Eileen In Stitches

I've finally finished the top for the herringbone (which I've been mistakenly calling chevron) quilt.

This quilt top was made from several charm packs of Moda Into the Woods and Bella Solids White Bleached turned into HSTs. It measures 18 by 22 squares and I'll have to get an assistant to hold it up when finished for some better photos as it's rather difficult to lay out in my small apartment.

Finishing this quilt is my April goal for ALYoF; I'm hoping to have it basted this weekend.

I'm planning to quilt a quarter inch straight line grid around all the squares in this mint green thread, then outline a chevron across every few rows in the red to add some detail and make the design pop. (I suspect I'm going to need more thread!) The red polka dots will be the binding.

I can't wait to get this finished off and finally gifted to my friend! It's a very late birthday present indeed as her birthday was about three months ago.

Last weekend I showed some of my comics and illustration work at a convention in Manhattan called MoCCAfest; I had a great experience selling my work and meeting other artists. I had some short comics with me and also an art book I did last year about NYC street fashion.

I shared a table space with the friend the herringbone quilt is for and two lovely girls visiting from New Zealand, one of whom had never been to the US before; we had met them through the comics community on twitter and offered them table space when their previous arrangement fell through. They're staying in the US for a few weeks so we are making a lot of fun plans to show them around.

I also made a short doodle comic about my cat including some scenes that fellow quilters may find very familiar:

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.

Back to working on the first quilt I ever started, which is my ALYoF goal for April!

The points definitely aren't perfect, but it's not too bad for the first time sewing in over a decade and my first start at a quilt. This quilt is 18 squares across and 22 rows down using Moda's Into the Woods charm pack. I've had all the rows sewn and numbered for a couple weeks. Today I sewed the top 13 rows together.

I haven't decided yet if I want to quilt this with a pale mint green that will be subtle against the white or if I want to go bright with a cherry red. I'll be straight line quilting this, though, probably in a horizontal zigzag.

I've got a busy week for my day job so I don't anticipate much time for quilting the next few days. I'm a freelance artist and I've got new comics that I worked on launching at a convention this weekend, so I'm currently finishing up everything for my con table.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'm joining in A Lovely Year of Finishes to try and get some of my WIP quilts finished. This chevron quilt was intended for a friend's birthday in January and it's now very late, so my April goal is to finish this quilt.

I'm also going to extend ALYoF since I started late - I still want to get 12 projects completed between now and the end of 2015. To that end, I'm going to get the simpler blocks finished for a Dallas Stars hockey quilt I'm making for a friend. All of the single patch and four patch blocks should be finished by the end of April, leaving me with just the stars and the paper pieced blocks to do in May.

Linking up with ALYoF.

Towards the end of 2014, I decided that I was going to do something very ambitious and get back into sewing by making a quilt from scratch for the first time. I hadn't sewn at all since I was twelve or thirteen and begging my grandmother to help me make a cosplay costume for a convention, and back then I hadn't been responsible for anything beyond stitching the edge of the skirt so I could feel like I was 'helping.'

I devoured quilting blogs, wasted away many an hour browsing online fabric shops, and finally ordered a bunch of charm packs and got to cutting and laying them out for weeks.

This is not that quilt.

Mainly because when I said 'ambitious,' I meant 'I started out queen sized and now I can't figure out how to baste the thing in a tiny NYC apartment.'

(sad trombone noises)

I'm planning to test out the tabletop basting I've read about, but in the mean time, I decided to make a small throw quilt for a friend to practice maneuvering something smaller through the sewing machine.

The cat is very fond of the birds and had to be locked in the bedroom so I could baste it.

This quilt uses Amy Smart's Fast Four-Patch Quilt Tutorial and makes a quick baby quilt or throw. It was easy even for me with my complete lack of experience to put together, and I would definitely recommend it to another beginning quilter or someone who wants to let the fabrics take center stage - the large blocks finish at 8in, so it's a good way to show off larger scale prints.

I used a variety of different bird prints in the large squares and a fat quarter bundle of Cotton + Steel basics in Splash that coordinated nicely for the four-patches. I also pieced a bird and hand-embroidered a label out of scraps for the back. It was quilted with simple straight line quilting, and while I need more practice to avoid puckering, I'm very proud of this as a first effort!

This quilt is now being packed up and shipped off as a surprise to a friend who's had a rough year - hopefully it will cheer him up a bit!

I'm looking forward to continuing to make more quilts, including finishing up my queen-sized monstrosity and making a surprise quilt for my grandparents who are moving into assisted living this spring.