I finished all of the snail trail blocks for my Storm at Sea quilt!  Whew!  I didn't realize at first that there were going to be 56 blocks - all of them basically the SAME.  It did get a little monotonous (20 pieces per block, paper pieced - about 25 minutes per block), but I plugged away and finished them all!


Of course, there was a little snag along the way.  One night I decided to lay them all out with what I've got so far to see how they looked.  It's a good thing I did, because I discovered that half of the blocks I had made so far were WRONG!  The snails were pointing the wrong way.  That was a gut wrenching realization, for sure.  Luckily I caught it when I did and only had to unpick and resew about 14 blocks.  I could have just left them, but I've worked so hard on this quilt, I want it to turn out right.  So about a week's worth of TV watching with the hubby and the seam ripper, then another several days of nap time and they were all fixed.  I'm ready to move on!

Finally ready to resew

Big pile of unpicked pieces.

After putting the boys to bed the other night, I got everything out and laid it out in the living room.  This quilt is going to be SO BIG!  Seriously.  Huge.  I wanted it to be big enough to be a functional bed quilt (one that could actually be tucked in), and I think it might be big enough.  It better be.  ;)  I'm so excited to see my plans all coming together the way I envisioned them!

The only thing left is to fill in those gaps with diamond blocks, make a back, and quilt it.  I've been taking Ann Peterson's Craftsy course on quilting big quilts and I'm so excited to get started!  This has been an awesome class.  I bought it while it was on sale and I'm so glad I did!

SO.  In order to keep the ball rolling, my February ALOF goal will be to finish piecing all of the filler diamond blocks.  If the top gets assembled, that will be a definite bonus.  :)

January's goal setting post can be found HERE.

p.s. I'm still debating new names for this quilt.  I can't just call it "The Storm at Sea Quilt."  That's too boring.  I like the idea of something referring to a rainbow.  Right now I'm leaning towards "After the Storm."  What do you think?  Do you have a better idea for me?

Linking up!

Even though I have seen posts about the Finish Along happening this year at The Littlest Thistle, I resisted jumping in myself.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe because I'm already participating in Shanna and Melissa's A Lovely Year of Finishes, which works better for me because the goals are much smaller.

Either way, I realized that the deadline for Quarter 1 of the Finish Along just happens to fall right around the time of my self imposed deadline for my Storm at Sea quilt, so I might as well link up, right?  Here we go!

My one goal is for this quarter is to finish my Storm at Sea quilt.  It's a big goal - this quilt is going to be HUGE (about 120 x 108) when it's finished.  But I'm gonna finish it!  I've been working on it forever and now it's being moved from the back burner to the very top of the list.

Here are just a few photos of my progress so far:

Original Fabric Pull

One of the first blocks

Finished center section

Wrinkly outer borders

Oakshott Triangles ready for piecing

Snail Trail blocks for inner "border"

Large solid remnants for backing

The layout plan!  Minus outer borders

But here's the thing.  I'm tired of calling this just my "Storm at Sea" quilt.  I feel like this quilt needs a name of it's own.  What do you think?  Does anyone have any amazing suggestions?  The pattern for the center section is called "Storm at Sea" and the border section around it is made up of "Snail Trail" blocks.  But this is a VERY non-traditional interpretation of the Storm at Sea pattern...


And just in case I happen to stray off course and work on my Twin toddler quilts, I'm including them in this post.  I'm planning on making a Broken Herringbone quilt with the green stack and a Jungle Path quilt with the blue one.  


Linking up:

Well, it's almost time.  At some point in the next several months (hopefully not too soon) my boys will be ready to graduate from the crib and move to toddler beds.  This means they will need new quilts for their brand new beds!  Yay! 
 I spent some time during our Christmas break looking for ideas.  I decided it was time to try making something with a Jelly roll so I pinned tons of jelly roll quilts on my Pinterest board.  Then I picked 7 or 8 and mocked up generic versions in Excel and let the Hubby pick two.  Sometimes he complains that I ask for his advice but never actually use it (this doesn't ever happen to you, does it?), so I am sticking to the ones he chose - and I'm super excited about it!  He picked Jungle Path and Broken Herringbone:

THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO.  CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO VISIT MODA BAKE SHOP

THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO.  CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO VISIT MOLLI SPARKLES

And then I got to pick out fabric!  I decided I wanted to make two quilts using different patterns, but the same fabric line.  Matching, but not matching, you know?  That's the way we do it around here with our twins.  :)  Once again, I found 6 or 7 lines that I liked and left it up to Hubby to choose.  He chose Cruiser Blvd by Sheri McCulley for Riley Blake, which is perfect!  The Hubby is a transportation engineer, so he loves all the road signs and stuff.

And the best part is, I found this FULL FQ bundle on clearance at Fabric Fly Shop.  Since I would have needed three jelly rolls to have enough fabric for both quilts, and this bundle cost about the same as one jelly roll (don't hate me...), I jumped on it.  So I'll be making two jelly roll quilts with fat quarters.  It's all good.

I was SO excited to get this package in the mail!  (I have never bought an entire line of fabric before.  Usually I buy only what I need for a specific project.)  When it arrived, I didn't even wait to open it and spread it all out on my kitchen table to admire it.  :)  And then I put it all back together and took some nice pictures of it...

I've decided to do one mostly green quilt and one mostly blue quilt.  As of right now, these are my fabric groupings.  The green one will be Broken Herringbone and the blue one will be Jungle Path.  I'm going to use the little hexies and the stripes for binding (the two yellow prints are leftovers). 

What do you think?  I'm still a little unsure.  Is the pop of red in the green stack too much?  Should I switch it for one of the yellows?


On another note, the other day when I was working on bee blocks, one of my boys came in to "play" with me.  We'd been struggling quite a bit with nap time and I kept ending up with two toddlers taking naps at DIFFERENT times (NO FUN).  So one day while Jaxson was napping, I brought Bronx in to sew with me.  I sat him on my lap and chain pieced a bunch of blocks while he watched.  Then while I was ironing them, he went through one of my fabric drawers and brought over a pile of fabric to "sew" (don't worry - I took the needle out as soon as I realized what he was doing and of course the machine was turned off).  At first he put a piece of fabric up on the extension table and waited for something to happen.  It was so cute.  When the fabric refused to move by itself, he reached up and started pushing it through like I did (hence the big pile of fabric on the other side).  He would also wiggle the presser foot with his fingers because he knew it was supposed to go up and down while the fabric moved through.  I think he's a cute kid.  Boots in the house and all.


Linking up:

No, I didn't send my December blocks late, just forgot to blog about them.  That's all.  Had to get that out there.

Anyway.  I finished two more months worth of bee blocks!  I've been having lots of fun working on these.  However, I'm surprised at how difficult it is to choose colors that I think will work with what my bee mates are looking for.  Particularly without adding to the stash.  :)  Everybody has their own interpretations of colors and I just hope that my fabric choices aren't too far off!

Here are my blocks for December.  Jaime asked for Japanese x and + blocks with bright, colorful fabrics and low volume background.   My interpretation was that she wanted fabrics with lots of different colors in them, rather than one tone fabrics.  Or just fabrics with bright colors.  Either way, this is what I ended up with, trying to use lots of bright, colorful fabrics but still trying to get them to look good together:
 Fabrics: Lots of old things from my stash - I do know that the egg fabric is Tula Pink. 
 Fabrics: More old stash picks.  Another Tula Pink egg and some Timeless Treasures Sketch Basics.

Since the first one ended up so pink (nothing else seemed to match), I made sure to use more variety in my second block.
All in all, these were fun blocks to make.  I can see now why they are so addicting.  I think Jaime is going to end up with a fun, scrappy, colorful quilt!

For January, Sandra asked for Autumn Star blocks in beachy colors - blue, aqua, gray and lime.  I really love the colors she chose and I'm excited to see how they all come together.  I knew immediately that I wanted to use some of my Patty Young Textured Basics.  The green looks a little yellowy, but I think it will work.  It's more green in real life.  I even found a little gray square in my scrap bins with the lime and aqua dots!  Anyway.  I hope these colors work out for Sandra.  I really liked this block tutorial because Faith gives you plenty of breathing room when working with the triangles.  I like having plenty of trimming space to work with so that my triangle blocks are easier to sew to other blocks with the crisp edges.  If that makes any sense at all...
 Fabrics: Med blue is from 10 Little Things by Jenn Ski, White is Kona White, Lime is from Joanns, Gray is Riley Blake something or other, the rest from my stash
 Fabrics: Blue and Lime are Patty Young Textured Basics, Gray is Kona Iron (I think), Whit is Kona White, Dark blue is something from my stash  


I'm looking forward to February, and even though my month isn't until May - I've been searching for the perfect block to ask for.  :)

Hi friends!
Last year I didn't do so well linking up my monthly goals with ALYOF.  Probably because none of my monthly goals were necessarily quilt related because I didn't make enough quilts. :) Well, this year I have a few deadlines and a few quilts that WILL be finished, so I plan to link up every month.  Hopefully it will help me keep at least one quilty thing going in the middle of whatever else comes up.  :)

This month my goal is to finish all of the Snail Trail blocks I need for my Storm at Sea quilt.  It shouldn't be too bad - I'm about 1/3 through at the moment.

My Storm at Sea quilt took off with a lot of steam at first, but then my progress sort of died because my self-imposed "deadline" for the quilt was SO far away.  It became my "back-burner" quilt and I worked on it whenever I had nothing better to do.  Well, now that the deadline is starting to approach more quickly, it's time to finish it!  I'm SO excited, it's going to be awesome.  This is what it looks like at the moment:

And this is how I plan to incorporate the snail trail blocks:

I'll be back at the end of the month to report my progress!

Looking back, it seems like 2013 was the year for making lots and lots of small items.  This is probably due to the big move in the summer, and then the decision to open my Etsy shop.  I only finished two quilts in the entire year (thank you Maggie, for having a baby!  Otherwise this number probably would have only been 1).  I also finished two quilt tops, a bunch of smaller quilted items, and a whole slew of baby things. 

I'm really looking forward to 2014.  I'm hoping to grow my Etsy shop a little, and then keep it stocked.  (More quiet books are coming!)  I'm also really excited to make my first Bee quilt.  Yeah, I'm freaking excited about that.  In 2014 I'm going to make more quilts in general.  Definitely more quilts.  The boys will be switching to toddler beds sometime in the next year, so of course they will need new quilts (don't worry - I already ordered the fabric.)  :)

There are lots of people in blogland committing to a fabric fast for 2014 and I say more for me!  ;)  In my opinion, I have been fabric fasting for three years and now that I am finally making a profit from my Etsy shop, I am going to stock up on the good stuff!  That was the deal when I started this thing.  After putting a percentage in the bank and donating another percentage to our church, the rest of the profit is going to be purely for me to spend on fabric and supplies!  Yay!  The hubby is happy that I won't be spending any more of his hard earned money on "sewing stuff" from now on...

Anyway.  Here are all of the things I created in 2013: