Happy February!

My break is over. The stress from the holidays followed by RnR is in the past. I've been building my stash with fantastic year end sales from online stores. The stores I bought from are Burgundy Buttons and Pink Castle Fabrics. Burgundy Buttons had, by far, the most discounts (some up to 55% off) that I found. Please let me know if you found any better offers! Also purchased was my first quilt kit from Pine Tree Country Quilts - I originally saw it in a quilting magazine (The Quilter) and knew that that's what will be on my bed in summer time. I also went to Loraine's Fabric when visiting Rhode Island. How friggen fantastic is that store!! So, now I'm not allowed to purchased any more fabric unless it's necessary and for an active quilt project.

What have I got done? Not a lot because, well let's face it, quilts take a long time! But one project got done and one is started.



Winter Joy - Quilted Wall Hanging
This project was my very first endeavor in quilting. The ladies at my local quilt group were working on it when I joined and decided it would be the perfect beginners project. It was! The girls did red and greens for Christmas but that's just not my fave holiday - hence the winter theme but not necessarily Christmas! 

 

While this project is riddled with imperfections, it's so nice to look at. The two coordinating fabrics (purchased at Marden's) remind me of a town I never lived in.

 This was the first time I appliqued anything. Honestly, it was tricky using gold thread just because it was stiffer than other threads. Luckily the shade of gold matched the music notes fabric (purchased at One Stitch, Two Stitch) perfectly!

Here's what I learned:

1. Ironing is very different from pressing - Thru research of this, I determined that this was probably the biggest cause of my squares being different sizes even though they were cut perfectly.
2. Add stabilizer to the middle section, aka re-read directions each time you restart a project.
3. Measure the space between letters and triple check they're evenly spaced before ironing!
4. Quilt starting at the center and move outward.
5. Square off the quilt top before quilting! (You can deff see the round and uneven edges hehe)

Cathedral Quilt
It's so much like origami with fabric! The tutorials that I'm using are from Hyena in Petticoats blog and The Jilted Ballerina blog. What's super fantastic about it is that it's sort of not a quilt - you don't have to add a layer of batting or quilt it when the top is done. A 10" square ends up being 4.5" so that makes the quilt dense enough.

This was my first effort towards it and inspired me to create a repeating pattern with 15 fabrics - 2 different fabrics for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink, and one black fabric. It'll be 10x15 squares which I estimate to end up being 13 yards of the white fabric.

This is the first two rows. On hand there is enough fabric for 4.5 rows - that's when I'll be allowed to buy more fabric and when an update will be posted.

-Beatrice