Squares!

Wow it's been a crazy month(s). My craft/sewing room has been completely reorganized and furniture moved. This was due to the one suspect wall with possible water damage, which is still waiting to be fixed. The silver lining of this story is (a.) none of my supplies, equipment or furniture was damaged and (b.) This has forced me to clean and have a new layout for my sewing space. Yay! I probably would have never figured out this awesome configuration of furniture without the damage which appears to be quite minimal thankfully. I will share pictures when everything has been fixed and the final pieces of furniture moved.

Now on to today's actual post...Squares!

When I finish a project and end up with scraps like this...

I like to cut them up into squares as small as 2" and as big as 4½" or 5" and put them in plastic bags labeled with the size.

Sometimes when I'm lazy (or have available a long skinny strip) I'll usually cut it into a 2½" strip or 2" would be the narrowest I would go.

Anything smaller than the 2" square I generally throw away or sometimes use as a sewing scrap. Someday I hope to create a quilt using all these squares in a mishmash of colors.

What do you do with your scraps? And when it a piece of fabric small enough that you'll throw it away?

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Quilting Update! June 2013

Wow time has sure been flying by this past month, I feel like I've done a lot but there's still so much to do...
I still have 2 quilts pin-basted and ready for quilting I don't see why I can't just get these done. Maybe I have Adult ADD, because even though I want to finish my UFO's I am easily distracted by the lure of a new project or idea. Some ideas I will be sharing in the posts ahead, along with the new stuff I'm working on So I guess for this months update I really haven't got much yet for ya to see.

 Unfortunately my sewing room has been somewhat trashed (we've had issues with our house) and on my list of things to do today is straighten it back up and hope I don't have to do some major furniture moving in the near future. I hope to get back to fun things again soon.

What kinds of things have you been up to?

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Quilting Journal

The subject of quilting labels got me to thinking about quilting journals. Does anyone keep a quilting journal, and what kinds of information do you write down? At one time I tried to keep a journal and at least have a picture or drawing of my planned quilt and for some reason I stopped I am thinking about starting one up again maybe this time use a binder and keep all of my notes and plans with pictures.
Here's a photo of the journal layout I came up with in Excell.

I was thinking for each project having a second blank page to add photo's or fabric swatches. Here's a link to my PDF for my Quilt Journal. This is my first time linking a PDF Hope it helps. I am planning on using this on all future projects and filling it in to the best of my abilities on all of my older projects. What do you think?
Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Quilt labels

How many of you add labels to your quilts and what information do you include?
Only as of recently have I added "Handmade by Olivia 2013" on a small corner in the back of my quilt but the many other's that I've given away as gifts through the years have no labels what so ever. I saw this neat idea to easily add a little label to the back corner of your quilt and that's what I've been using on my most recent quilts.

Here's how I did some of mine this year.
First I square up one of my corners(this is after you have finished quilting but before you add your binding)

 Then I take a 5" square of fabric that matches my quilt (not necessarily the backing) and fold it diagonal. I then cut from my batting scraps a triangle that will fit inside my folded square. Next I embroider on what I want my little label to say below I simply put "Handmade by Olivia", I didn't add a date to this one because if I give as a baby quilt it would be nice for it to have the baby's birth year. Kinda not sure if I shouldn't have just put 2013 after all that is when I made it. What do you think?

 Anyway's so next I just sewed about 1/8" away from my edge just enough to tack it down, since when I add the binding I will sew ¼" all around; firmly sewing it down.

I kinda figure I could hand sew a date if I wanted to add the year. What do you think? What kinds of information do you include in a quilt label? How important do you think labels are?

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

A baby hounds-tooth quilt

Lately it seems everyone is having a baby. I usually try to have some small quilts on hand, at least one girly and one neutral or boy made from my scraps. This time however with several girls in the works I needed to make some quilts fast. I did a quick sketch and pulled some fat quarter bundles from my stash that were reserved for just this occasion.

To make the hounds-tooth pattern you need 2 or 4 fabrics, this is for my easy version I have seen quilts with more but it would take some care and planning.
Next you'll cut 2¾" strips I used one fat quarter of each fabric (make sure you have enough to cut out matching 6½" squares).

 Next sew pairs of strips together...

 Iron them open...

 Now sew these two strip sets together. Sew on both sides to create a fabric tube.

Next we cut our 6½" squares. One way to do this is with your regular square ruler. using the diagonal line down the middle you can place that on your stitch line and cut.

 Or if you have the quilt in a day 6½" triangle square up ruler it works perfectly.

From the fat quarters I got 3 blocks from every "4 strip set" giving me a total of 18 blocks from my 4 fat quarters. As you can see below from that strip set two of my blocks are identical and one is different you'll need equal amounts of each block type to complete the quilt.

To get equal amounts you simply need to flip your strip set over so for example fabrics A and B are on the top for half of the triangles you cut and fabrics C and D are on the top for the other half. We have to do this because the fat quarters only give us 3 blocks per set since it's an odd number  we have to flip the set to make it even. If you are working with yards of fabric you might get 4-6 blocks out of your set and need not worry. I would open up your blocks and make stacks to ensure you have a even amount.

 Next I cut 6½" squares out of my four fabrics with the other fat quarter bundle. You can get 6 squares from each fat quarter.

I used only 4 squares from two of the fabrics and 5 squares from the other two fabrics below is what I had left.

Here's my layout. As you turn your stripey squares and match up your fabrics the design easily begins to fall into place.

And here's the finished quilt! This ended up being 34"square.

 Here's how the back turned out. I ended up using those leftover squares plus some other additional fabrics to create this pieced back.

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Chevron yoga mat

Wow it may seem that I am finishing things quickly but some of these projects have been in the works for a while so I am not really that fast. Besides I like to take time and make things that are quality not quantity. Today I have finished my chevrons quilt (which I had intended for it to be a yoga/stretching mat) the final dimensions are 23½" x 51". I wanted this to actually be longer but since I was using scraps I went as far as they would take me. I am also thinking now that nicer weather has come our way this would be a nice sunbathing blanket perhaps the perfect fit for a lawn chair or chaise out on the patio.

Without further ado here is my quilt... these first pictures are before washing the quilt.

 I did a close up to show the detail of my machine binding I did.

 This shows the back, I used more of the scraps here.

These next photos are after I washed my quilt, it adds such a charming look to the finished product.

 here's the back again. I almost love it more than the front.

What do you do with your scraps? What kind of scrappy patterns are your favorites?
Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Another sewing bag, this time for my niece.

I made my niece a sewing bag for her birthday she is only seven but has taken quite an interest in hand sewing. Her bag is very girly in pink with a splash of yellow here's how it turned out...

This bag is so much fun to make in different fabrics. I can't wait to make more.
Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

Sarah's Quilt

Finished in time for her birthday here is Sarah's Quilt...

This has been a big project; as many of you know it's a lot of work making a queen size quilt(this one 90 x 90"). This quilt is made up of two blocks(shown below) alternating. I wanted to use the "puss in the corner" block since this was a quilt about cats and I liked the simplicity of the design since my fabrics were busy.

This is also the second largest quilt that I have attempted to quilt on my home machine. I stumbled upon a tip to not sew in the ditch but instead about ¼" away and this worked wonderfully for me. I used a foot that was symmetrical on both sides so no matter which way I went on either side of my ditches my stitches were the same distance apart from my fabric seams.

Here's a shot of me quilting.

This is by far the best quilting job I have ever done by machine; I had virtually no puckers.

I tried taking the best pictures I could, really hard to photograph such a large quilt and try to get some nice natural light. It's amazing what a yellowed glow you'll get from just turning on your ceiling light and how much brighter your whites are when you turn off your lights and use the natural light from outside.

 As you may notice my backing is peiced with all the leftovers from the top of the quilt.

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia

How to join your binding ends on a quilt top

Wow I've finished my quilting on my small chevron quilt and now I'm ready to put on the binding. It feels good to be getting a project done even if it is small. I used some of the purple with white dot material that I had already cut into bias binding, so far this binding will have completed 3 projects and there's still quite a bit more left. While I was putting on the binding I was thinking I wanted the join to also be at an angle like all of my other binding seams. This has never really bothered me, but I was thinking it would be nice to hide the join. After all, how hard could it be?

First off if you have never sewn on your binding before you want to make sure you have some extra length and you will start off somewhere usually in the middle of a side and leave a tail of binding say about 10-15" (this really doesn't have to be exact . Sew all the way around again leaving a tail about 10-15", your tails should be something like this below. Basically you just need enough extra on both ends to overlap each other about 3-5" (more is always good)

As you can see I have plenty of overlap this is better than not enough, the more quilts you do the better you'll be able to judge this. Next I will be laying my binding tails even my quilt edge and on top of one another. In the picture below I staggered them slightly to show you where they overlap.

 We are going to trim this to a ¼". Below I've lined up my fabric and placed my ruler ¼" to the right of where the two fabrics meet (as I've shown above). I mark this with my pencil. As you can see I used the 45° angle on my ruler to make sure my line would also be 45°.

Next you'll open up your binding you just marked with your pencil and continue marking your line.

Next I place my ruler on the pencil line, again using the 45° line to make sure my cut is perfect and cut.

Now I lay my bindings even again with the edge of my quilt and make sure they have a ¼" overlap.

Next we can sew them together. I open up both ends and put them right sides together(as shown below), leaving a ¼" triangle overhang on both sides. Then sew a ¼" seam.

Now you can line up your binding with your quilt edge once again and finish sewing it down. Now all your seams are going at a 45° angle and no one will know where you binding started and stopped.

How do you finish your quilts?

Thanks for reading♥ Olivia