December ALYOF: Anchors Aweigh

I finished it!

I actually had it done a couple weeks ago, but we’ve been traveling and then without internet for some time, so once again I am squeezing the post (but not the finish!) in last minute.

I gave it to my parents at our holiday celebration. Then we all headed to Florida which I thought would be perfect for the pictures. That’s my husband and Brother in law you can see through the quilt.

I had some yardage of some of the saltwater prints (unfortunately not the blue ones I wish I had now). In the back I used the coral octopi for the upper portion and the coral seahorses for the lower. I like the contrast of saturation. I separated them with some water related layers from my swap last year.

You can see some of them here. Mostly Neptune and a few others. I also used one of the sand bars for the label.

I believe this is my only ALYOF failure in the 12 months – I tried to finish it in the summer and got overwhelmed with the quilting. I do all my own quilting on my Singer and was trying to be very ambitious and this is a very large quilt (96×96) and I gave up. I decided I needed to just get it done and so “copped out” and just did some meandering horizontal wavy lines.

This was, of course, hardest in the center of the quilt, but I got into good rhythm elsewhere. I do still fight with starts and stops on my singer. No matter how cautious I am it skips and/or knots at those points. I was very good about keeping things well rolled to help with the bulk. Not the elaborate quilting vision I planned, but it works and it got the job done.

Happy New Year! So looking forward to 2015.

Goal Post

More posts about this quilt

ALYOF December goal

The one ALYOF goal I haven’t met this year was when I planned to quilt my Tula Pink anchor quilt. I’ve been intimidated – by its size, by my vision of what I wanted…. I’d like to give it to my parents for the holiday, but I have to finish it. It has just been sitting on my balcony collecting dust (well, really, other quilt tops). I’ve decided I need to go ahead and bite the bullet, which really means lowering my ambitions and getting it done. Instead of the elaborate swirl design I was hoping for, I think I am going to go with a more simple wavy line deal. I have it rolled up and under my machine ready to go.

Other posts about this quilt

Wip Wednesday: Whole lotta wips going on

So I’ve felt very scattered. I am working on many things at a time. My sewing room and cutting table are a cluttered mess. This is why I often scale back on bees and swaps, but I have myself in a bunch of them right now, and there are a lot of July deadlines.

Supernova

I am working on the supernova friendship swap. We are working with Nordika. I am loving these blocks, and can’t wait to have them all together! My swap mate is Rachael and she lives in the UK! We were late to join, took time to make a plan, and time for her fabric to get to her, so I am actually making two blocks and sending them together. Check out my bias seam line! I’m getting a lot of practice at this (and getting better!) because….

Mini Quilt Swap

I am also in the mini quilt swap. I am not going to say much about this as my partner is still meant to be secret. The above is my mini quilt top, done with the mini northern lights pattern. As you can see, many seams to line up there! Most were dead on. I did rip and redo a couple rows, and there are a few that are off a tiny bit, but overall I did a good job.

Scrappy Trip Bee

I am working on my trip blocks for my bee. These are three of the six. I was given colors to work with and am pulling from my stash to make them. I can’t believe I am working on another one of these so soon, but again, I couldn’t resist joining. I have a strict color scheme for my blocks. These blocks are quick and fun to make so why not? And good chance to use my stash.

Anchors Aweigh

Well, I didn’t think I would finish my ALOYF goal this month, but I honestly didn’t think I would be this far behind. My quilt is basted and I am still buckling down how I am going to quilt it. I started practicing some designs, and I am a little discouraged. This is going to take a lot of practice and I am especially nervous with how big this quilt is. It is a lot of quilt to be pushing around smoothly through complicated quilting. This is supposed to be done for my mom’s birthday in July, but I just don’t know right now… I don’t want to go with simpler quilting, but I don’t want to ruin it being too ambitious or rushed either.

Wip Wednesday: Too many wips!

I am simultaneously working so many projects. And I am itching to start a couple new ones. But I am already tripping over too many piles and pushing too much stuff off my cutting board… I feel so scattered.

My most important wip right now is my Anchors Aweigh. I’ve completed the back. It is huge and I am hurting for space to spread it out. I had yardage of a couple of the coral prints so that is the main part of the back. Then I also wanted to add some other pieces (as usual). Even though it would have made more sense yardage-wise to place the pieced strip vertically, I really wanted it to go horizontally on this one. That took some math to figure out the best way to cut the yardage with as little waste as possible, which also meant more piecing in the background areas. I decided I’d rather do that than cut off another 2 yard piece and waste most of it. I was pretty impressed with myself that even at 3am I was able to calculate how wide a piece I needed to cut to fill that gap.

For the blocks, I pulled out all the water related layers from my huge Tula swap layer cake pile. I think initially, I was just going to sew a row of them together and sew them in between the backgrounds. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to frame them somewhat. In the end it was a good thing I did, because for whatever reason, I needed that extra length. I wanted grey, but I didn’t have enough left over and my closest store doesn’t carry it. I had a scrap with me of the Octos and selected the snow and stone to take home and play with. I really thought I was going to go with snow, but as I laid everything out, I liked the look of the stone. It was more toned down and also reminded me of sand (even though the sand at our beach is probably closer to the snow color. hmm….).

Here is how it turned out, as best as I was able to photograph it at that time. Now I am starting to baste it. I am really intimidated by quilting this. I know it is going to take forever. But, onward and upward!

In the meantime, I’ve been pushing through blocks for two other projects. First up, my economy quilt. This is going to be a graduation/college gift for my cousin. I was going to make it 120 blocks (roughly 50×60) but I am wondering now it that’s going to be big enough. I am moving right along on it. I get hung up every now and then trying to pick colors for the blocks, but once I have a bunch of those chosen and cut and ready to go, I make good progress til I get stopped again.

 

And my goal for the year is to make a kaleidoscope quilt. As the year is half over, I need to get moving on that! I had cut out about a million triangles and taken them to stash bash, but didn’t actually start on it there. I eventually started putting pieces together and playing around. I’ve tried several times to plot it out – both on the computer and on paper – and it just isn’t working for me. I am such a control freak, but when it comes to quilting, I kind of like to let things happen organically and make decisions as I go. So, here I am playing with some blocks on the design wall.

This one still has a long way to go. Again, wishing for bigger spaces to work in.

So, that’s a lot of small progress on many things!

Don’t forget to check out our blog hoppers today:

 

Jill @ Pie Lady Quilts
Chelsea @ Patch The Giraffe (http://patchthegiraffe.blogspot.com/)
Daisy @ Ants To Sugar
Rachael @ The Floral Suitcase
Elizabeth @ And Pins
Jennifer @ Never Just Jennifer
Alice @ Blossom Quilts
Megan @ Sew Stitching Cute
Stephanie @ Late Night Quilter
Kelsey @ Lovely And Enough
Carole @ Fresh Off The Frame
Camelia @ Camelia Elliott
Nurdan @ Hug a Bit Quilts
Paula @ Mud Pies and Pins
Lori @ Sew Psychd
Kitty @ Night Quilter
Christina @ Wips and Tuts
Diana @ Sew Crafty Chick
Marcia @ Cozy Capatiller
Judy @ Quilt Paradigm
Jasmine @ Quilt Kisses
Beth @ Cooking Up Quilts

 

 

Anchors Aweigh top finish

I bought a quilt kit during shop hop this year. I’ve never used a kit before. I just couldn’t resist this one. I quickly cut the 2 inch squares and packaged it up for Stash Bash.

I worked on it during Stash Bash and finished 6 of the 8 rows there.

Anchors Aweigh is a free pattern by Tula Pink using fabric from her Salt Water line. People at Stash Bash (and instagram) were all impressed with it, but really, it was very simple. It is like sewing by number.

For the most part the instructions are very clear. All pieces are diagrammed in sections with an image and a letter. Each section and row is numbered then shown how to put together in another diagram. The main complaint I had with the pattern is that while you are given the cutting directions for the solids, there is no indication in the diagrams which size solid you are using. Yes, it is pretty easy to figure it out either from the image or by holding the different sizes against your sewn pieces, but it would have saved a lot of time and some trouble to just include the size in the pattern. There was one spot in particular where there were four pieces of large solid blocks in two different sizes, and I wasn’t sure until I had the whole quilt together that I had actually placed them in the correct spots.  Also, just another small annoyance – solid pieces were listed as different pieces even if they were the same size. For example, (2) 2×5 and (2) 5×2. Sure, one is horizontal and one is vertical, but when I am cutting, I want to know how many I am going to need to get from the piece I am cutting from. If I cut two and move on, only to discover later I need two more….

Anyway, I guess it looks impressive to work on – and of course, I love it, which is why I made it, but I have to say I get more of a sense of accomplishment from my bad piggies quilt, which I created myself from a picture, and which will also be one of a kind.

So, here is the completed top:

I have some pink Salt Water yardage and some layer cake blocks from the Tula Pink 10 inch swap I participated in selected for the back. My goal is to have this one done for my mom’s birthday in July.

As I worked on it I also worked on my economy blocks as leaders and enders. I made decent progress. Here are some of them: