Mateo’s Quilt

June 13, 2017June 13, 2017 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

What’s this? Another baby on the way?! Yes!

This time my cousins Oli and Matt are expecting their first – a baby boy named Mateo! I just love that name. I can’t wait for him to be here. 🙂

Typically, I stick with pretty traditional quilting. Civil War quilts are my favorite, followed closely by The Farmer’s Wife (1930s). But, I just couldn’t see myself giving Matt and Oli’s son a traditional quilt. I decided to go for something bold, modern, and way out of my comfort zone. Pretty much the entire time I made this quilt I asked two questions 1) is there something with more contrast? 2) is there something bolder? I think I finally got the questions answered with ‘no’.

Again, I didn’t use a pattern and I just used jelly rolls. It will be the last time I use jelly rolls though. They just aren’t consistent! Im pretty sure it’s the one time that a human is more consistent than a machine – plus they cut them between 2 3/4 inch and 3in and it just makes no sense. trying to match them up with anything is a nightmare. If you look close you can see I used a lot of optical illusions on this quilt to adjust or the non-standard jelly roll strips. *shakes fist* never again jelly rolls! But I’m super happy with this quilt. It’s modern, fun, and super bold. It’s perfect.

Quilt for Juanita’s daughter

June 12, 2017June 12, 2017 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

Over a week ago I got to attend my friend Juanita’s baby shower for her upcoming daughter! It was such a beautiful baby shower – the food, location and decorations were perfect! Not to mention I got to see so many people I haven’t seen in probably 5 years!

I decided to make a second version of a quilt I made my niece last summer, because I just love the pattern. This time I didn’t measure a thing – which was really dumb. But it worked out! I also used jelly rolls – thinking it would speed up my time. The thing about jelly rolls is, they don’t save time because they aren’t identical. If I had cut these strips I would have been done a day sooner, I actually had to spend an hour at least readjusting the seams in the center once I got it all pieced. Jelly rolls just aren’t predictable. The time I saved not cutting I more than spend double in the end dealing with. Long story short, I used jelly rolls on another quilt after…. more to come on that.

But!

The quilt came out super adorable – I love it!

Goes to show the things that give you the most grief are always the best.

Congrats Juanita and Mike! ❤

Western Floor Pouf

July 30, 2016July 30, 2016 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 2 Comments

A month or two ago, I got this western themed duck fabric for $6 a yard! SCORE. I bought 3 yards of it because I knew I wanted to make an Amy Butler Floor Pouf with it. I finally got around to doing this last Saturday Afternoon – it took maybe 2 1/2 hours total (including a trip to the local craft store to buy 10lbs of polyfil). I forgot how easy this pattern is – remember back to 2+ years ago when I made my first AB floor pouf. Go ahead, click on the link and imagine the wavy lines and harp music as you travel back in time…..

Okay welcome back to 2016. So I remembered one of my greatest complaints about this pattern was that you a) have to hand sew it shut and b) can’t really do anything once you get it dirty. Sadly the floor pouf from 2014 was thrown away in the great migration west in 2015. Well, to solve that issue – I decided to sew a zipper on the bottom of the pouf to prevent that from happening again. Now if I need to wash it, I can just remove the polyfil and wash the pouf easy peasy!

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27963550413_4abdde591f_b — is that a cactus or are you just happy to see me?

28507588815_f45d447b64 — zipper with polyfil coming out

28295122120_b176c23840_c — he’s sticking his tongue out at me.

28295125320_5497fe3d00_c — pretty boy and floor pouf

Astrodelic Quilt

July 15, 2016 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

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I finished this quilt a few weeks ago, but finally delivered it to my new niece so I can finally go in depth with it here. 🙂

I found the Astrodelic Quilt on a great website of Fat Quarter Shop. They have a ton of free patterns and really cute fabrics. I chose this quilt because it looks really stunning and actually is very simple. The angle cuts are made with the same method of making binding so this is a true beginner quilt. Due to the large pieces it was also easy to line up and piece together. I kept this incredibly simple with just a cross ‘x’ quilt. I looked at other people’s quilting choices online and decided I wanted my fabric and clean lines to show more than the quilting so I literally did the bare minimum. If I did it again, I would probably hand quilt or machine quilt the seams. Overall, it took 2 hours to iron/cut, 3 hours to piece/sew, and 3 hours to bind. So a wonderful weekend quilt. Here are my pics!

Feel free to ask question in the comments – I would also love to do a small class or tutorial of this online/in person if people are interested!

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27386529483_3f7519ce9a_c — prepping to join batting with front/back

27715042810_bc7483f645_c — prewashed, post binding – it looks so good in my living room 😉

27380648093_8acef8b6b2_c — this finished result!

Quilt the day away

June 13, 2016 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 3 Comments

I have a fever and the only prescription is more quilting!

Okay corny jokes aside – I finally made the leap into quilting this month and it may or may not be why I haven’t been updating my blog. (Sorry I’m not sorry!)

I first made two no-piecing quilts and then I dove right in to something that was actually made with squares. I am having a blast. I can’t believe how much fun it was.

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27027710534_63916ec80f_c — it’s always nice to see the things you make being used

27369687440_2c6c0d175a_c — table runner for lois!

yay quilting!

Baby Quilt Fabric

April 22, 2016 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

Since I’m officially losing my mind at the Farm House, I decided to take some time to talk about another hobby I have in the mix. Baby Quilt or as it shall be used in my home CAT QUILT! I signed up for a class at the end of May with Lois and I am just counting down the days.

I have never taken a class at Fancy Tiger – but they do have a … well, fancy, set up. Here is the class info.

I have been hoarding quilting fabric for years, so I figured starting off simple would give me the motivation and interest to dive into real fabric piecing and traditional quilting.

Here is the fabric I got for my little baby blanket! EEEE PUGS! Fabricworm is a super cute site with TONS of quilting fabric. This fabric is high quality and I can’t wait to get started.

In the past I have also joined a ‘fabric of the month’ club with Pink Castle Fabrics. I really love their ‘Kawaii’ or Japanese fabric. They have a lot of different ‘fabric of the month clubs’ and they are really well priced.

Here is some past fabric I have received from Pink Castle:

Anyways! I can’t wait to get my craft room all set up and start sewing more than just curtains 😉

This is my current state of mind at the house:

Chicago Modern Quilting Guild

April 30, 2014 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ Leave a comment

Oh my cow. I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday. I swear I blinked on Sunday and here I am! Speaking of the weekend I finally hit 1000 followers on Instagram! Weee. To celebrate I made this cute little celebration cake cozy.

On Sunday, I was so kindly invited to attend the Chicago Modern Quilting Guild and let me just say WOW. I didn’t really know what to expect. In crafting, I find that fellow crafters are either really friendly and welcoming or the other extreme of incredibly protective and clique-like. I was very pleased to find that CMQG was the former – full of enthusiastic and warm women. I seriously was jaw dropped at the kind of creativity and happenings in this local quilt guild. It was a ‘demo-day,’ which meant we had four different short, but informative demos. I learned a great deal focusing on ‘squaring up your quilt’, labeling your quilt, creating a sleeve to hang your quilt (yay! no more ruined door panels!), and finishing borders. Then during the show and tell portion. HOLY QUILT BATMAN. Let me just say I have always been impressed by traditional quilting, but modern quilting and concepts for inspiration BLEW ME AWAY. I seriously can’t believe how amazingly creative and talented this guild is.

Robbi Joy Eklow. QUILTING GENIUS & Epically wonderful lady.

I was just so impressed and inspired. I think I’ll go ahead and work on some cute little beginner patterns for quilting some coasters or maybe a door panel. I was so jazzed up I came home and knocked out a cute little embroidered semi-reversible baby bib.

I have 31 days until my GMAT. Then, on June 1…. Quilting….. the final frontier.

XXX
GFK

Crafter-Blood

Aside ~ September 9, 2013October 1, 2013 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 6 Comments

I am from a line of crafty and meticulous women. My blood is made from a mix of glitter, thread clippings, and creativity. I am of crafter-blood.

In all seriousness I am so lucky to have both my grandmothers as examples of how creative someone can be. My mom is a talented seamstress and knitter herself, so growing up was filled with art, projects, crafts, and unique gifts. I don’t know what I would do with myself if I wasn’t a crafter. How do people live without a craft project? What do they do? Here are some photos of the few of uncounted crafts from those with crafter-blood that I am a descendant of.