Wedding Colors

Well, for the first day of Spring, it snowed.  Go figure.


Back for Valentine's Day, Eric brought home flowers for me.  He stayed away from red roses and instead picked out gorgeous orange roses with a beautiful shading across the petals from yellow to bright orange.  He paired them with purple mums and left me not one, not two, but FIVE vases going up the stairs.  The color combination isn't new to me - purple and orange are our wedding colors - but I loved how his particular combination made them pop.

Some of Eric's arrangements rearranged on our dining table.

Since these are our wedding colors, I've been working with them pretty constantly - the most recent being searching for the right combination for a flower girl dress.  I'm pretty excited about the look of a deep purple dress and a bright orange sash.

Not my actual flower girl!  Image is from the Dessy website.

I've been collecting purple and orange fabrics - and I've even managed to find a couple that use both - but they feel scattered, not a cohesive collection.  Part of this is because my tastes range from fresh and modern to historic reproduction prints, which don't always play nicely together.  

I've actually added quite a few more to the group since I took this photo.

I have grand visions of pieced table runners from these fabrics, but since I only have three months to go, I'd better get started!

Happy Spring!

Well, it's been a while since I've been here!  I've been wicked busy, but actually not too much quilting until yesterday.  We've had a friend staying with us and it's finally been sunny enough that (most) of our snow is gone, so we've been out and about, enjoying the balmy fifty-degree weather.

I've also been working on wedding invitations - we printed them ourselves, Eric cut each of them, and I am hand-stamping the decorations:

These are cards requesting fabric for our wedding quilt.
Each is now stamped with "A REQUEST."  Whew!

Yesterday morning I did get some time to just sew and made progress on several projects.  I also figured out how to catch when my bobbin tension goes haywire, hopefully before it makes the back of the piece all loopy.  It's been driving me crazy for months.

My Spring Zig-Zags I started last time it snowed - I guess in protest and anticipation.  I was inspired by this quilt and used the HST tutorial from p. s. i quilt.

Mine is made with 4-inch finished blocks and will finish as a wall-hanging.  I did sketch it out and color it in pencil to make sure I had my dimensions right, then cut out my big squares and threw them up on the design wall.  I played with the layout until I liked the way the colors worked, then started sewing them into HST blocks.

This shows the progress about halfway through the piecing.
Wow, that second yellow shows up brighter in the photo!

Now my challenge is getting the points to kindof sortof match up when I sew those together - I'm getting better at it, but I'm also getting pickier, which has meant some seam ripping.  I'm also debating adding more yellow on the bottom, although I'm not sure I like my available options.  (By the way, this top is 100% stash except for the two yellows!)

Starting to join the rows and match points.  Yellows at bottom are auditioning to be included.

The other accomplishment from yesterday were pillow-case tops for my living room, to go with the throw quilt that is mid-quilting.  They were both planned as I went, with just the basic ideas of nine-patch and rail fences and using up the 1-inch borders I had left over.  I'm really happy with how they have turned out, although I think next time I do pillows, I'll start with a bigger basic block!  The one on the left will have the brown flowers as a border as well - that's next on the to-sew list!

I think that's sufficient cheeriness to celebrate this beautiful spring day!  I hope yours is as sunny and warm!

Workshop in Progress

This is my first time joining in the Workshop in Progress.  I'm excited by the chance to get feedback from a wider group of people.

I am working on my prep for my wedding signature quilt blocks.  There are two issues that I keep coming back to.

The first is making sure that guests sign on the right part of the block, inside the seam allowance.  What I've come up with so far is adding a freezer paper backing on the part that should be signed.  When I made a mock-up, I realized that I could write on the back of the freezer paper to explain.

Back side

Front side

The question is - does this make enough sense?  Eric suggested I add a border to the back of the freezer paper in dark Sharpie to make a clearer frame.

The second question is pens - I've narrowed it down to a Sharpie or a Pigma pen.  I've tested both and found that the Pigma pen bled a little bit but had a bolder result.  The Sharpie looks faded but doesn't bleed.  Any advice or thoughts from people who have done this large-scale?

Wedding Quilt

In my very first post, I mentioned one of my current works in progress - making a signature quilt as a guestbook for our upcoming wedding.  Blogging about the process on this might be s-l-o-w going, since we won't make real progress on it until after the wedding in June.

The Excel sketch of the planned layout for the quilt.

We are requesting scraps of fabric from our families to make up the patterned corners.  We are hoping to have it filled with pieces of family history.  We have a good start - fabric from a dress my mother made me and from maternity clothes she wore.  But the rest is yet to come.

I've designed the quilt based on several different sources of inspiration.  I started by searching Google images for signature blocks, and decided I liked the basic diagonal signature block.  There was one image that stuck with me and resulted in the layout I've planned above.  Of course, just now in trying to track down that image, I couldn't find it.  (Edit: Found it!)  Instead, I stumbled on this quilt that adds four-patch blocks into the mix.  I like it, since it makes it bigger and adds visual interest.  So perhaps the layout won't be set until I have the signature blocks together and up on my design wall!

This tutorial at p. s. i quilt for siggy blocks provided the shape that I wanted with the most straightforward description.  I made it slightly bigger (five inches finished instead of three).  I made up some sample blocks out of stash, and decided that the tutorial instructions are the best.

The blue and tan blocks on the right are the mock-ups.

The problem with this form of assembly is that we will be receiving most of the patterned fabric later - after the blocks need to be signed.  That's an issue for another post.  I also discovered that I'll have plenty of half-square triangles left over.  I plan on using them to identify the stories behind the fabric, either as a border or maybe as a pieced strip on the back.

So far, this is what I have: fifty-odd white 5 1/2" squares.

Not the most exciting process post, but it's what I have!  I'm really looking forward to playing with all the scrappy fabrics I hope my family and friends send my way and pulling it all together into a cohesive final product.  

A Completed Project!

Christmas runner - Pieced by Kate, quilted and bound by Eric

Now that this Christmas present is (finally) delivered to my soon-to-be in-laws, I can share it.  (Only two months late!)  On the upside, they have just remodeled their kitchen, and so didn't have a place to use it this holiday season.  Also, Eric's mom pointed out that the greens go with the new decor!  By the time we left after visiting, it was already gracing their dining room table - I'm so happy that she liked it so much!

The full effect laid out on our table.

(Psst, can you spot my mistake?  I love the nine-patches set on point, I just wish I'd cut my setting blocks so it, you know, showed the points.  Oops!)

One of my big challenges with blogging might be my problem with naming projects - I'll have to try to get better at that.  Suggestions welcome!

I have more to share from my Pennsylvania trip coming soon...

Fabric Finds!

I did not get much quilting done this last week - I have hit a block in my current project and I'm mulling and auditioning fabrics for it.  Plus my little sister came out to visit me, so I was busy doing other things.  I did get to play show and tell with quilt tops she hasn't seen.  We also went to Goodwill looking for picture frames (and totally struck out), but did come home with about 17 yards of cotton quilting fabrics for $5!!

A sample of the approximately 17 yards!

We actually found four curtains homemade from the light green pattern, so that is slated to go up in our office.  My sister took home about two yards, and I got to keep the selection you see above.  Some really neat patterns (that orange batik! those adorable bears!) and some things that round out my stash - I have next to no pink, and certainly no bright pink.  But now I do!

Design Wall

Blogging regularly is a challenge - I'm impressed all over again by bloggers with full time jobs and especially with children!  My only excuse is that in the last month I have picked up a new hobby - shoveling snow!  We have six-foot tall snow piles in our driveway and four-foot tall snow walls at the street, and we're running out of places to put it.  Actually, even with several snow days off of work, I haven't made any progress on any quilting projects!  But I did manage to set up an external drive to house my millions of photos that were slowing down my computer, so I have new photos to share.

My most exciting quilting project recently was my $4 design wall.  Here's the secret: a POLARVIDE fleece throw from Ikea.  The white one even has holes along the edge, so it was easy to hang from my picture molding with bent-out paperclips.  And ta-da!

The throw fit perfectly onto the wall I had available, and putting fabric up there definitely perks up my sewing nook.

On the wall are a pillow cover made from leftovers of my blue and orange quilt (with some green being auditioned), the orange and blue scraps I've been sewing together as I try to keep my machine's tension intact, and trial signature blocks for our wedding quilt.