Free Fall Finish

It's done! It's finished!  Free Fall!  This quilt was so much fun to make, from picking out the fabrics, right down to piecing it together.  Then came the quilting...I decided on good ol' straight lines with my walking foot.  Simple.  Easy.

Well, it should have been simple and easy.  For starters, I decided to put a small black border (like 1.5") around it to make sure I didn't loose any of my points to squaring up or binding (hindsight, probably should have used the gray).  I picked out a lovely white backing with large clusters of flowers in colors that match the floating leaves on the front.  At the point I was basting it together, I realized you would probably be able to see the dark prints on the front through the thin batting and backing.  I had plenty of the cotton batting and decided why not double layer it??  So I went for it, doubling the layer of batting to two, pinning and then baste stitching around the edge of the quilt.  Go me!!

I started stitching in the middle of the quilt using Aurifil #2610 Light Blue Grey 50wt and used the edge of my walking foot to space my lines, so they ended up about a 1/2"(ish) apart.  I knew the close stitching and extra batting would make this quilt a bit more stiffer, but that's okay, it's a wall hanging.  Things were going well until I was reaching the end of the quilt.

As you can see, I was ending up with quite a pucker...URGH!!!  I worked it out as best I could and stopped stitching when I reached the edge of the black.  I pulled her away from the machine and regrouped.  I would not abandon this project.

Over all it wasn't bad, but that pucker was FRUSTRATING.  What to do???  Instead of focusing on the panic of the pucker, I turned her around and started quilting the other side to buy myself some time before dealing with the problem, problem procrastination. 

Unfortunately, I just ended up with a pucker on that side as well.  My solution?  I'm sure there were much better ones to pick from, but I picked out the remaining basting stitches and quilted on.  I assume it was the extra layer of batting that was causing things to pull more and contort.  Maybe not, but that's the story I'm sticking with.

Here it is all finished on the floor.  Part of me thought about leaving it just like this and not trying to trim and square it up.  Call it a new type of quit finishing...really raw edge binding maybe?  Add a little more soft poof to your quilts? 

Figuring my new trend didn't stand a chance of catching on, I trimmed away and squared as best I could.  I didn't get a picture to share of what that first trimming looked like.  Trust me, somethings shouldn't be seen.  You are welcome (it was bad). 

So I sucked it up and trimmed some more, put a smile on my face and bound this quilt.  Wonky Donkey or not, I love it!

I love the pattern, I love the designer, I love my fabrics, I had a ton of fun creating it and created it with a bunch of really great online friends!!!  This quilt made memories and I will love her forever, bobbles, wobbles, puckers and all.  Best of all...she's finished.

A huge thank you to Sandra at mmm!quilts for hosting this QAL for us.  She did an amazing job writing the pattern and walking us through the steps to create it.  Sandra, I'm so proud of you and the success you have had with your first QAL!  Did you make the Free Fall Quilt?  Don't forget to hop over to mmm!quilts tomorrow to link up for Sandra's finished (quilted or pieced) linky party.  I can't wait to see what everyone made. 

Today I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers ,Wednesday Wait Loss, Free Fall Linky.

Crazy Quilt Along Lady

Mark you calendars!  Even with all the craziness of the quilt show and Strawberry Festival, I managed to stay completely caught up on all the QAL's and BOM's.  Above are all the Aurifil Designer Blocks of the Month to date.  This month's block was called Faux Weave and was by super talented and fun guy Matthew Boudreaux, better known to most of us as Mister Domestic (read Pat Sloan's interview with Matthew here).

The color of the month was red--hot, hot, hot!  This block was much fun to put together and contained some very thin strip sets.  My "weave" had some wobbles and bobbles, but if I tried weaving in real life, I feel pretty sure I'd have the same result, so score!

After all the hotness of Faux Weave, I decided to chill a bit and work on Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilt's Have A Jolly Little Christmas Quilt.  The block was called All Wrapped Up.

All wrapped up in adorable cuteness!  The next block, Holly & Berries, is due to be released this weekend.  Hopefully, the long weekend will allow me time to stitch it up.

Then I moved on to the Medallion Quilt BOM by Cindy at Stitchin At Home.  Broken Dishes is the third of the twelve 12" blocks.  

Squares in squares always make me nervous, but with Cindy's instructions, I breezed right on through and ended up with blocks the size they where suppose to be.

And last but not least, the beast in my living room, Pat Sloan's 182 Solstice Challenge Quilt.  As of the second I'm typing this, I am caught up completely on this monster huge quilt (for a quilt along quilt anyway).  This is not the best picture, but I had to get another picture of the quilt "all together."

After making the big block in the lower right hand corner, Weather Vane, I pieced the entire bottom row together.  I also pieced the last checker board section and attached it to the Day into Night block.  The only thing left to do is wait for the last three 12" blocks to be released over the next three weeks, then this top will be finished.  How in the world did I manage to stay on top of this one?

Well this concludes today's installment of the Crazy Quilt Along Lady.  Join us next week to find out will she stay ahead of the Solstice Monster or will it wrangle her completely to the ground?  Will the Jolly Christmas Quilt snowball and roll right over top of her leaving her flat and cold?  Will she piece together all of her Freefall Blocks or pile them together and run through them?

Or will she just start 20 more projects and laugh madly?? 

Today I'm linking up with Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers and Wednesday Wait Loss.

QAL's-Haulk Mode

I'm still plugging away over here, working on QAL's and getting that pattern ready to release.  After my crazy productive week the week before, last week I kind of hit a brick wall.  I didn't really do anything-at-all.  It happens.

David has been gone since last Friday for work again, and I knew I needed to buckle down and be productive over my quiet weekend (well as quiet as it gets with a teenage daughter in the house).  On Friday it was like my batteries recharged.  I hit the coin box and found that flashy star on Super Mario Brothers that warped me into moving at super quick speeds.  I turned on quilting Haulk Mode (no I didn't turn green).

Saturday, I popped into a local quilt store, Helen's Hen House, to pick up a few FQ's to add to my Solstice challenge quilt.  That's where I picked up those yummy pieces above...I think I'm going to need more.  What was suppose to be a quick trip ended up being a 1 1/2 hour event.  The place was hopping and I ran into quilting friends and made a new quilting friend.  But the quilt store magic had to end...I had things to do!  So back home I went.

I was able to quickly finish the straight line quilting on my pattern quilt, which leaves me with one more to quilt.

I was able to get that quilt basted and cut binding strips for four quilts.

Next up, was the Freefall 1/2 blocks.  Sandra at mmm!quilts had emailed me the instructions for the next set of blocks so that I could test them before she released them on Monday.  Making that a major priority, I knocked those out pretty quickly.

Here are all the blocks playing on my design wall.

I needed a carrot chocolate bar on a stick, dangling in front of me as a reward.  I decided to do a fabric pull for the three blocks I need to make to finish section A of Pat Sloan's 182 Solstice Challenge.  I will only allow myself to work on this project once everything is completed.

Now on to the blocks I completed.  I had three blocks to catch up on;  Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts had released the Santa block for the Jolly Christmas Quilt and he had yet to visit my design wall, April's Aurifil block needed to be completed, and Pat Sloan released The Children's Library May block two days early.  I cut the pieces for all three blocks and slowly (and carefully) worked on them all together.

Santa finished up first.  Isn't he just the jolliest? 

I even pieced one of the five rows together.

The Children's Library Block for May was Green Eggs and Ham.  I dug into my stash of green and went to work.  This block goes together log cabin style and for some reason, I always end up with a wonky block.  My 1.5" piece blocks got a little bit off, but I didn't sweat it and improvised.  As long as I ended up with a 12.5" block that looked dag gone close, I was happy.  I think Dr. Seuss would agree, whimsical is better than perfect?

And here they are all together.

Last but definitely not least, was the Aurifil BOM by Sue Marsh New Direction.  I put this block off for half of a month because the templates and triangles scared the crap out of me.  Something I've never really worked with.  I cut very carefully and took my time sewing.

I have to say the block turned out much better than I expected.  Once put together, I did lose a few points on the arrow, but hey some times in life, the arrows that point us aren't quite as sharp as they should be.  This is just one of those times. (It's not done losing points either...shhhh)

And here are the start of my rainbow blocks, ranging from blue to red purple.

So this is what my list looked like at the end of Sunday.

Not bad if I do say so myself.  I also finished making a pressing board to use for bigger pieces of fabric, but I think I'll save that for another post.  This one is about eye candy.  

So for now, my Haulk muscles have retracted and I've returned to little ol' Tish N Wonderland.  I still need to keep the forward momentum going, but for now I think I deserve a nap.

Today I'm linking up with Freefall Linky, Wednesday Wait Loss, Midweek Makers, Let's Bee Social, Main Crush Monday and Linky Tuesday.

Freefall 2

So let's get right to the point here (see what I did there??)  I am having a blast making all these little Freefall leaves.  The next six blocks went together easy peasy lemon squeezy over here.  Since I was a pro at making them from making the first eight, I was able to chain piece the crap out of these little buggers.

I separated everything into neat little piles and in no time at all have my completed blocks.  I LOVE a project like that.  I chose to paper piece the large shadow leaf points as well.  Sandra has the paper piecing units also available in her Craftsy Shop.

So now I will leave you with all my blocks to date floating around on my mobile design wall.

Only six more blocks to go!  So now there is nothing to do but set around and wait for the next set of instructions, or maybe I could quilt something :)

Today I'm linking up with Freefall Linky and Main Crush Monday.

Freefall Update 1

She's a good girl, loves her Sandra

Loves quilt alongs, and being caught up too

She's a good girl crazy 'bout kittens

Loves puppies and quilty Dave too

And I'm free, Freefalling!

Yeah I'm free, Freefalling!

Okay, so maybe those are not the words to the song but I just had to and I'll warn you now, the quilt along isn't over and me doing that probably isn't either.

Today, I'm just quickly checking in and linking up with Sandra's Freefall QAL over at mmm!quilts.  The linky party is open all week and we are all anxiously awaiting the next set of instructions on Monday.  Never to late to join in the fun, obviously there is good music along with it :)

WARNING:  This next section of post may contain graphic and violent material for those of the quilting faint of heart.  Viewer discretion is advised.  Especially if your name is Dave the Quilt Engineer.

As I am working through my QAL's I am also feverishly quilting my and David's quilts for our upcoming pattern release.  Since am almost finished quilting his baby quilt version and my neighbors (my mom) left their garage door open when they left, I quietly borrowed their garage and tables to baste my quilt.  

His quilt lay neatly folded with the backing facing up (Thank God!) on my HQ Sweet Sixteen.  When I returned from my basting adventure (I was in and out like a ninja) I discovered one of the cats had thrown up on his quilt!  OH THE HORROR!!!!!

Jen, being the best daughter ever, cleaned the mess up for me, since I was frozen in a mixture of panic, anger, fear, sadness and a few other emotions that haven't yet been identified.  Sadly, what was left was a yellowish stain.

After I came out of my frozen state and re-animated, I did the only thing I could do...Shout.  I shouted at the cats, I shouted at the sky.  Then I realized there might be more proactive shouting to be done.  I grabbed the bottle of stain remover and generously applied it to the spot....and walked away.  

I am happy to report when I checked on it this morning, it does look like the stain has lightened quite a bit.  I plan on finishing this up ASAP tonight  so I can pop it in the wash.  Did I mention how happy I am it's the back of the quilt and not the front?

That's it for me, back to getting projects finished up.  Hope everyone is having a great quilting week.

Freefall QAL

When my QBF Sandra (mmm!quilts) announced that she was hosting her first ever QAL, I just had to participate.  What kind of friend would I be if I didn't??  Since fabric wise I've been a very good girl this year, I decided to treat myself to a few new pieces to kick off this quilting party.  My Freefall leaves will have more of a spring feel than fall.

Once my new pieces where home and out of the bag, I decided to mix and match them with items that already existed in my stash, leading to the 10 fabrics below.

The medium gray on the top left will become the background fabric with the dark green morphing into the shadow leaf.  The purples, pinks, greens, blue and white will become the 20 smaller leaves that will free fall around the quilt.  Every time I type "free fall" Tom Petty starts playing in my head.  Anyone else having this issue?

Before I ever started whacking away at this pile with my rotary cutter, a little bit of planning was needed to figure out what leaves would end up where.  I turned to trusty EQ7 (with Sandra's permission) to do a blank mock up of the quilt to play with color placement.  If you would like a blank layout to play with, you can down load it here, on Sandra's Craftsy page for free.

After I had everything where I wanted it to be, cutting commenced and bag stuffing began, so I could keep everything straight.

Whew, now I'm all ready for the next set of instructions to come out on Monday.  Hopefully, I can share my first Meadow Mystery finish this weekend.

Tisha is behind and I make no apologies.  Quilting and piecing have been put on hold for about a week.

Last weekend, was my daughter's state archery tournament.  Most of Saturday was spent at our state's capital, watching Jen and her team compete.

To give an idea of how big the event was, 100 kids could shoot at a time.

Maybe we should start calling her Katniss Everdeen, because baby girl only missed placing by 5 points.  Next year. Next year.  However, she and her team mates pulled off second place in the high school division!  These kids rock!

After the excitement of the tournament was over, more excitement was to follow!  My little eyes saw the most exciting thing...

Sandra in the flesh with my studly boyfriend!!!  We've been planning this visit for quite some time now and it finally happened.  We enjoyed a late dinner that evening and met back up in my hometown the next morning for breakfast.

She and MacGyver (it is uncanny how much he looks like Richard Dean Anderson...like identical twins I tell you) came over to our house for a short visit.  Sandra even got to hang out with the boys.

Here is Sandra with my Becker Boo. He actually was very happy to see her, he just had his serious face on.

Newton, bless his heart, couldn't contain his excitement with that big ol' toothy smile.

All too soon this visit was over and they had to travel on, but not before our little family covered their fur babies in slobbery smooches.

Hopefully, this will not be their only visit to our little town.  We enjoyed having them over so much.  Spending time with them is like spending time with family.  And I only had to get onto MacGyver once when he tried to show David how to make a defibrillator using a candlestick, rubber mat and an electric cord.  Apparently, that man really can do anything.

If you are participating in the Free Fall QAL, don't forget to pop over to mmm!quilts and link up your progress.  I can't wait to see everyone's quilts come together.

Alright, back to quilting!

Today I'm linking up with Finished or Not Friday, Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop!  Freefall Link Up, and Let's Bee Social.