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! ❤

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!

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

Let’s Talk About Sew bay-bee.

September 15, 2013October 1, 2013 ~ ghostfaceknitter ~ 9 Comments

I always get the song by Salt N’ Pepper “Let’s talk about sex baby – let’s talk about you and me…” stuck in my head. Today at Joann’s I was walking around humming it to myself and ad-libbed my own version.

Speaking of Joann’s, I obviously love to support local sew/knit shops, but sometimes I find myself at Joann’s for the selection and the ‘instant gratification’ feeling. I do shop for vintage fabrics and patterns on Etsy and online all the time though (you can tell I have chain-support guilt). Plus, unless you’re the first in line at the fabric table you have to wait FOREVER and I’m sorry most (not all) cut the yardage so uneven it makes my soul hurt.

Anyways! I show a lot of the knitting projects I work on, but I also sew. What’s that? Yes I do do it all! Kidding! My levels of skills varies greatly from each craft though. I’m just getting into intermediate sewing, because I just don’t keep up with it as much as I do my knitting. I don’t know why either because I have a beautiful sewing table that was my great grandmothers! I also have Carolyn Mary’s Pfaff machine that I am in love with already after only a few short projects.

So to inspire me to sew a little bit more, especially with the Holidays coming up I have prepared for a few fun projects. Today I kind of felt like it was even getting late to start for Halloween, but you know crafters are on their own hyper time-table! It actually reminded me of this:

(source)

PS Stanley Tucci is a GOD. Any movie he is in is pretty much my favorite.

Okay now on to the crafts:

Here is WIP door panel for Halloween – isn’t so cute?! I ordered it from Etsy and I just have the interior stitching and then border to do.

Then, here is fabric I will have to go back and get for Lois for Christmas.

Get excited! The holiday bolts are here!

Flannel is on sale for $2.99/yd at Joann’s so I’m gonna make a ‘quilt’ with this and sew along those dotted half-circles I think it will be ADORABLE. Plus, with this craft I finally got to buy FLAMINGO PINK thread…. once in a lifetime purchase I swear.

This pattern is dark, but I am going to make the Christmas tree center-piece.

(source)

Then I got this cute cat/halloween fabric so I made Mister Lee a bandana for his pug meet up today. 🙂

I did not buy this super cute Halloween fabric even though I was squealing when I saw it. I just don’t have a project for it and I don’t want to waste it.

Here is all the fabric I got today – the Christmas themed ones are for the table trees.

Yay! Sewing! Do you do multiple crafts? Do you find it hard to balance time and interest in both at the same time?