life+running » quilts

Tu-tu-tu-Tuesday: Map of the States Quilt Blocks

chimes — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:00:00 +0000

Looking for something to do with small scraps of fabric? Check out this awesome tutorial by Oh Fransson! for map of the states quilt blocks.

For the life of me I cannot find the blog post that I talked about my progress on this project. Which sucks because I cannot remember what size block I was doing (would have been smart to make a template …). I know what size the finished blocks are, but I know there was some trimming involved.

Anywho, I took this project on for all the scraps of my favorite fabrics that I can’t bear to part with. I like things wonky, so I kicked it up a notch. I also love white space (imagine that) so I added some relief to the craziness with some white strips of fabric.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to just be done with this project and finish it up with white on the top and bottom of the quilt, or if I’m going to keep going. I think I’d like to keep going for 2 more rows, but I need to remember what size I was doing first. And I need to get my craft room organized.

Also, did I mention I started this project in March 2010? And I haven’t touched it since … yeah …

WHICH REMINDS ME. I need to start going to the Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild meetings. That *might* actually get me to finish all these poor WIP quilts I have. I seriously have 3 finished quilt tops that I’m too poor to get quilted and 4-6 in-progress quilts.

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Humpday Blog Love: Turtle Soup

chimes — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:14:19 +0000

This week’s Humpday Blog love goes to my friend Steph Hertel’s Turtle Soup blog. Don’t confuse her with the yodeling sensation, Stefanie Hertel.

I don’t even know where to start! Steph is pretty much the perfected version of what I do at my blog … she makes things … creates things … designs things … bakes things … and is pretty amazing at it. I met Stephanie through ISU’s graphic design program — and she is extremely talented. She works for Hallmark, which is the most coveted job in our field (or at least in my eyes anyway!)

Here’s a random smattering of lovely things that Steph has created and blogged about … you should go check her out, and don’t forget to leave her some love!

Lovely tote bag Steph created a while back

Um, YUM. Peanut butter cup cookies! Oh yes — and she shares recipes as well.

Lovely Zucchini pasta

Seriously — she is a jack of all trades! Adorable felt flower pin …

Here’s a closeup of an adorable onesie she made

Here’s a little taste of some of her great design skills … an invite for her annual cookie party and what I’m guessing is the lovely packaging she created to go with it.

And … a beautiful quilt.

You must take 5 minutes and check her out! Definitely worth it, unless you don’t like looking at well-designed and yummy things. Then … um … why are you here?

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Iowa State Fair RECAP!

chimes — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:20:11 +0000

Oh boy.

In case you didn’t know, I hate the fair. It is absolutely NOT super-magical. Honestly, if I didn’t have to go for work, I wouldn’t go. And I really should play state fair bingo when I do go (after my shift) because it would make the day so much more exciting.

Regardless: it’s over.

Well, my day there is anyway — the fair is still here for a few more days … blech.

First off, I must mention that I parked in front of the Slaughter residence. Yes. That is an epic last name. I wonder if they have a son around my age …

I got there and ran my shift at the Drake Day at the Fair tent. Check out the cool pix on our facebook! That was a lot of fun. My shift was slow, but we had a few awesome alums come through that made it totally worth while. Our theme this year was “Capture your love for Drake” and we were handing out pennants with a contest for the best fair photos with the pennant. What a cool idea. Yay Drake!

I also worked at the VI building earlier that day and met a lady who graduated from Drake in 1930! NINETEEN THIRTY. She was amazing. She was an art teacher and a counselor for years. She also apparently has a golf cart with a bulldog on it that she wants to paint blue. Not just any blue, DRAKE BLUE. How cool!

Also, let me just say, I hate temporary tattoos. Most of my day was spent putting these on kids. Every time I put one on a kid, I felt like his mom was going to kill me. I had this one kid that asked for it on his FOREHEAD. Seriously? I put another kid’s on the back of his neck. Honestly, he was out of room everywhere else. These kids went around to every station and got temporary tattoos. I’m sure to the delight of their parents.

Regardless. Adorable photo op!

Between my two shifts, I kind of geeked out over the quilts. I’m more of a fabric-a-holic than anything and the quilts at the fair never pique my interest as far as fabrics go, but damn. There is a lot of stitchery that goes into those quilts!

This one had a few fabrics I like and was a cute pattern.

Seriously. Look at that stitching!

All I have to say for this one is: wow. Those are a LOT of little tiny squares. This was a huge quilt. It didn’t even get an honorable mention. Really? Really. I want to find out who did this so I can make him/her a ribbon because this is amazing. Not as beautiful as some of the other quilts, but super amazing nonetheless. Can you imagine how much time and effort went into this? Seriously. CRAZY.

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. Wait. I almost finished my post here, but then I realized I didn’t mention food. You can’t blog about the Iowa State Fair without food, right? Yeah. Okay, so I’m a health nut. I found the ONE thing that probably won’t kill me (and it was cheap too!). I had an apple with caramel and peanuts. OM. NOM. and only 2 bucks! That’s cheap for fair food.

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Mendocino Quilt Blocks

chimes — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:41:04 +0000

I’ve been working through my fabric scraps and I came across the Heather Ross Mendocino scraps that Adria had given me a while back. She had leftovers after making a really cool mendocino quilt.

Here are a few of my favorite ones … They’re 5″x6″

I’m going to add 5-6″ of white fabric around each block to make it look like they’re floating and make a larger quilt out of these. So excited!

If you want to see all the blocks, I’ve got them posted on Flickr.

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I’m a lottery winner!

chimes — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:20:41 +0000

Not the kind of lottery that involves money, unfortunately, but still awesome all the same!

I recently participated in FatQuarterShop.com‘s Jolly Jabber Block Lottery (see my entry here)… and I won! I get 1/3 of the blocks sent in.

Here’s my bounty of blocks (you can only see the top one):

Not sure what I’m going to do with them but I’m sure I’ll come up with something crafty (probably not something approved by the makers of the blocks, but still).

ALSO — on the same day I won Iowa Girl Eats‘s Pure Bar Giveaway. That means I get to try 4 flavors of Pure bars for free. How cool is that? I think it’s pretty cool.

Wow. Lucky day, eh?

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new quilt top on a saturday!

chimes — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:57:36 +0000

A while back I was going to participate in a charm pack swap on craftster, but didn’t realize that I had to complete a swap before I can do two at a time … and I really wanted to rock the metal swap (which I blogged about earlier in the summer).

Anywho, I bought a buttload of fabric and made a bunch of charm packs to send out. I decided today to make a quilt top (I have a 2nd one in the works) out of the charm packs I’d put together.

Enjoy! There’s some Amy Butler, Michael Miller, Kaffe Fassett and MUCH more.

I think I’m going to do an oatmeal/cream backing and do a pink polkadot border (from the Wonderland fabric set). I’m wanting to do an all-over stitching pattern with either stippling or some sort of floral.

I haven’t mustered up the courage to do the quilting myself, so I’ll be sending this off to a quilting lady to work her magic.

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SUMMER SALE on Etsy!

chimes — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:37:11 +0000

I recently marked down a LOT of items on my etsy shop for an Independence Day Sale. I decided to extend the sale into a summer sale.

As always, shipping to Des Moines and Ames is free. Just contact me before buying so I can adjust the shipping price and arrange a drop-off/pickup.

Here are the items I’ve got on sale:

Wonderland by MoMo Charm Lap Quilt

Regular price: $150
Sale Price: $100
1 Available

Lotsa Hearts Handbag

Regular price: $18
Sale Price: $10
1 Available

White Fiestaware Musical Flowers Cup and Saucer

Regular price: $15
Sale Price: $10
1 set Available

Birdies and Coffee Cup

Regular price: $8
Sale Price: $5
5 Available

Vintage Flower Fiesta Bowl (turf green or gold)

Regular price: $10
Sale Price: $7
2 Available (one green, one gold)

Tea Time with Gram Cup and Saucer Set

Regular price: $15
Sale Price: $10
1 Set Available

Birdies and Coffee on Vintage Lime Green Pyrex Cup and Saucer

Regular price: $15
Sale Price: $10
2 Sets Available

Custom Etsy Banner and Avatar

Regular price: $15
Sale Price: $10
5 custom designs Available (below are examples of banners I’ve done)

You can e-mail me at calee@chimesdesign.com or PM me on twitter (@chimes) OR convo me on etsy if you’ve got questions, concerns or special requests.

ALSO — heads up! I’ll be doing Market Day in Des Moines on July 25th and will be having a special that day ONLY at Market Day. All dishes will be buy one, get one half off. I may be cooking up some more specials, and even a raffle or giveaway… STAY TUNED!

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I’m famous…again

chimes — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:59:01 +0000

Not really, but I always feel special when something I do ends up on somebody else’s blog.

A while back I blogged about a block I sent in to the Jolly Jabber Block Lottery. I sent it in a while back. Today I was catching up on all my blogs in Google Reader after the weekend in Chicago (which I’ll blog about later once I get photos from my girlies). I got to FatQuarterShop.com‘s Jolly Jabber Blog and saw my name was mentioned! They were updating on the block lottery and picked a few blocks that had been sent in so far. I’m not sure if they only had a few to choose from so mine was chosen or if they just really liked it…either way, I was kind of excited!

(here’s the block for reference)

Okay…so I found the group on flickr. They don’t have a lot just yet, but mine is clearly one of the cooler ones.

Check out the original blog post on FatQuarterShop.

Did I mention I sent in my first official block? I’ve only made quilt tops out of non-block patterns before. I’m currently working on a quilt for my sister with this block pattern (different fabrics though).

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quilt tops!

chimes — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:23:18 +0000

I can’t believe I never blogged about this! I posted this on craftster.org a while back. I did these over the last 2 weekends.

Coin Stack baby top for my neice’s 1st b-day (in October). There’s a lot of fun fabrics in this — these were fabrics I’d bought to do the charm pack swap, but I couldn’t do it because I’m doing the metal swap on craftster right now and that’s my first swap — rules are yo have to have one completed swap with good feedback before you do multiple swaps. I’ll be in on the 2nd round of a charm pack swap though! I’ve got the fabric cut already.

Hello Betty top for my mom. I’m using the brown for the backing (ideally would have used the brown with orange flowers, but everywhere is SOLD OUT!) and the turquoise for the binding (was going to use orange w/ the brown flowers, but I like the turquoise better w/ the solid brown).

the colors are really off.. :/

again..colors are really off.

I’ve got the Hello Betty quilt ready to be quilted…but I’m not sure where I’m taking it. I need to find another quilt lady around here. I found an awesome one in Cedar Rapids, but I’m going to reserve her for special quilts. She charges a fair price for the work that she does and she’s really nice, but I think I can find somebody a bit cheaper for quilts I want to have just a simple all-over stipple pattern on. I’m too chicken to quilt myself. I might try it with my hardcore quilt top this month since I’m borrowing a good sewing machine from my grandparents, but I also don’t want to risk breaking their machine…so I better not.

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T-shirt quilt top

chimes — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:03:03 +0000

This is heinous, but I had to start somewhere. I’m going to probably tie quilt this beast and give it away or use it for a camping blanket ( in case I ever get to go camping again!) or a picnic blanket.

Care Bears, LGBT, Spiderman and Bob Ross CLEARLY belong together.

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