Electric Quilt – Page 3 – Kelly's Kwilts

Design Wall Monday

Well, I’m making progress! I’m now working on the final row before adding the scrappy border. I have the 6 remaining flowers done, I’m prepping the rest of the white I need to finish the row. I’m hoping to start on the border by the end of the week.

I’ve been asked to teach EQ7 at Amherst library again, this time instead of doing 2 classes (beginner and advanced) we are just doing 1 class. I need to start looking at the manual and learning all the new stuff! I haven’t had time to do much with it lately, but I have it on my mac using a free virtual software, so I can start working on the lessons while Alex plays!

Head on over to Judy’s to see what everyone else is up to!

Still flying along!

I really have been flying on this hexagon quilt. I’d say I’m just about halfway done and I’ve only been working on it for 2.5 weeks! I was surfing today while I was stitching some pieces together and found an interesting website with the History of Hexagons. I also saw a picture that gave me a great idea for the border, and no, I’m not telling until I have it designed out in EQ and know for sure that’s what I’m doing. I still haven’t decided how big I want to go with this, but I do know I want to try hand quilting it. I was thinking about making a small flower – maybe with 2 rings around the center hexi – and hand quilting that first before I start on the whole quilt. I still want to take a class on hand quilting, but I don’t know if and when that will happen. I forgot to post the picture the other day of the pile of 2.5″ squares I cut with my Accuquilt Go, so I’ve posted that below along with the current status of the top – I can’t wait to get more done!

DSCN0293 — Pile of 2.5" Squares cut with Accuquilt Go

DSCN0295 — Hexagon quilt status 02-24-12

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about blogging and something bothers me. You don’t know if anyone is actually reading it or if you are really just talking to yourself! I know my hubby reads this, because it’s in his RSS feeds and he mentions it all the time, “I see you blogged today”. But I don’t know if anyone else is reading this or not. I don’t seem to get any comments, which makes me think either I’m not interesting, or no one is reading. Oh well, it is what it is I guess.

Wow I’m flying!

Was it only Tuesday I posted about starting my hexagon quilt? I cannot believe how much I have done already! I’m using red centers for the flowers and scrappy around that center. White in between each flower. I have 9 flowers done, 7 of them almost all put together. Putting this much together allowed me to pull some of the templates out and I can work on getting more flowers together. I’m hoping (weather permitting) to go to Joann’s tomorrow and get some fat quarters – white for sure and possibly some colors – even though I have a bunch of squares all ready to go. A few years ago one of my friends gave me a gift certificate for Accuquilt, and I haven’t used it yet. I think I’m going to get the 2.5″ square die which will cut out 9 squares per layer at once. It’ll be so much faster doing it that way instead of using the value die that came with my Go that only cuts 1 per layer at a time. It’ll also help when I decide to go back to my other hand piecing quilt project with the 4 patches.

I didn’t mention it the other day, but I never made it to the guild sew-in last month. I spent the morning of the 26th prepping Star Crazy and making my pillow case contribution. By the time Alex got up I wasn’t feeling very well and had a fever! Somehow I managed to get the flu and was sick until the following week. However, they are having another one this weekend and I already told hubby I needed to go. Have to figure out a way to start working on my projects!!!

Hoping to get up to the frame in a little bit to see how much I can get done on basting my mom’s turning twenty quilt. I had it almost done and discovered that there wasn’t enough backing fabric the way I had attached it to the frame. Had to take it all out and start over again. Since I’m using those red plastic tacks I need to get the off the backing so I can start again. Hoping to get that done soon so I can quilt the tumbler quilt for my sister – haven’t worked on that in a long time! I just went back to link to the post where I showed it and I haven’t taken a picture of it yet! I don’t feel like taking it out right now, but I’ll get a picture before it goes on the frame.

Batik Lap Quilt Finished!

I have finally finished the batik lap quilt. Since there were so many squares on this quilt I didn’t know how to quilt it. After a lot of pondering, I decided to print out a different design from my Quilting Designs software. I have volume 1 and 2 – but I do want all the rest! I had to pick 49 different designs from the software and it was not easy! Once I had all the designs picked out I printed each one on Floriani Stitch-n-Wash stabilizer, pinned it to the block I wanted it on and stitched away. Because I had so many designs from each category I pulled them into EQ and decided where each was going to be placed before I started stitching anything. This allowed me to play with placement and EQ7! It took me a couple weeks of serious work, but I finally got all 49 quilted. Once I got the binding on and washed it I found that the Stitch-n-wash was “stuck” under the quilting but all the rest was washed away. This resulted in me sitting for nights on end with tweezers and a lint roller picking the pieces out of my quilting. I didn’t mind so much since it meant I could easily sit in my husband’s office on the couch and talk to him while I worked on it. I’m glad that it’s completed and I can finally mark that one off the list!

Jelly Rolls

Ok, I know I don’t need to be starting ANOTHER project, but I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this jelly roll I bought a while ago. I’ve looked at many, many books and just haven’t found a pattern that I liked. I was thinking about it while I was out today, because I was listening to a podcast and she was talking about heart themed projects for Valentine’s Day. I’ve FINALLY decided on the project! I’m going to cut these strips into tumbler shapes and put it all together randomly. The blocks will use the full 2.5″ height so I should be able to use just about everything in the jelly roll. I have a template, but it’s for 2″ tumblers which was just too small. Below is the EQ drawing – no, it’s not colored correctly!

So anyway, now that I decided what I was going to do, I needed to figure out how big this was going to end up being and figure out the layout – how many rows and how many in each row? Off to EQ to try and figure it out! But I needed to know how much yardage there was in the jelly roll to make sure I was making it a realistic size. I could not find the yardage ANYWHERE on the web! So I finally decided to calculate it out myself! I know there is 36″ in a yard and these are 2.5″ strips. You can fit 14.4 strips in a yard of fabric. Most jelly rolls are 40 strips of fabric, so I can figure that there’s about 2.75 yards in my jelly roll. This made it easy for me to determine the right layout in EQ since it tells me how many yards of the fabric I need! The center of the quilt is 42 x 32 and I need 528 tumblers to make this quilt. Now to cut them all out!!!

The good news is that I also have a tub FULL of 2.5″ strips cut from old projects that I can make a totally scrappy one too! But first to use the jelly roll!!!!

On a roll

I am on a roll this week! I’ve finished 5 new DJ blocks this week! I am really very happy with the way the applique blocks are starting to turn out, I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it! Hope to get even more blocks done soon!

The biggest news this week is that I’ve been teaching! The Amherst Library has a mobile computer lab from the state for a couple of weeks and when the request went out to the guild, I said I’d be interested in teaching it. Today is my last class, 2 beginner and 2 advanced. Everyone is loving the class, and even ladies that have used it before said they’ve learned something new! I even think there are a few that will be upgrading to EQ6 soon! There is also a possibility that I may be teaching the same classes at another library in our area when they get the mobile lab, but I don’t know any details yet!