Postage Stamp Quilt – 2012 Charm Swap!

January 10, 2012January 10, 2012 / lemonwoodclock / 1 Comment

This lame photo does not express how excited I am about The Curious Quilter’s Postage Stamp Quilt Charm Swap! But you can see that I am digging out my scraps and gearing up to participate!

If you have been tiptoeing around the idea of creating a postage stamp quilt, now is the time. Mary is hosting multiple swaps all throughout 2012. This will give you access to lots of different fabrics without having to go a huntin’ for them. And this is a real blessing, because these quilts have THOUSANDS (well, like 1-5 thousand, depending on your size.) of teeny tiny squares. I’ve been using a lot of duplicates, and that’s making it quite a bit harder on me than if I’d been patient and collected unique squares!

And I’ve discovered through Mary’s swap that I am not even in the craziest group of us crazies! Some of the folks out there are making these quilts out of ONE INCH SQUARES. I know, I’m astonished too!! But I decided to help them out and I’m using my teentiest, most tossable scraps to make them some squares.

So head on over to The Curious Quilter, get a little info, and sign up to join the swap!! You might even get some of that fancy schmancy strawberry fabric* for your project!

*Fancy schmancy strawberry fabric is pictured above, in all its glory.

Felt Food Frenzy

January 3, 2012January 3, 2012 / lemonwoodclock / 5 Comments

This year my Dexter’s Christmas gift was a beautiful play kitchen. So I went crazy making accessories for ~~myself~~ him.

It was so much fun coming up with ideas for mildly 3-dimensional foods. I also found a lot of great inspiration online. I didn’t want to have to put a lot of thought into it or sculpt something magnificent. I just wanted to throw together a lot of fun little pieces to spark some imaginative play.

The hardest things to create were the teeny tiny oven mitts, but I hand-sewed binding for the first time, and I’m excited to take that to the next level on a quilt soon!

Eventually I will compile some links and upload patterns/templates/tutorials (don’t hold your breath, I’m not super great at adding actual patterns…), but for now, I want to showcase my work!

What NOT To Do When You’re Quilting (Or: Destroying The Owl Quilt)

October 19, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / 3 Comments

This is the sort of post that I never ever ever want to make. But SOMEONE (me) thought it would be a good idea to sign the Process Pledge, so I guess I have to chronicle this.

I started quilting my sister’s owl quilt. I was super excited to be finalizing the project. I looked into having a pro quilt it for me, but, partially to save money and partially for bragging rights, I decided to just quilt it myself.

It was going way better than I expected. The top was a little more poofy than I expected, but ok, no problem.

The stitching wasn’t *great*, but it was waaaaaaay better than my first attempt at free-motion quilting! I’ll just admit… I was pretty proud of myself.

Until I turned my quilt over.

Here’s what I have to “brag” about:

Don’t really see a problem? Let’s look a little closer, shall we?

Oh yeah. That’s a foot-long fold in my backing. And it’s not the only one, there are little folds all over the place, this is just the worst of it. I can fit my finger through the tunnel, so I know I’ve got a good two inches folded over. I’m pretty disappointed.

So, the only option I really have is to take out ALL… THOSE… STITCHES. And do it all over again. This is a problem for a few reasons. 1. That’s a lot of work. 2. I’m going to have HOLES all over my quilt. 3. I don’t want to do it.

But Alex and I are going to watch some TV in bed, and I guess I’ll be curling up with my ruined quilt and my new best friend, Seam Ripper.

Postage Stamp Quilt Progress

October 14, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / 1 Comment

We’ve been having a crazy couple of weeks! In order to de-stress, I finally started working on my postage stamp quilt. I finished cutting all my pieces… 3584 to be exact. Here they are all sorted and bagged into quadrants.

I’m sewing duos right now, keeping them all strung together until I’m ready to iron them.

Pairing my little squares has been a lot of fun! I know Mary at The Curious Quilter keeps hers pretty random. Unfortunately, had A LOT of duplicates, so I was a little picky about how to pair them. My goal is to keep duplicates from touching, and hopefully to keep fabrics that are very similar from touching. Plus, as I was pairing them up, I really liked the idea that each fabric would have a coordinating buddy in the all the chaos!

Because of all the duplicates and my vow to keep them apart, I’m having to go about the whole thing a little differently. I’m going to use Mary’s Classic Squares Tutorial as my piecing guide. but I’m doing all my duos in a quadrant first, then I’ll probably lay them all out and sort them into individual 64 square blocks, to try to spread out the duplicates. Tip: Take it from someone who now knows better- duplicates in a postage stamp quilt cause problems!! I now believe it’s better to have as many unique squares as possible, unless you are striving for a controlled pattern in your quilt.

Link: Training Pants Pattern

September 12, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / 2 Comments

Occasionally, I trip around my WordPress dashboard, noting sporadic spikes in readership. Usually those are from mentions here and there on fellow bloggers’ pages. But, taking a look at my data just now, I discovered that someone has does something WONDERFUL with one of my tutorials.

Amber at Mom Road has created a pattern based on my Training Pants Tutorial! I can’t thank her enough, because I keep promising that I will gain the ability to produce patterns, and I never do.

I plan to print out her pattern and size it for Dex, because *whisper* I never even got around to making a pattern for myself! I just kept my ruined prototype pieces. So there is my confession of the day: I never officially used my own training pants because the knit was too tight and I got discouraged and never modified them! Any wonder why I never put out patterns Winking smile ?? Thanks so much, Amber!!

Anna Maria Horner – Loulouthi – Pink Castle Fabrics Giveaway! (And An Update On My Recovery)

May 21, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / Leave a comment

What could possibly bring me crawling out of bed rest to blog? Oh… I don’t know… free fabric? Yes. Free fabric.

Just A Bit Frayed is hosting a giveaway for bloggers. The winner will receive some GORGEOUS new Anna Maria Horner fabric!

It was a hard call, but I think my favorites are 3, 5, 15, 20, and 25! I’m always partial to the dots 🙂

So if you’re a blogger, and you LOVE free fabric, head on over and check out the details of the giveaway!

I’m hoping my entry will secretly count for more, since I am completely stoned on painkillers, and begged my husband to hook my computer up to my tv so I could do this from bed.

I haven’t posted any post-op pictures yet, partially because I haven’t really felt like doing ANYTHING, but also because I’m not sure anyone wants to see those 🙂 I did decide I’m not going to create a blog specifically for them, but I’m going to post them on a jaw surgery blog I’ve been frequenting and then just link to that.

Please continue to pray for me, because this is rough stuff! I think I’m about 1/3 of the way through the hardest part, and things should start getting better maybe by the end of next week!

Sorting Little Squares

May 3, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / 9 Comments

With all the things I *should* be doing this week, my mind is continually pulled to my postage stamp quilt. Maybe I just want what I can’t have, because I know I technically can’t start working on it right now. But those fabrics are soooo pretty!!! I keep help wanting to play with them.

Remember how my stash looked like this?

I thought I was doing the smart and right thing by keeping them all mixed up so that when I started sewing, everything would be all random and scrappy. That makes sense, right?

Well, not technically. If you truly want a random quilt, then sure, go all willy nilly. But Mary at The Curious Quilter pointed out that doing things this way could result in all of one type of fabric ending up in one area, despite your best intentions.

And that bugs me a lot. A lot.

So I’m going to go for a controlled-random look!

A few weeks ago, after reading Mary’s advice, I sorted, painstakingly, through all my squares. So far I have just created stacks of like fabrics.

One thing excluded from this shot is my stack of unique squares. I’m going to have to sort them in a different way, and make sure they are distributed around the quilt.

It was nice getting them all stacked like this because I was able to get a feel for what fabrics were going to be most present in the quilt.

I think it’s really a tie between some of my reds and a fabric I dyed orange. (One day I’ll do a post about my dyeing escapades!)

What I plan to do next is to make 4 groupings of fabrics, one for each quadrant of the quilt. And I’ll divide my color stacks amongst those. I still may go as far as to halve each quadrant.

I’ll let you guys know how that goes!

Still Here!!!

April 19, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / Leave a comment

I’m sorry for the lack of posting recently! Sickness has been ravaging our home!

I have barely been able to craft, although my mom and I cut out about 2000 2 inch squares while she was staying with me through my sickness. These squares will go toward my mom’s quilt… whenever that might be started…

Browsing through my pictures today, in search of something crafty to share, I came across pictures of Tiny Dexter, The Chunky Baby. He has grown and changed so much over the past year! And sometimes I feel like he is trying to outgrow being my baby. But today he gave me the sweetest, unsolicited hug, and it was wonderful 🙂

So feeling nostalgic, and longing for the time when my family is healthy and back to normal and snuggly and not cranky, I’ll leave you with a sweet picture of a then 7.5-month-old Dex and his sleeping daddy. And, to this day, he still loves to go wake his daddy up 🙂

The Curious Quilter: Tips and a Giveaway!

April 7, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / Leave a comment

Head over to The Curious Quilter for some tips on how to tame your stash of 2” squares! Obviously, I need to heed her advice!

I love how my box says “Big Smile”!

And, if you’re intimidated by the prospect of gathering 3 or 4 thousand squares for a quilt and need a boost to get started, Mary is giving a way a set of 500 2” squares! (Or 80 5” if you’d prefer…) Or, if you’re like me, and you have 2000+ squares already, but you could just use some more, enter away 🙂

But who can blame me! They’re soooooo pretty 🙂

Mailbox Magic

March 25, 2011 / lemonwoodclock / 1 Comment

Yesterday, I came home from a play date with my friend Stephanie, to a mailbox full of happiness!

First of all, I got my first copy of Parents Magazine. Who doesn’t love magazines, especially when you get a year’s subscription for $3? And I got a disc from Netflix to replace a broken DVD, which I’d been waiting on for almost a week.

But the best thing of all was from The Curious Quilter!!!

A tiny, wonderful package of tiny, wonderful 2 inch squares for my postage stamp quilt!

I sat down right at the door and started playing with my new present 🙂 There were so many really awesome clippings, but I wanted to show off a few of my favorites!

Ok, geekery abounds in this house, so this could not have been a more perfect addition to my quilt 🙂

I just loved this little polar bear!

And I love gnomes!!! When we owned our own house, I wanted a garden gnome so much! But grumpy Alex told me no. I’ll wear him down at the next place 😉 Or who knows, gnomes have a way of just wandering in and making themselves at home…

This square is just the sweetest!

I really liked this one, especially since Mary calls these 2 inch treasures.

How awesome is this set?? I had wanted to sneak some skulls into my quilt, but I didn’t think I wanted so many as to go buy a length of fabric. Two is the perfect amount 🙂 And I LOVE that star fabric.

So after grouping those 4 together, I started thinking about other groupings. There were lots of little animals, which made me want to do a Critter Quilt for Dex. I LOVED the bee square, but felt really guilty about wanting to keep it because I know Dexter LOVES bees too. (We LOVE a lot in this house lol. We’re not very neutral people!) But maybe I’ll trade him the polar bear for the bees…

And then I have to decide if animal print is a fun girly addition to my quilt, or if it ultimately belongs in the Critter Quilt.

And then I came across this “square”… made up of 2 tiny triangles. I’m saving that one. Because I’ve got a lot of scraps that are too small to make 2 inch squares, and I feel a Tiny Triangle Quilt may be in my future…

Lemonwood Clock

Creativity in chaos

Fabric