Camilla's Quilt Part 2 | A Bubble Quilt

After the heavy of yesterday, I think it is time to lighten things up with one of my favorite past times, quilting.

Remember part 1 of Camilla's quilt? Well, I finished it, almost a year ago, but I never got around to blogging the second part, so here it goes.

After ironing all of those crazy circles, it was time to stack them into their respective cool and warm stacks.

(Did you know that I am basically colorblind? Well, it is no easy feat for me to make stacks of different colors, but I succeeded!)

My "warm" stack:

My "cool" stack:

Each stack had a different backing. The warm stack had a cream backing, while the cool stack had a pink gingham stack. I LOVE Riley Blake for this reason. Great core colors and fabrics. I love going a little "Gingham Style" too.

Now for the tough part, choosing alternating warm and cool fabrics and laying them out so that none of the same fabric touches on the finished quilt. Whoosh. My least favorite part of quilting. So. Stressful.

Once I had the fabrics laid out, I stacked them back up in their alternating warm and cool circles. All the while reminding myself to keep them straight!

Here is the underside of my stack:

It is pinning time, and I am not talking about Pinterest! Pinning all four corners of the square is a MUST. These circles are thick and like to shift under the presser foot. Pin the backside of the circles together.

Sew along one line. (LOVE that this quilt let's you draw in sewing lines. While this quilt can be tedious, almost anyone can make one!)

Presto! Our first two circles are sewn together.

Open out the backside circle portion.

Pin. Again, I repeat, PIN! The bulky fabric will shift.

Then sew along the rounded edges.

As you can see, I am not the world's most perfect quilter and I will NEVER win an award or a blue ribbon for my straight lines and beautifully matching edges...but that is okay. I gave up being perfect a long time ago.

Continue along, sewing the rest of the strip in the same manner.

Once the strip is finished, lay it out on the previous strip, backsides facing one another.

Then? Pinny McPinalot. Pin. Pin. Pin.

Then? Pin some more!

Now, sew along the long seam, being very careful to make sure your seam sewn between the circle edges. You don't want to end up with any holes when you are done.

When the long seam is sewn, open out the backside portions of the circles and pin, pin, pin again.

Then sew along the curved lines. This part may make you wish for death, or Hulk strength arms. Either way, repeat to yourself, "I can do this!". The quilt gets VERY heavy as you go on, and very bulky. If you do it right though, you can keep most of the bulk on your sewing table.

I prefer to sew these curves in a "snake like" manner, or an S shape going down the line. This makes it so you can keep the less bulky end of your quilt under your machine. I wish I had a better way to explain this but I don't.

I sew one line of curves, and then go back to the top of the curves and sew the rest of the round edges.

 

This quilt is SO fun to sew because you get to watch it come alive one row at a time, you don't have to wait until you are all finished to see the end result.

Now is the time to finish your edges. You could choose to keep them "scalloped" just make sure your edge pieces do not have any pen marks or cut marks from turning the circles inside out.

I prefer my edges finished.

Turn over your edges and pin.

Finish sewing the curves.

Here is the finished edging. Clip threads and you are done!

Here is the final product on the bed!

I love the back almost as much as the front! You can see the circle quilting through the back. Gah. ADORE!

Finally, the front! This quilt is so bright and fun and puts a smile on my face every time I see it!

This quilt ended up being king size, about 82"x82" and weighs over 10.5 lbs. It. Is. Heavy...and cost a lot to make. Whoosh. I am certain I will not be making another anytime soon.

What am I working on next? Well, another quilt that involves circles, robots, orange and teal. Some of my favorite things. I will share when I am done.

xoxo

Difficult | A Self Portrait Assignment

This morning I board a plane that will fly me to a beautiful place. A place I have wanted to visit for the past few years of my life. This trip was last minute and kind of just fell into my lap as an answer to prayers, and desperation. I owe a huge thank you to Casey, and mostly to Shelley, and of course a thank you to Today's Mama for making this all possible. I feel so blessed to be able to fly to North Carolina to The Outerbanks to attend the Click Blogger Retreat.

As part of this retreat/conference MeRa Koh asked us to take portraits of ourselves.

This. Was. Hard.

It was at times, horrific.

It was extremely painful.

This is what I ended up with:



So many emotions flooded through me as I took photos of myself. I took smiling ones, laughing ones, serious ones, and it came down to this one. Somewhat sad, and pain-filled.

I hate that I am still sad and full of pain at times. It is something I try so hard to push back and not let eat away at me, but that part of me is so very real, and gnawing all at once. Some days this pain keeps me in my bed, or on the couch hiding under a blanket, because I am anxious that it is winning.

Currently it stems from the last two and a half horrible years of struggle and triumph. Some of it comes from a deep desire to continue on a path that I cannot go down alone, a path that both frustrates me and angers me and eats away at me almost every single day of my life.

Sometimes I wonder what it is like to live without extreme marriage difficulties, or depression, or anxiety. Sometimes I wonder how I would feel with a different life. It is, of course, always easier to see the grass greener on the other side, but then again, sometimes I get sick of throwing the horse shit onto my grass hoping it is going to get greener eventually. Guess what? Shit stinks. I am knee deep in it, and that is rough.

What if I never had to feel the pain of losing a pregnancy?
Or a child I was a foster mother to?
What if my marriage never tipped the scale toward a divorce?
What if I had an amazing metabolism?
What if my husband wanted another child as much as I desperately want one each and every single day of my life?

I know, I know I should be over all of it, some days I am just not. The emotions that were brought up while taking this photo were amazingly difficult. The emotions are not all bad though. They are cleansing and I am working my way through them. Slowly.

Thanks MeRa Koh.

I think.

Camilla's Quilt Part 1 | Riley Blake Fly a Kite Fabric

While browsing fabric stores online, I came across "Fly a Kite" by Riley Blake Designs. I immediately fell in love long before the line was released and put myself on the waiting list to be one
of the first to snatch up a few fat quarter bundles.


I adored the playful theme and bright colors of the fabrics, and what drew me into it the most were the strawberries. I have loved strawberries since I was a little girl. Not just eating them, but anything strawberry themed...I loved, and still do. This fabric line was no exception.



You may remember my last bubble quilt. I loved it so much and learned a lot from it, I decided to give it another go with a few alterations in order to make my life easier. Since this quilt was for little Camilla, I wanted to make it big enough that she could use it on a queen size bed. I didn't realize logistically how much fabric I would need (therefore, keeping my favorite quilt shops in business), as well as ultra time consuming this quilt would be. As it is finally coming together I can tell you it has been worth every minute of Bones and Scrubs reruns. Thank you Netflix!

The first thing? Cutting the circles:



The goal is to end up with a huge stack of perfectly cut circles. When I say huge stack, I mean the photo above is only 1/8 of the quilt. Yes. Yes.

I started off by starching and ironing each of my fat quarters. This enabled me to get them to lay as flat as possible and allowing me to get 4, 8.5" circles out of each fat quarter.





Of course, having a messy faced, sister-dress wearing little girl to help is half the fun.





After I ironed the fabric, the fun began. I purchased this little lovely for 50% off at my local fabric store. I wish that it could cut bigger circles than 8.5", but it didn't, however that turned out to be lucky because, as I mentioned I barely cut 4 circles out of each fat quarter at the 8.5" size.

This is quite possibly one of the coolest quilting gadgets around and if you don't have one, totally get one and create a quilt using circles. I am in love.

Olfa Circle Cutter:



I folded my fabric exactly in half so I could cut two circles at a time.



I carefully eyed the center of where the circle should go so that I made sure I left room for the other two circles to be cut out of the fat quarter. Nothing like making a mistake and ending up with a straight sided circle. That would be very sad.



Hold the little cutter on the pivot point and swirl it around. The blade is SUPER sharp, as is the pivot needle. I may have poked myself more than once, but luckily no cuts. After cutting no less than 1,000,000 circles I may have had some wrist pain, but it comes with the territory.



Finish up the fat quarter by cutting the other two circles, then give your scraps to friends who are making a Dear Jane quilt, then discover that you are obsessed with that Dear Jane quilt and next time you cut circles keep your own scraps.



Voila. Beautiful and perfect circles. The 8.5" size leaves a .25" or (1/4") seam allowance, so when the circles are finished you will end up with 8" finished circles.





Dig in and cut all of your fat quarters, as I mentioned you will need no less than 1,000,000 circles. (I may be exaggerating, when the quilt is finished I will let you know how many you may need.)



Don't forget to take two photos and allow your helper to put her little hand in one. It makes for a fun post. Are these fabrics not the most delicious you have ever seen?



Work on your quilt for three months only to determine you don't have enough fabric. So, order some more fabric. When the fabric comes and spring hits, and you go to photograph the rest of your tutorial, realize that the lighting in your photos is so drastically different, because your first photos were taken in the winter and processed at Walgreen's, and your second photos were taken in the spring and processed at your preferred lab. Then pretend that no one will notice anyway, but that your mistake allows you to photograph the next step of your tutorial and everyone will be so grateful they won't even notice the changes.

Sew each top side quilt circle right sides to your backing fabric circles leaving a quarter inch seam allowance. I went with a cream backing and a pink gingham backing. (When the quilt is finished there will be a checkerboard of pink gingham and cream squares...photo to come.)

The second thing I am doing differently from last time is cutting my batting into squares instead of circles. I wanted to cut down on bulk and needle breakage. So I measured my circle, found the size of square to fit inside. (It is about 6")





I used a rotary cutter and mat to cut the squares.



After I cut about 500,000 pieces of batting, it was time to get the batting to stay in place. This is where Quilt Basting Spray comes in SUPER handy.



I got a deep box and stuck a stack of my batting squares inside. I sprayed one side lightly with batting spray.





I took that piece off of the top, flipped it over and 'glued' it to the quilt top fabric side of each circle. This step is important. If you are like me and tired at 1 a.m. and on episode 101 of Bones, you will start to glue them to the backside. As you will see in a few steps, this will cause you to cut your backing fabric, and then you will cry when you realize that you have to order more fabric...thus continuing to keep your favorite fabric store in business. Thanks Angie!



Time for cutting.



Carefully separate your backing fabric from your quilt top fabric and slice a small hole only through your quilt top fabric. Cut along the edge of your batting so that you can turn your circle inside out.



Open the hole and flip your fabric right sides out.





You will end up with a deliciously messy stack of fabric circles.



Next (or it would be 100 times smarter to wait to do this step until after you iron, but again, I like difficulty) take the same template you cut to fit your circle and start drawing your squares. Remember to see my last tutorial if you feel a little lost.





Trace a square on your quilt top fabric, make sure to line the edge of the template along your cut fabric line. This helps ensure that your square batting piece lines up with where you will be sewing later. Continue to trace until all 500,000 circles are done.



Next, set up shop in front of your favorite Netflix shows. You will be ironing for a few hours.

We are going for perfect circles here, so I used a butter knife to help pop out my edges while I ironed.



Just slide the knife in the cut slit and kind of trace the lines as the iron glides the fabric.







You will end up with a pretty flat, almost perfect circle with the square piece of batting in the center. Like a little quilt hamburger bun.



Finish up the stack.



You will end up with stacks that look like this:



Stay tuned for post number 2 of Camilla's Quilt. She is very excited about it, and I am too now that I am 2/3 of the way done. Can't wait.
Happy Friday.