And now... time for somthing completely different!

I wasn't going to talk "work" on this blog at all... but...

My husband and I are working with a couple of Portland clowns:  Olive Rootbeer and Dingo Dizmal who have super rad skills with balloon animals, and entertainment in general.  You may have seen them riding their tall bikes in the first episode of Portlandia! 

Anyway, in their spare time, they paint rubber chicken paintings... that's right:  rubber chicken paintings.   Since our business name is Phantom Chicken, we are especially partial to anything chicken! So when they came to us last week,  to print this Seahorse image (from their coloring book) on some shirts, we wanted to help:

Do you see the little rubber chickens? So cute! 
So we are offering the opportunity to pre-order this t-shirt before we print ~ the more pre-orders we get, the more it helps Dingo & Olive.  So... if you're in need of a new shirt... check it out here :)

I haven't been able to get any sewing time in 3 whole days!  I'm going a little stir crazy... but an idea for another paper-pieced project has entered my head:  can you say DRAGON.   I keep imagining a hexagon/triangle pieced image of a dragon in reds and creams and pale blues ~ maybe today I'll get some time to layout another design ~ I feel a little empty inside now that my squid quilt is done!

No Patience

I have absolutely no patience at all.  I finished my squid and took some photos and I want to show it off even though I should wait and put the hanging sleeves (and my little tag) on the back... and have it photographed on a nice wall with good lighting and a tripod so the photo itself is good... but I just can't wait!! 

  *happy dance commencing* 

and here it is:

 I keep staring at it and daydreaming of my next big paper-pieced project.... aaahhhhhh.

Sunday... Squid Binding

So I think I've finished quilting "The Squid" ~  I'm so close to completion, I'm giddy!!

I've been free-motion quilting it over the last week.  It has been quite an education.  I had to practice every idea on little quilt sandwiches of scrap fabric... and I still had a hard time with controlling my stitches.  It doesn't really matter, because it's little things that you wouldn't notice unless someone pointed it out. Plus, I'm sewing for fun and relaxation.  The last thing I want to do is get all anal and stressed on sewing.  But... I now have a list of things I want when I'm able to purchase a newer machine:

• Pedal speed regulator.  I found there is very little play in my pedal between too slow and too fast, so I often ended up with micro-stitches.
• Bigger "throat" space.  Not much room to move around.
• Needle down control.  How many times did I stop and have to manually put the needle down while my fabric moved a little?
• Feed dog control.  There is a cover for the feeddogs on my machine, but that leaves little space to fit the thickness of a quilt sandwich.
• and if I'm rich: Stitch length regulator.  mmmm, how nice.

It was hard for me to pick thread colors too.  I went back and forth with the idea of using just one color for the whole quilt, or using grey for the back... but in the end I decided to go with color! It worked out great... the back of the quilt is almost as cool as the front now :)

Last night I stitched the top of the binding and today I'm handstitching the binding on the backside.  I think it was Petrá's idea of using clothespins to hold the binding in place.  Sweet ~  I didn't want to have to buy anything extra this week, and I had clothespins already... so YAY! 

Here's a teaser pic:

It's ON!

Okay... it's ON!  I started quilting my squid.  It's about time too ~ it's been sitting on a table in my sewing room looking at me for months now.
I was inspired a great deal at the last PMQG meeting!  I have a long list of notions I want (need) to get, and again I saw some amazing quilts ~ my favorite being Jill's monochromatic quilt - it was fantastic!


So, I spray basted this quilt.  The back is solid Kona Coal  I figure I have only a few days before the tackiness of the glue wears off, so I feel like I want to sew and sew and sew until it is finished.  BUT this time I WILL take breaks.  I have something called thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) from an accident that hurt my neck when I was a kid.  So everytime I get tense in my shoulders, it pinches nerves down my arms (painful) and makes my hands and fingers go completely numb.  I still haven't regained feeling in my right thumb since I quilted my yellow circle quilt... hmmmm, might be time for some bodywork!

Until then, I will be at my machine (on and off with breaks of course) working on my current favorite project.

Free Motion Practice Octopus

So... as some of you know, I'm practicing my free motion quilting so I can successfully quilt my hand-pieced squid.  The squid is just sitting there staring at me and I can hear it yelling "hurry up and quilt me already!"  I'm a little afraid because I really, really want to do it justice... and I'm just a little too lazy to hand-quilt it.

That said, I did a little practicing over the weekend, I'm getting much better at the circles! I'm still not sure how I will do the 'water' part of the quilt and so I think I'll need at least one more project under my belt before I hunker down and get to work!

 

It ended up looking kind of cool, so I decided to make it into a wall hanging.  With the last few things I've stitched together, I have lamented not having labels or a way to "tag" my finished pieces.  So I thought I'd have some made and found out they are just satin ribbon with a print... and since we have our own printing studio, I kicked my hubby in the butt and got him to print some simple label tags for me.

We printed them on some satin ribbon I had laying around, and they turned out great!  With new tags, I was so excited... I went and finished this little octopus piece (with a label) and I'm just about to sew the sleeves on the back so I can hang it up!

With A Little Help From My Friends

WooHoo!  I finished my Yellow Circle Quilt today!!   I am thrilled it turned out as good as it did ~ thanks to all the many, many tutorials I read and watched online.  The modern quilt thing ~ to me ~ is all about the internet.  It would have taken me years to learn by trial and error what I just learned in two weeks while making this quilt.

While I have sewn my whole life, I really (REALLY) didn't have a clue when it came to quilting.  So with this quilt I tried a few new (to me) things:

• free motion quilting
• squaring up blocks and the quilt
• spray basting
• machine stitched binding

For squaring up quilts I followed this blogpost by Naptime Quilter.  Then I spray basted my quilt.  I didn't see any tutorials the way I ended up doing it... I used the same technique we use when spray gluing paper, I will do a little tutorial myself here in few days to show you, because it worked out so fantastically I'm never using pins again!!

After the quilt was basted I started free motion quilting.  Now... I haven't ever used my machine for this because I didn't have the right presser foot or feed dog cover... BUT I've made a few purchases recently.  I'd like to introduce you to my new friends:

Yep!  I got a nice darning foot and walking foot, and a cover for the feed dogs... and holy crap what a difference it makes!  So I practiced a few different free motion patterns and decided on one and got to town.

Then I squared up the whole quilt and did the binding.  I found a few really good tutorials on this too, but the best one was this one from Red Pepper Quilts.  I followed the instructions carefully and used the walking foot and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with the results:

For me, I think this is the best quilt I've made so far!  Here's the back:

Funny, but I made this quilt to test some technical things, so I thought I would turn out a bit more messy or problematic... but now I'm getting attached to it and am thinking a nice yellow quilt would look soooo nice in the living room :)

Yellow Circle Quilt

I started a new quilt two weeks ago, motivated by the Modern Quilt Guild monochromatic challenge... and I thought I'd share my progress. 
With Illustrator I laid out a design and made a template for the circles.  Here is my design plans and figures:

My first thought was to go with red, but at the last minute I decided on yellow.  Yellow is so bright and cheery so I thought it would help with the grey rainy days. 
These are my pieces:

I'm incorporating some circles in this quilt, so I've been practicing sewing on a curve... and honestly, I'm not sure I would make good circles even with tons of practice.  Can't help but end up with a little puckering.

With my new quilting venture, I've been finding I have A LOT to learn about quilting!  I'm taking my time and researching techniques online and now armed with a new darning foot, and some spray basting and a head full of new information ~ I  basted and started free motion quilting this quilt today!

Unfortunately, the battery in my camera putzed out and so I don't have a picture of the quilting yet... but soon!  YAY... I'm doing it!