The Social {lite}'s 1st quilt!

Okay I'm just gonna say it...there are far too many of you out there that have really great quilts that are your first quilts ever!  What?  Not fair.  Today we're featuring Cindy from The Social {lite}'s very first quilt.  AND she hand quilted it.  I haven't even attempted this.  When I told Heather the other day that I want to hand quilt one she let me know in no uncertain terms that she was not interested in that...at all!  Anyway, check out Cindy's blog for a fun read on what she calls "learn(ing) the ropes of local society life with food stains on my shirt and a "Mom's Taxi" sign on my car."

i've finished my first ever, have never done one of these before, holy crap i can't believe i finished it quilt.

for those of you into this sort of thing, i didn't use any particular pattern for the quilt top (though i did use oh fransson's paintbox quilt as inspiration for the design). all of the fabrics were scraps i had laying around, except for the back and the binding (and i have no idea who the fabrics were made by, sorry!).

i followed the circle patterns on the backing fabric as my quilt pattern (just made sense, ya know?) and since i was hand quilting the entire thing, it took freakin' forever.

six months, give or take.

 

but totally worth it, don't ya think?

and i chose to use this rainbow palette because it's gender neutral (for babies, anyway) so that my daughter  can pass it down to her children someday.

i just love it. and truth be told, i'm so damn glad it's done.

next up? i'm trying my hand at hand tying quilts. i'm using my husband's grandmother(who passed away last september)'s old clothes and housecoats to make memory quilts for all of her great-grandchildren.

 

Thanks again Cindy...really I'm so impressed!  Also we wanted to mention for those of you who haven't heard of it, Katie from Swim, Bike, Quilt and Aunt Spicy have teamed up with a really great holiday idea.  The goal is to donate 100 quilts for Christmas.  Check out their blogs for details and look through all your unfinished projects or homeless quilts and consider donating them!

 

HST Quilt Tutorial part 2

First, as we are getting ready for Thanksgiving, Christmas, winter, etc. Heather and I would like to feature quilts leading up to each holiday that are the appropriate colors, themes, feeling etc.. If you have a quilt that would fit into these category please send us an email with the link! (myquiltstory[at]gmail[dot]com) Also if you know of  a quilt that should be featured send us a link or picture and we'll get in touch with them.  Thanks!

Remember these HSTs?  I'm ready to share the rest.

HST Quilt Tutorial Part 2

Click here for HST Quilt Tutorial Part 1
Click here for HST Quilt Tutorial Finish

I got those beautiful Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow fabric from Treasure Bay Fabrics.  Really great little etsy shop...I just went over and saw this most darling fabric, don't you think?!?

Want a sneak peek of the quilt?

Don't you love these beautiful flowers? ;)

Down to the nitty gritty.  We left off with 120 HST's.  Here is the first block you will assemble.

Remember to "square up" after each step.  Basically making sure each time you sew then you trim to make sure everything is straight and measuring correctly.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Repeat this block 6 times.

Here is a finished block in fabric.

Now, you could choose to do this block 9 times (or 12 or 16...) and would result in a beautiful square quilt.  I wanted my lap quilt to be rectangular.

Therefore, the remaining HSTs I made into "half" blocks and this is how I constructed them.

Click on photo to enlarge.

And a tip.

Your lucky day.

For those of us who have wee ones, or not a designated craft room, or don't have a design board...basically you can't leave your blocks laid out.  I use masking tap and mark the block with it's location...being careful to mark each block in the same spot (for me, top right corner).

This way every night I could stack them back up again and not feel panicked that I'd forget the order or lose all my work.

I've never left the tape on for more than 24 hours nor has it been in extreme heat/cold.  So just use caution with these beautiful quilts!

Okay do you just want to see the whole quilt top? 

Oh fine :)

Refer to the picture for quilt block layout.

Piecing blocks first by row, and then sewing all rows together.

Finished quilt size 50" x 60"

I've seen this layout around and I really wanted to give it a try.  Some people have called it a geometric squares quilt...but when I hear/see "geometric" I just want to put my fingers in my ears and "la la la la".  For now I'll just call it a HST quilt.

Hope you like the layout and hope you give it a try!

See you tomorrow for another QuiltStory!

Little Scraps of Happiness

Today we're featuring Jennifer from Little Scraps of Happiness.  Check out her blog to see her quilt finishes, neatly linked on the side for us.  Amazing.  It makes me want to stop this post right now and go quilt.  Today she is sharing a quilt that she made which was raffled for charity.  I am so amazed of those of you who do that, such a labor of love I can imagine.  Here's Jennifer:

It's the night of the "Hawkeye Ball" and all the items that were to be raffled off are displayed. I had a couple fellow Navy wives that were all over my quilt and wanted it bad. One in particular, was partly in charge of setting up all the raffle items ahead of time and had gone to the hotel and took the time to hang and display my quilt with the other raffle items.

My husband and I arrive at the Ball and buy some raffle tickets. They were only $1 a piece, which kinda made me sad. Especially to think that someone could buy $1-$5 worth of tickets and win my quilt, but oh well. So my hubby bought $40 worth of tickets and we move down the line to distribute our tickets. There were some great prizes: Tiffany bracelets, necklace, "Date Night", golf lessons, a Nook, I could go on and on. I dumped a bunch in the date night, my hubby in the golf lessons, some in a "kids pack", and he puts ONE ticket in the quilt bag. You see where this is going don't ya!? As he puts his one ticket in there, I see my friend's husband (the one who hung my quilt) putting a HUGE stack of tickets in there. 100 to be exact.

The raffle begins....Friend who hung quilt wins the 1st prize, a Tiffany bangle bracelet. Said friend wins second prize, a Nook. And so the raffle continues.... We win "Date night" which was $50 gift card at a nice restaurant, 2 movie tickets and a $15 Starbucks card. We're happy...

Raffle continues....quilt ticket is drawn....1st number called....no one claims it....going once, going twice....drawing another ticket.....who wins?.....My hubby! He walks up to get the quilt, gets it, turns around, walks right over to friend who hung the quilt's table and hands it to her. Comes back to our table and asks, "that's what you wanted me to do, right?" "YEP!"

After raffle is over, friend comes up to me and thanks me with tears in her eyes and then tells me that the 1st number called was hers but her husband wouldn't let her claim it since they had won the first two prizes. He wanted someone else to have a chance. So all along, I knew she was suppose to have that quilt!

Come to find out that she had purchased $350 worth of tickets...she deserved every prize she won!

And of course....the rest of the night and all weekend I heard, "sure wish I had that nice new quilt". So now I have to get busy and make hubby a quilt before he leaves on Monday for another month on the ship! (probably not going to happen!)

Thank you Jennifer!  That is such a sweet and funny story. I am so glad to hear your quilt ended up somewhere it was truly wanted.

Make sure to stop by the blog tomorrow. I have part 2 of my HST quilt tutorial.
Check out part 1 if you haven't yet.

Fabric Tuesday Week 12!

Welcome to Fabric Tuesday!!
A place and a day where we share all crafty things with fabric, so please join in!

Hi everyone!  I have had a very busy crafting weekend. Every few months I take a personal quilting/crafting retreat to my folks house. They live in the mountains about 20 minutes away. They feed me well, let me watch murder shows all weekend, my mom offers her free labor on my projects, and they let me spread all my stuff all over their house. I LOVE it. (I think they do too, either that or they don't know how to tell me no.)

Please welcome our new sponsor!

Just last week I got a gorgeous pile of fat quarters in the mail from Randi of  Fresh Squeezed fabrics a super fun etsy shop! Seriously could you just die of gorgeousness?  The line is from Fig Tree, called Breakfast at Tiffany's.

So pretty!  Randi also has a super fun blog with a ton of inspiration!  Tons of projects made with all the fabric she carries in her shop. Like these cute little clutches. I want to make some so bad!

Anyhow, I make about eleventy billion HST's. Oh my word, that was alot of work. Seriously!

I plan to show you a little tutorial for this project in the next couple of weeks...

and the best news of all is Randi has already set aside an identical set of FQ's for a giveaway!  We will be setting that up in the next few weeks too, so be prepared!

 And now FABRIC TUESDAY

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.***

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!

Let's see all the cute projects that I will then have an immense desire to make for myself!