Doctor Done

My Doctor who quilt is finally done.  I finished the binding last week and hung it up on Saturday.

Each block is hand embroidered, and each one took about a month to embroider.  I wasn't rushing to finish, I would do it while watching TV.  Then assembling, and completing it.  I quilted it in the ditch.  Took about two years from start to finish.

Working with wood

So I joined Milwaukee Makerspace.  It's a place where you can make things.  They have tools that are available to use once you get trained on them.  I decided I wanted to see what I could make out of the wood shop.

We have some plastic adirondacks in our backyard that stay out all the time.  They have been outside for a few years and the plastic is getting brittle.  They are cracking and pretty much falling apart, so I figure I might be able to make some nicer ones out of wood.  I asked if anyone had made one on the makerspace e-mail list, and I found someone who made one and even blogged about it.

I wanted to make two chairs, so I got enough wood for two.  I cut all the boards one evening.  It took me between two and three hours.  These were just rough cuts, all at 90 degrees.  I decided I'd cut the angles in the boards later when I assembled the chairs.

Sara took the kids went to Minnesota for Christmas, and I took the bus a few days later, so I had time to work on the chair all at once.  I didn't take any pictures of the work in progress, because I didn't think ahead.  But here's the final product, after about 5 hours of cutting angles and assembling, I have one complete chair, and one that needs a little work to complete.  All that's required now is paint!

Complete

Finally, Space invaders quilt is all done.  I quilted it and used a technique I learn from craftsy to use the back for the binding.  No hand sewing required. :)

I'll be a little while before my next pixel quilt.  I have a superhero applique "quilt" almost done, and a Doctor Who quilt that needs to be quilted. 

I might make a Fresh Beat Band Applique quilt next.  We'll see how I feel after I finish the stuff I'm working on.

Invaders... from Space!

I finally finished piecing my Space Invaders pixel quilt!

I waited until the instructions I made up were on Fandom in Stitches before I posted it to my blog.  So if you want to make your own, just follow the link all the instructions are there.

Just have to quilt it and viola, another quilt.  

Superheroes

So it's about time for a new craft.  Well, not really a totally new craft, but a new way of making a quilt.  My four year old daughter is watching Superhero cartoons on Netflix.  She really only likes the ones with the girls, so we're watching X-men (lots of girls) and we flip through episodes of Justice League until we find one where Wonder Woman is the "focus" of the episode.

Well.. I decided to make a Superhero logo quilt.  I decided on about a 7 inch long or wide logo.  Some logos are wider than they are long, so 7 inches wide and whatever height for scale.  So I picked up 2 yards of white fabric for the quilt top, which is 72 inches.    So, 72 inches... divided by 8 inches (7 inch logo, plus an inch between logos), that's 9 rows of logos, and 42 inches across divided by 8 is 5 logos.  So, 9 times 5 is.. FORTY FIVE?  I'm making a quilt with 45 logos?  What was I thinking?

So I made up a document of heros that have logos.  The first ones are easy, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman... but near the end I'm scraping for logos.  Hit Girl, Greatest American Hero... So I wanted them dispersed through the quilt.  I used random.org to give me a random sequence of 1-45 and out them in a spreadsheet.  

I am using Gimp to draw all the logos, because I need the colors separate.  It's a slow go, but I'm making progress.  I'll explain later how I'm actually doing all the work (tracing and heat-n-bond light), but for right now, I completed the first logo, and it is Wonder Woman.  Center, top of the quilt.

Baby Trent

So I have a friend who is having her first baby. I wanted to make her something unique for her, not just a "standard" baby gift.

She likes very hard rock, so I thought maybe a band logo, and Nine Inch Nails seems like it could be simple to turn into a quilt block

So I googled for quilt patterns for Nine Inch Nails, and came up blank. The pattern looked pretty easy, so I looked into the quilt block creating software everyone seems to use. It's called Electric Quilt. However, it costs about $190.  Someday I'll probably get it, but not today. I thought about other options, like hiring someone to make the block, but then I found quilt assistant, which is free design software that can do paper piecing. 

After some stumbling around with the software, the first draft had 12 separate pieces to assemble.  But I figured out how to get all of them into one block.  Now I had my template and I was ready to pick fabric.

At first I was thinking about getting some babyish pattern fabrics, like little rattles or something, but when I was at the quilt store and looking at their sample quilts, I was afraid that NIN would get lost in the fabric pattern.  Instead I decided to go with the standard baby colors for both boys and girls, yellow and green, and I went with the most babyish fabric I could find.

It turned out kind of small, so I decided to make some type of border, but I wanted to stay with the theme, so we looked at three different fabric stores before we found a fabric that fit the theme.  CORN!

The logo was too small, and there was too much corn, so I wanted to cut it back a bit.  I was going to add more green and yellow, I even went to the store and got more, but once I cut it down, I liked the size it ended up, so I free motion quilted it, and finished it,  viola!  Here it is!

I think the baby is going to like it.

Jelly roll... and a challenge

This...

...is a jelly roll quilt top. It's a fairly straightforward build.  There are instructions on the web.  This one took me between three to five hours to assemble.  The most time consuming part was making sure there wasn't a "twist" in the long strips.

But now, the challenge.  After taking a craftsy class by Leah Day, I decided to try something different when quilting it. I'm going to try to free motion quilt each strip with a different pattern (found on web, in a book, or made up).  There are 32 strips, so 32 patterns.  Let's see if I can do it!

Still going

I'm still working on my doctor who stitch along. I just finished the seventh doctor. The stitch along ended on July 31st, but I'm still moving along at a slow but steady pace.

Four down!

Still working on my doctor who stitch along.  I have four complete, only eight more to go!  Then to make them into a quilt. Working slowly stiching while watching TV. 

I've been making dresses for my three year old. I've only done one so far, but I have the fabric for three more.  I made it with knit fabrics, like a t-shirt, the fabric stretches.  I made it long sleeve, and it's been too warm for her to wear it, so I only have the pictures of her trying it on, but I think she likes it.

I'm also working on a space invaders pixel quilt, so I have a lot to do.  Now that summer is over, maybe I'll have some time to finish them.

Free Motion Quilting

Our friends are having a baby, and I decided to make a quilt for the new little one.  This is the first quilt that I made specifically to give away as a present.  All my quilts have still been paper piecing, and most of them came from Fandom in Stitches, so I looked to their free patterns to figure out what I wanted to make.  At first I thought since it's a girl, and her sisters like the Disney Princesses that I could make a princess quilt.  But I couldn't figure out which ones would be best.  Instead I went with the always classic Sesame Street.  It was an easy decision of Elmo and Cookie Monster.

I started the quilt top in February, and the baby is due in July.  I figured, no problemo, just two blocks and assemble, I could have it done by the beginning of June, plenty of time to get it quilted and finished.  However, time seemed to slip away, and all of a sudden it's the middle of  June and I still don't have the quilt top done.

I finally finished assembling the quilt top, but there is no time to take it in to get quilted, so I'll have to learn how to quilt and do it myself.  Lucky for me, my mother has been quilting for years, so she can show me all the ins and out of how to get it done.

 After a lesson, I decide to do a meandering pattern with loops, it's a pretty simple pattern, I can "make it up" as I go.  I took a video of me doing the quilting, it's not terribly interesting, but you can see the meandering and the loops.  When quilting, it's important to try to keep moving the quilt through the machine the same speed to keep the stitches the same length.  I think it turned out pretty good.

Here is a close up of the quilting.  The picture didn't really come out well, but you can see the meander and the loops.

I'm no longer under the thumb of big quilt, charging me an arm and a leg to quilt my quilts.  I can do it myself now.

I'm already thinking about my next quilt, and what pattern I'll be using for it.  It's a half finished space invaders pixel quilt.  I put it on the back burner because I wanted to finish this one before the baby is born.  For the record, it was finished in time.  I even made this blog post before the baby was born, but I had to wait to post it until after they got the quilt.  

And here it is.. complete

The IT Cross Stitched

More Cross Stitching!  

While I was checking etsy and craftsy for my next cross stitch project, I found a free pattern for Roy and Moss from The IT Crowd on the internet on dorkstitch.com (Dork Stitch).  If you haven't seen The IT Crowd, then go to netflix right now and put it in your instant queue.  If you don't have a subscription to netflix, then subscribe, and put it in your queue to watch next.

I didn't add all the embellishments on it because the Doctor Who Stitch Along started, however, I think the final product turned out pretty well.  

I also found instructions on how to frame a cross stitch on instructables.com.  

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Doctor Who?

More needlecraft!

I played around with cross stitch, but now one of my favorite quilting websites, Fandom in Stitches, is having a Doctor Who Stitch Along!  We'll be stitching 12 blocks, and then putting them all together into a quilt, one block per week.

After searching the google machine for instructions on everything having to do with embroidery, including how to transfer a pattern, how to stitch, how to start and end a thread, I started in on the first Doctor, William Hartnell.  He performed Doctor Who from 1963 - 1966.

I was hoping to get someone else to join me on the stitch along, and Sara decided she'll give it a try too.  Now we're going to have two Doctor Who quilts at the end of the project, but having too many quilts is a problem I can deal with.  For the record her first block is much nicer than mine.  However, I'm not worried, because when I learn something new, I can see my early attempts being sloppy, but I learn from each block and get a little better.

I have to say embroidery seems easier, and more free form than cross stitching.  I think I'll be switching over to doing more embroidery in the future.  

The designer for this block recommended two strand split stitch, so that's what I used.  It took me about three to four hours in total.  The next block is the second Doctor, Patrick Troughton, and the designer for that one recommends three strand back stitch, so that'll be how I'll be doing my second block.

TV Cozy

A few years ago I saw something on the internet that I just had to have, and I'm not sure why, because it's not really practical for anything.  But it looked simple to make and it was when I was starting and was looking for unique projects.

It's a TV Cozy!  I made it by taking a picture of a TV station that had the test pattern running, and then holding my phone up to the fabric choices at JoAnne Fabrics to get matching colors.  Back when I made it my TV was sitting on a TV stand, like most TVs in the world.  Once I had a toddler in the house who was at the age of not listening, and had a TV within her reach, I came up with a cunning plan of attaching the TV to the wall.  But this has the consequence of making my TV cozy unusable, since there was a bracket behind the TV.

The toddler just turned three, and we had a party.  I always wanted to fix the cozy, and with a simple clip clip, and a little sew sew, I can once again hide my TV.

Cross Stitch

So I was looking for something to do while I'm watching TV since my other crafts require me to "hide out" in the basement / crafting room. I tried knitting a while back, and I just didn't seem to enjoy it at all. Maybe I'll try crocheting someday, but not today! Today I decided to give cross stitching a try. I ordered one of the few non girly starter cross stitch kits from Amazon, a robot.  The directions were pretty bad, but luckily Sara and Google have done it before and they could help me with the basics.



 It was pretty easy, and didn't require much thinking. This is something that can be done while watching TV.  I already downloaded a pattern from the Internet based on the IT crowd, and maybe after I finish it I'll design my own pattern next.

We already decided that the wall on the stairs to the attic is the perfect place to put my completed cross stitch projects.