Sewing Weekend

For my birthday back in October, my husband gave me an IOU for an uninterrupted quilting weekend and this past weekend he took our daughter to visit my in-laws so I could stay home and sew all weekend. It was magical.

First on the docket was finally finishing my dragon quilt. I finished piecing this one a little over a year ago, but I've been super delinquent about actually quilting it. I finished it with black matchstick quilting in the background and color-matched outline quilting over the dragon and books. I'm so happy with how the quilting turned out.

I wanted to get this quilt hung on my daughter's door this weekend, but I made a slight measurement error and didn't account for the doorknob. So now I need to decide whether I want to trim it slightly narrower or find a different spot to hang it.

Next up was my Be Kind Monster. I kept the quilting pretty simple on this one, with bright pink vertical matchstick quilting in the background, beige horizontal matchstick quilting on the sign background, and bright pink outlines on the letters. I didn't do any quilting on the monster himself and I think that helps him stand out from the background.

I decided to turn this block into a pillow, which meant I needed to relearn how to add piping and a zipper. I've done it before, but it's been a few years, and it's one of those things that I seem to need to relearn every time. I used the lightest green of the monster for the piping and the contrast adds such a nice pop.

When my daughter saw the finished pillow when she got home on Sunday night, she brought it right to her bed and gave it a big hug. She said, "Mom, you should make another monster and he should say I love you so much." 

My final finish for the weekend was adding the binding to my Hate Has No Home Here block. I finished quilting this a few weeks ago but hadn't gotten around to buying more magnets to add it to my In Protest sign. I finally got the magnets and added them and the binding on Sunday.

It feels a little bit like magic to switch the signs in and out - the rare earth magnets are so strong that the sign practically levitates into place. 

I also started a new project that I am calling "The Produce Section". I designed 20 to-scale fruit and vegetable patterns, and I'll be sewing them up in bright pop-art inspired colors.

My biggest challenge for this project so far has been figuring out what colors I need. I want to use the same colors across multiple blocks, both to make it feel more cohesive and also to avoid buying 27 different shades of green. I was really struggling to do this digitally, so I took a trip to the paint chip section of the hardware store and grabbed about 100 different paint chips. Then I printed out all my designs, laid them out on the floor, and started choosing paint chips. Whenever possible, I tried to grab from the pile of colors that I'd already be using in another block.

I narrowed it down to 40 colors, then brought my paint chips up to my sewing room and dumped my collection of solids on the floor. I was able to match 30 of the colors, so I only need to buy about 10 quarter yard pieces of fabric. Much better.

So far I've sewn up the apple and eggplant blocks, so 2 down, 18 to go. I think I am going to use a quilt-as-you-go method for this quilt, so I'll be quilting each block individually and then bringing them all together with colorful sashing and cornerstones. We'll see how that goes. 

It was a productive and relaxing weekend. It feels so good to have finished some of my WIPs and made headway on a new project. 10 out of 10 birthday present.