A week ago, I decided I wanted to take on Amy's One Thing, One Week challenge.


I finished quilting my purple and green quilt on Sunday night and had ALMOST enough fabric to do the binding but not quite.  I know I should have made finishing the binding a top priority, but I didn't.  Instead, I got this hairbrained idea that I wanted to make a new tablecloth for our table.  Our table is square and it has always driven me nuts that all of our table cloths are NOT square.  We always have to fold one side under to get it to fit and I hate it.  SO I am making a quilted tablecloth - since that is the only thing I know how to do...

I decided right away that I wanted to do Elizabeth Hartman's Kitchen Window quilt.  I LOVE this quilt!
At first, I wasn't sure what colors to do it in and almost decided to go shopping, but then I figured I better shop my stash first.  I put together a bunch of different color schemes and this is the one the Hubby picked.  I think he picked this group because it was the mellowest of the bunch.


I'm glad he picked these too.  These fabrics are all part of the giveaway I won from Quilty Pleasures and it's nice to know that I found a place for them! 

My goal was to finish the top by today.  I made a lot of progress cutting and even sewing last Sunday and Monday.  Things were going great - I got to do lots of chain piecing, which sure helped things move quickly!  But then Tuesday came.  And Wednesday, and Thursday.  Things were kinda stressful at work this week.  I started to get nervous that I wasn't going to make it.  But then my husband got offered a super cheap ski pass.  We couldn't get another one for me and I decided that (even though I love skiing) it wasn't justified to spend 80 bucks to get me one.  Plus, the hubby likes skiing more than I do... so he went skiing all day and I stayed home, cleaned the entire house, and finished the topper - just barely.  I have about an inch and a half of the brown fabric left over - and that's AFTER piecing together small pieces.  But I made it!



Even with the little glitch of forgetting seam allowances when I sewed on the cream sashing and having to add another inch...

Yay!

Now I just need to quilt it.  I'm thinking of trying my hand at quilting pebbles to keep the quilting nice and tight.  I hope it doesn't end up too bumpy.  I put it on the table and it doesn't seem too bad.  I think I will either back it with flannel and NOT use batting, or use the flannel for batting and add a layer of backing.  What do you think?

For my birthday this year, my mother-in-law wanted me to buy myself some fabric and I decided I just had to have this Pure fabric (I especially love the pieces with words on them).  I wanted to make something with colors that would work for a boy.  So I bought some fabric and set it aside, waiting for inspiration to strike.
Well, it did!  I discovered HoneyBear Lane's Puff Quilt and I KNEW that was what I wanted to do!  (Check out her website - she has lots of cute stuff!)  At the time, Heidi had a series of free tutorials on how to make the puff quilt.  I guess her puff quilt became so popular that she decided to make it into a pattern to sell, so it is not free anymore.  Sad.  Lucky for me, I downloaded the tutorials while I still could - Wahoo!  This quilt was a lot of fun to make!  I want to make more in the future - I just need someone to make them for!
Isn't it great?  Don't you just love the fabrics?  I do.

p.s. Sorry about the crappy pictures.  I'm just not home in the middle of the day when the sun is shining.

For my non-quilty friends, UFO means UnFinished Object.


Way back in August, Christina at A Few Scraps announced that she was going to have a quilt-along.  And not just any quilt-along.  A free motion quilting quilt-along.  It was perfect!  Exactly what I needed since I was just figuring out this whole quilt-on-a-regular-sewing-machine thing.  So I jumped on board (except, I never actually signed up - I guess I am more of a stow-away...).
The plan was to make an ugly quilt top using only fabric from our stash.  NO buying new fabric for this one!  So I put together this quilt top:
Looking back, I really should have just used solids for the whole thing.  I LOVE this blue dots/squares fabric, but it is way too busy and now I can't see the quilting designs over it.

I should have used the blue for something else.  I guess I was worried I would run out of solid.  Well, I still have QUITE a bit of it left...

I didn't have enough fabric for the back, but I DID have a ton of totally randomly shaped pieces of heavy duty green "upholstery" fabric that I figured I would never ever use otherwise.  So I pieced them all together for a very heavy quilt back.  (Don't judge too harshly...  It's not like I was planning on giving this quilt away to someone.)

And here's the best part.  At the time, I also didn't have enough batting but I DID have a ton of left over felt from a time when I made a horrible miscalculation and bought about 4 times what I needed.  So... don't tell anyone... but I used felt (also pieced together) instead of regular batting.  This turned out to be one funky, heavy, stiff quilt.  That's for sure.

Here is the final product:

What?  You can't see any of the quilting?  I KNOW!  So here is a picture of the back:

I have officially decided that I am NEVER going to give this quilt away.  I would be too embarrassed.  Instead, I am going to keep it for my own reference.  There are a LOT of flaws - TONS of places where my thread tension was bad, not to mention the fact that I ran out of blue and green thread (which is really hard to see on a green back anyway) and ended up using a whole lot of yellow and red - with no particular rhyme or reason.  And for future reference - I should NEVER use two different colors for the top thread and bobbin thread.

The quilt-along consisted of lots of different types of quilting and it was really interesting to see what worked for me and what didn't.  There were a few surprises - some of the designs I hated seeing on paper turned out great on the quilt, others turned out much worse than I expected.  I am definitely not good at anything that echoes the shape of something, and meandering is still the easiest - although there were a lot of line designs that I think I could use.

With that said, here are a few close ups of designs that I am now able to quilt:

Feathers

Pebbles (these are my good ones)

Sprirals and more Spirals


Meandering

Square meandering

Scallops.  I didn't like these as much as I thought I would.

Lines.  If you look really closely, you can see the (upside down) treble clefs and stars

Loops

And words...

Since these are backwards, I thought I would show you one of them front the front.  Look closely!


And there you have it!  Now I can start a NEW project.  Yay!

Here is the wall hanging I made for March (I'm trying to make my house cuter by making one of these babies for each month - it's a good chance for me to try new skils).  I think it is my best one yet - probably because I decided to try stitch in the ditch quilting and it gives it such a nice, clean look!  I wanted to practice making pinwheels and they were a lot of fun to make.  I think the double pinwheel in the corner is my favorite.
And, yes I realize that three leaf clovers AREN'T lucky.  Oops.  Should have made a four leaf clover.


p.s. The fabric I used for the clover comes from the giveaway I won.  I thought it was PERFECT!