Trying New Things Thursday

Over the weekend I finished up a wall hanging to enter into the Tangerine Tango Challenge.  Along the way, I did lots of new things:

1.  I used fabric choices that were definitely not something I would have ever chosen on my own.  Orange is not a color I am particularly drawn to, and my palette was limited by the fabrics available in my very small local quilt shop.

2.  I took a class!  I signed up for Cathedral Windows by Machine just to get myself out of the house.  Getting out more is one of my New Year’s Resolutions.   BTW, there were three other people in the class and the median age was 68.  I only know this because they were discussing social security…for like a half hour…really.  Another of my New Year’s Resolutions is to start a local Modern Quilt Guild here in southern Maryland.  I’ve already recruited a handful of quilters and I can’t wait to meet more people in real life without having to fly to Utah or London.  I want to do those things too, but with a baby it’s just not really possible for a few years.

3.  I did mitered corners.  I followed an online tutorial that I can’t seem to find now, and it worked like a charm.

4.  I added corners to the back of the quilt for hanging via a dowel.  I saw this method somewhere a while back on another person’s blog and it worked like a charm, too!  This photo is before I added the binding.  The binding covers up the raw edges perfectly and then later I can slide a dowel into the two corner pockets for hanging.

5.  I quilted this with different color threads.  I have used other colors besides cream or white, but this is the first time I’ve ever used such bright colors and had the lines stand out so much.

I am linking this up to Melissa’s Trying New Things Thursday.

Hello, I love you!

I finished up my entry for the Tangerine Tango Challenge over the weekend.  The weather is rainy and misty in Maryland today, so I only took two photos but I had to because I am too excited to wait to share this.  It is a wallhanging and the first thing I’ve ever made that I really, truly LOVE! 

Lesson Learned!

I have so many stories of terrible, terrible, terrible mistakes I have made while learning to sew.  But one I am not going to make anymore is to ask for help if I need it.  I am lucky to have some quilty friends who have helped me out from time to time.  I am making a concerted effort to get into the habit of asking for help when I need it instead of trying to work it out on my own--wasting my precious free time, frustrating myself, and adding to my gigantic UFO pile.  And, I am going to start taking classes at the LQS. 

Today I took a private lesson in binding from one of the LQS instructors who happens to live basically across the street.  Doing a good binding has been so mystifying to me and I've seen so many tutorials on how to do it, that I was just bungling it up time and time again.  It was so frustrating to see my beautiful and time-consuming pieced quilt top get uglied up by my unprofessional looking binding.  But, I am happy to report that the private lesson paid off and was worth ten times the price I paid for it!   Exhibit A:

I have never met a more perfect mitered corner on any quilt I've ever put binding on!  Here's a photo of the complete quilt.  It's quite small--made with some leftover Deb Strain Love Is In The Air charms--and my 2 year old has already staked a claim to it.  I attached the binding to the back and have pinned it all down to the front except for a small 6 inch piece where I ran out of pins!!!  I plan to machine sew it to the front tonight after bedtime.

I also have ratcheted up my machine quilting skills and have branched out from just quilting squiggles.  This time I did nice little flourishes and curliques all over and it looks pretty great!

And I also finished up this table topper that I made for my cousin.  I have a square table topper of the same fabrics on a round table in our living room that she's admired before, so I made this one for her kitchen table.  I plan to give it to her for Mother's Day.

And I'm also partial to the quilting on this one as well.  I tried to make viney leaves on the back of this (it's backed with brick red linen) and I quite like it, too.  After my lesson in binding today, I've decided to sign up for a machine quilting class next month.