Gearing Up for More QUILTS :)

I know the holidays are not over yet, but after weeks of shopping, wrapping, crafting, decorating, etc etc I think I am TIRED of Christmas. So as a break I am dreaming some quilts and gearing up for it. Here's a glimpse of what I have in store

Quilt #1:


Quilt #2:


Some of the fabrics are featured here and some are some I had already in my stash.

Wordless Wednesday - Almost Wordless & Stash

Chirp!  by Katie Hennigar for Robert Kaufman Fabrics
Plain Jane Lil Daisy (Grey) by Michael Miller
 

Celebrate Seuss!  by Robert Kaufman

Adding to the Stash - Piece N Quilt

Had my first order from Piece N Quilt this past week.  Their selection is not that large but what they have is wonderful.  


Here's my purchase - 

Blush Cherry Cordial in Essence and Blush.

I couldn't find a good angle that would show off the beauty of these 2 fabrics.  Believe me the colors and prints are breathe taking.

Half Moon Leaves White

Totally out of my comfort zone getting this fabric.  I'm not quite sure what to do with it and I don't have other fabrics to really match for a quilt.  Maybe a small project?  Purse??? Hmmm...

12 Days of Christmas Charm Pack

Leslie - we'll have to exchange project notes once we figure out what we do with our 12 Days of Christmas pack :P.  My first time doing holiday fabrics too...well it's my first time doing Pre-Cut fabrics too.  I didn't want to commit to a bunch of holiday prints - mostly I'm scared it'll snow-ball.  But this is a nice way to do some holiday projects without over committing :P.

I didn't get around to taking individual pictures of the other fabrics I got (though you look very closely you could kinda of see it in the picture below):

• Bella solids in Cream and White
• Essence Fall Flowers Red
• Blush Be Mine Charmed
• Frolic Large Floral Cream

Of course - all these have been  tagged and organized.  Hahaha okay, they were my first batch to be organized, but hey it has to start somewhere right? :P


Cheers to new fabrics and thanks Piece N Quilt for a great shopping experience!  Can't wait to use some of these fabrics :).  New projects here I come!

The Slow Road to Fabric Organization

After struggling with trying to figure out which fabrics I had, how much, and even where in the house I have it at, I finally got fed up with it?  Meet the new me - at least the new me when it comes to Fabric Organization!



What is this?  It's a tag - made from stiff scrapbook paper (no I don't scrapbook but I do love the papers though :P, label sticker with the fabric into (including yardage), a lovely little piece of ribbon, and a safety pin to pin it to the fabric.  And voila!  One step closer to organization - I hope.  Well it can't be worse right?

The tools:

Safety pins, cut up ribbons, cardstock paper cut.  Not pictured but equally needed: magic tape and shipping labels.

After a little while of cutting tags and sitting up my Access database to keep an electronic version of my fabric stash I got 6 fabrics labeled and accounted for:

This is already making me smile and happy anticipating an organized fabric stash.  BTW - more info on the fabrics later - hint it's my next stash from Piece N Quilt.

Hopefully I could get the rest of my fabrics organized in the fashion - or at least die trying!  Just kidding.  But I do really hope that this makes me remember the name of the fabrics so when people ask where I got the fabric or what it is - I could then reply "It's Essence Fall Flowers from Piece N Quilt - it's another Moda fabric". :)

I'll update - hopefully not too long from now - on my completely organized Fabric Stash.

Adding to Stash & Week's Goals

http://quiltsbyq.blogspot.com/2010/05/scrappy-pillow-1-done.htmlA pretty uneventful addition to The Stash the week.  I didn't have time to order online so I just picked up some solid colors at the box store - Joanne fabrics.


Like I said nothing eventful.  They're just some solid Moda cotton that I picked up while out running other errands.  I'll have to make up for such a bland addition to The Stash this coming week :).  FYI I'm not a big fan of Joanne's for print fabrics.  They're good when you're in a crunch and need something simple - like the solid colors.

So, along with some other Weekly Goals for the upcoming week I will HAVE to had additions to The Stash as one of the goals.


It's going to be a little tricky trying to complete the upcoming goals because I'll be out of town and unable to do any actual quilting for 2 days this week.  Maybe quilt like mad for the days that I am home and work on designing the next projects while I'm on the road??  I decided to put the design of my kitchen floormats in the goals for this coming week so I have something to work on while away from my sewing room.

The results of last weeks goals:

A little bit better than the previous week's results.  Notice that I didn't even bother putting Patchy Pillow #2 on this coming week's goal.  I know I will be able to work on it....or have the desire at this point.  I guess I'm just really enjoining Patchy Pillow #1 and don't really have the need for two of them at this point.  I'll try to finish up very soon though.  As much as it does happen, I try not to have unfinished projects floating for too long.  The longer it gets, the lesser the chance of it being finished.

Adding to The Stash - First Fabricworm Order

What is a Fabricworm?

According to the fabricworm.com it is "a person devoted to fabric".



If you ever visited this shop (if you haven't then you should!) then you too will become a fabric worm.  Just by browsing around a little you could tell that fabricworm.com has great fabrics.

To a lot of quilters who shop online for fabrics, this is not a new store to them.  But I have never purchase anything from there...before now.  I finally visted their online store, fabricworm.com the other day and I immediately fell in love with about 5 DOZEN fabrics.  I like the way the online stoe was laid out - simple and clean.  They list fabrics by the 1/2 yard so that was little adjustment for me since I usually buy fabric by the yard - just remember to double the price tag.

So what great fabrics did I end up getting?  Here's a sneak of what I got :):



I finally ended up with about a dozen fabric prints - ranging from Moda to Japanese Imports. 

Earthy tones...


Florals...



More florals...


Playful prints...


Something for the kids...


All except the last picture, I have no idea what I'm going to do with the fabrics.  I just LOVE them! :).  I still need to organize and label these fabrics.  I'll make sure I have the designer and print name when I use them.

Here's my review of my initial experience with FabricWorm.com

Shop Pros:

• Great layout
• Gorgeous selection of fabrics
• Competitive prices
• Their mission to be more green!

If you can't read the card inserted with the package - it reads "We have no included a paper invoice to help reduce our global footprint."  It touches my GREEN heart ;).

Shop Cons:

• Cumbersome to add additional quantity to shopping cart
• A lot of the fabrics where out of stock but still shows in the item listings.  You don't know it's out of stock until you try to add it to your cart (you can't)

Overall Impression:
I would definitely shop there again.  I already have my eyes on a dozen...two dozen fabric prints :P.  I love the circles for the fabric preview - cute!

Adding to The Stash - Man's Best Friend

I couldn't help myself - I picked up 2 yards of fabric this week. Normally it's no big deal, but the 2 fabrics (1 yard each) is something that I have no idea what I'm going to use it for or is something that I usually pick.

Here's a photo of them:

 

One yard each. Same design - just different colors.

Yep, it's a dog motif - dog bone, dog house, dog food, and ball.  The fabric is by designer Yuko Hasegawa called "True Companions Toys" in Rust and Brown.  I guess I was thinking of my two real life dogs when I was picking these up.  Don't get me wrong, the design is very adorable and the fabric quality is great.  However, I'm not quite sure what to do with this.  I have no other fabrics to match or really go with this.

One thing I considered using the fabric for is pillow tops or a dog sheet/pillow for the dogs.  But it is a 100% cotton print fabric meant for quilting or similar purposes - I usually use a coarser and more heavy duty for making dog bedding.

For now this fabric will remain in my stash and hopefully I'll find a need for it soon.  It is very nice to look at since it always remind me of my first 2 babies.

A picture of Crackers and Locke.  Since our second son came along these days have taken a permanent home in our courtyard outside.  Kid allergies, dog messiness and a smaller house all factor into the dogs no longer being inside.  It's been a big change, but they seem like they are really enjoying being outside :). Makes it easier to keep my sewing projects pet free and the kids from rashing up.

Cutting Long Strips

Doing something new again ... cutting fabric into long-long strips.  Which ones?

Remember this?

I'm going to tackle the one with blue flowers first - pictured about 1/3 of the way down.

Yep it's the Bryant Park fabric I got a little while back.  Still don't have a concrete design in mind yet for this fabric - though I have a few things in mind.  All of which involves cutting the fabrics into strips.  So, let's get snipping.

I'm going to do the one with blue flowers with long borders first - Bryant Park Floral Stripe Natural (I think - again I'm not good about keeping track of my fabrics especially the design names).  Since I'm cutting along the length of the fabric and the one with blue flowers is 2 yards long, I decided it'll be easier to tackle the cutting with scissors.

Where to cut?  There's a brown border running along side the flowers.  My first instinct was to cut that in the middle and try to keep some of the border in the quilt.  But since the brown border was less than 1" wide it will not be significant if I tried keep it in by cutting it in half.  So I decided to cut two types of strips - one with ALL the brown border on both sides and one with no brown borders at all.

The first cut - oops I should have cut on the OTHER side of the brown border!  Arg - oh well onward....

First cut - not so cool.  I was suppose to cut on the other side of the brown border.  Oh well, not I have more selvage to use for misc projects :(.  Check out Jacquie's blog for a cool selvage project.


Cut cut cut...

Showing off the two different strips I get from one fabric - the one with the brown border is about 7 inches, and the one without is about 5 inches wide.  All the strips are 72" long - perfect for a full quilt width or maybe a lap quilt length-wise?

Cutting with scissors after using a rotary cutter for all other quilting cutting was different.  I love the feel of the scissors against the fabric - I use a Clauss 8" scissor - quite heavy and feels solid.  Some may think that's a little odd - but I also use wooden #2 pencils for almost the same reason.  I just really like "old fashion" equipment.  I like the heavy feel of it, I like how it's very reliable, and it last FOREVER!  Haha okay, a #2 pencil does NOT last forever, but it's been around for almost forever :P.

Okay back to the fabric.  After cutting along all the borders,  this was the result:


The Stack - 4 strips without brown border, and 3 with.  Can't wait to find out what I'll decide to do with this ;).  Wish I have more time to design...


I'll update once I decide on a design :).

The Stash - Adding Stripes - Binding and More

Got a bunch of stripes today - pictured below from www.fabric.com.

An assortment of colorful stripes from the mail today.

I LOVE stripe fabrics - even before I started quilting. Haha I never really found that many uses for stripes before quilting. There's the occasional pillow top or fringe for a clothing item. But QUILTING has been my lots of reasons for getting stripes - more stripes.  I really like the look of stripes (and polka dots) for the binding of quilts.  It could help create a fun and unexpected finish to any quilt.  Sometimes the stripes serve to tie all the fabrics together on a quilt - having stripes that are similar and goes with each of the fabrics on a quilt.  Sometimes the stripes serve to completely contrast the piece - like an unexpected design to keep the quilt interesting.  Or sometimes it's just a nice fabric that goes with the overall design of the quilt.

Here's a quilt that I used a from polka dotted fabric for the binding.  I didn't want the binding to be the same color as the quilt - but I wanted it to go with the earthy feel of the quilt.  I opted for a olive colored fabric with small white polka dots.

The small white polka dots on olive fabric added a nice contrast from the floral designs of the fabrics on the quilt top.  However at the same time, the color went very well with the earth tones of the quilt top.

For the Boxed In quilt that I'm making for my sister (still in progress :P), I went with a fabric that matches the quilt top - it's  dark red that is almost the same shade as the reds on the quilt top.  The fabric is striped with a very subtle gold/brown design.  I like the look of the slight stripes with this quilt because it gives it a fun finish without distracting from the overall quilt.  It is still subtle enough to maintain the more 'adult' look of the quilt.

It's not pictured too well here, but you could see that the red of the binding matches the red on the quilt top.  The binding also has a stripe design on it.

Can't wait till I get a chance to cut up these new stripes fabrics - probably more binding? BUT maybe I'll use some for the quilt top??? We'll see...

Shipment In - *New* Fabric (The Stash)

I usually use small prints, but I'm going to try something new - BIG prints. Here's the fabric I'm trying out:

Bryant Park Fabrics.  Two with sage tones, one with natural, and one with Rain (blue).  The two on top has big prints and the two on the bottom has slightly smaller prints but has a running border pattern on the length of the fabric.

It's from Bryant Park called Floral Sage Rain, Drop Dots Sage, Floral Stripe Natural, and Park Dottie Olive.
 
I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be with these fabrics yet, but I really like the big, colorful, flowers. There are 2 designs with long bordering strips. These will probably be cut length-wise to maximize the design of the long borders. I've never done this before but I'm looking forward to trying something different.

In this shipment I also got a bunch of Moda Bella and Kona solid colors. Pictured below are the solids I got. Some I got in anticipation of needed colors I MAY need down the line - like the black and dark brown. Some I got to match the print fabric I just got - green or dark pinks. Others -light pink, light blues, greens - are for some more baby quilts I want make - getting to the age when a lot of my friends are having kids. But whatever the use, I’m pretty sure it’ll get used up very quickly.


A stack of solid cotton fabric from Moda Bella and Kona.

I get a lot of my fabrics online from various sources and some I get from small neighborhood fabric stores. I usually don’t have a design in mind. When I see a fabric I like I usually get it – not much, just a yard or two. If it’s a pretty basic fabric, like solids, I usually get a few yards because there’s more use for it. There are some many great designers and prints to choose from that I don’t want to commit myself to a lot of the same one. I’m sure one of these days I’ll find the need to bulk up with a particular fabric – like if I need to make a bunch of quilts that are similar. But for now I’m enjoying the variety.

I also don't usually keep track of the fabric name or even designer after it's been put into my fabric shelf.  I vow - though probably a vow that I'll break - to organize my fabric in a way that I could pull up designers and names of each fabric.  For now I make sure all my fabric are from reputable sources and for those that are not 100% cotton, it is labeled and organized as such.  The latter half is pretty simple - ALL my quilting fabrics and threads are all 100% cotton.  I do keep fabrics for other purposes - ie: curtains, patching up my children clothing, etc - in a separate area just so I don't get it tossed in with the quilting fabric.