Harry Potter quilt update

It's been ages since I've written an update on the Harry Potter quilt, and that's mostly because once I realised I wasn't going to have it ready before Christmas and it would become Bean's birthday present I just sat on it... because I had *time*... like a whole 6 months... except time has gotten away from me and now I have just less than a month. I can't disappoint my son by not having it ready in time for his birthday - he's been asking when he's getting his Harry Potter quilt and it makes me feel so guilty!

But over the last 2 weeks I've been on a roll - I completed the rest of the Split Drunkard's Path Star blocks, and laid it out so I could get an idea of how all my pieces looked together:

All my blocks, roughly placed.

 Next step: Making the owl blocks the same size as the star blocks. This shouldn't be too hard, right? It's just a case of cutting some triangles and sewing them on...

Auditioning 2 different fabrics as potential backgrounds for my owl blocks.

 I went with some blue "feedsack" (repro, of course!) fabric I'd bought at Spotlight, drew a scale drawing of my block and the "finished size" block and then used my ruler to work out how big my HSTs needed to be in order to make my block the right size. Luckily for me, it went together pretty smoothly. (Clearly my quilt math was ok!)

My larger owl block (unpressed)

Blocks laid out again with the larger owls

The next day I worked out how I was going to sash the stars to make them fit and have now turned them into strips of stars (but I forgot to take a photo) and I went and purchased a complimentary fabric that will go at the top and the bottom of the quilt top to make it longer. I think the width will be fine once it's all sashed and put together properly.

I haven't had a chance to touch it since last Thursday/Friday though as my husband and I have spent most of our spare time playing with Daisy, my new embroidery machine. (He is playing with another design he's digitized as we speak! I am sure he's getting WAY more out of this toy than I am! Oh, and my sister-in-law had her baby, so we've been visiting my new nephew!) Hopefully I'll get a chance to go to Phillipa's in the morning for our regular Thursday sewing morning and work on it some more then. Only 25 more days until it needs to be finished!

Harry Potter Tumbler Quilt & Christmas Table Runner Update

I finally finished cutting out all my tumbler blocks with Flo, my Accuquilt GO! (Not that it took a long time to do the cutting - that was a breeze! It was finding the time to retreat into my bat cave to sew!) And even better than finishing the cutting, I finally worked out how I was going to lay it all out.. well, the tumbler section anyway! The tumblers will be sashed with the material that will also be used for the backing, and then there will be a plain border around the tumblers and then something along the lines of the split drunkard's path stars as another border/section, and finally the Hedwig Owls will be incorporated into the corners of the quilt. I'm still tossing up whether to put them on point, or have them squared with their bodies pointing in.. I guess we'll see how it all pans out..

My tumbler blocks laid out (wadding is underneath)

 Yesterday was the monthly meetup for my local quilting friendship group, so I packed up Flo the GO!, the fabric for the sashing, my Christmas table runner fabric and my 2.5" strip die. My goal was to  cut the rest of my strips for the tumbler sashing and all the 2.5" squares for my Christmas table runner  (see post here)... I achieved both of those goals as well as doing another couple of informal demo's on the Accuquilt GO! (This time I wasn't really prepared for a demo, having only taken my strip die but no one seemed to mind... infact one lady even asked me if I offered a cutting service because she wants some drunkard's path blocks cut!)

My 1.25" strips (folded - they're not really that short!)

My table runner squares

 Another lady was also very impressed to see how quickly I was able to cut all the 2.5" square blocks - she hand cut 400ish 2.5" blocks only a week or two ago and it took her significantly longer!

I also spent some time sorting through fabric.. the quilting group put out all the donated fabric they'd received in the hopes that people would take some home for charity quilts. I found quite a bit of fabric that I think I can do something with.. once the Harry Potter quilt is finished, of course!

So when I came home I was rather eager to get those tumblers sashed, and here is how things finished up:

I still have to do the horizontal sashing, but I was thinking that perhaps I should cut some tumblers out of the sashing fabric, and then cut them in half to square up the tumbler section so that it's easier to add borders. Once I'm finished I'm considering writing up a tutorial on how to sash tumblers incase anyone is interested? Only because there doesn't seem to be much information about sashing tumblers floating around on the web as far as I can tell..

And then, even though it was REALLY late (nearly midnight!) I had to quickly sew some of my squares together just so that I felt like I'd made some actual progress on my table runner..

Then finally it was time to drive home and go to bed!

Tumbling along

Saturday night we went over to my mother-in-law's for dinner, so of course I took the opportunity to escape into my sewing room and work on my apron.. I was perhaps a little optimistic in thinking that I'd actually get it finished, and ultimately the sewing gremlins came along and made sure that didn't happen!

Bodice sewn, curves clipped

 First I basted the lace onto one piece of the bodice before sewing the bodice together... I turned it in the right way to find that one piece of lace had gotten caught so I had to unpick that section, move the lace as far out of the way as possible and re-sew it. Problem solved.

Bodice in the right way, pressed, topstitched and basted

I pressed the bodice, stitched around the edges to keep it all nice and flat, basted the bottom edge and then pinned it to my skirt.. I was so careful not to catch the wrong bits of the waistband and had it all looking perfect.. until I turned it over..

Bodice attached to the skirt

*sigh*

 The waistband got caught in my stitching. And my un-picker was at my house, not in my sewing room. So I got annoyed and decided that was the end of the apron for the evening. But wait! I had new toys to play with.. so let's crank up Flo the GO and try out my brand spanking new tumbler die! *huge sigh of relief* My fabric squares fit perfectly.

Playing around with my theoretical layout (clearly not to scale)

I pulled out my backing fabric and my Hedwig owls so that I could get a (very) rough idea of the layout that was in my head. I ended up deciding that the tumblers will need to be sashed, probably with the backing fabric because when they were butted up against each other they merged into an undefined blob.. and that wasn't really the look I was going for.

Looks much better with the blocks apart, yes?

Then yesterday I went over after school and spent some time cutting and placing more tumbler blocks to get an idea of how I might actually lay them out. I have a significantly larger amount of harlequin style blocks than any other, and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do about that as far as layout goes... does it matter if I have them adjoining, or should I try and keep them apart?

Also, if anyone has any tips on how I go about sashing the tumbler blocks I'm all ears, otherwise I'll just follow my instincts and we'll see what happens!

Hedwig the Owl (Part 2 - Thursday)

After dropping Bean off at school, Blossom and I went over to my MIL's so that I could finish off my owls. But before I could start sewing, Blossom wanted to go and say good morning to the chookies and see if there were any eggs to collect.

Good morning, girls!

Blossom proudly showing off her haul.

With the "chores" out of the way I was free to finish sewing the rest of my base blocks together and then press them.

The rest of the blocks ready to be pressed

Blossom playing photographer

She's only as tall as the ironing board, can you tell?

Halfway there!

 The morning was mostly spent alternating between the sewing machine and the ironing board, sewing and pressing until.....

Four completed owls! (Well, minus the appliqued eyes)

 Then it was time to give Flo some attention and cut some felt for the eyes. I used the 1" and the 1/2" circles on my Rose of Sharon die. I wasn't sure what colour to do the eyes, so I cut a pair out of each colour that I had and then took a poll. Blossom voted for blue. My husband voted for blue. My girlfriend Linda voted for blue. The blues have it. I also kind of liked the brown, but the blue matches the background fabric nicely. The yellow and the orange are just plain demonic... but would be a great idea for monster eyes (on a different quilt).

Eenie, Meanie, Miney, Mo.. my mother said to pick this one.. Blue!

So this afternoon I went to my local quilt shop to buy some Vliesofix to put on my owl eyes (yes, I realise this is backwards - I should have done that BEFORE cutting) and tomorrow morning (or is that today, seeing as it's 1:45am?) I will attach the eyes to the blocks, although I might just do the white bits for now and wait until I've sorted out the rest of the layout before I commit to a direction for the owls to be "looking"... or maybe I'll just decide to have them looking straight ahead because an owl with half an eye is just plain weird.

Hedwig the Owl (Part 1 - Wednesday)

I have a confession to make.. aside from dressmaking efforts I have never really "sewed curves" as far as quilting goes. So I was a little apprehensive about my Hedwig blocks and decided it would be a really good idea to have a practice run.

Sewing curves

 So I loaded up a practice block onto my trusty Brother My Star 15 (he's not fancy, but he does the job and I've had him since my 16th birthday) and it was surprisingly easier than I'd anticipated.

Test block turned out ok, next stop Hedwig!

All of the "heads" strung together

 Then it was time to pin my Hedwig blocks, so I did all the heads first, and then I did enough bodies to complete a full block.

The first block, pressed and ready for assembling

Completed first block - we have an owl!

 After I finished the first block I just kept going with the pinning and sewing of the other blocks until it was time for me to take the kids home and go to Weight Watchers. I finished up with enough blocks to complete another owl, plus the other two heads and a few more blocks pinned ready to go. (Yes, I'm also aware that when I say finished, there aren't any eyes yet!)

Wednesday's efforts (not including the pinned pieces)

Taking shape..

We went over to my MIL's last night for dinner, so after dessert I snuck off into my craft room to play with Flo (the Accuquilt GO!). During my excursion to Spotlight last Friday (previously referred to in my post on Needles in the Haystack) I found some textured white cotton fabric that looked perfect (if a little thin) to make my Hedwig owls out of (for Bean's Harry Potter quilt). 

I decided that if I added some interfacing to make it a little heavier, it would be perfect, and easier to manage than trying to double the layers for thickness. So I estimated the amount of fabric I'd need to use for Flo to cut all the pieces, cut a piece of interfacing to match and then ironed it before putting Flo through her paces.

All my Hedwig pieces cut out

 Two rolls through later, all my pieces were cut! And then I looked at my scraps and thought "I really should save the pieces that could go through the GO! again"... I trimmed them into pieces and popped them into a zip-lock bag for use at some other time. I impressed myself with my thriftiness.. pieces that I normally wouldn't have kept because they were too small for anything useful are now completely perfect for things like my Rose of Sharon die!

Left: To keep. Right: To ditch.

Then it was time to find some fabric from amongst my HP "coordinating" fabric squares to surround and finish off my little Hedwig blocks. Because I'm making 4x Hedwigs, one for each corner of the quilt I was hoping that I would have enough of one type of fabric to do them all. Sadly, I was ONE SQUARE short of being able to do it all in the sparkly dark blue fabric. But never mind, I can do two in dark sparkly blue and two in medium sparkly blue.

Blue sparkly squares waiting to be cut

And now all my blocks for Hedwig are cut! Look at me GO!

 I must say that I was super impressed by how little time it took me to cut my fabric.. I spent more time trying to work out which contrasting fabrics to use (I had other fabric choices aside from the plain blue sparkly, but I thought they might detract from Hedwig and that just wouldn't do!) than I did cutting them. Then I cut 4x 1" squares from orange fabric (from offcuts that Phillipa cut for me.. same fabric as the top shown on Needles in the Haystack) for the beaks and laid out all my fabric pieces so I could get a mental image of how she would look.

Hedwig with all her pieces (unassembled, obviously!)

Flo with her seatbelt on, ready for her first playdate!

Then today was Stitch 'n' Bitch Tuesday, so I took my crochet over to Kym's only to have the girls ask me if I'd bought Flo with me.. which I had not. So off I went to pick up Flo, a die or two and some fabric scraps so I could demonstrate her to the girls. They were impressed by her portable size - they'd envisaged something much bigger.. and were absolutely floored when I popped a few scraps onto my Rose of Sharon die, ran it through and then showed them all the flowers and leaves I'd cut in the space of 25 seconds. I forgot to take a photo of my scrappy flowers though! (And once again, I went through all the scraps and cut the small RoS circles out of the pieces that were large enough so that I minimised my waste! I'll have to find something to use all those flowers, leaves and circles on eventually)

Pinning the curves

After pinning my first piece of Hedwig together (below) it occurred to me that perhaps I should practice sewing the curves on some of my spare pieces, so one of my girlfriends, Nici, picked out two of my spare pieces (white & yellow, above) to be my test block.

One of Hedwig's heads (pinned) 

Looks like an egg, yes? Or maybe a birdie beak?

 I thought the white and yellow together looked like eggs, sunny side up. Nici saw a seagull. So then I "made" her a seagull by playing around with the block layout..

Head, beak, body, wings on the sides.. imagine two embroidered feet at the bottom

 Silly, I know.. but we had fun! And then sadly it was time to go to playgroup so we had to put aside our crafty projects, pack up and take the kiddies for *their* playdate!

Tomorrow is my local quilting friendship day, and I'm planning to go along (for the first time in about 3.5 years!) but I'm not sure what to take with me. I don't have enough pins (and it won't take all day just to pin) to sit and pin all my Hedwig pieces together, but I could pack up my sewing machine and take that with me and do pretty much what I used to do at the friendship day - sit in the corner on my sewing machine and not really talking to anyone else because I need to be near a power point!

If my tumbler die was here I could take Flo along and do double duty.. demonstrating how cool the GO! is to the girls at the friendship day, AND cut all my Harry Potter fabric squares into tumbler pieces. But I can't do that.. and I'm not sure yet what I'm doing to do with my other bits of fabric until I've seen how the tumbler pieces go together. (I really should get my husband to help me mock up an image of my quilt so that I can work it out properly instead of winging it!)

So what to take?? Maybe I could not take any quilting and take my apron fabric & pattern and cut that out instead. OR WAIT! I have it! I was going to wait for my strip cutter to come along so that I could do my Christmas table runner... but I could just use my value die to cut out my squares. And so, apparently tomorrow is the day that the Christmas table runner pattern that I bought at the friendship group 4 years ago will finally go from being a pattern to a project in progress. There we go.