February Vice Versa Blocks

I finished up this month's vice versa blocks in short order this morning- I like the half-square triangles so this one was a breeze. I'm really liking all the colors together!  What a great way to finish up the weekend. 

Lovely piles of squares and scraps:

I even got to practice a little chain piecing:

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

New Year, New Projects: Bandwagon Edition

As January winds to a close, this is the last installment of "all the projects I'm starting this year."  Who knows when I'll actually finish, but man, I'm good at starting!  There are a few things that are all the rage on the quilting blogosphere, and I've totally fallen victim to the excitement.  

First up is my single girl quilt, which I've been wanting to start for a long time (I know I'm very late to this party, people have been quilting-along to this one for a few years now).  It's based on Denyse Schmidt's pattern, but Im cheating a little and using plexi templates that I bought on Etsy.  I wasn't sure about the colors, because I originally envisioned something more vibrant, but the first piece looks very springy, and I already love the softness of the fabrics I picked.  So this will be my Spring quilt!  Well, one of them at least :)  Check out everyone else's gorgeous Single Gal Quilts on the Single Girl Support Group flickr page.

Next up is my other "spring quilt" which I haven't touched in a while, but I'm looking forward to digging back into, my Cuzco scrappy trip-around-the-world.  Well, it's not really scrappy if it's one fabric line, but I'm reconsidering using only Cuzco.  I'm just crazy for scrappy quilts right now, so I don't know!  At any rate, these are the two blocks I did last year, and I LOVE the colors but the uniformity is starting to bother me.  I may have to ponder this one a while before I finally pick it up again.  This one may just end up being my "summer quilt."

Here is the tutorial that really helped me figure out the process. 

Onward!  Last year I caved to the pressure and bought the gorgeous Tula Pink City Sampler book.  I also bought the Saltwater collection and decided to make my sampler quilt a sort of beachy one.  I made it about a third of the way through the book before the holidays last year, but it's definitely another one I'm eager to pick up again.  Since I'm still a pretty new quilter, I learned all kinds of new techniques (flying geese, the importance of starch, etc) and I think the next two thirds will go a little faster.  Here's how it looks so far:

I'm thinking about bordering it in grey between the blocks, and quilting each one separately before I put them all together, sort of a "quilt as you go" technique.  I would like to try some free-motion quilting, but I'm not even sure I can do it on the little blocks, much less a whole quilt, so the smaller chunks may be a good way to start.  


And finally, I have jumped feet first into the latest craze: the Economy Block Quilt!  I am using the tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts, who makes some of the most beautiful quilts I've ever seen (I just love her simple blocks and vibrant colors).  Mine is going to be very scrappy, I'm taking a "kitchen sink" approach and just throwing in random fabrics to see how they all look together in the end.  I love the fussy cutting in the center, so I'm trying to put something interesting in the middle for the other fabrics to frame.   Starting with the hipster glasses, of course :)  I have a bunch of fabric pieces cut out, so the next step will be putting them all together into a loud, random quilt.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot!  I'm trying my hand at paper piecing hexies.  With all the quilts in progress, I need something to do with all the scraps!     

Happy Saturday everyone!

January's Vice Versa Blocks

I finished these a while ago but forgot to post them- January's installment of the Vice Versa Block of the Month.  

It's intended for solid colors, and while I think they can be spectacular, I just can't bring myself to not use prints so I have a spectrum of "blenders" to achieve that effect.  I just love the simplicity of the blocks and how crisp they came out (see my last post for a little insight into how angsty I get when centers don't match up). 

A close-up of vice...

And a close-up of versa...

Happy Wednesday!!

January's Lucky Stars Blocks

I finished my first paper pieced blocks for the Lucky Stars Block of the Month- and I have to say, they were harder than I thought!  I like the way they came out in the end, but man, they took me a while to perfect.   

It didn't take me too long to catch onto the paper piecing technique, which is fun except for the excessive amounts of scraps I seem to end up with (I tried to eyeball the blocks and cut smaller pieces, but after sewing and flipping a half dozen times only to discover I had shortchanged the size, I gave up and cut them according to the directions).

Not even a fraction of all the scraps I created...

The biggest problem I had was with the centers which just didn't line up right.  I found a few tutorials online and tried the suggestion of putting a pin in the center and sewing from there outside in either direction.  That evened up the center, but then I had to go back and re-align some of the outer seams.  Biggest lesson: starch starch starch!  Things went a lot easier on the January block when I heavily starched right off the bat to keep the bias from creating too much stretch.  

On the left are the yucky center seams, and the right they are somewhat fixed.

These took a lot longer for me to make than I thought they would, but there was a lot of trial and error involved.  I'm looking forward to February when I can hopefully put all these lessons to good use.

Happy Tuesday!

New Year, New Projects, Part 3

Over Christmas I found this beautiful quilt top in my mother's fabric stash (yes, I may have been doing some raiding).  

We have no idea where she got it or who made it, so I promptly stole it and ordered the perfect backing fabric, from Denyse Schmidt's Chicopee line.  Her colors go perfect with the 70s vibe of this quilt, which was clearly made in a time when tangerine was all the rage.

You can see whoever made it used a combination of hand-stiching and machine stitching, even on the same pieces, as if she got sick of hand piecing the blocks (I don't blame her!!). 

The "white" pieces look like a flour sack material and are more off-white, which gives it a very vintagey, authentic feel.  There are dirty spots and stains, but I don't dare wash it until I finish quilting.  It just looks so fragile.  So I ironed her up and got her ready for the batting and backing.  I think I'll just hand quilt around all of the pieces in a thin off-white thread, since the quilt itself is so vibrant.  

This will be the perfect companion to my new obsession... Breaking Bad on Netflix!  OMG, you guys, I know exactly what everyone's been talking about.  I'm on season 2, and hooked hooked already.  Don't tell me what happens!!!

Happy quilting!

New Year, New Projects, Part 2

So I messed up!  Actually, I didn't so much mess up as change my mind.  Yesterday I posted about one of two BOMs (Blocks of the Month) that I'm doing this year.  I decided first to use the Nordika selection below for my Vice Versa BOM from Gen X quilters.  But then I started working on the fabric selection for my second BOM, Lucky Stars from Don't Call Me Betsy, and I realized the two were perfect for the opposite ones!  So I changed my mind, or rather the fabrics showed me how wrong I was to begin with.  

So here's the revised selection for Vice Versa:

You can see how that's going to work really well with the 5-color scheme in the quilt:

And here's what I'm going to use for the Lucky Stars paper piecing BOM:


The colors really lend themselves to the shading, and the blacks and grays are really going to pop.  I don't know what I'm going to do with the prints yet, but I just can't put them away, so you'll definitely see a few mixed in.


It's going to be a busy year and I can't wait to see how they both turn out!

New Year, New Projects, Part 1

Fabrics #viceversabom, a photo by hipsterquilter on Flickr.

I don't have a cool retrospective for 2013, since I really just started this blogging thing, so I thought I would just go straight to what I have planned for 2014. First, I signed up for a couple of Blocks of the Month, or BOMs. I've never done one before, so now I'm doing two! First is the Gen X Quilters Vice Versa BOM.  Besides having the greatest blog name ever (I TOTALLY should have thought of it first), I really like their blocks and I'm excited to work with solids (and some patterns, as you can see above... I can't resist). I'm going with Art Gallery solids in Nordika-themed colors with some Nordika thrown in. I haven't decided yet, but I'm probably going to have to get one of the cool panels that comes with the collection. I have a year to decide :)  I already love the Art Gallery fabrics, both solids and prints are soooo soft and the colors are so rich. I can't wait to dig in and see the blocks come together.

Here's the link if you want to join in:

Almost the weekend, so hopefully I'll have something to share by Sunday. Unless the Federal Government gets overwhelmed by a few feet of snow suddenly tomorrow morning and I find myself with lots of time and nowhere to be. Fingers crossed!!!