Horrible sewn on binding, favorite seam ripper!

I am a super bad stitched on binding-er! I am determined to get it right one day. I stitched the front "stitch in the ditch, but didn't line up the binding good enough on the back....

Half of the quilt looks like this, all sloppy all over the place. I have to undo half of a quilt!

I am not being paid a penny to say that this seam ripper is the bomb! Meg and I were lucky enough to score this seam ripper at market. Havel's sewing makes it.

See this hook? It is razor sharp! You just slip it into your seam, and glide it through, and it smoothly slices your mistakes away! 

I think I probably did it 5 times faster than the regular seam rippers where you pluck one stitch at a time. 

LOVE it. Now on to attempt again. Any advice? Do I just need to pin the heck out of the binding? Someone said glue once, that sounds like it is worth a try. I also heard about fusible thread, I bought some gutermann fusible thread, and could not get it to fuse?  It wouldn't melt!

Anyhow, if you get this seam ripper, I promise you will not be disappointed! LOVE

Have a fun crafty weekend!

Fabric Tuesday!

Welcome to Fabric Tuesday!

Edition 5

Every Tuesday we share a recent craft finish that uses fabric. Whether you have a project to link up or you're coming to look, make sure to stop by and comment on all the great projects!

Tonight I got to do one of my favorite things.

Bind my quilt.

Sit on the couch.

Be with my love.

My favorite part of the whole quilt process?

BINDING!

as in handstitching it to the back, the very last step

What about you?

What's your favorite part of the quilting process?

I will post this finished quilt within a week or so.  It's almost done, I've got about 1/2 of it left to bind.  This was my first time using a multi colored binding and I think I like it for this quilt.

Also check out my latest post on Fresh Poppy Design of some cute fabric bracelets!

And now FABRIC TUESDAY

read on if you need a refresher

Link up a recent craft project that uses fabric.

Mention us in your post with either a link or make it easy and add the button to your blog sidebar and you won't have to remember each week. ***You can take either of our buttons on the sidebar.***

Please make sure to link back, we don't want to delete links, so please make sure to link back!

You don't have to do this to link up, promise. However if you want to follow us, we follow back :) But please comment telling us you did so and we will hop right on over and make sure we're following too!

And how about we each take time to comment on the link just before yours, that's easy enough right? We'd love for this to be a linky party where everyone gets comments, so if you take the time to look, take a second to leave a comment!

Can't wait to see your creations!  Thanks for coming by!

Yours Truly

This quilt is brought to you from Megan of Fresh Poppy Design :)  Okay okay, if you don't know Heather and I (Megan) we do our multi-crafty things on our Fresh Poppy Design blog (also the name of our quilt patterns) and we share quilt stories here! 

Heather and I have sewn for many years, for me personally I think it all started with some pj pants, but we first learned to quilt 3 years ago when we were expecting babies only 1 week apart.  (And they ended up 2 days apart.)  We made our first quilt for our babies, the quilt I am sharing today is the 2nd quilt I ever made.

I used Chocolate Lollipop fabric by the fabulous Anna Maria Horner for Freespirit.  (I think there are some other odds and ends thrown in there.)  We did use a purchased pattern but I cannot find it to credit it for the life of me!

I think this is my favorite block.  The funny thing is that Heather always goes for pinks, and I go for blues...in our fabric choices, decorating, etc..  So we decided that for these quilts we would pick outside our normal ranges...so you guessed it, Heather's (same quilt) is blue.  And we both in the end admitted we liked each others better...and have planned for some time to switch them when we can.

So wouldn't you know it that my favorite block is blue and green :)

Our amazing aunt Wendy who is a fabulous crafter taught us many of our quilting tricks.  Bless her heart she had to put up with some ridiculous questions.  She is also an amazing machine quilter, and she does all of our quilts.

(If you're in the Utah area send us an email and we'll get you her info!)

Here is one thing I learned.  Don't do polka dot binding unless it's very small.  I didn't know to look at it on the bias, which on the bias it is straight dots, and thus doesn't look too great.  My favorite bindings are stripes and ginghams. I also like a bright color for the binding that just pops.

I only ever have two choices for my backing.  I can either pick my very favorite fabric (which I did here) because then I can flip it over and enjoy the solid backing just as much.  And I don't really pay to much attention to how it may relate to the front (although of course I have it match.)  My other backing choice is minky...it is just so much more snuggly and thus more used!

There you have it!  A quilt by yours truly :)  We may throw these ones in here and there...hope you enjoy them!  Linking with AmyLouWho.

ALSO on MONDAY we are premiering a

BRAND NEW BOY QUILT PATTERN

that is so amazingly cute and having a

 QUILT PATTERN GIVEAWAY EXTRAVAGANZA!! 

Check back first thing Monday morning for many many chances to win.

Hand-sewn all it's cracked up to be?

Today we're featuring a quilt from Mary at Pin. Sew. Press. (I so wish I thought of that blog name, CUTE!)  It's a darling charm pack quilt that she made for her daughter, thus it's called Lauren's Quilt.  And I just love the backing fabric she used, perfect for a 2 year old (or a 20 something year old alike :)  Here's Mary:

It's a bit busy for my taste, but Lauren (my 2-year-old) absolutely loves the fabric as has lots of fun pointing out the owls, snails, turtles, trees, flowers and birds.

I used straight line quilting for this, mostly because I'm not brave enough to try free-motion quilting yet! I quilted straight lines 1/2" apart on the sashing, and eyeballed straight-ish lines approximately 1" apart across the blocks.

The fabric is Love U by Deb Strain for Moda, and I think it's perfect for a fun 2-year-old quilt.

I used this tutorial by Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson! for the quilt pattern. Since the tutorial is for a baby quilt, I modified it a bit by adding 1 1/2 more charm squares to the width, and two additional rows to the length. I wanted this to be large enough for Lauren to use at night on her toddler mattress, although she hasn't really gotten the hang of sleeping under covers yet!

I just love those owls!

 

I was also feeling particularly brave yesterday and decided to hand-sew the binding to the back of this quilt. I usually machine sew my binding, and to be honest the result doesn't bother me much. I guess I'm not a "binding snob" . . . yet! But I was intrigued by the romantic notion I seem to hear about from all the other quilters - of curling up on the couch with my husband for several hours, chatting and watching tv while hand sewing binding.

I found this awesome tutorial that finally made sense of the hand sewing process for me. And after a mere five hours, I can finally say that I get it! It really does look pretty good, compared to machine sewing, but it sure did take a LONG time! And it was kind of nice to spend time with my family while sewing, and be a bit more productive while watching tv . . . but did I mention that it took a long time?!?! Well, at least I overcame my fear of hand-sewing, but I can't promise I won't go back to machine sewing binding, at least some of the time!

Well coming from a "binding snob" :)  I can say I absolutely love the finished project!  And binding is my absolute favorite part of the process...looks like a fabulous job!  Thanks for sharing, and make sure to hop on over to Pin. Sew. Press. where she has darling projects and is just a straight-up fun read for any quilter!

Linking with AmyLouWho.