Sunday, August 10, 2014

What Did You Call Me? Holiday Fun

Festive holiday quilting is one of my favorite things to do. I love to create new wall hangings and quilts that can be displayed each year for others to enjoy. I can't lie, I'm a bit selfish with my quilting and find it very hard to give away anything I've made. When I make items other people get to enjoy but I get to keep it's like the best of both worlds for me. 

My days quilting have been greatly modified into minutes or hours of quilting now that I'm a parent. Don't get me wrong I LOVE being a parent and could play with C all day, but when I want to quilt it happens in about 2 hour blocks while he's napping or after he's gone to bed. 

Last night I decided to just go for it and take on the "What did you call me?" Witch Wall Hanging pattern from Happy Haunters by Kelly Mueller. My husband, C and I spent the afternoon at a pool party with family, so when we got home everyone was exhausted-- except the baby! Even for skipping his nap he just wasn't ready to sleep. 

At about 5pm my husband made us dinner. While he was working on that and C was in his high chair I started on the applique tracing to the heat n bond, precutting, and ironing. Before dinner was ready I had all my shapes ironed on. 

About 7pm we put C in bed and he finally caught on that it was time to sleep. At that point I was ready to pass out, however quilting tends to give me a second wind so I headed back to my quilting room. I cut out all my appliqué pieces, which for this pattern was actually a lot. This was one of the first patterns I've done that has required a lot of layering of the appliqué.

 I was able to use my appliqué pressing sheet which was a life saver. I placed it on my ironing board and then layered my appliquéd witch on top.  Once I was happy with the placement of all the pieces I ironed the witch down. Then I was able to pull her up in on piece for easy placement on the backing fabric. 

I had already added my preliminary border to the quilt background fabric so next I started placing the witch and the letters for "what did you call me?". Then I added the batting and went to town sewing down the appliqué. I was able to get this all complete by 11pm!! Including about a 15 minute break where I seam ripped an entire section of sitching I had done on the witches head but also caught whole other part of the quilt top. WHOOPS! 


In the morning C got up at 7am so we played in his room for an hour and then I took him to the quilting room where he listened to Old McDonald on Baby Einstien and watched my quilt while playing with toys in his high chair. 

I had a short timeline to get the wall hanging finished as we were leaving the house at 9:30am to head to breakfast with family. 

MISTAKE ALERT: 
I always buy extra fabric thinking I'll need it for additional projects. Really my brain must just think it's for backup because without fail I almost always cut at least one piece completly the wrong size. And well this wall hanging was no different. 

I cut my background and borders perfectly, however my backing fabric I cut too short the first time, grr! I had decided to increase the backing measurements from the pattern so I could bring the backing to the front and have a built in extra border and mitered corners. Well my first cut I cut at the shorter of the two lengths I needed. Thankfully though I had bought almost an entire extra yard of fabric. So I did my second cut, success--- or at least I thought. 

I ironed the lines I needed so I'd know where to sew and create the borders/mitered corners but there was about an inch extra lengthwise so I had to readjust placement of the quilt top and re iron. Then I sewed the first corner. It seemed really off so I didn't cut it, I just flipped it to take a look. Sure enough it wasn't going to work. The side borders were an inch wider than the top and bottom and it wasn't making the corners got correctly. So I had to take an inch off the sides. :( Scraps for the future I guess. 

With that in order I sewed all my corners, clipped them, and turned them... To find that my magic border/mitered binding trick covered the border I already sewed onto the quilt top! Oh my.  

This would not have been a problem if the hat for the witch didn't go into the border for the quilt top. So I took out my trusty seam ripper. 

This was my first time undoing appliqué and I wasn't sure how it would go because of the heat 'n bond. However it came up fine and I was able to applique it on the new border. Woo!! Finally success. 

After that dibacle I was able to wavy stitch the border/backing down and add a hanging sleeve.

Even with all of those snafus before my morning coffee I was able to complete my wall hanging by 9am. 

I am so happy with the finished product and want to make another one which I can send to my Grandma Y. 

Since I was young Grandma Y has had a sign in her garage that says something to the effect of "this isn't Burger King, so you'll have it my way" which makes me think she will think this is pretty funny too. 

No comments:

Post a Comment