9/10/2014

Craftsy Class Sale

(This post contains affiliate links, sponsored post)

 Craftsy is having a sale on classes thru Sept. 15th. I have heard great things about the free motion quilting classes and I think I'm going to try one. This is something I REALLY want to master! If you are unfamiliar with Craftsy, they have many free classes too that are wonderful, if you would like to try before you buy :) There's a link on my side bar to the free classes as well.

Best-selling Craftsy classes are on sale for one week only! Save up to 50% off on Sewing, Quilting & Knitting classes taught by some of the world's best instructors. Once you purchase a class, it's yours to enjoy forever. Every class comes with a money-back satisfaction guarantee!

Happy sewing!

9/08/2014

Indian Summer


Have you ever started something that you thought would be one of your easiest and fastest projects... to have it take forever?  That's kinda what happened here. I bought this Indian Summer by Sarah Watson for Art Gallery Fabrics from Vintage Fairytale over a year ago. The minute I saw them they reminded me of my sister, so I bought some fat quarters. It was supposed to be for her birthday last year, and then this year. It's a couple weeks late...but it's done :) 


I used this simple tutorial from John Adams aka Quilt Dad, you can find it here. I thought the design was a good fit for the southwestern fabrics. I did make one change from the tutorial. I only trimmed my half square triangles to 8 inches instead of the 7 it called for. It seemed like a waste of fabric so my quilt ended up bigger than the tutorial. I believe mine finished at 60 x 75.


This took much longer than it should have, mainly because I just wasn't feeling well again. Then I got to the back and nothing went as planned either. I did not have enough Pure Elements Snow left to do what I wanted. Sooo, I had to piece more than I wanted to. I used every last scrap of the white I had left except one small rectangle. I purchased the circle print from The Intrepid Thread for part of the backing. The back looked funny and I wasn't liking it at all. There was a big empty space at the top. I have been wanting to try making my own labels for a more personal touch on gift quilts, so I did! 


And I stuck it right up there in that dead space. Who says labels have to go on the bottom corner?! I always love Kelly's labels and this is what I based mine off of. I did learn to make sure you leave plenty of space between your writing and your label border, or it will look bad, like mine does.


It was a lot harder to write on the fabric than I thought it would be, so mine's kind of sloppy but it was my last piece of white and I knew my sister wouldn't mind :) I used the Pigma Micron 01 and I think I may like a little bit bigger tip as well. This pen is great though, even after ironing over it, it never changed the ink a bit. I definitely recommend it! And I tried something new, yay for me!


Binding is one of my favorite parts of making a quilt, it comes easy for me. This is probably one of my worst binding jobs as far as stitching the last side down. It got a bit too far from the edge. My vision goes out the window when I'm not feeling well, so it took me way too long to finish this part too. But again, I knew she would not mind my imperfections :) I planned to do all diagonal straight lines in the direction of the arrows but my eyes weren't having that either! So I just quilted it wherever I saw fit and called it good.
I'm just glad this is done and I can get it in the mail finally. The colors in this fabric are so pretty, I really love them!


Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, Fabric Frenzy Friday at Fort Worth Fabric Studio and Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts