Winter has arrived.

Each time I start to type, I have the greatest desire to remove my splint… Or just give up before I hardly get started, I suppose this is a test of my patience.

You see, winter arrived in full force this week, just in time for the solstice, and I fractured my right wrist when I slipped on the icy sidewalk in front of our house. I definitely underestimated the layer of ice that had rained down the night before. But it was the last day of finals, and I had things to do…

Anyway, its fractured and splinted now, and I still have things to do–but I have a pretty good excuse for not doing them…

=====Nine Days Later=====

Well, I started writing this post Pre-Christmas, but with the splint and the fresh fracture I just didn’t have the patience for it… Now, I have a neon yellow cast which I will wear until February. And, I need to practice typing with it anyway because my life will not wait for it to heal. Yes, it was my right wrist and yes, I am right-handed. About as frustrating as it can get…

But anyway, before visiting with the orthopedic surgeon today, I did a little bit of cutting and sewing with the splint on. You see, I had a grand plan to finish some WIP’s and start a few new projects during this break. So I ordered some new fabrics and was very excited to work on the Tone it Down quilt designed by Lissa of Moda Lissa for the American Patchwork & Quilting Quilt a-long. I finally ordered some Essex linen to make up a few projects from Ayumi Takahashi’s Patchwork Please book. I will be working on Elizabeth  of Don’t Call me Betsy’s Lucky Stars Block of the Month  in 2014. Working on my Lala Salama 100 Quilts for Kenya quilt. And continuing the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks QAL and Crochet a-long blanket!

I had big plans for this Holiday from classes! It was the last day of Finals week when I injured my wrist and on the same day I began to receive some of the beautiful fabrics I  had ordered! Then for Christmas, I received a generous gift certificate for the Fat Quarter Shop from my parents. My pre-order of Vintage Quilt Revival arrived on my doorstep, along with the rest of the fabrics I had ordered pre-injury (I mean, those holiday sales were crazy good right?).

So, as I said, I did a little bit of cutting and sewing between the time when I injured my wrist and today’s orthopedic casting. For starters, I spent a good amount of time cutting fabric for the Tone it Down quilt. Just last night, I finished cutting all of the bright fabrics–leaving only the low volume background fabrics to finish up. Right about now, I am wishing I had a die-cutting machine… I think I could manage cranking that with my left hand since I have been strongly advised against using my right hand for much of anything beyond typing.

I also, cut and stitched up a Prettified Pincushion from Patchwork Please with my new Essex linen.

There are a couple of other great little patterns in that book that I would love to work on, I admittedly got on the Zakka 2.0 bandwagon a little late after seeing all of the darling projects pop up during the Zakka a-long. I am pretty excited about the Happy Hexagon trivet, Sweet Trips Embroidery Pouch, Vintage Pencil Case and Triangle Patchwork Box Pouch, all are far too cute (take a peak at some of these in the flickr group.)

That’s all I managed during those few days surrounding Christmas. Maybe I can sew with my hand in the cast, but I probably won’t be able to do much else (rotary cutting, crochet, etc…) The good news is that I officially finished my Master’s degree (yay!), the bad news is I am pretty behind on a lot of other things (graduate assistantship hours, journal submissions, conference abstracts, literature reviews, class prep. *the exciting life of a PhD student*), but maybe I  can catch up a bit now that I wont be tempted by crafting… We’ll see!

Oh, and Happy New Year! To quote Walt Disney, “Keep moving forward.”

Tone it Down -American Patchwork and Quilting

I know it’s been a while since my last post, but that story is for a different post all-together. Today, I want to tell you all about the American Patchwork & Quilting Magazine’s Tone it Down quilt along.  Below, I have shared an image of the Tone it Down quilt designed by Lissa Alexander of Moda Lissa.

So here’s MY backstory on this project… I follow a number of quilter bloggers using various methods of social media including Instagram (follow me @erinmyone), Bloglovin (find my feed to see who I follow, erinmyone), and Facebook. A few of the bloggers I follow are Camille Roskelley of Thimble Blossoms and Sherri McConnell of A Quilting Life.  Little did I know that both of these ladies had been invited to participate in a very public quilt along, that is until Camille started posting about it back in November. The tricky thing about all of this was that the quilt is featured in the February 2014 issue of APQ, and you know, it was November! But because magazine world is kind of funny the issue went out on newsstands on December 3rd, for those of us who aren’t subscribers.

So I waited patiently, kind of, it was really hard to see Camille posting all kinds of beautiful photos on Instagram of her progress but not have the information available to get started myself.  And then, I noticed that Sherri was also getting geared up to quilt, still a few days before the magazine was even available so I was getting a little anxious and itchy to start. But, I was starting to get an idea of what I wanted to do with my own quilt, since each of these ladies was putting a different spin on it.

However, one thing I hadn’t realized from their updates was that there are two versions of this quilt. The first version, the original designed by Lissa that is, is the Super Scrappy Block Variation. The second is the more prominent method described in the magazine, a strip pieced method that saves some time in the cutting and piecing stages by minimizing the background variation within the individual blocks. I honestly couldn’t help myself… This quilt is the type of quilt you will keep forever and hand down in the family, I want it to be amazing and special, I want it to hold your attention as your eyes scan through the many variations of fabric within the blocks, I want it to take a long while so that it is worthy to last a long while… I chose to do the Super Scrappy Variation.

To really make the super scrappy variation, well, scrappy, I decided to cut all of my fabrics before I begin so that I can achieve a good variation in all of the blocks. Now, because I am working with assorted low volume prints for the background, all I really need to know are how many pieces of each size to cut, not how many pieces of each size for each print to cut. So I started doing some math, for the full size quilt there are 20 blocks, without giving away too much information this means from the Low Volume Prints, I need 80 pieces of cut A, 160 pieces of cut B, 240 pieces of cut C, and 560 pieces of cut D, and 49 pieces of sashing. These numbers are for the entire quilt, in the magazine they list what you will need for a single block, but because I  want an even distribution of my low volume prints across the entire quilt, I needed to know what to cut in advance for the whole quilt. Also, because it’s a scrappy variation, I can use different proportions of the different prints, so if I love a fabric I might cut a lot more of it than a fabric that I am less fond of. But how was I ever going to keep track of all of those pieces?

I created a cut sheet, the document I prepared is strictly for the Super Scrappy Variation and allows me to just highlight or mark through the pieces as I went, tracking my cutting progress. I shared a photo of my cut sheet on Instagram and have had a request for a copy of the document.

 

As much as I would love to share this cut sheet openly with everyone, I know that some of us are brilliant at reverse engineering a quilt, so that we can whip it up without purchasing a pattern. I know knitters who do it, crocheters who do it, and quilters who do it. I’ve even done it myself, but then my conscience kicked in and I remembered that somewhere out there a designer put in some time to figure this out, prepare it for publication, and put their name on the line to risk the sometimes expensive publication fees, so I went ahead and bought the pattern anyway and considered my momentary slip as practice for my own quilt design skills (truly I did.) I don’t want to live and try to work (as a designer/artist) in a world where we are all comfortable with skimming someone else’s work, and unfortunately our desire for an open online community sharing and pinning away we often make it that much easier to take someone’s work without paying any contribution for their efforts…

With that said, I would be glad to share this cut sheet with any of you who have already purchased the magazine (or if you haven’t yet you can purchase a digital copy here.) How will I know if you have purchased the magazine? Well my request is that you share a picture of your progress on the quilt so far. Maybe that is just a photo of the magazine, a stack of fabrics waiting to be cut, a bunch of tiny pieces already cut, or maybe even a finished block or two!  Just share your image in my Linky Library here, this link will take you to another website but you will be directed back here, don’t worry! Or direct me to your flickr, or instragram posts in a comment below!

One last tip!!! For the bright prints you actually only  need a 9×9.5″ cut of fabric. So if you want to cut down on expenses, share a quarter of a yard with a friend or two, or three, or four! OR reduce the number of prints you will use and cut multiple blocks worth of bright prints from a quarter yard and simply space your blocks pleasingly across the entire quilt.

Don’t forget to check out the other quilter’s progress on Flickr or Instagram, and don’t forget to tag your photos with #APQQuiltalong so everyone else can keep up with you too!

And check out the quilt along hosts and bloggers progress at these links below!

• Amy Ellis of Amy’s Creative Side, amyscreativeside.com.
• Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill Designs, bunnyhillblog.com.
• Camille Roskelley of Thimble Blossoms, camilleroskelley.typepad.com.
• Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie’s Quilt Co., lavieenrosie.typepad.com.
• Jane Davidson of Quilt Jane, quiltjane.blogspot.com.
• Kimberly Jolly of Fat Quarter Shop, fatquartershop.blogspot.com.
• Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings, lisabongean.com.
• Lissa Alexander, modalissa.blogspot.com.
• Sherri McConnell of A Quilting Life, www.aquiltinglife.com.

Thanksgiving and New Traditions

Well hello there!

I hope you have all had lovely holidays, if you are in the United States we’re talking Thanksgiving, and if you are anywhere in the world celebrating Hanukkah! This year my husband and I spent our first Thanksgiving on our own without either side of the family, here in Ames, Iowa. We really didn’t make any plans, considering he would be away at work until around 5 p.m. that evening, we just didn’t know what would work for us. But then on Wednesday, Nov. 27 (our anniversary, no less) I was starting to become very bummed about being away from family and not making any plans of our own. So, I jumped in my truck and headed to the grocery store. I picked up all of the fixings for a full-scale Thanksgiving meal for 4-6, including enough to make 5 different types of pies! I was a little over excited maybe. I planned a menu of Cornish game hens, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, glazed carrots and pie! I also picked up a few Turkey breast chops to cook with the stuffing for leftovers.

On Thanksgiving, I fixed the apple pie in the morning and started the crock-pot with the turkey chops and stuffing. I managed to talk myself down from baking all five pies that day, instead, we will have a pie a week through Christmas! Then I spent the day relaxing until around 4 p.m. when I began working on the rest of the meal.

 

This was my first attempt at cooking Thanksgiving dinner and overall the outcome was great, granted there was no full turkey involved. As we move away from our family, I have found it’s important to begin creating our own traditions so that we have special memories, rather than another night of an average meal and television. So, following the meal, we built the tree, a silver tinsel tree inherited when my Grandma passed away last spring. But decided to wait and purchase new decorations to transform it into our tree the following day.

Again, I really hope you are enjoying peaceful and joyful times with your family during this special time of year. The winter brings us together in close proximity, like no other season. Whatever your faith, or lack thereof, appreciate those around you and share joyful experiences and hopeful wishes as we move into the new year.

xo,

I won! We did it!

Hey! Guess what?

I won the October prize for the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks Quilt a Long! With your help, I received 120 “Likes” making my block the most “liked” block, and therefore the winner! Above is a photo of the October “Best Friends” block, and below is a photo of my prize, a Fat Quarter bundle of Cypress Acacia by Tula Pink! The sponsor of the October prize, The Fat Quarter Shop, also included a free pattern for their quilt Layer Cake Lemonade. I am so thankful that there are excellent sponsors out there, who give so freely of wonderful prizes, it makes being part of the online craft community so much fun!

I am so happy to have won this prize, I think Tula Pink’s fabrics are really lovely. Now, I will need to buy the fat quarter bundles for the other two color ways in the Acacia line. I think, I am a little OCD about having complete collections… But really they are lovely, and why wouldn’t I want them? So keep an eye out, as these fabrics start popping up in projects in the next  few months. I am not sure what I will do with them yet, but I am very excited to get to work with them!

Finally, I want to thank all of you who took a few minutes to travel over to the Linky party at And Sew We Craft to vote for my block. If you only made it over to vote once, I thank you, that is awesome. If you went back on multiple occasions to vote for my block, I cannot be more thankful for your support, you are amazing people!

xo,

Modern Blocks Quilt a Long: December 2013 Crossroads

Welcome back!

I am here to share the December block for the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks Quilt a Long. This month’s block is “Crossroads” originally designed by Angela Pingle blogger of Cut to Pieces, chosen and instructed for the Quilt a Long by Amy at Actually Amy. If you would like to attempt the block yourself, and haven’t purchased the Modern Blocks book (compiled by Susanne Woods), you can find a tutorial led by Amy here. Below is Amy’s block, sewn from Little Apples fabrics by Aneela Hoey for Moda, which by the way is currently on sale at The Quilted Castle.

This is another block in the quilt a long that works best if you have a novelty print like those from Little Apples because you can fussy cut the larger pieces, as Amy did for the children playing and the clothes. Because I am using all-over non-directional prints, I really didn’t bother fussy-cutting any of my pieces, but I did choose to use that extra space for larger prints which I haven’t been able to utilize throughout all of the blocks. I also, chose to maintain my background solid to create continuity within the blocks.

So, above is my fabric key, I chose to work with Terrace Main in orange cream, Bouquet in sprout, and Rosebed in Pomegranate. All of these fabrics are from Juliana Horner’s 2013 Rosette line, designed and sold exclusively at JoAnn’s Fabrics (which makes it really accessible when you live in a town without amazing modern fabric shops.) When I purchased my fabrics, back in June/July, I purchased 9 of the 12 prints in the line, there were a few I just didn’t love to pieces at the time. But now, I am really wishing I had purchased those other prints so I could have the full collection, unfortunately those three have sold out at my local JoAnn’s, and they don’t seem to be bringing them back. They are available online, but only in full yard cuts and I really only want half yards, so I’m on the fence about ordering them. But I will mention, that Juliana Horner has already introduced some new fabrics at JoAnn’s in November. I went ahead and snatched up a half yard of each of those too, and am in love with the colors and prints, but that’s for another post.

So here she is, a little unconventional as far as color combination, but I think actually quite lovely.  This was a challenging block to match seams on, and I think I could actually create it with greater success, if I re-organized how the blocks are pieced. But I won’t, because I am overall pretty happy with the outcome.

A few photos to swoon over…

And an updated photo of all 8 completed blocks, thus far. Not too shabby!

The plan is for 12 total blocks, so we are already 2/3 finished with the blocks.

However, I finally purchased the book, and I think I might just make up a few more blocks, maybe an extra four, so it is a 16 block, or even an extra 8 so that it is a 20 block… There are just so many blocks in the book that I want to try, and where better to put them than in a sampler quilt! (There are by the way, 99 blocks in the book, but I won’t be making them all, for this quilt at least!

So, why not pop over to the Linky party to see what the other quilt a long participants are whipping up this month! Also, be sure to return tomorrow for a very special post also related to the Modern Blocks Quilt a Long, which I know some of you have been asking about!

xo,