Quilty Fun Blocks 1-7

I am a sucker for cute pictorial blocks, so of course I have been following along with the Quilty Fun Sew Along Blog Tour. All the blocks are from Quilty Fun by Lori Holt. The book has so many adorable blocks and projects. I especially appreciate the spiral binding!

I had gotten a little behind (5 blocks to be exact), but all of Lori's piecing techniques are very time efficient. I was able to catch up in one evening. The most time consuming part is picking out the fabric! Because of the holidays, the Week 8 block won't be posted until January 6. That is plenty of time to catch up if you want to join in! The schedule and companion PDFs are listed at this link.

Week 7 - Cocoa Cups

Week 6 - Chubby Chevrons

Corner triangles used to be my worst block, which is a tiny bit embarrassing since it really can't get much easier! My issue was the part that would fold back wouldn't end up even with the main block. I have gotten more consistent sizing lately and I think it is because of the following reasons:
1) I started sewing right outside the drawn diagonal line, instead of on the diagonal line.
2) To place the corner squares, I use a Sewline Glue Pen or Elmer's School glue instead of pins. This is especially true on blocks with really small pieces.
3) I started using a 50wt thread for piecing, instead of a 30wt All-Purpose thread.
A few of my blocks are a tad off, but I have a policy of not resewing if I can't see the mistake from 5'4" away. :D

I've also gotten a little lazy about drawing the lines on the corner triangle pieces. The Angler 2 sounds amazing, but I was too impatient to wait for one to ship here! I ended up making a rudimentary corner triangle assistant by adhering some painter's tape to my machine and drawing some simple lines. I just make sure my corners stay aligned with my guidelines and everything turns out perfect.

Week 5 - Flying Geese

The individual Flying Geese measure 1.5"x2.5". They are so teeny-tiny and cute! These are pieced using the No Waste Flying Geese method, which feels a little bit like magic every time. I love the colors. If I ever get around to making a medallion quilt that has flying geese borders, this is my color scheme!

Week 4 - Sewing Baskets

I just have to share a little excitement here: I got 1 & 1/3 yards of the yellow(tangerine?) Nicey Jane print for $5 at the local fabric store! Lucky find!

Week 3 - Courthouse Steps

The cute little print from Baby Jane fit perfectly in the middle of the courthouse steps!

Week 2 - Twinkly Winter Stars

Week 1 - Apples

The last week for this QAL is March 31, 2014. I can't wait to put the whole quilt top together!

Other WIPs for the week: 2 Baby Quilts & Swoon. Those projects will have to wait until I finish cleaning up the Scraptastrophe I created during my frenzied Quilty Fun catching up!

Linking Up With WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

[CLOSED] Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day - December 2013

Welcome! I am happy that you are here to join me on Sew, Mama, Sew's Giveaway Day. If you are new here, my name is Taryn and I like to sew quilts. If you like (not required!), you can follow my sewing progress via the following links: Bloglovin'  |  Feedly  |  RSS  |   Instagram  |  Flickr  | Pinterest. The picture below is a collage of some of my most recent work.

Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day is one my favorite times of year. My first Giveaway Day was two years ago and it really encouraged me to join the blogging community.  I love to meet new friends and the chance to win free stuff isn't so bad either! 

Here is my offering: One person will win a copy of Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts by Pam & Nicky Lintott & Two Trade Winds Charm Packs.

GIVEAWAY CLOSED The winner is #225 Karrie S. She has been emailed and the package will be shipping tomorrow. Congratulations Karrie and thanks to all who took the time to enter! Leave one comment telling me about your sewing or crafting plans for this month. If you don't have any projects going on, what do you like to sew or want to learn how to sew? My answer: My main projects right now are two baby quilts. One of which I am 8 months late on :D. The thing I am most excited about is preparing blog posts about two finishes that will be gifted after Christmas. Finishing a project can be so exhilarating and it is so hard to keep quiet!

Fine print: This giveaway will close December 13, 2013 at 5pm PST. The winner will be chosen using random.org. I am willing to ship internationally. I will be contacting the winner by email. If you're a "no reply" or anonymous commenter, please be sure to include your email address in your comment so that I am able to contact you if you win. Entries without an email address will be disqualified. The winner must respond within five days of the end of the contest. If the winner does not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.

Thank you so much for entering! It gets a bit crazy on Giveaway Day and I can't always respond to every comment like I do on regular posts, but I will be reading all of the entries. I really appreciate your visit. Good luck and thanks for stopping by! I hope to see you again!

You can see the all the giveaways at Sew, Mama, Sew's Blog (starting December 9 @ 6AM PST).

WIP Wednesday

Hi, friends! I can't believe how much time has passed since my last post! I have been working on a king-sized gift project for the past couple of months and took a mini internet hiatus to avoid distraction (except for Instagram, I can't give up Instagram). It took way longer than I anticipated! The quilt went to the longarmer last week and is already on its way back to Houston. Naturally, I will be spending the next five days repeatedly reloading the USPS tracking page. I hope to be able to share it with you all before the end of the year.

This was my sanity project while working on the gift project. I needed something quick, easy and with a little bit of color. For this quilt top, I used Prairie Paisley II (Minick & Simpson), Blueberry Crumb Cake (Blackbird Designs) and half of Papillon (3 Sisters). I received all these fabrics as part of the Moda Fat Quarter Club at FQS. I never quite knew what to do with these fabrics, but they were all so pretty and soft that I couldn't make myself get rid of them. When they were stacked together, I realized that most of the fat quarters would combine nicely into one quilt!

I looked for a pattern that was a total fat quarter hog and wouldn't require any background fabric purchases. The St. Louis 16 Patch (tutorial by skburton designs) fit the bill! I love how all the fabrics work together and the red just makes this quilt for me. I am going to try to work as many of the scraps as possible into the quilt backing and I will by tying this quilt

Since it is almost 2014 and I figured I ought to get a move on it, I finished the last two blocks for the 2012 Designer Mystery Block of the Month. The block on the left is April Showers designed by Sweetwater and the block on the right is Sunday Drive designed by Polly Minick & Laurie Simpson. How cool is that pinwheel block? I used to dread making pinwheels, but they are now my favorite! Even though the blocks are finished, I have lot of piecing left to do for the sashing and borders.

Besides all that, my cat blocks are quickly multiplying, I started appliquéing leaves down for the Looking Back quilt and within an hour of rejoining the internet I joined the Quilty Fun Sew-Along! How was I supposed to resist that apple block?

Linking up for WIP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced!