Let me fill you in

So I've been keeping up with the quilt-along blocks but I haven't kept up with blogging them. That means you'll get four in one post! Get excited.

Block #7 was pretty simple. It was made of squares only....no need to worry about those temperamental flying geese. It went together easy and with little fanfare. Sweet but not in your face. This is a laid back block.

Next came Block #8 which brought back the triangles but in a totally new format. The little squares below were cut into tiny (I mean tiny!) triangles.

This block was a simple cream square framed by four prints. That part was breesy but then came the applique! I cut the squares into three triangles each and had to arrange them into a basket in the center square. See what I mean:



I had to place them just right-it was tough to get them all to fit in the arc of the basket. After ironing them down I used a blanket stitch around the edges. The good thing was I had done some practice applique in the making of my pillow. The whole block came together well in the end, it just took a few days.

Now I have for you Block #9 which I'm not too sure about.

I wanted to use brown because I felt like there wasn't a whole lot in the first eight blocks but the plaid is a little overwhelming. And do you see those triangles...they are little bitty 1.5" squares cut in half. Not too fun to work with.  After wrestling them into flying geese I realized the fabrics blend with each other a little too much and so the geese don't stand out. I may redo this whole block at the end if I have enough fabric left.

Last I give you Block #10 which is my favorite of these four.

 I love the fabrics for this because that brown with red hearts in my absolute favorite of the whole bundle. I was saving it for a special block where I could highlight it and not have to cut it into tiny pieces and lose the effect of the design.

Awesome, right? I love the center square. I cut the fabric special to make sure that little heart was right in the middle. This block used lots of flying geese which were easy to make on their own but hard to get all of them to line up. So in the end my edges don't all match up but I love the colors so much i don't care.

I have six more blocks to make for this and then we will put them all together. That means I only have four weeks left of the quilt along! It has gone by amazingly fast!!!!

I will leave you with one more glimpse of beauty :)

Enjoy your weekend!
-Laura

I'm sharing the love

And maybe I'm a little late but better late then never. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!! I wanted to share my spontaneous valentine's craft.

I planned on going to Ruston High on Monday to see an Ancient Greece exhibit from their 9th grade classes. I wanted to stop by and see Dana but I wanted to take her something. I was going to make a card but taking out the Cricut and paper and whatnot felt overwhelming. I had a brilliant idea instead: I would make paper flowers. I had made some in high school and knew I could do it again. I found the instructions online and put a few together before I left. So cute!

     That night Connor and I made dinner-steak and potatoes. Delicious!!! Connor made the steak and  I made the potatoes. I made roasted potatoes with a little assist from Mom and Dad. They were awesome. Our table came together quite by accident. Connor got me some beautiful tulips-yay! Then I thought we needed to have candles somewhere, so I scrounged and found the ones we used at Christmas and tada!

Love you guys and hope you are having an awesome week.

Here I go Quilting Along

I've gotten behind in writing about my quilt-along blocks. I've finished two since my last post. Blame my precious pillow, she took all my free time. So in this post you get two blocks instead of one.

Block #5: All squares cut and ready to go.

Before I even saw the design for the block I had decided I wanted to use my teal fabric because as I said before pink was taking over. At the end I wasn't so sure but we will get to that in a minute. This block included a ton of little flying geese-24 to be exact. They were easy to make but a little hard to make sure all the points stayed pointy when they were attached to the middle of the block.

All done-as you can see the teal is pretty bright. So far this block is my least favorite but I still like it. I do love the cream and pink flower material that make the geese.

Block #6: Ready to go....

In this block I was able to use all the colors in the fabric collection and they look awesome together. I'm pretty sure this one turned out to be my favorite when I was done. I wasn't sure at first but when I was done all the colors look so awesome together. I think it will make block #5 go with my first four.

Tada!!! Isn't it beautiful?? I love it. The colors look better in person. I haven't figured out how to get good pictures of my fabric yet.

I need your help....

First of all, my project is done! I finally get to show you: I made a pillow!!!

Front:

Back:

I am so excited about this little guy and there is quite a story as to how it came together. As you know I joined a quilt-along. They have set up a flickr group where everyone can post pictures. So when the group first started I posted a picture of my fabric and another member commented on it. I went to her profile and begin to look at past projects she had made. As I looked I saw this cute pillow and read her description that she had made it for her daughter's teachers. So I decided I needed one too! I'm a teacher, I need a cute little pillow for my chair. The description explained that it was made with something called a charm pack which is a set of 5" squares of coordinating fabrics. I happened to have one I had picked up when I had extra Christmas money-now I had an idea for it!

     So I got to work studying the picture and figuring out how the pillow was made. I came up with a method and got to work cutting my fabric into 2.5" squares for the front of the pillow. It took quite awhile for me to get them all cut perfectly square which is important with this kind of pattern. After they were all cut I laid them out where they looked pretty together and then begin to sew. I was as careful as could be but lining up all those little square was pretty hard. They didn't come out like I wanted but still pretty good. After I had all my little squares together I quilted straight vertical lines along each seam. I was going to do horizontal as well but it would have only highlighted the uneven seams so I nixed that. I got all my lines done and had been searching craft blogland the whole time. One day I looked up Sew, Mama, Sew and found that February was pillow month and they were having a pillow contest.

     Light bulb!!!! I was making a pillow-I should put it into the contest. I begin to read the contest instructions and found they had a category for pillows with words to live by. So then I had to find words to add to my pillow. I knew it had to be about teaching because this would be going in my classroom, so after a few hours I came up with Dream, Teach, Inspire. I planned to use my Cricut to cut out the letters because I figured out how to cut fabric on a previous project. I thought since I was using my Cricut I should cut out some cute image to go with it....the only teacher appropriate one I had was a tree and its such an awesome one. So I cut out all my applique with the Cricut and then I realized I didn't know how to actually do applique. I searched and found a few tutorials with helpful hints and then found a few videos that showed me exactly how to stitch around the applique correctly. The biggest tip: go SLOWLY.  Not what I wanted to hear because I wanted to be done quickly but I got to work and found that going slowly made it possible to get the stitches around all those letters!

     During this time I had two and half days off of school thanks to snow (even though I never saw any at my house) and plenty on time to finish it. After the applique was done the next step was to put in a zipper and make it into a pillow. I found a tutorial about putting in a blind zipper and after a few (ok maybe 5) attempts got the zipper sewed in correctly. Then I sewed up all the edges and stuffed it with stuffing I stole from Connor's ottoman. Done. I made my first pillow!!!! Here it is again in case you forgot what it looked like:

 

I love it and want to make a million more. In fact I am making another one right now with different fabric to try to get my squares to match up better. I was getting frustrated with it earlier so I am taking a break to right this. I'll finish it when I feel better.


  So here is where I need your help......to enter it into the contest I need a name, something I'm not that great at. So leave a comment and give it a cute name for the contest. I've only got a little over week to enter it in so don't be shy.

Pretty Pretty Pinwheel

The quilt-along continues with block #4. Those of you in Louisiana know we had another weather scare this weekend. Once again I had no school on Friday! I spent most of the day sewing but it wasn't on the quilt. I'll give you peek at my project but its not done so I don't want to give the whole thing up.

 

Currently trying to figure out how to applique those letters on and once I do it should be pretty simple to finish. I can't wait to show it to you.

Since today was my second Saturday of the week :) I worked on my block and it went together super fast. I'm very proud of my pink triangles, also called flying geese. Their points are so nice and pointy. On this block I could tell that my technique has improved....at first I didn't see how I would get better by doing the same thing over and over but now I can see how I get better each time I make a block.

Monday will reveal new instructions and I need to make sure I use my teal fabrics-I've got lots of pink in the blocks so far and I don't want it to take over the quilt.

-Laura