Quip # 4 - Quilt in progress - Plus One

As promised I'll share the 'making of' my Plus One Quilt today in another QuiP post.
This Quip should have actually been posted before the post of the finished quilt but I was so excited about it that I couldn't wait.

So, and this is how it all started:

Selecting fabrics. I happen to collect a lot of low volume fabrics and they all seem to go very well with blues, greens and yellows and oranges.

I found a plus block tutorial with a lot of 3/4'' dimensions and that made me crazy... growing up and being used to metric dimensions that was not for me. Ultimately the first block went wrong. I found another tutorial with full or half inches and that worked better.
But even though the block was hopelessly wonky I thought I'll keep it anyway and make a rug out of it for my jewelry at the bedside table.

But everything went wrong with that one...
I wanted to try quilting parallel lines ... and that went wrong too. I rushed it and I did everything wrong what one can do wrong while quilting. Oh, and not to forget the the binding... that also went wrong and looks rather horrible. I rushed this as well...

The only good thing was it taught me a lesson.

- If you follow a tutorial, follow the tutorial.
- Preparation is everything.
- Be precise, don't rush.

With the other blocks I was really careful and they turned out to be really nice and square.

I knew I had to do something with the quilting, even though it's 'only' straight lines there is so much to it!  
I am on Craftsy and I joined the new class by Jacquie Gering 'Creative quilting with your walking foot' which is excellent and very helpful.
But she also has this tutorial on her blog.

So I taped the entire quilt and started quilting.

Nice and slow, always checking if I was still on track.

Using the little bar attached to the sewing machine really helped, but without the control measuring I would have been hopelessly off.

I quilted the lines every 1/2 inch apart because in fairness the lines were sometimes still off by almost 1/4 inch or even more.

But I am so happy how it turned out!
Here it is again:

As for the jewelry rug: reminds me every day that mistakes can only make you better!

Linking this to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and Sew Cute Tuesday!

BlockMquilts turns one - I have organised my scraps

One year into blogging and making quilts I thought it was time to organise my scraps.

After eight quilts and a few other things I've sewn in the last year I had scraps and fabric left overs everywhere. Mostly in little plastic bags, one from every sewing project.

This really started to annoy me so I was looking into options as to how to keep the scraps in one place, tidy and organised by colours.

I found these really nice over sized jars during a trip to Ikea. They hold one liter, are about 7 inches (18cm) high and about 4 inches (10cm) in diameter. I have seen people using these in their kitchens filling them with pasta and rice and all sorts of food... well, I have a different agenda!

I started off with buying 8 of them, but quickly realised that I needed more to cater for every colour. I first had yellow and orange in one jar and also turquoise and blue but realised that they need an own space. So now I have 11 of them.

I know the glasses are rather small, but I think this is good because my plan is to use up the scraps as quickly as possible. What I love about the glasses is that I can see the scraps all the time. I keep on changing the glasses so that colours are always in different locations. That's almost like having a scraps design wall!
 

Naturally I did my first scrap project straight away: a coffee cozy!

My husband loves coffee and  so I made one for him.
I opted for greys, yellows and browns and used a strip of velcro rather than a button, I thought this is a bit more manly!

We have these cardboard coffee thingies laying around the house all the time. So I just took one apart added the width of the velro on each side and finished was the cozy!

It's funny, I can actually see every sewing project in that tiny little thing.
I'm glad, my husband is actually using it and we have less rubbish at home.

How do you store your scraps?

Linking this to the German Montagsmacher!