Home is...

Not much quilting these days.  I've been super busy with other things, mainly physical therapy.  I injured a tendon in my shoulder awhile ago.  I think it was from carrying my precious toddler around, but in reality it's probably due to years of neglect.  In any event the physical therapy has put a damper on any heavy use of my shoulder, including quilting.  :(

So I've been busy creating other things.  I've been wanting to make a "Home is where the Army sends us" sign for quite some time.  After auditioning what seemed like a million different handwriting styles, I decided to just buy a stencil.  I found this one from the Stencilsmith.  They have reasonable prices and super fast shipping.  Fast shipping is always a priority for me.

Here's the final result:

x2- I also made one for my awesome friend, Ashley

  

We're still on our first duty station so those empty ones on the bottom are currently just wishful thinking.  As much as I want to see other parts of the country (and possibly the world- Germany anyone?) I'm grateful we've had a pretty good Army experience.  My husband and I were married in El Paso, I got my first professional job here, we bought our first house here, and of course our baby was born here.  We've had some good experiences here but I think we're all ready to move on.

I'm hoping to regain some use of my shoulder soon because I have a lap quilt waiting to be quilted, three toddler sized lap quilts waiting to be assembled, and a baby quilt waiting to be pieced.  I'll be busy for the next few weeks!

New Wave, cont.

The top of the New Wave quilt is finished!

Quilt top!

And my best friend.

I used a combination of pressing the seams to the side and open.  I normally press to the side and haven't had many problems with bulk.  I'll probably stick with pressing the seams to the side only because I seem to burn my fingers a lot when I press them open.  Oops.  Of course, when bulk is an issue (as it is with half-square triangles) I'll press them open.

I'm not entirely sure what I'll do for the backing.  I'm torn between a turquoise that really matches the front or something completely different that will really pop.  Thoughts?

New Wave

I'm not normally one for following patterns.  I usually get a vision in my head and try different things until I figure it out.  This is probably why organic chemistry suits me; just dump in some ether and see what happens.  Who needs measurements?  Anyway.  I love every quilt by Oh, Fransson!  So I decided to follow this pattern.  Her quilts are amazing.


I've been working on this quilt mostly as a side project because I'm making it almost entirely out of scraps.  Everything about this quilt has been incredibly time consuming, but I love the way it looks so I'm sticking with it!

I'm not quite done with the top.  Hopefully these line up well when the time comes to sew them together. We shall see.

The Film Strip quilts are on hold until I find a good way to get a picture onto fabric.  Or until I get fed up with the picture idea and decide to do something else with the final block.

Tonight will be more half-square triangles for the Lil' Rascal quilt and I'll have to figure out how I want to assemble the rest of the blocks.  I have a lot of extra squares cut, so I might try to incorporate them somehow.  I guess it depends on my mood!

Lil' Rascal

In between cleaning up the lake that is currently forming in our living room and washing towels, I've started another baby quilt.  Our good friends are currently stationed in Korea and will be welcoming a little boy to their family this fall.  Adam actually picked out this Lil' Rascals fabric from one of my favorite stores while we were up in Oregon.

beginning of the blocks

half square triangles

Eventually these pieces will all make a quilt.  I have an awesome Kona solid in khaki for the background.

Tomorrow I will finish the half square triangles and hopefully finish the blocks.

Quilts in progress

I stumbled upon this Film Strip Quilt awhile back and knew I had to make one.  I've been wanting to make a quilt for Lucas out of Adam's old ACUs and decided this would be perfect.  I know three little kids that don't get to spend nearly enough time with their dads; so I'm making each of them one of these quilts to cuddle with.  This may have been a little ambitious.  As it turns out, ACUs are not fun to sew with.  Ripping them apart is a nightmare and cutting them up isn't much better.  That's all behind me now though.  So here is a picture of what I have so far.

The start of L's quilt.  There will be a third row at the bottom but I'm waiting to have a picture printed on fabric for that one.

Hopefully I'll get these finished this weekend.  Now it's time to rebuild L's train tracks.