Yesterday my first post for Silhouette America’s blog went live! The first of many!! (If you missed it you can read about one of my new role’s as part of their 2014 – 2015 Design Team here).
It uses the free shape of the week and their Fabric Starter Kit. The process is super simple and yields great results. The coolest part is when people see them they think they are screen printed! Goal achieved.
You can read more about the entire process over on their blog here.
Pin ItEarly last week I was contacted by my “handler”, Jeana, over at Silhouette America and was asked if I would like to make a quilt for them. It would need to be finished pretty quickly and would need to showcase how to use their products in quilts. The icing on the cake? It would be used in their booth at the spring International Quilt Market. Yeah, that last sentence made me say “YES! of course!” as quickly as my fingers would allow.
If you’ve been reading my blog or following me for a bit, you know I am a huge fan of fabric! I love sewing with it, designing it, and just plain touching it! (not in a creepy way, I promise) So of course I’ve always wanted to GO to Quilt Market. It’s not open to the public and you need to have credentials to go, so of course I haven’t had the chance YET. So the idea of something I made going instead was the next best thing.
I used this cut file from the Silhouette Design Store and cut it all using my Portrait and Silhouette’s sewable interfacing (that they provided). If I had tried to cut out those letters by hand it would have taken me FOREVER! With my Portrait it only took about an hour. Most of that time was spent ungrouping the letters and figuring out the best way to utilize my supplies.
I could have just used a solid piece of fabric for the background, but can you imagine trying to line up letters on solid fabric? Let alone patterned fabric? I chose to do 4″ squares in an assortment of, low volume, gray fabrics. They add a bit of whimsy to the quilt AND gave me a built in grid to work with. I also set up the cut file in Silhouette Studio on a grid that mimicked the quilt and printed it out as a guide. I doubt I would have been able to line everything up without it.
To attach all the letters to the background I pinned the quilt top to my ironing board, while using my clear grid ruler to square everything up. This process made it so I could only do one line at a time, which is another reason I’m glad I had the guide! I knew that If I followed it, every line would match up with the one below it. It did!
I used a dry iron and made sure to give attention to each letter so they were secure and could deal with lots of manhandling (aka: quilting). After each letter was ironed on and cooled down, I went right ahead and started stitching a straight line 1/8″ inside each letter. I felt like the top stitching gave it a neat look AND secured the letters in case I missed a spot ironing. This was probably the longest process, but it was worth every second.
As for quilting the whole thing, I went super basic! I used the background squares as a guide one last time and just stitched across them like a chain link fence. I kept the binding neutral again, using a gray polka dotted fabric, because I wanted to words to stand out as much as possible. It was their show, not the rest of the quilt! It was just the back up singer. Oh and the back is a nice black essex dyed linen, super simple.
I am so happy with the outcome of this quilt! I feel crazy for finishing it as quickly as I did, but it was worth all the hard work. I really wish I had taken more progress shots though. I feel like this would have made a nice step by step tutorial. Should I make another, smaller one, to show the process? Would anyone be interested in that?
Disclaimer: First off, I only used the phrase “handler” because it’s funny to me. Also, I THINK this would be considered a sponsored post. I’m not sure. Silhouette provided the supplies but in the end the quilt is theirs, forever. So maybe it’s a gray area? Though even if they hadn’t provided the supplies, this style quilt was still on my to-do list. Ugh, the rules of the internet are weird…
Pin ItI have been coveting Concrete Geometric’s planters and vases since the second I saw them! They are totally my style. Plus they are made using molds, and you guys know how I feel about that!!! LOVE!
I think the only reason I haven’t purchased one yet is because I haven’t really purchased ANYTHING for myself lately. I kinda put myself on a personal spending freeze so I can save for upcoming trips and some new equipment.
However I must dream about these things. When I was going through the Silhouette Design store looking for files for an upcoming project I saw a 3D paper succulent cut file and my absolute first thought was Concrete Geometric’s planters. I mean it only took seconds to think of how to make a paper version.
I used my Silhouette Portrait and cut files from the Silhouette Design Store to make this. It seriously only took me about 5 minutes total. I’m not even familiar with folding or manipulating paper!!
I absolutely adore how the little faux plant came out. I was planning on placing it on one of the shelves in my living room, but CT claimed it as her own and it’s now living in her bedroom. Which basically means I really need to get the real thing!!!!
The top two photos were used with permission from Concrete Geometric, and I asked the owner permission to write about this post beforehand!
Pin ItI have some super exciting news to share!!!
About a month ago Silhouette America (the company that makes that awesome little machine I use) put out a call for their 2014/2015 Design Team. The whole thing sounded like a lot of fun, and would force me to think outside of my little Art School Dropout world. I sent in my application and crossed my fingers and toes…
…which apparently worked, because I am proud to announce that I am now part of Silhouette America’s 2014 – 2015 Design Team!!
Now you may ask, what exactly does this mean? Well, it means I will be contributing project ideas and tutorials on their blog (and sometimes my own) using my Portrait and a huge array of Silhouette products. I’ve already started brainstorming, and I’m even prepping for my first project.
I am seriously SO excited to be included in this awesome team (I’ve been visiting all of the other girls blogs too) and can’t wait to show you whats coming!!!
Ever since I got into quilting, I have dreamed of making a hexagon quilt. I thought it took some fancy machine work with impossible Y shaped seams. I was half right. You CAN do it that way, or you can hand sew them all together.
There’s a process called English Paper Piecing, EPP or Foundation Piecing (it gos by any of these names), where you take the pattern you want to make and have the pieces cut out of paper. You then cut out fabric larger than each piece, pin the paper to it, fold over the fabric and baste stitch (like my orange stitches shown in all of these photos). When you have enough pieces for your project or block, you then whip stitch them all together and take out the paper pieces. After all of this tedious work, you have yourself a quilt top.
There are loads of proper tutorials all over the internet. Heidi posted a tutorial and template for mini hexies this past week, and there’s a bunch on Pinterest. Plus if you search YouTube, I bet you’ll find some great instructions. Also, if you just want to start small but have an even bigger impact you could try something like Rebecca’s patchwork tote bag! (her IG feed totally made me want to start this project!)
This type of project is perfect for downtime, like watching TV, waiting at the DMV or when being a passenger on a road trip. I myself started it because I am being forced to rest a bit more. Plus it’s a quilt that I don’t have to sit at a sewing machine all day to make. My poor back needs a break from that.
I will admit now, I am NOT a strong hand sewer, and I am seriously not looking forward to whip stitching all of these together. For now I try not to think about it and just dream of what the finished quilt will look like… If I ever finish it!
I want to make a 70″ square lap quilt, and by my calculations, it is going to take 800+ hexagons to make. That’s a lot! I am able to finish around 30 a night, so if I work on it every night then it will take me a month. That’s a scary number to me btw, so I may just call it quits at 400 because I am also dreaming up a quilt that is just half hexies and the rest is solid colored gray. I guess I’ll decided when I get to the halfway point.
I’m happy I went with the 3″ size too! Because if I had done the normal 1″ size, it would have taken 2500+ hexies to finish a quilt. SCARY!!
Have any of you made one of these? Or are making one? Any helpful hints?
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Last year I bought this amazing lamp pictured above at a Restoration Hardware outlet on super duper sale! (it is the wood version of this model) A few months ago my brother in law installed it and it is now my favorite thing in the house.
We didn’t have any wiring where I wanted it to go above the morning room table, but we did have a hanging lamp a few feet away that I didn’t like anymore, so he just pulled the wiring to to the new spot and put a plate over the old spot. The only issue with the way we did this was the old lamp was on a switch in the kitchen, not the morning room. It’s on one of those plates with numerous switches. Those are confusing as it is, and having a lamp that’s in the next area over doesn’t help. Oh and it’s also the switch directly next to the disposal one, so that makes for some interesting reactions when you hit the wrong switch.
I’ve never switched the wrong one because I hate the sound the disposal makes, but other people have! It’s happened a few times when silverware had accidentally fallen in the disposal, and since they weren’t expecting to hit the disposal switch, no one checked first. My poor silverware.
My original idea was to just put a random sticker on the switch plate for my husband to know which one is which. Though I then figured that would still be confusing for others, and what if someone was getting something out of the disposal while someone else wanted to turn the light on?!?!
All of this led to a super simple solution…
A decal in the shape of the lamp. I cut it out using my Silhouette, but with patience and time it could have been cut out by hand! I used a vinyl sheet I found in the scrapbooking section of Joann’s that cost me $1.50 and since it was super tiny, I still have a load of vinyl leftover for other projects.
The disposal hasn’t accidentally go on since putting it up, and we had a bunch of people in our kitchen over the past few weeks. They all understood what the decal meant, plus they loved how clean it looked.
I have never really liked decals before, but now I have the urge to put them on everything!! For instance I now have a man/woman logo on the basement bathroom door, that way no one walks into the utility room or workroom accidentally. The bathroom is clearly marked!
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