Attempting the (supposedly) Impossible

Lately I've been thinking about making the Amy Butler Weekender Bag.  I know I'm late to the party, but I really like my Tula Birds and Bees so much that I want it on my couch and I want to wear it around town!  I've decided to make mine patchwork style like Elizabeth Hartman's tutorial here.  

So far I've cut out most of the pieces and made a million yards of piping using Steam A Seam a la Noodlehead.  I'm using a purple-winey colored linen blend for the piping.  Here's the front large pocket!  I love those squirrels - squeekity squeek squeeken :)  More on this later after more progress.

Flea Market Facified

I finally cut into my Flea Market Fancy and favorite DS Quilts prints awhile back when I found the perfect pattern.  This is called Perfect Points Sampler from Connecting Thread's website and can be found here.  I had a lot of fun making each of the different blocks, particularly my favorite Bear's Paw.  The quilt turned out quite green and orange - not exactly how I pictured it but that's what happens when I pick the fabric instead of letting Moda do it for me!

Winter Flickr Quilt Bee Blocks

I actually broke into the Flickr quilt bee world and signed up for the Winter Quarter 4x5 Modern Quilt Bee!  I am super excited because Elizabeth Hartman from Oh!Fransson is in my group!!!  I'm toying with having her sign my block :P  There are 5 other ladies in my hive, and these the are blocks I've finished so far.  I thought I saw a block like this somewhere, but I can't recall where and so I'm calling this an E.T. Phone Home original.  Each block is 12.5" square.  

Natural Sourdough Bread Starter Action

BF and I picked up a loaf of sourdough bread at the store last week that I found so tasty I challenged myself to DIY.  After searching through many starter recipes, I chose to duplicate this one at Naturally Knocked Up.  I started it on Monday and my has it grown!  

The first two days I used white all purpose flour.  Then I decided to switch to Bob's Mill rye flour to get more flavorful bread.  Yesterday it started to bubble a little bit but today it's full blown bubble action!  I don't want to have to buy a bigger jar to put it in so I may split it into two.  Researching sourdough is definitely interesting.  I'll probably make a simple loaf of bread first.  BF has been begging me to make chili lately though so maybe I'll tackle some sourdough bread bowls too!

October Sewing

This week while I was searching for a double oven mitt tutorial, I came across The Plaid Scotty Kaelin's pumpkin table runner and thought I just had to make that so my house will be a little bit festive.  Here's my version.  It goes together very quickly!  I'm actually quite surprised with myself because I used all scraps for the pumpkins and the backing!  

This was my first attempt at a pieced binding and I think it turned out great.  The directions call for the backing to be quite a bit larger than the front before quilting, so I just used the excess cut to my binding size and added a little bit extra.  I may actually like the back a little more than the front - oops!

Happy October!

How about a recap?

I realized that I never got around to showing off my finished first Triple Irish Chain quilt - how silly of me!  I used the Moda Bake Shop pattern featuring a Snippets Honey Bun and Kona white.  This pattern really struck me because of the flowers in the centers of the chains.  Aren't they gorgeous?

I machine stippled this quilt and used DS Quilts Fairgrounds prints for the backing and binding.  My grandmother was the lucky recipient of this quilt at Christmas last year.  I made a matching pillow cover to go along with it.  

DMQG Modern Block Challenge

The DMQG is having a lottery for modern quilt blocks at our next meeting.  The way it works is that each 12.5" block you make in the official colors gets you one chance to win a set of 12 blocks, all of which have been made by the people participating.  Sounds fun, right?

This one was hard for me because, while I consider myself a more modern quilter, I'm definitely scared of the abstract.  I like patterns and seams that line up.  I prefer geometric shapes.  I like symmetry!  Depending on who you ask, these are all requirements of "modern" quilting.  I will say that I've been drawn to stronger colors, so maybe I'm warming to the trend :)

These are my two entries for the raffle.  12.5" x 12.5" each, no pattern required (eeps!) 

The colors were supposed to be a light/medium grey for the background, and feature solids (or tone on tone that read as solids) turquoise, orange, lime, and fuchsia.  I found inspiration on Flickr and then kind of did my own thing.  I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, and maybe I'll even be making more sometime soon...