Design Time: Dune, Peg+Cat, Descendants, and more!

As I'm getting through my giant list of things that need to be organized, fixed, and weeded through, I finally reached the dreaded computer.  I got the new O/S installed, which means I was able to put my EQ7 back on at long last.  Couple that with a week of being down with a cold, and that means I got lots of block drafting done.

I started out with a Dune quilt.  This is a book series I have returned to many times in the last couple of decades, so it's a quilt I have wanted to make since I started paper piecing.  I've looked for patterns from other designers off and on, with no luck.  I figured it was up to me to fill the gap.  I think I represented most of the basic elements of the original trilogy: Houses Atreides and Harkonnen, a Fremen, Muad'Dib, sandworms, the skyline and two moons, and the Bene Gesserit as represented by an abbreviated Litany Against Fear.

Dune mini quilt.

That Fremen eye is based off of a really striking piece of art called The Fremen Child by Mitchell Hicks over on DeviantArt.  He was gracious enough to let me use it as an inspiration piece.  I did change it a little by removing the second eye, but that made the piecing much easier.  You can view more of his work over here.

This is actually my first time designing a quilt that is not just separate blocks strung together with sashing, so I like to think I'm growing a little as a designer.  I thought it might be fun to include my initial quilt sketch so you can see where these designs spring from.  It's a little embarrassing because this was literally a two-minute sketch and was never meant for other people's eyes, but I'm not going to stand on ceremony here.

My initial sketch for the quilt outline.  Check out that eagle!
And that griffin!  High-class art right there.  I especially love the sandworm;
it reminds me of a Quentin Blake drawing.  Except not as cool.

If you would like to test part of or all of this quilt, please let me know and I will get you the link to the PDF.  I am hoping to finish this up myself in March or April.  Too much on the plate right now, but I feel good knowing that I at least have it drafted.  I also want to spend some time finding the perfect fabric for it.

Once this was done I thought, "What could I design that would be the complete opposite of Dune?  How about Peg+Cat?"  Actually, my son has recently become a Peg+Cat addict (which I can thank for his new squishy hugs accompanied by, "You're amazing!"), and I was already toying with the idea of making a block for him.  When I went through the list of design requests on Fandom in Stitches, this request stuck out to me and I thought I would give it a go.

Who doesn't love Peg and Cat?  Peg looks like and reminds me of my amazing middle daughter.
Cat cracks me up.  He reminds me of Teddy from Bob's Burgers for some reason.

There are a ton of sections (27!), but that is partly because Peg and Cat are on the same block.  Had I done them separately, it would not have looked so overwhelming.  The beautiful thing about this pattern is that you can do Peg without Cat or Cat without Peg, but I don't know why you ever would.  They go everywhere together.

I have a tester lined up for this, but the more, the merrier.  Let me know if you want to test.

I also threw together a little Descendants block to make a mini quilt for my daughter's upcoming birthday.  I'm hoping to get it done in time, and then it can hang in their Descendants-themed "dorm room."  I'm copping out on this birthday and the girls are all getting invitations to spend the night at Auradon Prep, which is already decorated up because that's the room theme the girls chose.  Work smart, not hard, right?  ;)

Here's the block:

Maleficent's mark, from Disney Descendants.

I think this will be a fun one to piece.  I ordered some awesome Disney villain fabric for the backing, so I'll show it off when it arrives.  I don't plan on designing the other villains unless someone desperately wants one.  Testers welcome!

I finished up two(!) other quilt patterns this week, but they are both gifts so it will be a little while before I can share.  I'm hoping to have these all tested and posted in the next three months, which I think is a reasonable goal.

Sewing with Sewhooked: My Favorite Things, Block 1

The last thing I needed on my plate right now was another quilt-along.  But darn it all, Jennifer Ofenstein came up with the cutest little BOM that will fit my sewing room perfectly, and I rarely quilt just for myself, so I'm going to play along.  It's called My Favorite Things, and has an array of sewing and crafting tools.

The best news is, if you can snag it the first day of each month, the pattern is free on the Sewhooked blog.  If you're terrible at remembering to check in with things like that, I suggest you write it down in your planner, follow the Sewhooked Facebook page or group, and/or follow Jennifer's blog.  After the first of the month, it's an extremely reasonably priced 2$ on Craftsy, so either way, you can't lose because you're getting a free pattern or supporting an independent designer.  A big thanks to Jennifer for giving us the opportunity to download it for free for a time.

Here's my first block completed!

My completed block.  I'm pretty happy with it.
Don't mind the loose thread there; I actually tried to blow that off my computer  screen!

After rifling through my fabric collection for a while I chose one of my newest favorite things to work with: metallic patterned fabric.  I think they are so fun and have used them all over the girls' new bedroom.  They feel luxurious without being too bold.  It is hard to get a good picture because of the reflection of the light, but it looks beautiful in person, and I think it will look great hanging on my wall.

This black fabric has a gold floral print, and it was just screaming to be used for the sewing machine.  It will probably also end up being scissor handles in a later block as well as some other odds and ends.  I love this block because I have a 1905 sphinx Singer machine that I rescued from a rainy garage sale for 5$ a few years ago.  It sits in my sewing room now as a piece of sewing history.  It's beat up and rusty and has no monetary value, but it's beautiful to me and I'm so glad it's represented here.

My inspiration piece.
This poor guy was just rusting away in the rain and needed someone to take it home.
I was happy to oblige!

The first block (and the remaining blocks, from what I can see) is super cute, but definitely quick and easy.  My husband came up to hang out in the sewing room just as I was finishing another block and cleaning up, and I thought I'd start this as a quick project while he was there.  The 6-inch block took me about 30 minutes, and that included picking out fabric.  The hardest part was choosing a thread color for the top of the machine, so I had to have my daughter pick for me.  I think she picked well.

I absolutely love that Jennifer included both a 12" and a 6" block option to make our lives easier.  I'm making the small blocks (and to be honest, I probably should have reduced it a titch more) because I have so little available wall space in my sewing room.  I am even considering making this a 9-block quilt and just picking my favorite of the available options, so we will see how that pans out.

You can find the information for the January block here, and the pattern over at Craftsy.

Autumn mini quilt

It's hardly a triumphant return, but I have finally finished my first post-move project: a little Autumn mini quilt.  I gave it as a host/hostess gift to my husband's cousins, who generously hosted our whole crazy clan for Thanksgiving.

The finished project.  The quilt measures approximately 16"x44".

I had hoped to be back in the sewing room long before now, but we had a nightmare move that took months to completely sort out.  Before we were packed up, I did a total overhaul of my crafting room and organized everything in to labeled tins and totes.  I had the movers label every box by room and area within that room so our unpacking job would be easier at the next house.  The company who moved us in to the new house, however, was awful.  When I saw my studio after the movers left, I could have cried.  They had dumped out boxes from a half dozen different rooms in the middle of the floor, and there was a pile halfway to the ceiling of craft supplies, garage tools, children's clothes, bathroom items, and more.  Tins of tiny materials were dumped out and scattered, and my sewing machine and embroidery machines were on their sides or upside down and covered with heavy things.  As we sorted through the house, I tried to take care of the important things first, which meant sewing went by the wayside.  It didn't help that both my sewing machine and embroidery machine were broken.  I managed fix the former, but I can't work on my PoD until I get the embroidery machine realigned.  Good thing I have a ton of Christmas gifts to work on in the meantime!

Acorn pattern by Claudia Hasenbach.

This free acorn pattern is courtesy of Claudia Hasenbach, and is available from craftown.com.  The original size was 3"x4", but I blew it up to a 12" square block for my quilt.  It pieced easily and beautifully, and would be a great starter block.  In the original size, it would make really cute corner squares for an autumn quilt.  You can see here that I did a bit of a meandering pattern with a few gentle swirls mixed in.  This was my first time doing a large, all-over pattern on a quilt, and while my arms ached afterward and I can see some errors, I am pretty proud of my quilting progress to date.

I love this squirrel, in a soft patterned red.

The squirrel was not in my original quilt plan, but I just didn't have time to do the block I had wanted to do.  I made four acorns in order to make a second quilt for myself later, and on my quilt I will be using Sewing Under Rainbow's free Maple Fox pattern as the center block.  I have my fabrics all picked out for him and had hoped to do one for this quilt as well.  When I realized I had to do a rush block, however, I decided to applique a different fall critter instead of paper piecing.  I cut this squirrel on my Cricut using an image from the Folk Art Festival cartridge.  It's one of the cartridges I use the most for a variety of projects.  To cut applique shapes on the Cricut, I simply iron fusible interfacing to the fabric and put the fabric on the mat, backing paper and all.  Once cut, I remove it from the mat, peel the backing paper off, and iron as usual.

Orange quilty packages tied up with string ...

The beautiful thing about mini quilts is that they practically gift wrap themselves.  I simply rolled it up and tied it with a pretty ribbon.  This backing is funny; I bought it in the store because I loved it, then when I got it home, I couldn't figure out how to use it in a quilt without it looking strange.  I think it just screamed "background fabric" to me, and I love how it looks there.  In the interest of time, I did a cheater binding using the backing, and I love the little pop of orange on the front of the quilt.

Thanksgiving table with a mini quilt centerpiece.  

The quilt served as a lovely centerpiece to this beautiful Thanksgiving table.  We had a great holiday with great family and I came back tired, happy, and refreshed for the Christmas season.  In the next couple of weeks I will be sharing primarily Christmas projects as I finish them, but I will be continuing to work on my Game of Thrones quilt patterns as well.  I have sent the full pattern pack to several people who needed to finish their quilts before Christmas, and if you need a copy, I'm happy to oblige.

Throne Thursdays: Tyrell

Good news and great news today!  First, I am slowly chugging away on these Game of Thrones blocks.  A Christmas finish may be in sight!  Also, my husband was able to save all the information from my broken computer, found me a 5 TB backup hard drive so I have no excuse to skip backing up the computer again, and made my computer faster and better than before.  That means within the next few weeks, all my patterns will be getting fixed up and posted, either for testing or to Craftsy if already tested.

Now to balance that out with some bad news (for me, at least):  I will be taking a break from these and all other sewing projects until about mid-August.  We will be moving and sadly, my sewing machine and I will have to part ways until we have our new house.  I may get a few more PoD embroideries done in the next week, but there are no guarantees.

But tonight, I get to share a block.  Today's block is the Tyrell sigil.

Tyrell sigil.

I thought this would be more difficult to piece than it was.  It was a little time-consuming because it has something like 11 sections to piece.  Only a few pieces actually needed to meet up at specific points, so there wasn't much worry about matching points.  I'm fairly happy with how it lined up in the end.  This is maybe a 3/5 for difficulty, if you're good at matching up sections.

Everything lined up!

You can download the Tyrell pattern here.

Allyssa (Instagram:  @jirismama) finished up this block as well.  Here is Allyssa's block:

Photo by Allyssa; used by permission.

I just had to lay out what I had completed so I could see them all together so far, and I am totally in love.  Baelish isn't in there because I cannibalized it for the green fabric in my Tyrell block, but I will be redoing that one soon.  I can't wait to see these all with black sashing and the embroidered logo on top.  Almost halfway there!

Completed blocks so far.  I am loving these fabrics together!

Harry Potter Project of Doom "Quilt-Behind": Week 18

I haven't been able to do a lot of embroidery the last couple of days, because we are slowly recovering and backing up 1.3 MILLION files from my dead hard drive, leaving the laptop pretty well occupied and covered in wires.  It has been an expensive and lengthy process, but the good news is that all my family photos have been recovered, as well as all my patterns I had developed but not yet tested.  That makes for one happy mom and designer.  :)

Even so, I wanted to get a little something done today, so I finished up half of what will be my block 18.  I actually took the peacock quill and ink bottle from the block 15 pattern, but I have other big plans for block 15, and I wanted the peacock quill somewhere.

Peacock quill and magical ink.

Finding this peacock quill fabric was a total fluke.  I happened to be walking past it at JoAnn, and I thought I remembered a quill in one of the patterns.  Even though I would probably never pick this fabric for anything else ever, it really spoke to me for this particular block.

Close-up of peacock fabric.  It's a little psychedelic.

I went for somewhat plain greens and purples for the rest of the feather.  I'm fairly happy with how it turned out.

Our magical ink.

My daughter and I had a hard time deciding on ink bottle fabrics.  She wanted it to be rainbow ink, but the one fabric I had was going to detract from the quill fabric.  We went through my TARDIS cookie jar scrap stash and she found this black with stars and swirls.  We figured that looked like pretty magical ink and would show up well against the natural background.  We went with grey on top because a clear or light color wouldn't show up too well.  I think it looks like the ink is dripping back down into the bottle this way.  I'm not really happy with how it lined up on the left, but it was more important to me that the quill point lined up perfectly, so I think this is good enough.  I'm actually considering appliqueing some drops of ink coming down the side of the bottle later to cover that.

To finish this block, I am actually going to include the potion bottle book variation from block 18.  I got some small potion labels free from Spoonflower when they had a free swatch promotion, and it had tons of little potion labels on it.  I'm going to applique one of those on the book for fun.

Mostly invisible Invisible Book of Invisibility.

I worked on one other fun project today: my Invisible Book of Invisibility.  To make this one, I used clear, monofilament embroidery thread and the alphabet function on the embroidery machine.  I embroidered the book name directly on to my background fabric.

Look what a little monofilament thread can do!

To make it stand out more, this one is going to go under the horizontal stack of books on the Snitch block.  Hopefully it will make it look like the books on top of it are floating, drawing your eye to the empty space and title.

I am also super stoked about some fabric that showed up in the mail today:

Mermaid stained glass fabrics.  These really inspired me when I saw them!

These are slotted for my seventh(!) row on my bookshelf, where I will include the mermaid stained glass designed by Michelle Thompson.  It's available on the Fandom in Stitches Harry Potter page.  The fabric on the right will be the background, and I'm going to add an extra border of the fish fabric.  I have plenty of this, so I will be adding some of this to my book spine/magical item fabric giveaway.

Speaking of which, you can still enter the giveaway!  I've extended it by a week and will draw a winner on Monday.  Just leave me a comment letting me know that you would like some fabric for your PoD ... or any other project you might be working on.  :)  I have two entrants right now, and if I don't receive any more, I will add a bunch of fabric and split the pile between you two lovely ladies!

Harry Potter Project of Doom "Quilt-Behind": Week 25

I really enjoyed this week's block.  I had wanted my quilt to have an embroidery pattern I found on Etsy with the major spells of the Harry Potter world, but I wasn't sure how to include it.  When Jennifer posted this week's block, I knew it was the perfect spot.  Since I left my book open, my spells are escaping!  I accidentally put the tops of the words right up at the top of the block without much room for seam allowance, but I think it will look like they are crashing into the shelf above when I assemble the quilt, so I'm pretty content.

This is the finished block:

Open book block.

It's not exactly square, but because I have altered some of the blocks (for example; I widened the book on the left to accommodate more of the unicorn), I will pair it up with another block that was a little over to even it out.  When I assemble the quilt, I will add a book to each shelf to make them match up in width.  To fit the spells above the book, I had to extend the book cover on the left by about a quarter of an inch.  That wouldn't drive me nuts so bad if it weren't perfectly even on the other side, but I think I'm going to make a polyjuice felty potion bottle to sit right there to cover it up.

Harry Potter spell embroidery.  Pattern by embroideryquotes on Etsy.

I got this amazing Harry Potter spells embroidery pattern from embroideryquotes on Etsy.  I haven't done a great job of trimming up all the stray threads, but I love the way it turned out.  I did have to resize it slightly smaller to fit my hoop, and I used a cotton thread, so there were a few thread breaks.  Nothing too dramatic, though.  Even so, it must have been meant to be, because I got it all stitched up and almost perfectly placed on my first try.

I'm glad I bought lots of this aged book page fabric ...
there are a lot of books in this quilt!

I am using this fabric on all my books that have pages.  It looks like it blends in with the natural background, but there's actually a decent difference between them in real life.  I love that it adds a touch of text without being full of in-your-face words.  It was hard to choose between this book and the dragon eggs variation, but I think the dragon eggs will end up under my bookshelf when I assemble the quilt.

Far Far Away by Windham Fabrics.  This unicorn reminds
me a bit of illustrations in The Phantom Tollbooth.

I adore this fabric, and I got quite a bit of it so I could use some in the girls' new room after we move.  It's from Windham Fabrics and it is the "Far Far Away" line.  Really pretty, whimsical fabrics.

Speaking of fabrics, don't forget to go check out our giveaway post here.  There are no entries yet, so your chances are astronomically good.  ;)  And I may just continue to add more book spine fabrics until we have some entrants, so this giveaway will continue to get better over time.  Head on over and make sure you're in on the fun!

Harry Potter Project of Doom "Quilt-Behind": Week 21 ... and a giveaway!

I was really excited when Jennifer put out a new Sorting Hat block for week 21 of the PoD, and I just had to jump ahead.  I'm trying to work on the blocks as they inspire me, instead of trying to stick to an order or a strict schedule.  It's keeping the fun alive, rather than making this a chore.

This is my crazy fabulous (I know it's narcissistic, but I'm SO proud of this one!) block for the week:

Crookshanks and the Sorting Hat.

I already had the perfect fabric for my Sorting Hat, because my mom had given me about a half yard of soft, cotton-thin suede after making my sister some Link gloves for Comicon.  It sewed up beautifully and pressed nicely.  I was concerned because I knew nothing about the care instructions for this fabric, so I used a pressing cloth and only pressed for a second on low heat, just to set the crease.  This suede may actually end up being the bottom layer of my Monster Book of Monsters as well, but I'll be adding fur on top.

My Sorting Hat.

The same day the pattern was released I had to run to JoAnn for a Girl Scout project, and I thought I would check through the oranges to see what they had for Crookshanks.  They had about a million fat quarters of this perfect orange swirly fabric that I thought would make a perfect long cat fur.  This is one of those semi-directional fabrics, where there's a basic direction (up and down in this case), but no one will notice if it's slightly awry.  I'm pretty happy with how I got the fabric to line up.  The fabric really shines on his bottlebrush tail.

I used the embroidery machine to add the results of my sorting session.  I'm not doing a heavily Ravenclaw-themed PoD except for my wallpaper around the outside, but it's 100% my house and I did want a couple of little nods to it throughout.

If Crookshanks gets lost, he'll make it back home with his personalized pet tag.

Then came my favorite part: the tag for Crookshanks!  I was looking at one of those nitpicky little areas where Crookshanks and the hat meet up in a corner, and lamenting the fact that it was a smidge off and was going to drive me nuts for years.  I thought, "Gosh (yep, I'm a dork in my head, too), I wish there was something I could put there to hide that.  Like a cat tag."  Like.  A.  CAT TAG!  I could almost literally feel the light bulb going off above my head.  Within minutes I had ordered a 2$ cat tag that says "Crookshanks" on the top line and "Hermione Granger" on the bottom.  When it arrived, I stitched it on like you would a button, and it feels totally secure.  I absolutely love that little detail.

Eventually I will be embroidering some whiskers on Crookshanks, but those kinds of additions will come near the end, when I don't have so much piecing to do.

I'm so excited to be making progress on the PoD, and I want to help you get there too!  I have a giveaway for you to enter, with the chance to win some fabrics for your PoD.  I have some fun book spine fabrics, a fat quarter of the Crookshanks fabric, and a large piece of some speckled brown and green fabric that I plan on using for my Trevor when he comes along.  I will draw names from any entrants on my birthday, June 22.  You can see the fabrics you can win below:

Crookshanks and Trevor fabric.

Some fabrics for your book spines.  I especially love Alexander Henry's "The Ghastlies" print on the left.

Just leave a comment letting me know where you're at in your process or how you would use these fabrics!

Supernatural bullet

I think I mentioned yesterday that I had some people testing out patterns that I have drafted but not yet tested.  I feel really blessed to have them come along because I just don't have time to test all my own patterns, but I hate to see them languishing on my computer.

You might recall that a year ago some time back, I posted 16 Supernatural patterns available for testing.  Foxfire over at Needle of Sewing +3 (is that not the most amazing name for a sewing blog ever?!) has just tested out my Supernatural bullet pattern, so that one is ready to be submitted to Fandom in Stitches.  Right now she's working on the demon tablet, but that one is pretty embroidery-heavy and will probably take a while.

Here's the computer-generated image:

The computer-generated image.  It's poor quality because I had to steal it from my own pattern thanks to my computer going on strike.  :)

And here's her completed block!  I'll link up to her blog posting once it's published.  In the meantime, go check out Foxfire's Finger Paint blog ... lots of cute ideas for nail art there.  If I had any skill in painting my fingernails, I would definitely be trying some out.

Foxfire's completed block.  Photo used by permission.

This is a quick, easy pattern, and a great addition to your Supernatural quilt.  It might even be fun to make a bunch of these in a smaller size as quilt cornerstones.

You can download the pattern here for right now.  I will submit it to Fandom in Stitches and Craftsy soon.

Throne Thursdays: Lannister

It has been a very long week, spent preparing a million party supplies, dozens of goody bags, and food.  I had a temporary break with reality about a month ago and scheduled two parties for the same weekend: a Minecraft birthday party for my daughter, and a fancy tea party for my Girl Scout troop.  Quick, someone smack me upside the head!

However, I still made time for sewing, so I'm proud of myself.  I got a really fun block completed for the Project of Doom that I will share next week, and I got my Lannister block done for my husband's Game of Thrones Quilt.

The computer-generated image.

This block took me a bit longer than the rest, but mostly because it had more sections.  There were a few funny angles, but nothing outrageous.  I'd probably rate it about a 3/5 for difficulty.

My finished block!

His chin area isn't lined up perfectly, but he's got a mane so I don't think it's all that noticeable.  The colors are much more vibrant than they show here.  I get so excited when I finish a block, I get right to photodocumenting it without fixing my camera settings.  Maybe some day I will grow up and become a real blogger, but until then, it is what it is.  :)

I can't wait to see this as part of the completed quilt.

You can download the pattern here.  I will list it on Craftsy once we get a new hard drive for my computer, since the old one is toast.

I now have someone testing my Game of Thrones blocks along with me, which is super exciting!  I always enjoy seeing my patterns done up on someone else's fabric with their own special touches.  Allyssa will be stitching along with me, and I will be sharing those pictures as I receive them.  Here is the Baelish block, in a fun chevron print:

Allyssa's Baelish block.  I love the green!

I received my new, so-much-better grey fabric in the mail today, so I'm hoping to redo my Baelish block and finish up Tully this week.  Then it's on to Tyrell and Baratheon ... if I survive the weekend, of course.  Wish me luck!

Throne Thursday: Baelish

So there's bad news, and there's good news.

The bad news is, my computer is currently sporting the blue screen of death.  It's like the cherry on top of the sundae of suckage this week.  I've narrowed it down to an issue with the battery or the fan, so replacements are on the way.  In the meantime, I'm working on the kids' computer, which requires installing all of the programs I need to share my patterns.  It's funny how nothing will remind you that you never back up your files quite like your computer breaking down.

The good news is, I had just emailed the Game of Thrones pattern pack to a tester, so I was able to pull it up on this computer from my email.  Today's pattern is the Baelish sigil.

The computer-generated image.

This pattern is incredibly simple to piece.  I would probably rate it at a 2/5, only because I think a 1/5 should be a true beginner pattern, preferably with few to no sections to put together.  But you can stitch this one up really fast, and the pattern is really versatile and doesn't have to be related to Game of Thrones.

The real deal.

I'm not actually happy with the color combination.  I thought I would try it out since this was the only green and grey I had that wasn't heavily floral, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to redo this block after a quick trip to the fabric store.  At least it is tested and ready to go!

The Baelish sigil.

Then again, I think I love that green.  It's just that polka dot silver that needs to go.  I'd love to find a nice tonal to replace it with.

Since my Martell block got such a crummy picture last week, I thought I would try to get a better one to show it off.  It didn't work out too well, but here it is, in some of its glory:

Martell block.

I've decided that because the quilt will naturally be so colorful, I'm going to reuse a lot of my fabrics throughout the different blocks.  When I find a grey I like, it will be the Baelish bird, the Tully trout, and the Arryn eagle.  That same red from the Martell block will be showing up as the Targaryen dragon and the background of the Lannister sigil.  I'm hoping that will lend some consistency and connection to the quilt.

My progress so far!  They are colorful, but I think they will all work out together.

Right now you can download the pattern here, but it won't be available on Craftsy until my other computer is up and running.  I will update the posting as soon as I have it listed there.

Side note:  I just came across this Ministry of Magic pattern by liljabs.  It looks simple and fun, and I have a feeling I may take a breather from my PoD and GoT and knock this one out this weekend.  Head on over and check it out!