A Quilter Is Born and A Giveaway

This is one of my most favorite stories ever.  It's about how David became a quilt builder and gained two quilting "moms."  I have been quilting now for at least 10 years off and on.  Over the years, David, my husband, had started to show an interest in my quilts by helping me pick out fabrics and even doodling around on graph paper.  I've been telling him for years now to give it a try and a few weeks ago he finally decided to jump right in.

It started during an impromptu lunch date.  Sandra (mmmquilts) had just finished her Blue Skies and Sunny Days quilts.

After showing him a picture of the quilts he remarked at how pretty they were and that he really loved her design.  He ask how hard it would be to make the quilt and I said probably not very hard.  It's mostly strip piecing.  I followed up with, "Why? Do you want to make it?"  To my surprise he said yes.  I quickly texted her and asked if he could pattern test it for her.  I truly think at first she thought I was pulling her leg, but said of course he could.

The next day I texted her this picture.

 He already had a color palette picked out in his head before we ever got to the store.  Quilting lesson #1 was picking fabrics and getting them cut.  Which he handled like a pro.

After sending Sandra these pictures, she went to work writing her pattern for him to sew.  We both knew he was serious.

Quilting lesson #2 would be prepping fabric and cutting it.

It is also where I learned the difference between "piecing" a quilt and "building" a quilt.

Quilting lesson #3 consisted of piecing the blue and orange strips with the background strips.

Quilting lesson #4 attaching strips together.

Here's where the story sort of takes a surprising turn.  Quilting lessons #5-some higher number he figured out on his own.  I took our daughter to a family Memorial Day get together and he opted to stay home and finish up some things around the house.  When he was done he decided to work on his quilt.  While I was gone I received the following text.

There may have been a moment of slight panic on my part.  I hadn't thought about him sewing while I was gone, or running out of bobbin or him trying to fix it.  But he did and got everything working once again.  It wasn't long after I got home he had all of his blocks together and was ready to figure out his layout.

After narrowing it down to two he liked best, he even asked for help on Facebook.

A decision was made, rows were pieced and David's first quilt flimsy was finished.

Presenting to you, David's version of Sunny Days he is calling Hawaiian Stepping Stones.

I'm pretty sure this is a look of, "Yup, I built a quilt.  Don't mess with me. I am a bad ass."

Now, how about that giveaway?  Sandra and I are just so dag gone proud of him!  Just as proud as two quilty parents could be.  So that you can join in and share in our excitement, Sandra has very graciously offered a copy of her pattern as a giveaway on my blog.  It's kind of like when dads hand out cigars when babies are born.  So today through June 10th you can win a pdf copy of Blue Skies and Sunny Days.  The pattern is available in her Craftsy store today as of today and will be on sale till June 10th.  You can check out her Craftsy Pattern store here.  Also if you win the give away but have already purchased the pattern, Sandra will refund your money.  Isn't she the best??  

You have two chances to enter:

1) Leave a comment any comment really.  Maybe tell me if you have ever taught someone to quilt and how it went.  Or maybe you have some quilting advice for Dave, the quilt builder.

2)  Tell me how you follow Tish's Adventures In Wonderland.

Make sure you leave a separate comment for each.  On Saturday, June 11th I will pick a winner using a random number generator and announce the winner.  If you are a no-reply blogger (or even think there is a chance you might be) please leave your email in your comment so that I can reach you.  I know I'm pretty excited...this is TishNWonderland's first give away!

How about one more picture before we go?

This is our budding new quilter worrying inspecting seams that he feared didn't quite match up.  If they were off it was by like 1/8" or less.  He strives for perfection and I love him for it.  Congrats on your first quilt, quilt builder!  I promise it will not become your first UFO :)

Today I'm linking up with Whoomp! There It Is, Finish It Up Friday,  TGIFF, and Can I Get a Whoop! Whoop!

Dog Chasing Its Tail

I have to say that lately I feel like a dog chasing its tail.  And like a dog chasing its tail I'm either having too much fun or slightly confused.  Usually, other than family or work, I only concentrate on one thing at a time.  However, over the past few weeks I have had several different projects pulling me in different directions.

Last week, I started participating in the 2015 New Bloggers Blog Hop.  The hop has not officially started quite yet, but I am slowly getting to know my fellow quilting enthusiasts and learning so much.  I think most of us have been broken down into groups so that we could critique each other's blogs and provide advice on what we can do to improve our posts and pages.  With the help of my fellow friends, I have successfully added labels for better searching to my posts and finally figured out how to widen my layout so that things flow better.  Sometimes, it's the simple things that makes us happy.

I have also been desperately trying to quilt the Mystery Quilt I finished piecing back in April.  I solemnly swear (to whom I'm not sure) that I will not let this poor lap quilt become a UFO.  I'm not sure my back room shelves could stand it.  But I'm showing progress.  I just need to start quilting the pink blocks.

So with this quilt practically wrapping up this meant that I had a great excuse to break my "Thou shall not purchase any new fabric this year" declaration and splurge on new fabric for Meadow Mist Designs upcoming mystery quilt.  I'm ready, how about you?

In my attempt to try to bring a love for quilting to the next generation, I have persuaded my daughter to give it a try.  In her down time this summer she is going to follow Diane at Quilt Shop Gal's Kids Camp.  The fabric for the first project came yesterday and hopefully by the end of the week she will have her first completed cuddle quilt.

The last project I'm working on requires me to call on my limited paper piecing abilities.  I'm pretty sure piecing these blocks shouldn't take as long as I am making it take, but as I get the rhythm down I think I'm starting to shave my over all time down.  One of my biggest questions with paper piecing is how do you know what sizes to cut the fabric to make sure you are covering the area you are working with.  I can't tell you how many times I have abandoned a project because I got to the end and found that after all the hard work, I didn't have enough fabric to cover the seam allowance when I folded it over.  I hate wasting fabric.  In the next few days, I hope to share the process I have come up with to help me avoid this tragic mistake.

Thread that plays hard to get

The quilting of my finished Mystery Quilt is well under way.  I think I might be able to get it finished up by next week, which will give me time to start a second mystery quilt being hosted by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs.  She is suppose to post the material list sometime tomorrow.  I think I'm actually going to allow myself to purchase new fabric for this quilt.  Gasp!  I swore at the beginning
of the year I was going to try to only work from my stash but momma needs some retail therapy in a textile kinda way.



Another small project I'm going to follow (well the teenagers in my life) is a kid's camp being hosted by Darlene at QuiltShopGal. Every Tuesday and Thursday from June to September she is going to post some sort of kid friendly activity.  She is kicking off the camp with a Cuddle Quilt  and a tutorial from Jenny Doan at Missouri Star Quilt Company.  After showing my daughter the video she was more than willing to try making her first quilt.  Depending on what the activity is for Thrusday, I may recruit my teenage niece (she's the same age as my daughter) to participate as well.  I thought having them write down their thoughts about the activity would be a great way to introduce them to blogging and keep them thinking over the summer.

Yesterday I posted this picture of one of my pretty little Aurifil spools to Instagram and to a FaceBook Quilting group in need of advice.  This particularly bad boy was playing hard to get at a time that I just wanted to get to business and I was getting pretty frustrated.  Later a non quilting friend messaged me to see if I was able to find my thread start.  My response back to her went something like this:

"After walking away from it for a bit to cool down and reading advice from other quilters, I started gently rubbing/massaging the top threads to loosen them a bit.  Then I carefully lifted a thread with my seam ripper and lightly ran it along under the thread until, finally that little sucker popped out."

After reading my response to her question, I thought "rubbed/messaged" the thread?  Is there not a better way to word that?  But no there really wasn't.  She just kind of laughed at me.  But thankfully I was able to find the start to my thread and make a little more progress on my quilting.

Art In The Eyes Of A Child

The first quilt I ever made was a Turning Twenty by Tricia Cribbs.  Oddly, this quilt sits in our spare room and still needs the binding sewed on it.  Not sure how I let that happen but this story is not about that quilt...I digress.  The pattern was so easy (and it was the only thing I had pieced) so I thought it would be fun to take my daughter to the quilt shop and let her pick out twenty fat quarters of her choosing and make a quilt.  I believe she was around 7 or 8 at the time.

We were there forever as she buzzed around finding just the right fabrics.  After I had all the pieces cut, I had her hand them to me in the order she wanted them so that I could begin sewing it together.

As we figured out how she wanted them laid out I found myself asking her why in the world she chose the fabrics she did.  It was a crazy group of the most miss matched fabrics I had ever seen.  She had a reason for every single one because they reminded her of something she loved.  The strawberries made her think of the festival our town holds every spring. The brown one with holly made her think of Christmas.  There is one with blue, purple and green that looks like crackled glass that made her think of the ball at New Years Eve.  I was floored that she had put so much thought into what she had picked out.  

Sadly, this top laid around and collected dust for about 6 years.  I had decided that I wanted to be the one to quilt it since I wanted it to mean something to her even later on.  Finally in 2013 enough was enough and it was time to bite the bullet and finish it.  

I decided to do an all over quilting and was bored with stippling, so I gave loops and hearts a try.  Not too bad for my first time and take into consideration I had obstacles...

To this day she loves her quilt and even takes it with her to sleepovers.  I just hope 20 years from now she remembers how much fun we had picking the fabric out and what each little square meant to her.  She can forget all the yelling I did at the cat.