Piggybank Challenge

Last summer I read about Val’s piggybank challenge.   Living in a house with three kids, each of whom own at least one piggybank, I thought this challenge would be impossible for me.  I always give my spare change to them.  Would it be morally okay for me, their mom and provider, to keep the spare change for myself?  And I didn’t even have my own piggybank!  So I just kind of forgot about it until one day I was in line at Michael’s and spied this cute little piggy:

At first the kids were slightly jealous of the new piggybank on the block, and they didn’t like the fact that mom was putting money in it.  But soon, they were excited about helping me find orphan quarters in the laundry, payment for my services we’d say.  Three cents found on the kitchen counter was more than fair for making dinner.   And they would help me periodically dump the change from the “poor box” into it.  (Yes, that is what my kids call the cupholders in the minivan thanks to the movie Robin Hood.)

In a few short weeks the little pig was completely full!  I needed something else to hold change, so I went on walkabout in my house and borrowed an old dusty jug from my husband’s office.  The kids continued to put anything they found—pesos, play money, and even a $2 bill—into the jug.  When I got the reminder email to count my money a few days ago, I was pretty excited to see how much it all added up to.

Now, you moms out there know that I couldn’t count this money during daylight hours without the children asking for their share, so I counted the quarters out separately, $81 including golden dollars and the $2 bill.

And the kids promptly got out their quarter collecting books and pillaged my stacks of quarters.  Now their books are looking much more complete.

We took the rest of the change to the bank and the total was $55.45, so all in all I was able to save $136.45. 

Now the fun part, what to buy with all that “spare change?”

Actually I’m going to donate the money to the Orphaned Wildlife Rescue Center near where I live.  And I’ll just buy what I was planning (I keep a list, for real!).  My favorite new line coming out is Story by Carrie Bloomston and I just saw a custom Aurifil thread box to go with it, cue angels singing from the heavens.

Thanks, Val, for letting me join in the fun, and we are already putting change in for next year!

Churn Dash Cosmonaut {a finished quilt}

Here are the final photos of my Modern Quilt Guild Michael Miller Challenge quilt.

The pattern is called “Unchurned” and comes from the book “Accentuate the Negative” by Trisch Price.  I followed the dimensions for the quilt but made the corner pieces 4 inches bigger than necessary and cut them wonky, but maybe not wonky enough for it to really show.

I tried to include selvages from every fabric used in the quilt.

There are many pieces that read Michael Miller or are the color dots from selvages. 

I thought it would be cool to include the color dots because really this quilt is about using all those colors—from new Michael Miller fabrics like Petal Pinwheels and Just My Type to mixing in Madrona Road and Whimsy Windows.  If the color worked, I tried to incorporate it in the quilt.

Using solids was also a goal for this quilt.  The solid dark gray is Michael Miller cotton couture in charcoal.  The coral is also Michael Miller.  The provenance of the green, grays, cream, and aqua is unknown.

The gray rectangles are quilted densely with back-and-forth lines. 

And each of the gray half-square triangles are quilted with big and small circles.  The top thread is dark gray and the bobbin thread is light aqua.  Getting the tension right took a lot of practice, but overall the stitching is really good.

The rest of the quilt is stippled densely with aqua thread on top and bottom. 

The different quilting styles give the quilt a nice texture that is not stiff at all.

I tried to get creative with some of the piecing.  This flower is pieced from yellow and blue fabrics.

There are several fussy cut cats.

And one bird.

A fun little curved piece.

A pretty yellow flower.

And some flying geese.

 

The back has a pieced section…and quite a few puckers.  It was a major disappointment on my end.  I made the mistake of quilting the solid sections before the center section, and ended up with too much backing fabric in the center.  The good news is this quilt is going to hang in my living room, so no one will be the wiser, and it’s a lesson learned to always quilt from the center out.

The quilting on the back through these flowers is my favorite part of the quilt.

This quilt is entitled “Churn Dash Cosmonaut” for the fact that it’s a micro and macro view of a churn dash and the cat fabric is called “Atomic Tabbies.”  The song “Low” by Cracker may have had something to do with it too…

The finished size is 72” square.  I’ll be linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts and Fort Worth Fabric Studio.

MQG Michael Miller Challenge

Finally finished up my quilt for the challenge today…whew!  It was a whirlwind of sewing and I’m hoping to get some good photos of the quilt tomorrow.  Unfortunately the rain kept me from getting any today.  So in lieu of good photos, I thought I’d share a few process photos from along the way.

It all started with putting up a temporary design wall.  I marked out the sections and sizes with painter’s tape so I had a good idea of the spaces I needed to fill with patchwork.  Immediately my human helpers started using the wall for their very own projects.

I really wanted to use some text fabric in the quilt.  The rules state you can use any kind of Michael Miller fabric, so I dug out some Madrona Road from last year’s challenge and decided it added just the right dark depth to the Petal Pinwheel collection for this year’s challenge.  Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea.

Why not use some “text” fabric in the form of selvages?  I’d never sewn with them before, but it couldn’t be that hard, right?

The pieces were teeny tiny, plus keeping the letters lined up was easier said than done.  But overall, the effect is what I was going for.  My husband had the piggy-back brilliant idea of putting a huge strip of “Michael Miller” across the quilt.  I was digging through my stash trying to come up with enough pieces, but I settled for this strip, about 12 inches long in the finished quilt.  Unfortunately, a few inches of the original strip had to be amputated while trying to fit together the center panel.

I tried to pay homage to all the designers of the fabric I used in the quilt.  Patty Young’s name got bisected, so one selvage reads “Young Michael” but I thought that was kind of funny and left it in.  You can see I gave Violet Craft a shout out this year.  Too bad I didn’t think of this last year…

I got pretty excited when the pieces started going together and I could get a feel for what the quilt was going to look like.  My daughter made me a cute “good luck” sign that she pinned to the design wall.  I wanted to make sure a few signature pieces were included in the quilt, like a bunch of wonky churn dashes.

Then I wasn’t sure if I had enough recognizable “blocks” included in the quilt top, and I added flying geese even though they aren’t part of a churn dash.  I wanted the judges to see that I could piece points very accurately.  These babies are pointed (except the top point, which had to be sacrificed to make it fit).  There’s also an impromptu curved piece I made just winging it.  Just so they know I can actually sew…lol!

Then it was finally time to sew the nine patches together!  My trusty non-human helper inspected all the seams and fastidiously cleaned up any errant threads.  The bird fabric in this quilt reminds me of him, so this quilt is dedicated to him in thanks for all the quality control support he’s given me on this and many other projects.

Yay!  The top was finally done and I could sit back and relax, maybe enjoy a celebratory glass of wine?  Uh oh, not so fast, this was Tuesday, and the quilt had to be finished by Friday…

I got the backing on the long arm.  The center strip of the backing is pieced with the label in another churn dash and the two fabrics other fabrics are Michael Miller Birds of a Feather “Tweet” and Atomic Tabbies.

See, this quilt is dedicated to a cockatiel, but also to a cat.

The photo is a little fuzzy because it was taken around 6am this morning as she was helping me finish up the quilting.  She loves scraps almost as much as my children.

And that’s the end of the story.  Oh, and here’s the finished quilt right before it started raining again this afternoon.

Thanks for stopping by!

Holy Tornado & Holy Snowstorm!

About a week ago, a small tornado came through our neighborhood, less than a 1/4 mile from our house.  The winds toppled a giant of a pine tree in our front yard.  The tree blocked off our driveway for several hours and thankfully missed our neighbor’s house by a measly 5 feet.  In the photo below you can get a sense that the rootball was taller than my minivan!   I told the kids instead of joining the pool this year, we’ll just pour some concrete in that hole and have our own swimming pool.  A few years ago another tornado blasted right through our backyard, ripping out nearly all the trees and knocking two of them on our roof.  Tornadoes?  An earthquake?  Now another snowstorm?  Seriously.  I am done with crazy weather!

We are expecting 6-10 inches of snow today.  I spent last night after the kids went to bed putting a new quilt on the longarm frame ready to be quilted today in daylight.  I’m trying a few new things this time.  Gray thread instead of white.  I fooled around with the tension a little after watching a few videos on You Tube. (Thank you, Mary, for that advice!  I learned so much in just a few minutes!)  And this time I am going to try basting the quilt first with the machine to avoid any tucks on the back, which happened with the most recent quilt I had on there.   I didn’t notice the tuck until I’d taken it off the frame, and while it was small and pretty insignificant, I don’t want that to happen again!

This quilt is quite large by my standards, 70” x 70”, which would have been doable on my domestic machine, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed the process.  I’m going to be quilting swirls all over this one to practice because I will be quilting a friend’s quilt very soon and I want to have my swirls lookin’ good!

As soon as I get this quilt done, I’ll be moving on to making a baby quilt and making something for the Pantone 2014 Challenge.  I wasn’t sure I’d have the time, but since purple is my all time favorite color, I decided this was my chance to make something awesomely purple, so I picked this pillow cover pattern by Jen Kingwell in the February issue of American Patchwork and Quilting.

I ordered two different solids in orchid that were supposed to arrive today via USPS (probably more like Wednesday at this point with the 4 inches of snow already on the ground, but I’m still holding out hope the package miraculously arrives in my mailbox this afternoon) and I’ll use that as my starting point for picking the rest of the fabrics. 

So far I picked out a few “orchids” from my stash, but I really need the solid before I commit to a shade.  I’m really partial to the purple in the Denyse Schmidt fabric, but I don’t have a lot in that color, so I’ll probably go with the lighter color so I have more fabrics to choose from.  But after looking at this photo on my computer monitor, maybe all the colors look good together.  Are you doing the challenge?

Strangely enough, I realized the other day that I painted our downstairs bathroom orchid last month. 

I’ll tell ya, it’s difficult to get a good photo of a bathroom without the paint or mirror reflecting the light.  This is the very photogenic corner of the back wall.  You can see part of the lovely owl picture my husband reluctantly put up and endures looking at every day.  The paint color is called “flower market” and is a mistint I picked up at Lowes.  You now, picking paint used to be a huge headache for me, but lately I’ve just been buying mistints off the shelf.  No more agonizing over the right shade, and you can’t beat the price!

Have a great day!

MQG Madrona Road Challenge

This is the quilted pillow I made with the Madrona Road fabric provided by Michael Miller for The Modern Quilt Guild’s challenge.  You can see all the amazing projects here.

For the pattern I used the freezer paper method with templates.  Each block has 2 y-seams which was a first for me.  I used black, cream, and light gray Perle cotton to hand quilt inside each star.  Then I also quilted in the ditch with my machine.

The finished pillow measures 19” x 21”.  Have a fantastic Friday and weekend!  Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday.

WIP Wednesday

Three projects are at various stages of completion.

Garden Walk (actually called Pave the Way but I couldn’t remember the name of the pattern when I put it on my UFO list) is quilted and ready for binding.

My Madrona Road challenge project is almost done! 

And I started a Valentine’s pillow I put on my “Just Three” list for January.  It won’t be done by the 31st, but at least I have all the squares cut out. 

I love checking out what everyone is working on.  Linking up to WIP Wednesday.