Portland Modern Quilt Guild BOM 2013 - "Finished"

I finally got around to finishing the block of the month for last year.  The last two blocks were a rough finish...

I did NOT do the curved seams (after 8, I kid you not, 8 attempts...thank God for applique)

 
And I miscut half of the pieces for the last block...3 hours later...

So I got the blocks laid out...

 

I decided to make the blocks 16.5" inches, so the quilt would be a little bigger.  Originally, I chose a Michael Miller Hearse print as my border, but after I got the block assembled, the hearse fabric was just "meh." 

So I opted for cheesy monster movies!

 Now it's off to Frances for quilting, and it'll sit in the binding pile until I feel like binding it.  Probably in gray.  Another one bites the dust! (except for binding...)

PMQG Block of the Month: January - April

So the first third of the blocks for the Block of the Month I'm doing with the Portland Modern Quilt Guild is complete.  The point of the program is to make one block for yourself, and one for charity.  For the charity blocks, we can do "black, white and a splash of color," "scrappy" or "ROYGBIV."

For my charity blocks, I chose to do the black, white and a splash of color.  Honestly, I didn't think to take pictures of these blocks, but I have been changing up the splash of color each month. 

For my blocks, I also chose to do the black, white and a splash of color, buuuuuut I chose a theme...and it should not be surprising at all to anyone reading this blog.  Yes indeed, my Block of the Month is Halloween themed.  Hey now, this girl can never, ever have too many Halloween quilts!

So I grabbed all of my Halloween themed black and white prints, and I've been tossing in splashes of orange, green, purple and pink, with the intention of using my Michael Miller hearse fabric.

Hearse fabric. I like the touch of morbid humor, with the little casket bouncing out of the back.

So here are my blocks thus far...

 January 

This block was tricky for me because my brain did NOT want to think of this in tube format, which is how it was initially assembled and which is why not all my prints are right side up. I just figure the skeletons have been listening to too much Lionel Ritchie and started dancing on the ceiling.

February

I initially was going to just keep it to purple, orange and green, but I had this bright pink and orange geometric and I thought it'd be fun to pop in there.  

March

Not going to lie, I'm going to use a LOT of that bat print because it is my absolute favorite.  The green is much more of a bright, borderline neon green instead of the kind of bluish green it shows here.

April

This is when I wish I had a better camera than just my cell phone camera.  The pink is much more similar to the bright pink from February instead of the bubble gummish pink in the picture.  Also, the strip in the middle isn't burgundy, it is a really rich deep purple more similar to the purple from February as well, and the spots are a bright pink.  In person, it is much more cohesive than this crappy picture shows.  Someday when I am rich and famous I will have better equipment to take better pictures with.

I am SO impatient, I can't wait to get the other 2/3 of the blocks done so I can see what the whole thing will looks like...but that won't be until December!

Offset Triangles: A Hate-Hate Relationship

Whelp, I resurrected a creature from the deep...my Kaye England Block of the Month from two-ish years ago.  Some folks remember this quilt as the one I changed all the colors on in class, and got super behind on and they wanted to see it done and I wanted to see it burn.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the project and the colors but uh...let's just say my patience with getting stymied by techniques requiring superhuman precision is embarrassingly short.  Hey, at least I admit it, right?  That has to count for something.

So. Offset triangles are thee devil. Mom is so very wrong...my seventh level of hell isn't chickens (long story), it's a project with offset triangles in it.  Think I'm kidding?  Check out this entry from 2011.  This time, ironing isn't the problem...yes, this rookie cookie finally broke the press-not-iron code.  It's the quarter inch on the ends.  Somewhere, I am massively screwing it up despite my diligent (I swear!) measuring, pinning, careful stitching and pressing-not-ironing...because it's looking like a damn staircase. 

Of course, when I looked online for a half decent tutorial on prepping and sewing offset triangles, I got directed to engineering websites and sewing equilateral triangles.  Well, both of those help me exactly not at all, because I am sewing the squatty isosceles variety and as my brain is pretty busted in the math department, I can't seem to extrapolate the procedure.  Someone needs to get on writing up a tute for that...I'd do it but I am the absolutely wrong person for the job.

This looks like a quilt for another day.  Maybe it'll be done by the time I'm 30 (fat chance, I'm staring down the wrong side of my 20s)

Why yes, I WILL be doing this.

A Lord of the Rings themed Block of the Month. For free. YES PLEASE.

Block 1 is Gandalf. Puh-LEASE let there be a Gimli block in there. "Toss me...but don't tell the Elf!"
Yes, yes, yes. I know my geek is showing.

CLICK HERE for this little nugget of quilt geek heaven at "Fandom in Stitches."

Someone stop me before I put myself in stitches!

Hehe, well, if you can't laugh at yourself, well then, what are we doing here?

Anyway, cheesy joke and puns aside, for the whopping ZERO anythings I did in April, I'm making up for it in May...right? I'd like to think so! I finished another project and I have to admit, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It needs a little lot of squaring up, but I think when it's all said and done it's going to be a neat, ample sized wall hanging.

The original pattern is this:

I mean, it's cute, right? The display picture knew the way to my heart - it had a big ol' chocolate cake on it. I knew I had to make it! It was a match made in my stomach. But I looked at the colors it was asking for, and I looked at the picture and it's so sweet, so darling, so pretty...and so not me at all. to me, the colors are very nice but pretty blah. So I put the ol' Lauren spin on it. Because that's what I'm calling it.

Reds, oranges, golds...are you seeing a trend here? lol. Who'da thunk that my favorite color is purple, because I sure don't use it a whole lot. But this time I thought to put a zing-a-roonie of green in there. It's in the African ladies fabric, and quite honestly, I reaallllllllly love that border fabric and I'll pretty much take any excuse I can to use it in whatever I can.

As usual, the random color choosing was difficult (ask my roomate, I had all 54 pieces spread all over the living room floor, and I kept interrupting The Daily Show to ask her opinion on color placement) but it happened. I'm not too thrilled with that coin-gold in there once I got it in, but there's nooooo way in hell I'm going to take it all apart and replace it. So. I'm just ignoring it and letting the green take over.

This picture is not so great, but the lighting wasn't either. One of these days I have to invest in a for real, no joke camera. My birthday is in September...hmmm ;) Anyway, the green is quite a bit darker than shown here, but the point is the African ladies. Aren't they beautiful? I love this fabric. Considering my Anthropological background (God, it sounds pretentious doesn't it? I hate saying stuff like that but for this it's just what it is)  and the fact that my advisor was legitimately African, cultural stereotypes like this in art set me a little on edge but not enough to stop enjoying them or using them in my quilts. So, hoity-toity academia...I just got 2 words for ya :)

So I have a new quilt in the works and one more that all it needs are its dang borders (I know, I'm slacking in a mjor way on that quilt...I've had it since what, January?)...the latter, guess what, is in oranges and reds and browns and golds...Someone stop me! I need to do a blue quilt or something. Just the thought of that though completely un-motivates me. The new one is black and red and orange and yellow and purple and blue...but I'm really stepping out of my box and the focal fabric has bright, big ol' chickens on it. Seriously. I don't like chickens in decor. No offense to those of you who appreciate the occasional non-edible chicken in the kitchen but it's seriously not at all my thing. So, at least I'm branching out there!

It's Second Saturday this weekend, so the store will be a madhouse. But it's a new Block of the Month, so it should be fun! Hope to see some of y'all there :D



Dang you, offset triangles! Dang you all to heck! Hee hee.

If you know me, then you know (probably all too well) that when it comes to quilting and Blocks of the Month, I'm one of those pain in the arse-y people who is simply incapable of following the pattern. No, no, no. I always have to change SOMETHING...usually color, so it's no biggie, but kind of when you have to try and match your color choices to what the pattern calls for. So, before I show you what I (tried to do) did, I''ll show you what I SHOULD have done:

This is Kaye England's English Pathway's 6 Month Block of the Month program. I'm not a floral kind of girl, but even I have to admit, this quilt is gorgeous and a computer picture simply doesn't do it justice - the turquoise in there? Fuhgeddaboutit. It's WONDERFUL. But like I said....I don't care for florals. So...

I did it THAT way. The center of the star is the line I pulled everything else from. I should know what that line is called...Crap...Well, we have it at the store, it's the super contemporary piece. Crud. Ah well, I credit my laspe in memory to it being 1 in the fetchin' morning and that I'm watching stand up comedy (LOVE). Bah. Anyway...that border of triangles in the quilt...from the first picture? Yeah. Those are the freaking DEVIL. They're offset, which in theory isn't difficult but toss that bias edge in there with someone who irons fabric until it's super dead...what a pain in the... So I'm still stuck on that part. And by "stuck" I mean, "I'm tired of freaking looking at those dang triangles."  But eventually this thing is going to go on my bed and I'll re-do my bedroom to kind of match it. Aw heck, who am I kidding? Yeah I will be re-painting the walls and doing a wall hanging to match. Seeing that in writing just reaffirms what a Type A I am sometimes. Yeesh. lol.