A Winner

Congratulations to Christina! She gets a copy of "Whip Up Mini Quilts".

Christina said...

We love that you are keeping the robot chickens coming but nice to see you around here too! I'd love to win that book. The unicorn is cracking me up!

Whip Up Mini Quilts (with giveaway!)

No, I'm not dead!  I'm alive and well and back to work on Robot Chicken season 5 and feeling pretty tired at the end of the day.  Sorry blog.
This may be old news by now but a couple of months ago the book "Whip Up Mini Quilts" by Kathreen Ricketson came out with an extra special pattern written by guess who!

My first ever published pattern!  This baby is pretty simple to sew and has a nifty little trick to make piecing the random diagonal strips easy as you know what without using templates or planning anything out too meticulously.  I don't like meticulous planning.

In addition to this wonderful pattern, the book is full of great ideas, plus tons of info that would be useful to any beginning quilter, no matter what size quilt you're looking to make.

I am able to giveaway one copy of this great book, courtesy of the publisher Chronicle Books.  If you'd like to enter just leave a comment on this post by midnight (PST) August 2 which is next Monday.  I'll announce a winner on Tuesday!

More nerditude

We went to the Apple store and after touching one it was pretty hard to resist.

And you can't have a slick new iPad without a nice little sleeve to protect it. Mine was 100% inspired by this sleeve, same as the nerd quilt.
Harv's is made from the sleeves and neckband from one of his many many Packer jerseys, one he was willing to part with.

PS The iPad is awesome.

iNerds

I'm married to one of them.

A year and a half ago Harv didn't own a single Apple product.  He was stubbornly clinging to his past as a PC user and refused to give up his brick-like, 8 year old mp3 player (I think it was one of the first ones ever made).  Then I gave him an iPhone for Christmas and a love affair began.  A few months later when his laptop died he made the switch to a MacBook.  Then he finally realized there were mp3 players out there that didn't weigh 5 pounds and he bought an iPod.  His affections quickly snowballed and now he is one half of a little something called the North Hollywood Classic Mac Collectors Club.  I could try to explain what exactly they do but I think this sums it up quite nicely:

"Mission Statement: Collect Macs, Use Macs, Earn Friendships, Go to Thrift Stores, Explore Options"

About once a week, Harv meets up with the club's only other member and they while away the hours cleaning, fixing and playing with old Macintosh computers, most of which have been collected from thrift stores or Craig's List.

Now I love my iPhone and all but I have had no desire to get in on this action.  Until, that is, I came across this great iPad sleeve on Flickr.  I couldn't resist.

I made this as a gift for the club.  The apple is pieced into the background fabric using the 6-minute circle technique, slightly modified.

I traced the letters onto some lightweight fusible interfacing and ironed that to the back of the black fabric, cut them out, then machine appliqued them on.

As you saw yesterday, I made the label by using my laptop as a lightbox.  I swear to you, no harm came to my computer screen!  And even if a little bit of marker did make it onto the screen, a little rubbing alcohol would fix that right up.

And here it is in it's new home, surrounded by Macs of yesteryear.

Just so you fully understand the extent of the nerdiness here are some more shots of the club's collection.

 And some Mac art.

Labeling (part 2)

What do you do when you're lightbox has gone to bed for the night?

This is another trick I learned from Wendy, the queen of quilt labels.  A lightbox for the lightboxless.

Labeling

Today I've been working on the back for the baby quilt from my last post.  I'm trying to make a concerted effort to label all of my quilts, at very least the ones that are gifts.  My friend Wendy, the secretary for the LA Modern Quilt Guild, gave a very entertaining yet informative talk on the importance of labeling your quilts at a recent guild meeting.  She actually had a family member leave a quilt on a plane that was later returned because it was so well labeled.  That's pretty impressive.

For this quilt I'm using a technique I learned from Wendy.  I picked a nice font, typed up my label and printed it on paper.  Then, because I don't have a lightbox like Wendy, I used nature's lightbox (the sun) and taped the paper to my window with the label fabric on top of it and traced the text.  I used a micron pen (they're waterproof), then heat set it with my iron.

I love that it almost looks printed, just enough to mess with your head, but so much neater than my regular handwriting!

Chain Piecing

First, a work in progress:

This one really will be given to a baby, I swear.  I'm not going to keep it, like the dots.

Second, I thought I would show you how to do something called chain piecing.  I'm sure most of you know how to do this already.  In fact you could quite possibly be doing it without knowing that it's called chain piecing.  It's a handy little trick that makes piecing a quilt top go faster and more efficiently.  I love tricks like this.  I like to be efficient.  A lot.

This is a good trick to use when you're piecing two or more sets of something, the simplest example being multiple rows of a quilt.

For this quilt I'm piecing together each column, starting on the left and piecing from the bottom to the top.
The whole idea of chain piecing is to allow yourself to keep sewing without cutting the thread after each seam.  To do this you piece together two or more rows at a time.  I'm starting with my first two columns.  The stacks on the left are in the order that I want to piece them.  We'll call them stack A (on top) and stack B (on the bottom).  To the right are the first two pieces from each stack that I'll be sewing together.


First, sew together the two pieces from stack A.  When you're done DON'T CUT THE THREAD!  Just leave it there, sitting pretty.


Then take the first two pieces from stack B (I know these are different than in the first photo, that's my mistake.  Nobody's perfect, right?) and sew them together.   Again, don't cut the thread.


Now I've got the first two columns connected but I'm ready for another piece from stack A.  So, I just snip the little bit of thread between the two, leaving the second pair still on the machine.


And voila, I'm sewing on a third piece from stack A.


That's done, snip B off the back, leaving A on the machine.


Ready to sew another block onto B.


You're just leap-frogging between A and B, snipping off the end of the chain and bringing it to the front.  In theory you could do this with all of your rows at once, it just might get a little confusing trying to keep straight all of those piles and what row goes with what.  I will do it with three stacks though, especially on a quilt like this with an odd number of columns.  I don't want that last column to be left all by his lonesome with no one to be chained to.

I'm going whole-assed.

**Update: Sorry, the link wasn't working.  It's fixed now!**

That's right!  Gone are the days of half-assed, slacker tutorials!  No more will you be left with unanswered questions because I simply didn't feel like taking more pictures or writing out proper instructions.  Never again will you be puzzled by fabric requirements!*

I have for you today, free of charge, a bonafide, whole-assed PDF quilt pattern, complete with color diagrams and all of the information you need to make your very own Leo Baby Quilt.
Download it HERE.
With any luck, this will just be the beginning.  I've got plans, internet, and they include you!  So I hope you like the pattern.  Please let me know if you have any questions!


*Just kidding.  I'm totally going to continue to give you half-assed tutorials.  I'm just going to try to mix in some grown-up patterns while I'm at it.

Hexagonia

It's a disease.  Where you just want to sew hexagons.  I think a lot of people have it.  I don't.

At least I didn't until I figured out a way to piece hexagons with my machine as opposed to fiddly little English paper piecing.  Hand piecing is just not for me.  I've tried it, it's ok, I just can't keep it up for the long haul.
And so:

This is a Bee block for the queen of solids, Latifah, of LAMQG fame.

Would you like to try?  If so, I've got some treats for you!

Number 1, presenting the first ever Lady Harvatine instructional video:




I'm sorry that things aren't totally in focus the entire time.  I'll do better next time.

Treat number two is a pdf file of hexagon templates.  You can print and cut out 4", 3" and 2" hexagons, all with a 1/4" seam allowance included.

Download the pdf file here.

I hope the video is clear enough.  Please ignore my horribly ragged finger nails.
Let me know if you have any questions!

I am...

...in South Carolina, visiting my parents,

and working on this family heirloom with my mom.  I'll share more when I get back!