The Intrepid Thread Challenge

When I read the promise of "Free Fabric for you" on the Intrepid Thread blog, it caught my attention. Shortly after signing up for their challenge, a package arrived in the mail with a quarter yard of the hot pink Cotton + Steel Playful Word Game print by Melody Miller, an eighth yard of the Riley Blake Modern Minis Mint Arrows, and a mini charm pack of Moda's Modern Background Paper by Zen Chic.

Inspired by the tutorial at Sew Fresh Quilts, I decided to make a mini quilt using the Stepping Stones quilt block.

I modified the pattern so that the smallest unit would be a 2" finished square instead of a 1" finished square, which results in a 20" block instead of a 10" finished square. The mini charm was already precut to 2 1/2" unfinished, so I thought cutting each square down an inch would be wasteful and unnecessary.

Unfortunately, this took Lorna's handy dandy strip cutting out of the realm of possibility. As I'm a "Buy extra. Measure once. Cut at least once." kind of gal, I set about cutting into my limited materials before figuring how many blocks I could create. Come to find out, the answer is <1. A careful observer will notice some color placement shift on my block in comparison to the original.

But hey, I meant to do it that way all along. Wink, wink. The dense quilting was inspired by the ever talented long-armer Kathleen of Kathleen Quilts. Her Free Motion Friday segment is one of my favorite reoccurring blog segments.

The background diamonds were based on one of her helpful tutorials.

Thanks to The Intrepid Thread for allowing me to participate in their #intrepidthreadchallenge. If you haven't checked out The Intrepid Thread, I suggest you do. They have free blocks from the Sampler Block Shuffle and a Countdown to Christmas $4.99 Fabrics Sale, which are motivation enough for me.

Fabric Favorites

I asked all you you what new collections caught your attention. Here are some popular favorites. First up, anything by Cotton + Steel was on the wanted list, especially Cat Lady and Bluebird.

Vignette by Annela Hoey for Cloud 9 Fabrics, coming out this month, is another sought after line. It is more mature than her previous collections, with organic cotton and double gauze prints based on her floral sketches.
Mendocino is Heather Ross' long-awaited reprint of her highly sought after oceanic line that was fetching epic prices on the black market.

Anything Alison Glass is a hit. She's got a little something for everyone with Abacus, Andover Jersey Knits, Handcrafted 2, and new Sunprints.

What's not to like about classic aqua, pink, navy, and red? Bonnie and Camille's Vintage Picnic for Moda is pure sweetness.

Tula Pink is always at the ready with a must-have collection. Chipper has irresistible squirrels and foxes. Her Timeless collection will be a relief to those who missed out on aqua octopuses and trees of life the first time around.

I don't know about you, but my inner child has a weakness for unicorns. Perhaps that explains my love for The Lovely Hunt by Lizzy House for Andover.

Speaking of love, did you hear Kona cottons and Tone-on-Tone just had a baby! Don't you just want to snuggle their cute little bundle of joy? Karen Lewis designed screen prints that were applied to Robert Kaufman's Kona cottons.

Rounding out the favorites are Carolyn Friedlander's Carkai and the return of Denyse Schmidt's Katie Jump Rope line.

If you have any remaining will-power to resist, you're a stronger person than I. See you next time!

Lessons Learned Linky #1

Welcome to the inaugural installment of the Lessons Learned Linky! This is your chance to see how truly imperfect yours truly is. Oh yes, I almost forgot; it's also your chance to share your quilting growth, discoveries, helpful hints, ideas, and things you wish somebody would have told you sooner.

I stink at labeling. But it gets worse! I wanted to be like all the cool kids with their labels that can be sewn into the binding. Kati at From the Blue Chair shared her fancy labels from Etsy, and I splurged. The price isn't terribly high per label, but it's bulk ordering. Prices for colored woven labels start at $60 for 150 labels. I decided it would be prudent to spend an extra $10 for twice as many labels.
After much back and forth about the design with Steve from Hong Kong, I gave up on adding my name to the logo, and gave confirmation on my order.
The labels arrived.

Unfortunately, they are basically useless for their intended purpose---being able to be stuck in the binding and allowing me to avoid hand sewing a label on after a quilt is finished. Don't get me wrong; they're lovely. Just useless...and $70. Head hung in shame. Womp womp.

What I didn't know was that there are heap loads of label types. Cue the graphic sent by Steve of World Wide Label after I told him of my source of buyer's remorse. The key is specificity.

I'm giving it another go. Here's to not wasting another $70. If that happens, I will COL (cry out loud). And I don't want that to happen, because my husband will think I'm having a deranged postpartum moment. And it's not my cutie pie son's fault. It's these stinkin' labels that I still don't want to hand sew on a quilt. With fingers crossed, I'm cueing the new design.

Ika Print also does labels, so if you want some of your own, and aren't set on woven ones, they are another possibility.
There's also FinerRibbon, which you can read about on the My Quilt Infatuation blog.
Update: I should not have put the "Made by Afton Warrick" part upside-down because when you flip it up, it turns it upside-down.

Lesson Learned: Label fold types are many.

Don't think my folly ends there. I'm got another embarrassing surprise for you. After many more hours than I'd like to admit, I made a diaper changing thing-a-ma-jigger. It was beautiful. I mean, it was beautiful. Cue the before shot, aka evidence of former glory.

Now, it's time to startle my audience with a mangled mess resembling a "Don't Drink and Drive" campaign.

It all began as an experiment in using iron on vinyl in an effort to match my changing pad to my fabulous bag. So now I'm thinking this whole disaster is Cotton + Steel's fault for not producing a laminated cotton. Now it stands to reason that something iron-on will not respond favorably to being put in a drier. But let's face it, un-washable things do not belong in my child-ridden life. So now I'm thinking this whole disaster is my cutie pies son's fault. Sure, a person could take it out of the washer before it hits the toasty drier. But let's be honest here, it's only a matter of time before that's not going to happen. Because I forget things, like that iron-on vinyl melts with heat, as that's how I got it on the fabric in the first place.

I'm going to selvage what fabric I can from this, and make myself a new one with laminated cotton.

Lesson Learned: Iron-on vinyl hates the drier.

Then, I had a brilliant idea at the post office. I'd get postcard stamps, so I could save money and send fun designer postcards I picked up from Quilt Market for thank yous.

Smart idea, right? Except I forgot they were postcard stamps, and confused them for regular Forever stamps. And I put them on who knows what, or how many, packages before realizing how I went wrong.  So I'm sorry to all of you who got envelopes from me with insufficient postage. I hate it when people do that. (Like the time my mother-in-law sent a Dollar Tree toy with one stamp, and I had to drag all the kids to the post office to pay a couple bucks to break it free because I thought the withheld item was going to be much more illustrious.) Now I'm that person. Rag!

Lesson Learned: Postcard stamps look deceptively like regular stamps.

That's surely not all my mishaps, but it'll do for now.

Please join me. The linky will continue throughout 2016, with the first linky party concluding at the end of Janurary. To encourage you to play along, I'll be offering a prize to one randomly selected linker. Grab the button and leave the other participants some comment love.

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