Joseph's Coat Update

On Saturday I spent some time auditioning and interviewing my fabrics for a role in my Joseph's Coat quilt.
My process began with a set of 12 fat quarters from Sandi Henderson's Meadowsweet line. I purchased my fabrics from Lori of Stitches N' Giggles. Not only does she have the best prices for Meadowsweet that I have found ($7.50/yard) but she has great customer service and shipped my order out the next day! I didn't take a picture of the package when I got it but my FQ's came folded up into cute little triangles. Lori cut all my chosen fabrics into FQ's without charging me any more {yup $7.50 for 4 FQ's! That's about $1.88 per FQ}

The second part of my process involved pulling fabrics from my stash that I though would play nicely with my Meadowsweet. Some were immediately rejected for bad attitudes {just not feeling it} and fighting {clashing.} After the first round of cuts came the second call back where each of the fabrics was auditioned against my beautiful Kona Cotton Charcoal. Here I rejected some fabrics mainly based on hue. The problems main problem was that some of the fabrics just looked "blah" on the background. The were of a more subdued hue and did not provide the "pop" I was looking for. The final part of the auditions involved pairing each of my fabrics with each other to make sure they were in harmony with each other.

Yesterday after church I was able to finish up all the petals for my first block.

I was still unsure of my color choices as I was working on the petals. But as soon as I laid them out on my Charcoal I was sold! I really really love the outcome! The colors just pop and it is just super duper perfect! {Yeah, I'm excited!! ok enough exclamation points.} Even Mr. PD paid me an unexpected compliment by saying "Wow! That looks really good." I was afraid the gray would overwhelm the prints and colors, but they work marvelously together.

I really enjoy the process of picking out fabrics for a quilt. {The color geek in me comes out to play! It's sad that I never got to take the required "Color Theory" class while in college because I think I would have loved it.} Do you enjoy the fabric picking process or do you hate it? Do you mix and match fabrics from different lines, manufacturers, and designers or so you just stick to using fabrics from the same line?

Joseph's Coat Quilt-along

*Edit* if you are having trouble downloading the template, click here.

I've decided to join along with "Don't Look Now's" "Joseph's Coat" quilt-along. Seeing all of the beautiful creations in the Flickr pool has really made me want to try this out. The one that really caught my eye and gave me the push to join was Cabbage Quilts' block (top row last one.) Her bright cheery colors and charcoal gray background have really captured my interest. I have a feeling this will take a couple of months to make the quilt top.

1. Joseph's Coat Quilt-along, 2. DatongPingyaoShaolinLijiang Dec 2009 440, 3. Jacobs Coat, 4. josephs coat quilt along 007, 5. First two, 6. joseph's coat, 7. block 1, 8. block 2 , 9. Block 1

I've ordered all of my materials and am ready to start as soon as I get moved into the new place. I'll be using Meadosweet by Sandi Henderson and Kona Cotton in Charcoal. I've even made my block template and everything. I'm itching to get started but I've already moved my sewing room over to the new place so I can't even work on it when I find a spare moment.

Making the block template was a challenge. First my really nice compass {from my days in art school} was missing it's leads and missing a piece, rendering it completely useless! I took a quickie trip to Wally-world just for a compass. I bought their nicest one and came home all excited only to find out it doesn't open up wide enough! It's a good thing I'm handy with a mouse. I whipped up a template in Illustrator and I'm making it available to all of you who might not have a compass handy. You can either have it printed at Kinko's, Staples, Office max, etc on a large enough piece of paper (it measures 11"x11") or you can print it up at home on several pages and tape it together very carefully.

Click on the image to be taken to download the file, then click on "Download all images in folder" to also download a single "petal template."

Bird Pillow

I'm so excited to share this finished project with you. I found the tutorial on Kellie's website: Don't Look Now. I fell in love with her style the moment I laid eyes on her site. How awesome is it that she shared the pattern and tutorial for free? Well the moment she posted the tutorial I knew I had to make one. In fact I went out and bought the material when she announced she would be sharing the pattern.

I started on Jan 5th and finished yesterday evening (Jan 13th.) So it took me little over a week to finish this project. It would have been done sooner if it wasn't for little things like sleeping, cleaning, cooking, and toddlers to get in the way! Actually I'm surprised I was able to finish so quickly. I had a few set backs such as not having the right free motion foot for my machine. I ended up using my brother 270d because I was able to get the tension set up better than on my Kenmore. However when I started practicing I realized I would have to go and get a clear free motion foot as opposed to the metal one that came with the machine for the embroidery function.

I'm actually surprised I finished it so quickly. I love the way it turned out, and more importantly my daughter loves it. Over all not too shabby for many firsts: first free motion project, first time sewing on the binding completely by machine, first applique "quilt", first time using my blanket stitch, and first pillow! (unless you count the quillow I made for my son.)

So here are the progress pics and don't forget to go over to Kellie's site so you can make your own pillow. One note, the tutorial is for a 20x20 pillow, I made mine 18x18 since I already had a pillow lying around. So I cut my panels 18.5"x18.5"

The front panel after I fused all my shapes to it:

The front panel after I blanket stitched around all the flower stems, and free motioned around the flowers and bird (no background quilting at this point.)

Here is the front panel all squared up after I completed all the free motion quilting. Everything but the stems was done free motion.
Here is a picture of the back front panel. As you can see my free motion skills are very "sketchy" at this point.

Here is a picture of the finished front:

And the finished back:

Tips:

• Wear snug fitting gardening gloves with the no slip palms and fingers (the little white dots)
  
• Use a clear free motion foot
• Practice first on a scrap quilt sandwich
• It helps to have a larger area than just the machine throat to work on. So either get an extension table for your machine or use some flat hardback books behind and to the left of the machine.
  
• Use light fusible web otherwise your needle will not got through the heavy stuff.
• I used this method by Sharon Schamber for doing the binding by machine. The video shows bias binding but I used straight grain binding. It seems tedious but I got perfect results and I was done in 1 afternoon, otherwise I'd still be slip stitching the binding on as we speak!