Stack N Whack - #7 November

I have done a 60 degree Stack N Whack quilt before and I didn't have any issues with it.  When I saw the fabric that I received in my brown bag exchange for the night guild, I thought the flower fabric would lend itself well to a Stack N Whack.

I do believe the Stack N Whack blocks themselves look good.

I started to run into issues when I started doing the border though.  It required more triangles.  That, in and of itself, is fine.  Bias did become an issue though.

When a Stack N Whack is created, the fabric is ripped or cut parallel to the selvege rather than perpendicular as with most cuts in quilting.  This puts the bias somewhere different than if you just cut perpendicular to the selvege.

The Stack N Whack blocks worked great and stretched everywhere they were supposed to stretch.  In at attempt to conserve fabric, I cut the border triangles out of strips of fabric that were cut perpendicular to the selvege.  They did not stretch the same at all.  I ended up with a quilt that acted like a cupcake - big, full, and fluffy in the center; tight and rigid on the border.  It was wicked.

The center of the quilt was very pink and Dale believed that it was an anomoly.  In order to tone it down, I quilted the center heavily around the fussy cut flower bouquet.  It dulled up the pink all right because the thread was black and red varigated.

Flying Geese - #6 October

In hopes of helping "bust my stash", I created 3 scrappy Flying Geese quilts.  They were supposed to be completed for Father's Day 2012.  As with most of my quilting projects, the deadline is a nice suggestion.  I finally finished hand sewing the binding on Dale's Flying Geese quilt in October.

This was a quilt intended to use up scraps.  It did.  The starting squares were 11 inches and 9 1/2 inches.  Each pair of squares yielded 4 flying geese.  It was great for using fabric up fast.  It would have been nice to have one fabric that was the same in each flying goose to tie things together a bit more but then that would have defeated the purpose of using up stash.

Turtles & Tidepools - #5 September

I decided to do the Turtles & Tidepools pattern using the X Blocks ruler.  I had seen the pattern and the X Blocks book at Trackside Quilting in Laurel, MT but hadn't decided what fabric to use to make the Turtles & Tidepools.  When I saw the brown bag fabric I received from the day guild exchange, I knew this was the fabric that would be perfect for Turtles & Tidepools.

This quilt visited Trackside Quilting as a display quilt for about a month before it was presented at the December day guild meeting.  It was meant to help sell both patterns and X Blocks rulers but I do not think any additional sales were achieved.

One thing I learned from this quilt is to make sure to use a high contrasting floss to embroider the label if I opt to embroider a label for another quilt.  The embroidery floss I used blended in to the backing fabric so much I could not see it very well.  I could not see it at all in the picture that I took so I am not going to even bother to post a picture of the label.

Spicy Spiral Tablerunner - #8 December

Trackside Quilting in Laurel, MT has been doing classes on the Spicy Spiral Tablerunner.  They are created using the 9 degree Circle Wedge ruler.  Initially, I didn't think I needed to sign up for another quilting project but then I realized I needed a Christmas gift for a friend and a quilting group exchange gift.

The pattern calls for "spicy" colors but I just picked a line of fabric that was more brown and off white.  I like the colors even though they are not very "spicy."

I wasn't able to do just one Spicy Spiral Tablerunner.  I finished 2 in December and 2 more in January.  I think they are cool.

Moving

Early this fall, Dale announced that he was looking at houses.  When I asked him more, he did admit that he had only looked on the internet.  Dale had been talking about moving for a while but I didn't take him seriously.  Thinking that I would get Dale to reconsider moving, I made appointments to go look at some houses.
Surprisingly, to me anyway, we found a house we liked.  By the time we were thinking about making an offer, that house already had an offer on it. 
In the meantime, we had been looking at other houses.  We made another offer.  After a second round of offers on the second house, we were told we had an accepted offer.
We closed on our new house November 21.  We were given the keys to the new house on November 24. 
We started moving "stuff", and there was a lot of "stuff", as soon as we were allowed into the house.  The big stuff was moved December 1 by awesome fellows from Dale's workplace.
We decided to rent out the old house so Dale worked on cleaning, painting, and getting the old house ready the whole month of December.  I think we have renters that plan to move in next weekend.
We have been settling in to the new house and trying to get into the new routine of this location.  It is a really nice house and it shouldn't be too difficult to get into the groove of things.
Moving is crazy.  I thought that I was ok at functioning in chaos.  Moving taught me differently.  I like it best when everything is in its place and everything has a place.  I like to know where to put a thing when I pick it up off the floor.  It is nice to be organized!

Roads

Keegan has cute little trucks so when I saw this panel with camping and roads on it, I just had to have it.  I quilted this panel a while ago and finally finished hand sewing the binding on in October.

 

The things that I learned from this quilt is that I need to get the quilt completed before the recipient grows out of the phase that the quilt involves.  Keegan has not yet grown out of playing with his trucks but if I would have waited much longer, he may have grown out of that phase.

Puzzle

For Keegan's second birthday, I created this Puzzle quilt.  Of course, at his actual birthday in April, only the top was complete.  I finally finished putting the binding on this puzzle quilt in October.

I had really wanted to make a Lego themed quilt.  But when I searched Lego quilt on the internet, and free, only this puzzle pattern came up.  I thought it would work great and it looked easy.  It is easy but I did have to pay attention to where the pieces went to keep the puzzle pieces together.  I sewed the quilt line by line but each puzzle piece extends into 3 lines.  I had to stop chain piecing quite a few times to keep everything straight.
This was a fun quilt to do and I got to use up some of the 1 1/2 inch strips of fabric that I have cut and sitting in a pile.  Nice and scrappy.