Weekends Tumbler Quilt

I finished my tumbler quilt about a week ago and I love the way it turned out!



While blogging has helped me get a bit more motivation to finish projects, it's also made it possible for me to look back and see exactly how long ago I started something. I first cut out those tumblers way back in February.

This quilt came together slowly. At first I was just using the the green colorway of this fabric collection, but all the patches just blended together. It needed more contrast so I added the solid aqua. Better, but not quite enough. So I cut some more tumblers from the violet colorway and it worked! Adding the violet colorway also allowed me to get in some more of those little bike prints. Squee!



I tried a finishing technique with this quilt that I've never done before. Rather than binding the quilt, I finished it with a facing (using this tutorial). I had wanted to bind it with the solid aqua, but I didn't have enough left. And this fabric had been sitting in my stash for ages, so I didn't have a color name/number, and I couldn't find a good match in any of my local fabric shops. So facing, with no fabric showing on the front, was the perfect solution.



I quilted it with simple straight lines, about 1/4" from the seams. The solid aqua tumblers got an extra outline stitch on the inside. You can see the quilting really well on the back. I like the back almost as much as the front!



And, just for fun, a peek at one of my little helpers:

Practicing My Curves

Confession: Curves scare me.

No, not the women-only gym (although that's kinda scary in a whole different way). I'm referring to curved piecing. There are so many beautiful blocks and quilts out there using curves, and I usually avoid them because I'm not confident in my ability to piece them.

Well I've decided that's silly and I just need to jump in there and do some curved piecing. Face your fear!



So here's the start of my quilt chock full o' curves. I figure baby quilts are the best place to try out new skills. Babies don't notice puckered seams, right? I'm pretty fussy with each of these little curves, and I'm definitely not breaking any sewing speed records, but I think they're turning out pretty good!

And I've got lots of patches cut for practice. By the time this quilt is finished, curves will fear ME!

Tumbling

I have access to an AccuQuilt die cutter at work and I've used it several times to cut little stacks of patches like this:



But I had yet to turn these stacks into anything. This weekend I finally got around to sewing some of them together!



I previously mentioned these tumblers here and here. All the prints are from the Weekends collection by Erin McMorris. At first I was planning to only use prints in the lime colorway, but all the tumblers just seemed to melt together. Then I added the solid aqua tumblers and it helped, but I still wasn't quite happy with it. This time I added a few prints from the violet colorway and I think it's just right!

Now, I'm not sure how I'd like to finish this quilt. Do I add a border(s) or just bind it?



Here's another project I've been working on this summer. I had planned to have a finished project in time for the Festival of Hexagons, but I had my dates wrong and missed the deadline-- boo! At least there's no pressure to finish it now. ;)



We went on a couple of mini vacations this summer and these hexagons traveled along with me. I made "busy bags" of activities and games to keep the kids occupied in the backseat. The supplies to make these little hexagons were in my busy bag!

40th Anniversary Quilt

I am so happy to finally be able to say that this quilt is finished! It's a quilt to celebrate my parents' 40th wedding anniversary, which happened back in June, but really thoughtful gifts are worth the wait, right??



Each of the foundation pieced blocks represents something about my parents and their life together.



Pansy: Mom enjoys gardening • House: they built their house together • O: they met at the Ohio State University • Pig: they were hog farmers when I was a kid



Heart: for love! • Truck: my dad's job • Boat: boating is an activity they like doing together (this isn't the right kind of boat, but after several failed attempts at drawing a motor boat, I went with this easy-to-sew sailboat!) • Fish: fishing is another hobby they both enjoy

I had a fat quarter pack of Deb Strain's Cherish Nature collection I knew I wanted to use because it has my mom's favorite blues in it. It was pretty easy to find blocks I could use to represent my parents as I've known them all my life and have plenty of material to work with *wink*. But I took a ridiculous amount of time finding just the right layout. I almost always use EQ7 to work out my design choices, so I thought it might be interesting to see some of my rejected layout ideas.



The winner:



It's fun to see how a design evolves. My original intention when thinking about this quilt was to make the foundation pieced blocks a secondary design element. Not something you noticed right away, but saw after looking at the quilt for a while, which is why I made them all in neutral fabrics. That's not the way it ended up; I think the blocks are pretty center stage in the quilt. But I love the way it turned out. And I figured if I'm going to spend all that time making these intricate picture blocks, people better notice them!

A peek at the back:



Sewing time was pretty sparse these past few months, so this project pretty much took up my whole summer. But it was well worth it and the summer was spent doing lots of fun summery-type things. However, I'm so ready to tackle some new sewing projects! My oldest starts first grade tomorrow and I look forward to finding our new family routine, which I hope includes a bit more sewing time for me.

Progress!

I've made some good progress on this quilt. I replaced the four without much trouble, although it took quite a bit of time to rip out since I used tiny stitches for the foundation piecing. I'm just so glad the top is pieced together and the end is in sight!



Of course there's another border to add. And a backing to piece together... the quilting... the binding. Quiltmaking can really feel like a never-ending process sometimes, huh?

But I vow not to work on another project until this one is done. I hope to be able to quilt it this weekend (but I think I've said that the last 3 weekends!).