Nine Patches!

Here they are:

Still Behind, But Moving Along

Five more to go, then cutting to make the disappearing nine patch.  Pictures tomorrow.

A Day With the Family

The state we live in gets election day off of school, so we spent the day as a family.  My plan was to sew the nine patches together after we got back.  But first we had scouts and then getting the kids to bed.

I worked on the patches after the kids went to bed, and was making good progress, but then I noticed a problem.  I had stitched several of the patches so that they were reflections of what they should have been.  If I held the patch up in the mirror it looked right, but when I looked at it straight on, it was wrong.  I switched left and right.  I will spend tomorrow undoing that mistake and finishing as many of the patches as I can.  That puts me hopefully only one day behind.

The Begining

Here's the squares (all 180 8 1/2" squares!):

I cut them 8 at a time with my rotary cutter and the special square ruler you can see on the star cloth.  I highly recommend getting a rotary cutter if you are going to do any patchwork quilting.  I'd still be cutting away if I didn't have mine.

And I was able to get a little ahead and sewed one of the nine patches together!  I'll explain in more detail about these tomorrow.

NaBloPoMo Preparations

I've got a schedule worked up for the quilt making.
I need to sit down and sketch out the quilt backs I want to make.  The front of the quilts are going to be either similar or identical, so I want the backs to be special for each boy.

• Day 1: Cut Squares and shrink batting, go shopping
• Day 2: Sew Squares into nine patches, cut and organize
• Day 3: Sew Squares
• Day 4: Make and sew borders
• Days 5 and 6: Mark Quilt #1
• Days 7 and 8: Mark Quilt #2
• Days 9 and 10: Quilt Back #1
• Days 11 and 12: Quilt Back #2
• Day 13: Baste Quilts
• Day 14 through Day 20: machine quilt Quilt #1
• Day 21 through Day 27: machine quilt Quilt #2
• Day 27: Make binding and machine sew binding
• Days 28-30 Hand sew quilt binding
• Days 6, 13, 20 and 27 will hopefully be catch up days

The next few days are Halloween costumes, then the month of quilt making, followed by finishing up Lucy's quilt in time for Christmas.  I think that all of my "free time" is going to be spent sitting in front of my sewing machine.

I'm hoping that this works.  Daily life is going to go on as normal, I know I can do one or the other, but both?  I'm feeling a little intimidated.

NaBloPoMo

Two years ago, I unofficially took part in NaBloPoMo on my family blog.  This year, I'm going to do it on this blog.  I might even officially register.  I'm going to make two quilts during the month of November my posts are going to be quilting tutorials and updates about how the quilt making is going.

I've already picked the quilt pattern:

Disappearing 9 Patch

My favorite part about this quilt is the binding.  It is such a great idea.

And the cloth:

Riley Blake All Star Line

Yes to the Dress!

 

The Dress

In about a year my seven year old is going to need a fancy dress.  I think we found the one!  Luckily, I have enough time to hit sales to get the cloth, cause it isn't going to be cheap.  I'm really excited!