The Creative Process: Hogwarts House Quilt

Y'all, I am a huge fan of half square triangle quilts. I pin every type of pattern I can find on Pinterest and then, when I need to make a new quilt I scroll back through to find something new. Maybe it's really boring to use the same technique over and over again, but Im obsessed with the patterns that can be made from half square triangles.  I'm thinking about doing something fun with flying geese and other traditional blocks pretty soon, but in the meantime I'm gonna ride out this HST kick! I found this sample on Pinterest a few weeks back from Quilternity's Place. When I decided to make a Harry Potter inspired quilt for a pregnant friend, I went scrolling back through my boards and new it was perfect! I tweaked a few things, obviously, but this might be one of my favorite yet!

I am also currently trying to burn through my fabric stash and trying to not buy any fabric for any sewing projects. I bought a round of fabric in the beginning of May and only picked up more recently for an upcoming project because I really wanted something with polar bears for a friend. The Restraint!!!! So for this HP quilt, it took a lot of arranging and rearranging, but I had all the fabric I needed for all the house colors without having to purchase any! The hardest part was Ravenclaw only because I could've sworn Ravenclaw colors were blue and silver, but It was blue and bronze! Finding fabric that looks "bronze" is not easy, but fortunately I had a decent amount of tans and gold that I feel like it really came together.

I know there are easier ways to do quilt layouts without taking up the entire floor, but when doing things that are "intentionally random" I have to lay it out and rearrange it over and over and over and over again.  In each picture, you can see subtle changes as I move a triangle hear and there before snapping a new photo. It's only annoying for a few hours, but I had to surrender basically the entire floor of my living and dining room.

The shrinking never fails to amazing me! I love watching quilts get smaller and smaller as you piece them together! It used to annoy me because I wasn't good at planning my seam allowances and my quilts were turning out smaller than I anticipated. Now I love watching it happen!

I am surprised how fast the quilting went on this one. I thought it was going to take all day, but I finished it just a few hours with coffee breaks. I used rainbow quilting thread, but the lighting in my apartment is not great to see it. The background looks really neat with rainbow stitching showing up in person really well against the dark blue background.

The finished product! I am so so so happy with this quilt! Picking the binding color was tough as I was worried it would clash or blend too much with one of the house sections, but I think the white looks good. The person I made this for identifies with house Ravenclaw so I threw in some extras for her babe including a raven beanie and magic quote shirt. This might be the last quilt I make for a little while so I can have some time to get some other projects going, but I feel like this was a solid note to rest on!

The Creative Process: Fox Quilt

Last year I purchased the Elizabeth Hartman fox pattern to make stockings for the Stocking Stuffer Swap with Bee Creative Swaps and was able to use it again this year to make a full quilt! One of my friends recently had a baby and did a woodland creatures theme for the shower and nursery. I'm super pumped with how this once came out! I think it might be my first time making a full quilt with without simple squares or half square triangles!

For the fox face I used a bunch of miscellaneous plaids and flannels I had in my stash. I though the dark green background would work well for a forest-y look. Plus! I already had it and didn't need to buy anything for the top of this quilt! Always a plus. Some of the fox faces pop out better than others against the dark green, but I like the variety.

I also did something I've never tried before with the binding which was combine a bunch of scrap together. It look a while to cute and figure out which pieces were long enough to be worth using, but I love the look of it! I even mixed in a few pieces not cut on a bias and it honestly came out perfectly fine.

The backing was the only thing I purchased specifically for this quilt. I saw it at a quilt shop in Portland and knew it would be perfect for when I finally got around for making this quilt! I love the way in came out, but I'm looking forward to digging back in to some more half square triangle patterns!

The Creative Process: Bumblebee Quilt

Hey look something non-Frida related! I made a quilt for a friend a few weeks ago who was doing a whole bumblebee theme for her shower and nursery. It was a fun quilt to make and nice break to make during all the Frida-suff. She had her baby a few days ago and it's all so exciting!!

I decided to start using scraps of quilt batting and sew them together to make the batting for smaller quilts. It worked really well and I ended up doing it again for another quilt I've made.

I've never really done a design for the actual quilting part so I tried to sort of wing it for the idea I had. I kept the piecing simple because I knew I wanted to do something for intricate for the quilting. I have no knowledge of how "professional" quilting is done, but this worked really well. It just took FOREVER.

I didn't take any good pictures for scale, but the quilt came out slightly larger than a "baby" size quilt, but not quite big enough to be considered a "crib" size quilt. I think it will be a perfect size quilt for floor play. The little nugget was born just a few days ago so I hope they find it useful. 

Experimenting with Curved Piecing

Mmmkkkk so straight up this is a post sharing the hardest thing I've made so far in my sewing experience. We had some friends getting married that are part of video gaming community that my husband is a part of. Ari had the idea that we should make them something with the logo of their group on it. I said "sure" not really thinking about it, but quickly kinda started to panic at how to approach this logo. We went with pillows as it seemed like a nice, homey, new couple type gift. I made sort of like a stencil of the logo, cut out all of the fabric and then quickly realized I had no freaking clue how to do any type of curved piecing. After lots of YouTube videos, yelling, wasted fabric, and a few moments of weakness where I almost gave up and went to pick up a gift certificate instead.....I made the dang pillows.

As you can kinda see in this photo, the fabric doesn't lay very evenly so I still have a lot of work to do in learning how to make things like this. The nice thing about pillows is that a large squishy thing is going inside so it helps kind of disguise that the piecing isn't totally flat.

I also sort of embroidered their gamer handles on the pillows. I just used hand quilting thread and not embroidery floss so it's not crazy noticeable from afar, but I think it's a nice small touch. The photo above is just me lining it out and chalk.

I don't mean to doubt myself or my abilities, but like...I'm really surprised at myself that I pulled this off! I definitely want to take some kind of class or guided project so I can get better at this kind of thing, but jeeze louise I'm pretty stoked about these pillows. I would love to hear if anyone else has good tips or experience with this kind of piecing work!