male bonding time this evening in the front room - I'm off to enjoy a glass of CG Di Arie's Primitivo Block 4 {YUM!}, watch some trash TV, and piece my little heart out!

Be sure to stop by Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story to see all the other awesome projects going on in blogland!