bottled rainbows

2011 A Year in Review

7 Comments / 4th of july quilt, baby quilt, bottled rainbows, cobbleston road, Easter Basket, felt basket, felt flower, flag quilt, halloween, handmade gift exchange, monkey business quilt, mystery quilt, pillow case, table runner, whirly gig pillow / By Melissa Dunworth

This year has been a year of creation for me. I have spent hours upon hours letting my creative self soar – something I have rarely allowed myself to do. This year marks the first time in my life when I stopped following sewing and quilting patterns and started following my gut. It has been incredibly liberating. I have made my own knitting and crocheting patterns for years – easy to do when you make a knitting mistake and end up liking that better than the original design. Sewing though, was so much scarier for me. Cutting fabric has always seemed so final to me, like there is no going back. Knitting…I could just rip out my stitches and start over – no wasted materials or money, just time.

I learned this year that if I cut something and end up not liking it that I can hold on to that fabric and save it for a later project – ie. Bottled Rainbows. I now view scraps and “mishaps” in a whole new way. I also learned this year, as I mentioned earlier, to follow my gut. I know what I like and if I listen to my inner voice odds are everything will work out just fine. This is something that I have learned in both my crafting and personal life. Trusting yourself and your instincts is so important and I am so glad that I figured that out. It is so much more fun to sew now. I am not afraid.

I have a few goals for 2012. I am going to list them in no particular order with no real timeline in mind other than to do them at some point this year.

Make several more dresses for Anne (I won 4 patterns from Hopeful Threads by Lily Bird Studio and I really want to use those patterns!)
Learn to use the serger my mom gave me
Practice FMQ and attempt to keep up with the challenges over on SewCalGal’s blog
Publish at least 2 patterns
Turn the 3 quilt tops that I have already finished into quilts
Do more handmade gifts
Play More!!!

Do you set yearly goals? How do you hold yourself accountable? Better yet, do you hold yourself accountable?

NOTE: Don’t forget, I am one of the bloggers who is going to lose Google Friend Connect in March 2012, please take a moment and follow me via Bloglovin’, Facebook, RSS or networked blogs. You are important to me and I want to be able to stay in contact with you! Check my side bar for all the best ways to stay in touch after GFC goes bye bye!

How do you bind your quilts? A few tips

6 Comments / binding, bottled rainbows, quilt, quilting, quilts, Uncategorized / By Melissa Dunworth

I have been quilting for about 10 years now and until October I have always bound my quilts the exact same way each time. I have cut 2.5 inch strips, sewn them together, folded them in half, sewn them to the front of the quilt and hand sewn them in the back. A couple of times I have skipped binding all together and just used the quick turn method (which really ISN’T that quick if you ask me!).

In October, I started working on Bottled Rainbows and I decided to do it as a quilt as you go project. This meant that instead of just having a binding around the outer edge of the quilt blocks, I had a binding around each block – that is 16 individual bindings…which is A LOT of hand work for someone who has arthritic hands.

Solution for tired hands:

When I blogged last week saying that the Flora quilt would be the first time I machine stitched a binding – I had actually forgotten about the Bottled Rainbows quilt – mainly because in the QAYG technique this is considered to be sashing – even though it is really the exact same method as binding.

I don’t have a great pictures of the binding on Fancy Flocks, you can kind of see in this picture that I just did a basic zig zag stitch on the binding.

For the Flora Table Runner I used the same Feather Stitch that I used for Bottled Rainbows, but I put the stitch right at the edge of the binding.

Finally I used it in a couple of mug rugs I made this weekend, I definitely could have hand sewn these because they are so small, but I was finally starting to really get a handle on machine sewing the bindings and it had finally become fun instead of frustrating (it takes a little practice).

For this project, I used a decorative star stitch on the binding and it turned out really cute – love the Christmas colors!

A quick break down of how I did it:

1. Make your binding strips using whatever method you usually do.

2. Attach them to the BACK of your quilt (when I hand sew I usually attach them to the front so my horrible stitching is on the back of the quilt)

3. Fold the binding to the front – now here you can choose to pin or not pin, I only pinned in half the projects I made (Bottled Rainbows and the mug rugs)

4. Select your stitch: Straight stitch, decorative, basic zig zag

5. Start sewing, if you are holding down the binding or pinning, simply make sure that you have folded the binding over far enough to cover the stitches from attaching the binding to the back you don’t want those to show after you have done your decorative stitching.

6. When you get to your mitered corners, put on decorative stitch in each corner and that will be sufficient to hold down the corner

Easy Peasy! Lyanna from Purple Panda Quilts – left me an awesome comment with a description of a technique she uses to bind quilts on this post here, check it out to for more ideas on how to machine bind your quilts. I seriously need to find the fusible tape she is talking about – that would make it SO much easier! I hope she does a more complete tutorial of her method soon!

Have a great Tuesday!

4 Comments / bottled rainbows, ticker tape quilt / By Melissa Dunworth

I have decided to join the Ticker Tape Quilt Along that is going on over at Stitched in Color. We are going to do the Bottled Rainbows Quilt together. I am pretty excited to start. So far, I have managed to locate 9 of the 16 base colors and one of us has all of the Bone color that is required. I are going to hit two more chain stores this weekend and then probably a couple more local quilt stores later next week if I haven’t found everything I need.

If you have never heard of ticker tape quilting before, go and checked out the Stitched in Color blog for a quick tutorial and then consider joining us. I am doing it because I have WAY to much scrap fabric and nothing to do with it!

Here is a sample square in Pumpkin from Stitched In Color

I will keep you apprised of our progress!