quilt

my very first quilt

December 30, 2012 10 Comments

Thanks to the Craftsy Block of the Month class, I learned how to quilt this year. Thursday night I finished my very first quilt! I am so very proud of myself! I’ve always wanted to learn how to quilt like my Mema and now I have.

I blogged about each block as I got them done each month. If you want to read about them individually you can check them out here: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October.

I learned how to make each block by watching the videos provided with the online class. Each block was pieced together on the machine (except the hexagon blocks – I did those by hand); I also used the machine to sew the blocks together with sashing in between and sew the back.

I then put the back, batting, and top together and basted the layers together using safety pins.

The quilting was done by hand and took FOREVER it seemed. Seriously, people who sell hand quilted quilts should make thousands for the amount of hours spent doing the quilting. Not to mention the callouses on the fingers, the many pricks of the needles, and the constantly-aching back. But those are all worth it! I actually really enjoyed hand quilting once I got the hang of it. I would have like it more if I hadn’t had myself on a deadline to get it done by the end of the year. It seemed that every spare moment of November and December was spent working on my quilt.

The binding was sewn on to the back of the quilt with the machine and then hand stitched down on the front.

I finished the quilt off my embroidering my name and the year on the back. I’d like to also label it so that I remember it was part of the Block of the Month Class and that it was my first quilt, but it was hard for me to embroider what I’ve already done so I may take a break for a while. It’s been probably 15 years since I’ve embroidered anything so the label on my quilt looks pretty bad, but at least it’s labeled.

I am so very proud of myself and I love my quilt!

By the way, if you want to learn how to quilt you can still participate in the Craftsy Block of the Month class – it’s free and the videos will be accessible past 2012. I’ve heard there will also be a class in 2013 if you’re interested in that one. However, that particular class doesn’t teach hand quilting so I watched a bunch of YouTube videos to teach myself (I didn’t keep the links and I watched so many that I can’t remember which ones I used).

Filed Under: sewing Tagged With: Block of the Month, Craftsy, quilt

High Five For Friday

December 28, 2012 Leave a Comment

Hi Friends – Happy Friday! I hope you’ve enjoyed your Christmas holidays and are looking forward to the New Year. I’ve been alternating between ultra-lazy and productive during my wonderful Christmas break :). Here are some happies today:

1. My quilt is finished! I just finished it last night and I couldn’t be more proud. Here’s a picture of one block in progress, but I’ll be posting pictures of the completed quilt later today or tomorrow.

2. I love watching gymnastics but in all the years I’ve watched I’ve never seen anything this amazing – some of the coolest stunts and most flexible people every! Check these girls out!

Source: youtube.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

3. I finally made a homemade apple pie to complete another item on my 2012 bucket list. I used this recipe and it turned out pretty well – I thought the crust was amazing but I think I should have cut the apples into smaller pieces.

4. Once Upon a Time. Obsessed. Michael got us a Netflix subscription as an early Christmas present – I’ve been tearing it up over these past few weeks as I’ve quilted for hours a day. One of the shows I’ve discovered is Once Upon a Time and I love it! Fairy tales meet current day…sounds wacko but it is so great!

5. Right before school let out we had a Mary Kay lady come to our school with a ton of clearance items. I got a bunch of great stuff, including eyeshadow duos for $.50 each, eyeliners and eye shimmers for $2.50 and more. I also got some new makeup for Christmas. The few times over the past week that I’ve actually gotten out of my jammies and put on makeup *hangs head in shame*, I’ve been having fun experimenting with some new makeup looks. I usually do the same thing over and over again so it’s fun to try something different.

And, it’s a little late, but Merry Christmas!

Linking up with Lauren

Filed Under: everything else Tagged With: High Five for Friday, Once Upon a Time, quilt

October block of the month

October 1, 2012 1 Comment

I’ve finished my October blocks of the month…which means I’m finished with all the blocks for my very first quilt! I’m so proud! This month we learned how to do paper piecing. Once I’d done one section and got the hang of it, it turned out to be so easy! I loved it! Paper piecing with a template was so much easier for me then trying to cut out precise shapes and then make sure to sew the seam not too narrow and not too wide. I’m definitely a fan.

I just love how crisp and neat each block looks, thanks to the wonders of paper piecing!

Now that I’ve finished all 20 quilt blocks, I laid them all out to get a feel for how they will look once they are put together. I’ve just had them in a stack and this is the first time I’ve laid them all out side by side…seeing them all at once makes me so excited to finish the quilt!

(Pardon the bad picture – our bed was the only place big enough in our tiny apartment to lay the blocks all out at once…and it’s hard to get up high enough to get a good angle!)

I laid them out by month for this picture (starting in the upper left hand corner, the first two are January, then the next two are February; on the second row we have March and then April, and so on). I like the idea of grouping them together by month since this was a Block of the Month quilt, but I don’t think I’m going to end up leaving them in this order because there are clumps of similar colors that need to be spaced out, like the five blocks toward the bottom right that are predominately pink and turquoise.

Next month we will learn bordering and sandwiching, and then in December we finish it off with binding and quilting. I am a mere two months away from completing my very first quilt! Hooray!

Wanna make your own quilt? It’s not too late – the class is free, all the past videos are still available, and they will continue to be available even after the class ends. Check it out here:

Filed Under: crafts, sewing Tagged With: Block of the Month, Craftsy, quilt, sewing

September blocks of the month

September 11, 2012 2 Comments

Another month, another set of quilt blocks. This month in my Craftsy Block of the Month class we learned how to do curved piecing using the Drunkard’s Path templates. When I first started trying to pin and sew these pieces together, I got super frustrated. In fact, after I botched the first one, I had to just set it aside, go to bed, and try again the next day. After a little bit of practice the next day, though, I finally got the hang of it. They weren’t all perfect, and this was definitely more time-consuming than many of the other methods we’ve used, but I’m so proud of myself for conquering my fear of curved pieces.

I really like this chain block – I thought it turned out really cool.

The Cleopatra’s Puzzle block wasn’t my favorite we’ve ever done, but I still liked the end result.

I can’t believe it is already September – that means that I only have one more method and two more quilt blocks to make in October! Then I’ll have all 20 blocks done and it will be time to learn how to bind and quilt my very first quilt in November and December. I’m so excited!

Filed Under: crafts, sewing Tagged With: Block of the Month, Craftsy, quilt, sewing

2012 goals and bucket list update – August

September 1, 2012 2 Comments

(to see previous updates: January, February, March, April, May, June, and July)

2012 goals:

read through the entire Bible - New Testament: check. Old Testament: currently reading Esther (one of my favorite books!)
get my healthy lifestyle back, specifically to lose the 20-25 pounds I’ve gained since getting married. - Well, nine months in and I’m finally almost 10 pounds down (plus the 5 extras that got added on later)…now only 10-15 more to go.

2012 bucket list:

make an apple pie from scratch
~~take cake decorating classes~~ - I took the Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 classes in March (see here, here, here, and here) and took Course 2 in April (here, here, here, and here).
learn how to make Mom’s homemade Christmas cookies
make 72 hour emergency kits for our home and cars
~~make my own laundry detergent~~ - done!
~~bake a loaf of homemade bread~~ - Done! I’ve now made some Amish friendship bread and whole wheat honey sandwich bread.
make a quilt - Working on it! See January, February, March, April, May, June, July, and August
~~grow something~~ - Our popper tomato plant is bursting with tomatoes! They are so sweet and delicious and I love eating them on my salads.
~~can pickles~~ – It was quite possibly one of the stinkiest things I’ve ever experienced, but we now have 7 quarts of sweet lime pickles canned (plus 7 quarts of tomatoes, 11 pints of green beans, 13 pints of tomato sauce, 17 pints of salsa, and 9 pints of pizza sauce)
~~take some sort of vacation~~ - Chicago!
get at least one scrapbook done for my in-law’s
???start an Etsy shop???

Other notable things:

Our 30 day real food challenge and our 30 day no tv challenge (that has since been extended to 100 days) is going amazing. We will complete this challenge sometime soon (maybe September 18 or around in there) and I can’t wait to update you!
School has been in session for a full month now and it is going quite well. I love the kids at our school and I’m having so much fun. I’ve also learned a ton in my short month as the school technology coordinator.
Speaking of learning, I decided to finally move my blog from chocolatemoments.wordpress.com to my chocolatemoments.com. I did the move mostly by myself (the support people at HostGator and WordPress helped me some) and now I’m in the process of creating my own blog design. This whole process has been a ton of work but I’m having fun and proud of what I’ve learned.
On a not-so-exciting note, we still have not found a house yet. We’ve been looking forever it seems (only about 3 months I guess, but it still seems like a super long time). I’m just trying to be patient, but boy is apartment living frustrating!

I’m hoping that September brings in some cooler temperatures (and maybe a new house!)

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: 2012, bucket list, canning, goals, quilt

August block of the month

August 13, 2012 Leave a Comment

After a weekend full of canning tomatoes, tomato sauce, and green beans, I had a bit of a break yesterday and got to spend my Sunday afternoon working on my quilt. I completed my August quilt blocks and, as with every month, I’m already wishing I knew what September’s would be so I could get to work on them! This month we learned how to do two different star blocks.

Ohio Star

not my favorite – pretty plain jane, and I couldn’t get all my corners to match up nicely

Double Star

I was a little skeptical about this one at first, but I ended up really liking it and it wasn’t nearly as hard to do as I expected

I just can’t wait until December when I’ll have my very first quilt completely done! I’m so excited to see how it turns out!

(in case you’re new around here, I’m taking a free online quilting class: Craftsy Block of the Month…feel free to join at any time if you want to make a quilt, too)

Filed Under: crafts, sewing Tagged With: Block of the Month, Craftsy, quilt, sewing

July block of the month

July 3, 2012 Leave a Comment

The July blocks were so fun and so easy to do! I love how they turned out. This month we learned how to do Dresden blocks and made a traditional block and a modern block (although I think the traditional one looked more modern and the modern one looked more traditional…)

This was pretty fun to make. I liked using all the different fabrics, although I think if you wanted it to look more like a flower, you could just use one fabric or several prints that were all in the same color scheme. Michael and I both thought this looked like a bunch of neckties.

I really liked this modern Dresden wheel. It was very quick and easy to make. I think if you used an orange/yellow color and made the middle circle a coordinating color (rather than the same as the background) it would look just like a sunshine. I can totally picture a whole quilt done with bunches of sunshines!

The only thing that I didn’t like about this block was all the layers – there was the background fabric, then two layers for the big circle and two layers for the little circle, so when they were all seen together there were five layers of fabric in the middle of the circle! My needle did not like trying to sew through all that. But I love the final product so it was totally worth it.

As always, these blocks are part of Craftsy’s {free!} Block of the Month class that I’m taking this year. I think we just have three more types of blocks left to learn (August, September, and October). After that we learn how to put our whole quilt together. I can’t wait!

Filed Under: crafts, sewing Tagged With: Block of the Month, crafts, Craftsy, quilt, sewing

High Five for Friday

June 15, 2012 4 Comments

Friday, Friday… here are some of the good things from this week

1. Our little garden seems to be thriving (except for our aloe plant…it’s all brown and yucky). I clipped some of the basil, oregano, and parsley to use in homemade pizza sauce. We also have gotten five tiny tomatoes!

I’m not sure if these are called cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes…the label on the plant when we bought it just said “poppers” so I don’t quite know what to call these.

I do hope our other big tomato plant gets some tomatoes real soon so I can quit buying pounds of tomatoes at the farmers market. And to think that I used to not like tomatoes…

2. I made my own hand soap this week! I had pinned a tutorial on Pinterest about how to make your own hand soap, and since one of my 2012 goals is to make homemade laundry detergent, I figured I might as well take a crack at making hand soap too. It turned out really well.

I turned these two bars of soap into that gallon of hand soap plus one pump bottle (that had already been filled prior to this picture)

I’ll refer you to the tutorial for all the details, but I have to tell you that this very easy and cheap. The hardest part was grating all the soap – my arm was killing me! It’s definitely worth a try if you want to save some money on soap.

3. Tonight some of the ladies from church are having another scrapbooking night. I missed last month’s so I’m really glad I get to go tonight. I got a bunch of pages done last time and I hope to be that productive again.

4. Grasping for Objectivity. This is probably the funniest blog I’ve ever read. I laughed and laughed and laughed as I read until I’m sure Michael thought I was cray-cray. I have absolutely fallen in love with Rachel and her sweet family (Hi, my name is Caitlin and I’m a total blog stalker…). Like a nerd I went back and read through all her old posts…I just couldn’t help it! They were so hilariously great! Her post about Mom Jeans is probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long, long time. Also, the conversations she has with her daughter (seen here) make my sides hurt from laughing so hard. Check them out for sure.

5. I got this month’s quilt blocks done this week. Just like most things, the more I practice, the better I get (although having to rip out seams and re-sew is still just as frustrating as it was when I started!). I can’t wait to see my completed quilt at the end of the year!

Linking up to

Filed Under: about me, blogging, home, sewing Tagged With: Block of the Month, container gardening, DIY, Grasping for Objectivity, High Five for Friday, quilt, soap, Yardley English Lavender soap

June block of the month

June 14, 2012 Leave a Comment

After the super fun Wonky Log Cabin block from last month, the June blocks just weren’t quite as exciting. However, they were easy and pretty cute. This month’s “theme” was to learn 9-patch blocks…which are basically just 9 squares sewn together to make the quilt block. We really didn’t learn anything new, though, we just used our knowledge of half-square triangles and sewing multiple square blocks together (by nesting the seams) from February‘s lesson. I will have to say that I’ve gotten much better at making more precise squares and even seams since then, because the edges of this block matched up much better than the ones I did in February! I think it would be pretty easy to whip up a whole quilt out of either of these blocks, but especially the octagon.

Greek Cross

Octagon

I think I say this every month, but I’m still loving Crafty’s Block of the Month (which is free) and it has really helped me learn lots of quilting techniques.

Filed Under: crafts, sewing Tagged With: Block of the Month, Craftsy, quilt, sewing

Pinteresting Tuesday: quilt edition

May 22, 2012 1 Comment

Now that I’ve started doing this block of the month, I’ve been bitten by the quilting bug. I have no idea if/when I’ll ever get around to making all the quilts that I’d like to make, but here are some beauties that I’ve seen on Pinterest that are on my to-do list.

Source: sotakhandmade.blogspot.com via Caitlin on Pinterest

I adore this stack of books quilt! How perfect is this to keep on your favorite reading chair to wrap up in while curled up with a good book? It doesn’t look all that difficult either, so I’d say this one is definitely going to get made!