Finish it up Friday, FINALLY.

It's been forever since my last post, life just got in the way. The bridge project continues to be set back- we had a huge fiasco this week where, apparently, our drawings were uglier than a pile of poop and therefore unusable, so I pulled a VERY late night on Wednesday to get them reorganized. Oh yeah, and I picked Flash up from the airport on Tuesday.

HE'S HOME HE'S HOME HE'S FINALLY HOME SWEET JESUS I'M VERY HAPPY.

We went to the park on Wednesday to watch the sun set together.

Also, his mustache did not come home with him, which was a surprise.

These past couple of weeks, while school has been a freaking nightmare, I worked on a faux chenille blanket. There are a TON of tutorials online, but Moda recently featured one on their bakeshop website.

Back in November, I bought two yards of a great flannel print- it has mooses and bears and other wonderful woodland things on it. I knew I wanted to make a sweet blanket with it, but didn't really know where to start. But I realized two weeks ago that I wanted to make this faux chenille, so I bought more flannel and got sewing.

It took like a week to sew all the lines on it, but that's because I didn't have much patience.

BUT HERE IT IS ITS FINISHED.

I'm quite chuffed with how it turned out.

Nice and fuzzy :)

Ripples!

In the process of washing and drying, though, the blanket warped a bit. You can tell it's longer at some corners. But honestly, it's going to keep me warm just as well as if it weren't warped, so I'm ok with it.

Essentially, you sew 4 or 5 layers of fabric together with straight lines. It has to be on the diagonal, or it won't fray. Once the entire sandwich is quilted, you cut the top 3 or 4 layers between the lines. Then, you wash it and dry it, and it magically gets soft and beautiful! I completely filled up my lint trap doing this, which made me laugh.

But it's exactly what I needed: something quick, easy, mindless, and calming, in order to make it through the last two weeks of a long distance relationship and a crazy time in school.

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday!

PANIC

I woke up this morning and said to myself, "Couch, you are going to quilt that baby quilt today. TODAY IS THE DAY." I ate a big breakfast, pumped myself up, and sat down at my machine to practice the pattern I was going to use.

I was thinking of quilting small daisies, to go along with the floral theme of the quilt. But once I sat down and tried free motion quilting for the first time, fear grew in my heart and everything I did looked awful. Then I saw Cluck Cluck Sew's quilting flowers post, and she made it look much simpler and less scary. So I practiced today on a piece of scrap fabric with a minky back, and it turned out fine.

getting better!

Why minky, you ask? I'm using minky on the back of the cheery squares quilt. So I need to make sure that I can quilt with it, you know? My practice went fine, but I noticed that there was some fuzz peeking out from the stitching. I dismissed it, and prepared the quilt to be loaded onto the table.

Lookin' good, quilt!

AND THEN EVERYTHING WENT HORRIBLY WRONG.

I don't know why! But whenever I sewed, the backing fabric got pulled up to the front of the fabric. Hot pink fuzz all over the cream colored border. I changed the tension setting on my machine, I got a thinner needle, I tried using my walking foot instead of the free motion foot. BUT NOTHING HELPED.

SO MUCH FUZZ.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm at least going to ask the friend who this is going to whether she likes it or not. If she does, then I'll just have to be extra careful with my stitching (because now, every move I make is painfully obvious). If she doesn't, well, then I need some major help.

This didn't happen with the other minky quilts I've done. But then again, I wasn't trying to sew white cotton to hot pink minky. GAAHH

Finish It Up Saturday

Today was a wonderful awesome day, which is exactly what I needed after a crazy week of school. We had LOTS of drawings to do, and there was a possibility that our bridge would get axed, but all of that has been fixed and we should be good to start construction soon!

My friend and I went to the New River Brewfest this morning. I won tickets on the radio to the event, which was AWESOME. And it was really fun! The weather was nice, the beer was delicious, and I got a free glass out of it. 

Then, once I got home, a friend contacted me about some fabric at a yard sale. Bags of fabric for $2. Guess who is now five bags of fabric richer? THIS KID.

yaaaaaaaay!

I found some beautiful squares that I will need to make something out of.

And this adorable rooster print!

Also, today, I finally got the courage to clear away the coffee table and start laying out the t-shirt squares I had cut for my uncle's t-shirt quilt. It turned out to be a really big quilt, but I started and finished it in about 5 hours!

squares laid out.

And sewn together!

I knew I didn't have the space in my sewing cave to spread this quilt out, so I took over the living room and made a tiny sewing table out of the coffee table. I used my friendly apartment bear as a chair and busted out my tiny ironing board to put on the floor next to me. Goodness knows this is NOT how my grandmother taught me to sew, but I am young and driven and I really wanted to watch Bones while sewing, so I found a way.

Now I have THREE quilts to quilt! YAY. Plus the other baby quilt not pictured, so that makes 4...

This is Normal

This is my life when I'm not sewing. Drawing building sections and detail sections and learning about windows and doors and roofs.... 

The machine gets pushed to the back of the desk and the notebooks come out. 

Thankfully, I can draw straight lines pretty well and I've got a good handle on construction details. Hopefully these drawings can help me get a job someday.

Little Things

I've been incredibly productive this weekend! Sewingly, not academically....

Saturday was the Big Event here at VT, where the students go out into the community for a day of service. Three friends and I went to a house in town to help clear out some tree branches. Some people hate yardwork, but I really enjoyed it. It was sunny and breezy, and felt like spring for the first time since last spring, haha. It was really nice being outside.

Side note, it snowed about 6 inches on Tursday, and then was 60 degrees on Friday. That's Blacksburg for you.

But I finished so many things this weekend! I started and finished my Sister's Ten Blocks, basted the Cheery Squares quilt, and finished the Scrappy Trip Along top.

Lots of trimming.

And I realized that my blocks look very much like the candy I was eating.

My Lady of the Lake blocks!

And a Scrappy Trip that turned out quite nice.

I still need to figure out a border and a back for the STA, but I'm not in any hurry right now.

Also, I worked on my free motion quilting today. I'm getting better for sure, but it's still going to take some time before I'm happy enough with it to quilt the Cheery Squares quilt.

I practiced on some scrap purple fabric, and then on a little mini quilt I whipped up with the leftover fabric I had from the Cheery Squares. It looks alright, I'm still trying to figure it all out. However, I noticed that on the back, I have lots of stitches pulling.

It's kind of hard to see, but there you go. I think it's because I still don't have great control. Do any of you have any tips to minimize that?

Linking up to Made in Home for Let's Get Acquainted!

WIP Wednesday: Scrappy Trips

I finished my Scrappy Trip Along squares last night! FINALLY.

All piled up and ready to be assembled.

I was really concerned when making the squares that the finished quilt would just look stupid, but once I laid it out on the floor, I felt a LOT better about it.

It's really skinny, which is bumming me out. I'd really like to add a border or SOMETHING, just to make it a bit larger. I had some leftover strips of blue fabric that I used in the quilt, and was thinking of subdividing the top with those strips, but I don't really know...

Does anyone know of anyone who added a border to their STA? How on EARTH do you add a border to such a busy quilt?

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!