I have a feeling you guys are going to get sick of seeing these squares! Especially since, to the untrained eye, it looks like nothing is happening with them.
While it *is* in fact slow-going… it’s at least going. If you’ll pay special attention to the bag in the upper right corner, you can see it’s well organized while the other bags are in complete disarray. I’ve sewn all those squares into duos and have IRONED THEM. (I never iron anything. Unless I really really really really REALLY have to. And this time I really really really really REALLY had to.)
Which brings me to my point.
I am not at all an expert on fabric. I’m learning a bit at a time, especially as I follow other bloggers. When Mary at The Curious Quilter said there should be no homespuns included in the swap, I literally had to Google it. Now I know what a homespun is (or I at least have a clearer picture), and I went through my swapping fabric and pulled out all the probable homespuns.
But I’d already learned a valuable lesson during my ironing sessions. When I was ironing out my duos, some of my fabrics MELTED. Yes. They just shriveled up into a crunchy mess. So, my assumption is that some of those fabrics were synthetics. I am systematically having to go through my bags of squares and pull out the offenders and test the suspects. I am really excited that I get to personally touch all 3000+ squares at least 20 times each. (Sarcasm.)
So, don’t be an idiot like me. Learn your fabrics. Know what you’re using. And if you’re in doubt, test before you cut, sort, and sew.
So, you fellow swappers out there, I am sorry if you get my fabric!!! I am definitely trying to do this right, and I can assure you that you will not have anything that I *think* is a homespun, and you will not have anything that will melt!
What NOT To Do When You’re Quilting (Or: Destroying The Owl Quilt)
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
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.
Make Your Own Chalkboard
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I have been wanting a chalkboard so badly, pretty much ever since Pinterest showed me how cool they are (peer pressure!). You can’t find them anywhere, unless you’re willing to order one online. And I really wasn’t. I’m never on the front end of a fad, and I’m not about to shell out much money for one now :).
So I started looking into making my own. Hence this tutorial. I’m gonna show you how to make your own chalkboard using chalkboard spray paint.
This works especially well if you’re creating a big chalkboard and are worried about keeping things smooth and even. There are other forms of brush-on chalkboard paint out there, and I considered them, but I was really worried that I’d make a mess of it. When I stumbled upon Rust-Oleum Chalkboard Spray Paint, I knew this would be my best bet. Now, I felt a little guilty, because I’d been reading SuperFreakonomics, and I was in section about global warming, and I don’t know if spray paint is amazing for the environment. But I’d already bought it when it occurred to me, and I really really REALLY wanted my super cool chalkboard. So if you’re already ok with spray paint, go for it, if not, there is a tutorial for making a chalkboard with brush-on paint here.
1. Find your surface. I stumbled upon an old whiteboard in our garage, and I was super pumped. The frame was ugly, and if it starts to bother me I will paint it or reframe somehow, but I could not have found a better surface for my project! And it’s a good size, around 23”x46”.
Clean the surface as well as you can. You don’t want any dirt or lint under your paint.
2. Protect your frame. Pitiful as mine may be, I still covered the frame with tape. 
3. Prime your surface. Just how imperative this step is, I do not know. But the guy at Home Depot recommended I do it, and I really didn’t want to waste my time and chalkboard paint, only have have it chip off. If you use a whiteboard like I did, the surface is going to be slick. Better to be safe than sorry! I used Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch Ultra Cover Primer in gray. [This link leads to a different Rust-Oleum primer since the original link no longer worked]
Tips:
- Spray outside or in a well ventilated area!
- Put down a drop cloth if you care about the area you’re spraying in.
- TAKE THE WIND INTO CONSIDERATION! I did not think about that, as I was spraying in my open garage. The day was very windy. I walked away and came back to my drop cloth on top of my board, which was also covered in a nice layer of dirt. Thankfully, it didn’t mess up the finished product, but it did cause me some panic.
- If you’ve never used spray paint, it’s going to look crazy and splotchy at first (see above), but don’t worry, keep going back and forth as evenly as you can and you will cover the whole surface (see below).
3. Apply your chalkboard paint. There are special instructions on the can for the chalkboard paint. You apply one coat, then 2 more light coats a few minutes apart. You’re then supposed to do this a second time, either within 1 hour or after 24 hours. I didn’t see the instruction about the “2 more light coats a few minutes apart.” I just waited about 20 minutes after the first coat and did a second one. And my chalkboard is fine. 
4. Be patient while your board dries. I only waited a couple of hours because I was too excited. The can says it’s dry to the touch after 1 hour and fully dry after 24 hours.
5. Peel off the tape. This was probably my favorite part because I love how you pull off the messy tape to reveal the crisp, beautiful finished product!
6. Go crazy-town on your new chalkboard!
Sorting Little Squares
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!
Quarantine. Boo.
Well, someone in our family now has croup. And it’s not me, and it’s not Alex. We were excited to start getting out after the crazy tornado day, but for the next several days are in quarantine. Thankfully he should be fine in time for his birthday next weekend!
In the meantime he will have to be content to play in his laundry basket choo choo train (when isn’t he??).
Speaking of Dexter’s birthday, I have been plugging along on his lion pillow! I lost a few weeks when I couldn’t find my crocheting stuff. Why am I not more organized?? But now I’m back on track and I have a week to get it done!!!
I’m on the second circle, and it’s just in a blah stage where you don’t know if it’s going to look good or turn out to be a big embarrassing mess.
Although, I’m certain he won’t care either way. He’s just going to be so excited to have his own pillow, and double excited if he can tell it’s supposed to be a lion, so that takes a lot of pressure off 🙂
On another note, I want to start a new project!!! Almost anything will do. I love starting things and finishing things, it’s the middle part that’s not always fun 🙂
But I really can’t start anything new, I have SO MANY things going on. I’m finishing Dexter’s pillow, I have his birthday party in a week, and then a week and a half later I’m having jaw surgery (boo again..), so I have too much on my plate to think about starting something new. Not to mention all the other unfinished projects I have in the queue.
I’ve also started an herb garden, and I’ve been trying to keep that alive. They really should screen better before they just hand plants over to people.
Don’t they know how much I have going on???
WIP: Postage Stamp Quilt (Cutting and Calculating!)
Isn’t this project supposed to be a scrap-buster? What am I doing bringing new fabrics into this house??
I cleaned out my tiny scraps and had only 450 of my proposed 4096 squares. And I get a little impatient sometimes, and do impulsive things. I went to Joann’s looking for Thomas fabric for a birthday gift. I didn’t find any Thomas the Train, but I did find LOTS of fabrics that would look great in my postage stamp quilt.
My rationality: I planned on getting a few fat quarters. But it occurred to be me that 4 fat quarters would come out to $8. so, why shouldn’t I just get lots of 1/8 and 1/16 cuts of lots of fabrics for the same price? Yes, this is very sound logic indeed.
But it turned out to be a great choice. For $5.50 I got 13 different fabrics (just over 1.25 yards) as opposed to 4 for $8 (1 yard).
I loved all the fabrics I chose, but I was really excited about a few. This green fabric was around 60% off because it was a St. Patrick’s Day print. Awesome!!!
Novelty fabrics were 30% off so I threw in some mushrooms and owls! (BTW, somewhere along the line, I decided this quilt is definitely for me. I’m apparently not interested in sharing a “Big Hug”.)
I fussy-cut the owls, which is something I’ve always wanted to do! But, as they were almost 2 inches tall, they’ll still get a little cut off at the edges.
So I’ve been cutting up a storm, between other projects, “cleaning” (ha!), and going to birthday parties (2 this weekend). And I’ve now reached 1104 pieces. Proof:
I’m doing my calculations right on the box, lest I lose them and become desperate and frustrated later. It’s a lot of gibberish, but I know what it means. For now… (Update: I took down the picture of my “calculations” because something was way off.)
My quilt will be roughly 74”x90”, modeled after a quilt that I already use all the time. I’m currently planning to do 1/4 seams, because that’s what I normally do when sewing, unless a clothing pattern calls for something different. So that means my finished squares will be 1.5” instead of 1”. After all my calculations, I will need 2296.875 squares… as you can see, my calculations still need to be tweaked 🙂 (Update: I have done some crazy-bad calculating it seems… As Mary says on her blog, you should have 64 squares per 12” block. For some reason I came to the conclusion that she was using 1/2” seams, but she is also using 1/4” seams. NEVER TRUST MY MATH 😛 ) But I’m excited to have a semi-functional plan!
Postage Stamp Quilt (Am I Crazy???)
I’ve always wanted to do a block quilt, possibly out of 4” squares… sometime in the distant future, because that would take forever, right??
But then I saw this beautiful postage stamp quilt over at The Curious Quilter, made of 2” squares, and I felt I must rise to the challenge.
I told the creator (borrowing from her comments section):
“one of my favorite parts of the process is dreaming up my new creation. i do enjoy piecing (by machine) but i don’t enjoy the technical planning stage (figuring out how much fabric i need and how big everything needs to be), it just seems like it takes all the fun out of it. i just want to create!!!”
And she replied with this great advice for getting started:
“Thank you! Actually this is a great project for you then. Every time you make something, cut yourself a few two inch squares. When you have a pile, start sewing them into squares of 64 each, for a 12.5 inch block. You can assemble blocks using the Classic Squares Tutorial, but with two inch squares instead of ten inch ones. Over time, you will build a healthy pile of blocks!”
So I recently got started! I cut up tons of scraps into two inch squares while I was watching tv. (Got to love a simple, mindless task!) After a while I thought maybe I had enough for about half a quilt. I counted my squares… 420.
I checked Mary’s blog again to see how many squares I’d need. And I realized I didn’t pay enough attention before. That beautiful quilt is made up of 4096 pieces!!!!
At least I’ve made a dent 🙂
Anyone up for a quilt-along? If so, hop on over to The Curious Quilter and check out her postage stamp quilts. She calls them “Big Hugs”, and really, after that much work, that is exactly what they are! And the quilts can be very personal, made up of favorite fabrics or bits of old, well-loved clothing.
She also has great storage tips for all those teensy squares. Don’t do what I’m doing… you can see mine are all thrown into a box and that I didn’t even iron the fabric before I cut it.
The Transformation of Mr. Hunny Bear
Dexter has finally chosen a comfort item.
When I was pregnant, my husband sent me a beautiful (and yummy!) fruit bouquet for Valentine’s Day. A soft white bear happened to be attached, so I just added it to the tiny but growing basket of Dexter toys. In the first 21 months of his life, he barely paid attention to it.
Then he became socially aware.
He now recognizes that his cousins, Ty and Micah, sleep with bears. One day we were talking about it while I was rocking him (Actually, I was singing about it. Yes, we have a Ty and Micah song.) and afterward Dex really wanted a bear to sleep with. I pulled out the girly white bear and he has slept with him ever since.
A few days later, we were having lunch with my friend, Lisa, and her daughter, Alex. Alex’s favorite toy is a bear named Sunny. Dexter was really excited about “Sunny Bear”, and talked quite a bit about her. And eventually he started calling his own bear Hunny Bear.
Since the attachment is growing stronger, I decided I’d risk ruining Hunny Bear early on in order to make him more boyish. And less dorky. Let’s face it, random bears that come with bouquets aren’t made with aesthetics in mind.
Here is Hunny Bear’s journey:
Meet… Anya.
I really think my least favorite part is the ugly floral embroidery on the foot. But we’ll get to that. Easiest first step: Lose the bow!
What I really wanted to do next was get away from the white fur. If this becomes Dexter’s permanent buddy, white is going to look gross fast. I was hoping to warm it up to a honey tone, but a few things were in my way. 1. I know almost nothing about dying. I knew the tone I wanted, and I knew it needed to be child-safe. But I didn’t really know what would work on the mostly synthetic fur. Which leads me to my next point… 2. I am IMPATIENT and I wanted to start dying NOW. So my options were pretty much limited to a tea bath.
I boiled a bunch of tea bags, added some vinegar for good measure, and gave Hunny Bear a bath. Dex enjoyed watching the process from his high chair 🙂
(Ok, so I just took one picture of him, and it only proves that he enjoyed playing with the discarded ribbon and playing with his ears, and that I haven’t cleaned off my dining room table in a while… but I promise, he enjoyed watching Hunny Bear get dyed!)
Poor Hunny Bear really went through a lot. I hope for his sake that Toy Story isn’t true.
The pre-dye soak:
Into the boiling hot water:
The “Poor Wet Rat” stage (btw, THIS is the color I hoped he’d be.):
Rinsing and wringing:
After this, I realized that the dye was just barely taking and that the tea bits were not going to come out of the fur with a hand rinse. I think Dexter’s favorite part of the whole process was to personally throw Hunny Bear into the washing machine 🙂
While he was washing and drying, I made a tie. If I had to do over, I’d research the actual proportions of ties and plan the length a little better. But remember the impatience we discussed earlier? I decided to just go for it. I cut a folded length of fabric into the approximate shape of a tie.
I didn’t want to put a lot of effort into it, and I didn’t mind if the tie frayed, so it is just a single layer.
I unfolded the tie and machine-stitched around the edges. I did two rows to help ensure that the fraying didn’t get entirely out of control. I really like the way it looks!
After failing to understand several diagrams, I used a tutorial video to learn how to tie my necktie. I stitched at the knot so the necktie wouldn’t come off. I think, since I made a weirdo little tie, that it almost looks more like a scarf than a necktie. But it’s way better than that purple bow.
After he was dry, I could tell the dye was just *almost* a waste of time. But at least now he is a gentle vanilla shade instead of stark white. So ultimately it was worth the effort.
Dexter was happy to see Hunny Bear again and didn’t seem to mind the new changes.
Phase Two involved covering all traces of purple. I used scraps of chocolate brown fleece to patch over the nose and feet. So so cute!!!! This was my favorite change!
One last step… Goodbye forever, Anya!
And officially hello, Hunny Bear!!
Work-In-Progress: Crocheted Lion Pillow
One of the things we plan to give Dexter for his 2nd birthday is his very own pillow! This may not be so exciting to some of you, but he loves pillows and we haven’t let him sleep with one yet. I figured we’d just find something at Target when the time came, but then I saw this pillow on Anna Maria Horner’s site and it is perfect for Dexter’s room!
A special thanks to Anna Maria Horner for permission to use her photo!
We decorated with the NoJo Jungle Tales set. The colors could not have matched any better, and thankfully I was able to find almost the exact same colors at Hobby Lobby.
I’ll probably try to make my face match the one on Dexter’s comforter, and I’ll probably add a few rows to the mane. I doubt I will add ears, but that’s something I’m not even going to think about until there’s an actual pillow!
I have less than 3 months now, and I also plan to make him a felt playhouse, inspired by Homemade by Jill and a few others. Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Definitely. These may turn into Christmas presents!
Dexter wasn’t feeling well the day I took these pictures. Kind of makes me wish he already had his pillow 🙁
