Picnic Quilt - Big Finish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!Finally with weeks of cutting and sewing, I am done with my new quilt. Both top and backing are made with used jeans/pants/shirts of my 7 year old.

[caption id="attachment_517" align="alignnone" width="300"] Quilt Top[/caption]

Center of the quilt top is made with corduroy material, which is the most unruly material to sew with. Phew!!!....the fabric is so stretchy...I dropped my agenda of matching corners :-). I had to throw away a small stack of cut materials too. Kudos to the people who sew these materials in the garment factories. these materials are too stretchy to quilt with too.

[caption id="attachment_518" align="alignnone" width="300"] corduroy material[/caption]

I was relieved when I finished the quilt top. But a big pile of shorts (all cotton) and shirts were lying  and I thought of doing backing with those. There I was.... again and again sharpening my rotary blade, cutting and sewing, which felt like endless at the time. I cant explain how much I was dreading to finish it off....

[caption id="attachment_514" align="alignnone" width="300"] Quilt Back[/caption]

When it came to quilting, I broke off one needle (90/14) as soon as I started. Then changed the needle to heavy material size (100/16). [These sizes are as per my "Brother" sewing machine manual]. I dropped the idea of free motion quilting as it didn't help me with super stretchy materials. I just went on with my walking foot and selected a random wavy design stitch. I don't believe my eyes how beautifully it came out. I started in the center and had no clue about how would I continue along. I just did what came to my mind at that time. The quilting is simple yet pleasing to the eyes. Sometimes being spontaneous helps a lot :-). This entire quilt is about spontaneity and I had no layout planned. It was set up as I went along.

Love those corners. Aren't they awesome ;-) ?





Long story short, I am very happy of the outcome and my son will always carry a memory of his childhood with him.

As usual...there they are :-)



One last thought: Isn't it funny how human mind works?  Other day looking at my bath room drain gave me some design ideas. No wonder Archimedes ran out from the bath tub :-)). Thank god I am not as eccentric as him ;-).

Hope everyone is enjoying a little bit of summer weather left. This beautiful weather is not letting me sew.....and my kids want to be outside all the time.

Catch you with my next adventure....till then, be good :-).

Jyothi

Linking this post to:1. http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

2. http://quiltingreadersgarden.blogspot.com/2015/08/winners-and-winnings-on-wips-be-gone.html

Some more pillow covers and a trip to DC

This week I am posting my last week's finished sewing. I sewed two very simple envelope pillow covers.




Now all my four travel pillows are happy that they got the covers.They  traveled all the way to Washington DC and came back happily :-).



We went on a trip to Washington DC for the July 4th weekend. The reason behind our trip was to attend an Indian convention. There, under arts and crafts exhibition, I exhibited my wall hangings.

Here is the picture of my display at the exhibition. I am glad that most of my community members liked it.






I got to meet old college friends and many relatives from my native. We met some celebrities from my native. If you are interested in photography and art you can visit Mr.Vinay Hegde's blog here.  I had the feeling of visiting India.....got rejuvenated and came back with fresh mind and enthusiasm.

We also gave a visit to air and space museum and white house. Here are few pictures:



Discovery Space Shuttle:





Well...that monument wasn't very straight ;-)





Hope even you had an awesome long weekend. Until next week, be happy.

Love,

Jyothi

Linking this post to: 1. http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

2. http://www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/

3.http://www.sewcanshe.com/blog/2015/7/3/show-off-saturday-i-finally-finished-my-modern-log-cabin-quilt

Churn Dash Pillow Cover

This week I didn't have plans of posting anything on my blog as I did not have any finished sewing project. I was working on the jeans(pants/shorts) quilt and did lot of cutting and chain stitching.....



I was relieved that I didn't have to sneak in to the computer as my kids always bother me when I upload pictures or start blogging. We are planning a road trip next week and I thought I would focus on that. But then came the thought that our travel pillows are badly in need of covers. So I decided to do some pillow covers. While going through through my orphan blocks, I found this churn-dash block and decided to do a pillow cover using that.





It didn't take that long to finish the envelope pillow cover. I used the same method as I did last time using Venessa's (Craftygemini) video tutorial. This time I didn't have to look at the tutorial. Some times I feel good that I am becoming an expert in some areas of sewing ;-). I am planning to sew two more covers by tomorrow. Here is the finished pillow cover for this week:





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally... lighten up your mood by looking at these lovely flowers of my garden :-) :









 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aren't they beautiful? Hope your day turns out as beautiful as that.

Meet you in the next post...till then have fun :-)

Jyothi
Linking this post to:
1. http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/

Three little Pouches :-)

It was a week of relaxed sewing for me. I didn't want to get in to any of my quilting projects. All of a sudden I had the urge to sew pouches.

This time, dealing with zippers (using zipper foot) was the icing on the cake. I made all three pouches super fast!!!!!!





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used Riley Blakes fabrics for the pink/purple pouches. Orange fabrics was a fat quarter I had in my stash.

I did another recycling (or up-cycled as some people say) project! My husband's T-shirt was lying around from quite some time and he didn't want to get rid of it. I thought may be he could look at it for some more time if I my son wears it ;-). So I made shorts out of it. Here it is:





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally Hi from my lovely roses :-). There are so many buds!!!!!!!!!!!



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's it for this week....Thanks for stopping by. Catch you next week :-).

Jyothi

Linking my post to : 1. http://www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

2. http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/

3. http://http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/

Rainbow Lone Star and Some Flowers

Finally I had some exciting product came out of rainbow colored fabrics. I mentioned in my last post how I came up with the idea of lone star. Later I went through online tutorials and found this fabulous helpful homemaker blog. I am very bad at following patterns. It makes me feel guilty that I am not using my brain. But my idea of adding all 7 rainbow colors would have made a bigger block and I didn't want that to happen. So I decided to follow the pattern exactly how it was posted. This tutorial was made for 5 fabrics. As I had to incorporate the rainbow colors, I made a strip with purple and blue together. It gave a little weird look but I liked how it came out at the end.

Those Y-seams looked intimidating, but I managed to give it a good finish. Only change I made was adding triangular background fabrics before the square ones. Here is the finished block before quilting.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="640"] Finished block before quilting[/caption]

when it came to quilting, I wanted to do some machine quilting. But didn't have multicolored thread. Somehow I couldn't agree on any colored threads I had in my collection. Finally I came up with the idea of spiral quilting with matching colored threads for each set of colors.

Here is the finished quilt after hand binding:

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="640"] Fabulous Finish!!!!!!!!!!!![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_301" align="alignleft" width="400"] Backside of the quilt[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_311" align="alignleft" width="300"] As usual my models :-)[/caption]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally here are my other babies - some beautiful flowers from my garden to cheer your day :-).



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I planted some tomatoes and seeded some green beans too :-). A cute bunny baby from our neighbor's yard. Excited that summer is here :-)).

Thanks for stopping by. Meet you in my next post. Till then be good :-).

Jyothi

Linking my post to : 1. http://www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

2. http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/

Some WIP and Some Sweet!!!!!!!!!!!

Recently I am obsessed with rainbow colors in a quilt. So last month, when I  saw a very good sale on solids at Joann, l bought half yards of all rainbow colors.  Later I was worrying about the design I am going to with it. Meanwhile I signed up for an art and craft exhibition, which will be held DC and they allow only little wall hangings in that show. So I was focusing some design which could fit in a 15" square. Then came the idea of lone star with rainbow colors in it.

Here is my work-in-progress:





[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="640"] Unstitched halves!!!!!![/caption]

I still haven't decided the background fabric, backing or quilting. Hopefully I can come up with some ideas by the end of next week. Stay tuned!!!!!!

My son turned 7 last Sunday (May 31st). Every year for his birthday, I bake chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. But this time I thought anyway he will be cutting the cake 2 weeks after with his friends at his birthday party. So this time I wanted to celebrated it with simple Indian way by making his favorite sweet. He loves a simple home made sweet made with cracked wheat and it is very easy to prepare. Keeping that in mind I gave him the offer : "why don't we celebrate your birthday the Indian way? I will make your favorite sweet. Go ahead and tell me what should I prepare?". To my dismay, the answer was "how about the diamond sweet made with cashew? If you can't prepare it, we can bring it from the store". He was talking about cashew barfi and I completely forgot that it was his most favorite one :-(. I was little embarrassed to admit that I never had the courage to make that sweet. Being good at making desserts, I always thought that I could never make it. But him being the only person who calls me as "the best mommy in the world", how could I say no?. Finally I told him that I would give it a try and if it doesn't come out well, he should eat some other sweet I made. I looked one online video from khana kazana and it looked pretty clear and I tried it.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="185"] Final Consistency[/caption]



[caption id="" align="alignright" width="251"] Perfect Gift for the Birthday Boy[/caption]



You don't believe how good it came out!!!!!! It was indeed a very perfect looking cashew barfi and my son and husband devoured on it:-). His little sister and me were watching them with surprise!!!!!!! Finally I had to warn both of them that their tummy might get upset. In conclusion, I was very happy how it came out and I pronounced myself as not a bad cook after all :-).

Next week I will share with you my another passion- GARDENING :-)).

Till then be good,

Jyothi

I linked this to:

http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/2015/06/can-i-get-whoop-whoop-my-hands2help.html