May project 2: "Walking with Jane" zebra quilt

This is a real first - two quilts in one month. This one is for "Walking with Jane", an organization that creates awareness and does fundraising for neuroendocrine cancer. I help out occasionally by copy editing the website, but I thought I'd offer my support in a more tangible this time. The group is run by one of my teachers from high school - Jane was his wife, who died from the disease in 2010.  Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) and the resulting cancer are slow-developing, rare, and often misdiagnosed. A patient can go for years thinking they have IBS, when in reality, they have a tumor causing those symptoms. And if an NET is left undetected and untreated for many years, the patient is left with very few options for treatment.

The medical community has an aphorism, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." The thought behind this is that a doctor should first think of common ailments when making a diagnosis, and avoid assuming that the presenting symptoms are that of a rare disease. NET cancer is thought to be a "zebra", since NETs are so rare and so many patients are originally given a wrong diagnosis.

The zebra has become the mascot of NET groups, so that was my anchor point when designing this quilt. I was lucky to find a great zebra fabric, and it gave me a chance to try making a pattern described in the book "Wonderful 1-Fabric Quilts". The idea is pretty simple - take a striped fabric, cut it into triangles, rearrange it, and you've designed a quilt that looks complex but is made up of nothing more than large half-square triangles.

I was impressed by how little effort it took to create something that looks great. I'll definitely be making more one-fabric quilts in the future. It'll be a fast and painless way to rid myself of any yardage of stripes.

So the kaleidoscope-pieced zebra fabric quilt was great and all, but the quilt wasn't complete that way. I had more to say, so I made that into the back.

 

The front has a lot of negative space, except for a callback to the zebra aphorism, and Walking with Jane's logo in a modified log cabin block. For the logo, I ordered a swatch from Spoonflower. For the letters, I used Elizabeth Hartman's "Refrigerator Magnets" pattern, and was able to make them almost completely from black and white scraps. For the negative space...I made a mistake. Can you see it? I can't unsee it. I ran out of white and when I went back to buy more, I bought a different brand. The whites are ever-so-slightly different. I really hope the difference is just more noticeable in the photo, in the bright sun.

I finished the quilt off with all-over loopy free-motion quilting and a blue binding. The finished project ended up being 65"X65". I really should make up a map for all the places these quilts are going - this one is headed to Fall River, Massachusetts, where Walking with Jane is hosting a yard and craft sale on June 2.

And since I did two quilts in one month, I think I've earned myself a little bit of time off. My husband asked me recently, "Are you really having fun doing all this?", and I admit that I'm a little burned out. So for June, maybe I'll do a couple of small projects, but I'm not going to put too much pressure on myself. I need to dedicate myself to something else, like schlepping the baby around the house, and maybe painting a few walls before my mother-in-law comes to visit.

May project: a very manly quilt

My husband (pictured above) doesn't much care for quilts. He tolerates my hobby, but to him, quilts are a little too feminine, a little too juvenile, and overall not his first choice in bedding.

But why let that stop me?

I've compared myself to the Cake Boss in the past, and I've found that Buddy Valastro and I have another thing in common: if we tell someone that we have a gift for them, they pretty much know exactly what it is. Any time Buddy said "I have a surprise for you!", the recipient would be like "It's a cake, right?" So as my husband's birthday approached, I'm sure he knew what Quilt Boss had in store for him. 

This quilt has been in the works for a while - the earliest drawing I have of it is from two years ago. The layout was inspired by this picture:

...which can be found here.

And since it's been so long, you can imagine how relieved I am that it's done! The quilt is twin-size - my husband works a rotation schedule where he lives in a dorm at work for two weeks at a time, and I thought that maybe it would be nice to have a touch of home on his bed. Or, he could stuff it in his closet and lie to me about how much he loves it, and I would never know the difference.

And even though my husband doesn't like quilts, I made sure there was nothing here he could complain about. I used all his favorite colors. There's not a single print in here that could be considered too cutesy, babyish, or girly. I even found a great fabric by Echino featuring manly colors and realistic looking helicopters. (His hobby, which I put up with, is flying RC helicopters, so this fabric was destined for him.)

Usually he prefers to use a plain fleece blanket, so I backed it with pieced fleece in coordinating colors:

 

I wish someone had warned me about fleece, because there's definitely a learning curve. I liked that I didn't have to use batting in the middle, which made for a nice light quilt, great for a blanket hater. I didn't like how stretchy the fleece was. Just imagine, that colorful rectangle started out straight. I like my tops and backings to match up a little better than this - those wrinkles aren't the end of the world, but they're irking me. Using a fleece backing was my "something new" for the month - in the future, I'd probably do it again, but not on a quilt this large.

 

Even though Mr. Youth Hostile doesn't have much feeling for the quilt, he was pretty happy with the matching pillow I made. The form inside is a down pillow, which he loves. When he found my stash of pillow forms, he asked that I make a cover for this one so he could use it. That's the only time he's shown any interest in this little sewing thing I do, so I figured that it was right to make him the cover he asked for.

So I said that this quilt and pillow gave him nothing to complain about. Well, that's not quite true. They put a wrench in his packing plan, and didn't fit in his suitcase this go-'round. He had to leave them home this time. So for now, they'll hang out in the guest room.

Did you notice that we're only halfway through May, and my monthly project is already done? Guess I need to start something new...stay tuned.

Mayday disaster

Hey, look who's on time with this month's project! That's the good news. Now for the bad news. I felt so ambitious at the beginning of the month. I was totally going to make several baby quilts, and polish off some old projects that have been waiting around and staring at me for months.

I finished one baby quilt. One.

Maybe I could have gotten more done if this little tiny quilt hadn't fought me every step of the way. I wasted hours redoing sections and picking out stitches. I suspect that the white fabric I was using wasn't 100% cotton, because it was behaving in ways I couldn't predict.

 

It would have been great if all that work had produced a fabulous-looking quilt, but here's the rub: I don't think I like it. It looks kind of uneven and lumpy to me. Luckily, my husband's work friend doesn't know I'm making a quilt, so if my crippling doubt and indecision get the better of me, I can just stuff this down the memory hole (closet) and never think about it again. I can't ask my husband if he thinks it's wonky - even though a normal human can declare something to be ugly or not, he claims that his ignorance of quilting keeps him from being able to make an informed decision.

I tried something new this month, which was a free-motion quilting technique that resembles flowers, inspired by Elizabeth Hartman's "Loopy Flowers". Well, hers are beautiful. Mine are not. There's too much space between mine, and my quilt top is dotted with blue where the bobbin thread was poking up. Thread tension was a big issue while making this quilt. An all-over free-motion stippling would have been better, but I don't know if even that would have saved it.

 

Another new thing for this month was putting ruffles around the edges instead of a binding. I used some fabric left over from binding my very first quilt. I'm really loving the ruffles, and I'm glad I figured out how to do them. But, making the ruffled edge required a pillowcase finishing technique, which I think led to my quilting problems - the quilt top and backing must have been subtly different in size and shape. I would have loved to give this baby blanket a straight-line quilting, but there would have been too many bulges and tucks.

So this month's quilt looks wonky and painfully homemade. They can't all be winners, can they?

Small project, big ego.

My first grader's teacher sends home a canvas tote whenever it's my daughter's turn to bring in snacks for the class. The bag looks like it was lovingly handmade by someone, but since getting dragged around by first graders, it started to look a little worse for wear. I thought I'd make the class a new snack bag, for the same reason I do anything: 50% out of actual kindness, and 50% out of the desire to get rid of fabric and foist my crafts onto others.

On the right is the old and busted, and on the left is the new hotness. I tried to make the bag similar to the first - heavy material on the outside, webbed handles. I tried to improve upon the things that I found lacking in the original bag: I made it a little bigger, plus made the word "snacks" more visible. Plus, I like my bags like I like my women - with a flat bottom.

 

The lining is made from a colorful food-themed fabric I bought at Wal-Mart two years ago, fully intending to make a quilt with it. I was thrilled to clear it out of my yardage for once and for all. In fact, the only thing I had to buy to make this project was the webbing for the handle. I even got to try a "something new" for this project - for the first time, I made a bag without any sort of pattern or tutorial. It's not perfect, but it turned out pretty well in the end.

And when my job as snack buddy comes the day after Easter, you bet there are going to be 20+ kids who get to eat some deviled eggs. 

And even though the teacher sent home a very nice thank you note, her appreciation couldn't even touch the ego boost I got a few days ago. I was looking at the numbers of views on my blog posts, and I noticed that my post about the Dan Savage Valentine's Day "Fuck First" pillow had received over 1000 views, way outnumbering any other post I had done. After a little bit of investigation, I found that about a month ago, Dan Savage had Tweeted a picture of the package I sent him to Ann Landers' daughter.

I found the same picture later at a Nebraska news blog, showing Margo Howard's response, and her claim that if Ann Landers ever saw my work, she'd faint. This readers will take that as a compliment.

And even though Mr. Savage didn't mention my name or the name of this blog, people found their way here. And Dan's picture found its way around the internet, even to this Pinterest page:

See it there in the middle? Adorable.

So my work got a few bright moments of internet fame, and it was quite a thrill. 

Quilt Boss: Pinwheels, Placemats, and Procrastination

Back in September, a friend from high school asked me to make some quilts for her sons, as well as some throw pillows, throw quilts, and placemats. She picked a few prints from Fabric.com, gave me a few ideas for design, then trusted me to create something awesome.

I sent off the boys' quilts right before having my baby, and then my productivity level just dropped off. Sure, I had a teeny baby, but let's be honest - I really could have gotten the rest of this stuff done sooner. The throws and placemats became my February project...which carried over into being my March project. But hallelujah, everything is done and mailed.

The throw quilts were 60"X60", and I made two 14" pillow shams to match. The orange, yellow, and blue color scheme came from the print shown above, which I used on the back of the shams and throughout the quilts. I fulfilled my goal of trying something new on this project by using an invisible zipper in the pillow shams.

I'd used regular zippers before, but this was my first experience with the invisible kind. I found the overall effect to be meh. For throw pillows, I'm usually satisfied with making them envelope-style or installing a visible zipper. But some people swear by invisible zippers, so maybe I'll come to love them in the future.

 

The design for both the quilts and the shams was made from half-square triangles. Another "something new" for this project was the experience of making HST units eight at a time, using the technique described in this tutorial. The process went so much quicker than making each HST individually, and I'll definitely be using the same technique in the future.

Trimming a million little quilt squares puts me right in front of the TV for a long time. So this month and last, I found myself watching a whole lot of "Cake Boss" on Netflix. I just can't get enough of watching Buddy's team do all the work, then seeing how he calls them in so they praise him for how amazing the cake looks. I watched so much Cake Boss, I actually started hearing my life narrated in Buddy Valastro's voice.

"And the more I'm doin', the betta she's a-lookin'!"

As I said, I had to trim a few hundred quilt squares. But it had to be done - trimmed squares just make for better accuracy. Not every seam matched like clockwork, but for the most part, the quilt tops came together pretty well.

"This is the crew...mia famiglia."

Never too early to get the kids started, right? My 7-year-old was a big helper with cutting the batting.

"This thing is gonna be huge!"

So maybe 60"X60" is not a huge quilt, but as far as a scale of accomplishment, it felt huge. These days, if I set the baby down, I'm in for a whole lot of screaming. There aren't a lot of sewing tasks I can do with a baby on my hip. I could only work when I could scratch out some free time. Now, I've got more quilt ideas than I have time or energy to work on them.

I made simple pieced backings from large squares - a few squares were leftover from the front of the quilt, but mostly, I had to dip into stash and pull some coordinating prints. I was thrilled to use up some fabric that I had no idea what to do with.

"These things taste as good as they look!"

I really should make placemats more often - it makes for a quick and easy project. These particular ones used a soothing, low-key color scheme that made a nice break from the bright colors of the quilts.

Six placemats, no sweat.

I was happy to make the backings from brown gingham, which was another fabric that I'd been hanging onto and didn't know what to do with.

"That's how you do it...WASILLA-style, baby! Whoo!"

I finished the pillows a couple of weeks ago and mailed them off. It felt pretty great this morning to get two quilts and six placemats packed up and shipped to their new home in Nebraska.

Coming up next month on Quilt Boss: "Babies and Orphans." Watch as Youth Hostile makes a bunch of baby quilts and tries to finish up some old projects that she forgot about. 

You down with HST?

Since it's a short month, it's a good thing I've gotten a jump on making the HSTs for my February project. They're all sewn and pressed, and now they just have to be trimmed. Trimming is my least favorite task, and trimming all 720 of these squares is going to be miserable.

Hopefully, I'll be done with the trimming soon, and then I can move onto more fun tasks. I can't wait to see how these squares come together to make two 14"X14" pillow shams and two 60"X60" throw quilts. These, plus a set of six placemats, are promised to a friend who got married back in November. Hopefully, they'll look so amazing that she'll forgive me for sending it three months late.

The colors are great, and I think the leftovers might be just right for a unisex baby quilt that I'm planning.

Ruffling it in the wilderness.

This is about as close as I'm willing to get to an outdoor activity - making adorable little play tents. My girls were invited to a birthday party for a friend who is turning three. I thought she might like a little tent made from this tutorial. Since she's a little princess, I thought I'd make it a little more feminine than the brown and green one that I made at Christmas. I used a pink and white fabric with woodland creatures, and added some eyelet lace around the doorway.

Don't worry, I'm not a cheapskate trying to foist my crafts onto people - I also bought her a gift.