Craftster best of 2013

I'm very excited to announce that my Sheldon Quilt has been selected as one of the best of 2013 in the quilting category. I really like the craftster forums because of the large breadth of crafty items. It's really an honour to be included in this! Check out the rest of the winners! Craftster Best of 2013

 

 

Here are a couple of pics from my quilt in case you missed it:

 

 

New Stuffs For a New Year

It's always nice to learn new things. Sometimes we get stuck doing the same old, same old. A few months ago, my husband and I completely changed what we were eating at home. We started doing the Paleo diet which means cutting out things like sugar, grains, dairy, etc. We actually kept the dairy in because...cheese...but other than that we've been sticking to it pretty well. I've found that this has caused us to retrain our brains for more proper meals. If I was on my own for dinner, I'd usually just pop an english muffin in the toaster and have that but I can't do that anymore. Also, potatos are generally frowned upon (although not ruled out completely) so we've found ourselves trying new green vegetables that previously we wouldn't have. I ate brussels sprouts this week! Crazy! Last week, I told Eric that I'd prob eat anything as long as it had balsamic and garlic so he offered to get some cat turds out of the litter box. Not really what I meant but it does make boring vegetables delicious.

Anyway, this change had me feeling like trying new things wasn't so bad which is big for me since I'm an accountant and often like things a certain way. I don't generall like mixing things up but when we had our Maritime Modern Quilt Guild meeting last week, it inspired me so I tried a Quilt As You Go project similar to what Adrienne showed us. Here is a WIP pic:

For the first try, I'm just using scraps so the colors aren't super co-ordinating and the batting is pretty jenky but it's pretty fun to do. The MMQG girls laughed at me when I said I couldn't try this in public. I'm so used to doing pixel quilts where everything has to be perfectly square and lined up that it was a little hard to start but once I got going it was freeing. I'll let you know how it goes but for now, I'm back to a pixel quilt.

Mega Secret Santa

My office didn't do secret santa but Eric's did. His co-worker is very into Megaman so I made this pillow for him. Isn't it cute?? As usual, it's all Kona solids except the dark blue which was a middle-of-a-snowstorm walmart special. Luckily, this convinced Eric that I should have more fabrics on hand. I can't really argue with that.

In its new home

A Very Toad-y Christmas

So Shredder is on hold for a little bit while I work on a few items for Christmas. I have a couple of things that I'm knitting and one more small quilting project but this is the big one that took most of my time. A friend was looking for a unique gift to give her boyfriend so this was my suggestion. I have wanted to do a Mario type quilt for quite awhile and just haven't had a reason. So here it is. Toad in his Mario Kart. I somehow transposed the design so he is facing backwards but due to modern technology was able to fix the pic! Amazing, eh? (please excuse the little dog butt).

And here's the back  - I added a cute little banana peel to the back for a little excitement.

And for even more excitement, here's a picture of the husbeast with our black Lab, Jack. Please keep in mind that Jack is over 100lbs and thinks he's a lap dog. Isn't the white Christmas tree adorably tacky?

Shredded

I've been working on something new for the past few weeks that I was really excited to show you guys. The idea came about because my husband and his graphic designer friends are doing a gallery show based on 80's toys. They called it "Has Bros" for a little play on words for the classic toy comapny. It seems like they produced just about all of the awesome toys when I was a kid - Cabbage Patch Kids, Easy-bake Oven, GI Joe, Lite-Brite, My Little Pony, Mr Potato Head, etc etc. Now, the show is named Has Bros but art based on any 80's toys are acceptable. You can see the awesome poster Eric designed for the show above. Pretty cool, eh?

I was going to do a Shredder quilt because for some reason I loved the Ninja Turtles when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I ran into some snags and am not going to get it done in time. I probably could have pushed it but I would have ended up with something I wasn't happy with and therefore wouldn't want to hang in the gallery. If the guys end up doing another show in the spring, I will start something super early just in case. I'll show you the Shredder when I finally get it done. In the meantime, here's a screen cap to hold you over.

  

Baby's first applique

Ok, so maybe I'm not a baby but somedays it feels like I am a baby in the quilting world. Anyway, I'm proud of myself for learning a new technique. The basic idea of applique is that you sew the design on top of the background fabric instead of piecing the top together. I was a little scared to start it but ended up really liking the process. It's pretty fast and not too hard once you get the hang of it. The most important thing is to cut your design out well since everything hinges on that.

So here's the quilt I did. It's king sized so I had to send it out to be quilted but it turned out very nice. This is the logo for a local comic book store. The owner's wife commissioned it for his birthday. Pretty cool, eh? You can get some very different shapes going with applique and do some neat stuff. I wanted to show you this close up of the face since it's not very visible on the other photo. It's built with layers and layers. For instance, the hair and outline of face is one big piece and then you put the white for the face on top and then put the features on top of that. For the mask, there are another 3 layers for the outline/eyebrows, the yellow mask and then the black eyes. There could theoretically have been another layer for the pupils but I used a fancy thing on my sewing machine to embroider them. 

Oh, forgot to mention this was my first real commission too! So I guess I'm open for business. Now, if only I could afford to do it full time instead of putting my pesky education to work.

General Geekery

This past weekend, I had the chance to finish up the Excitebike quilt I've been working on in my spare time for the past couple of months.  I played this game a lot when I was a kid but I seem to remember being terrible at it. I always wanted to go full out but you were supposed to slow down when you went over the bumps.

So I guess if you want to be metaphorical about this, I learned my lesson and went slow with this quilt. Painfully slow. I finished it up with a black binding that really pops. This is also my very first quilt that I will be putting up for sale. I've opened an Etsy shop and everything so drop on by!  www.etsy.com/shop/candycoatedquilts I'm really hoping to be able to add some things in there in time for Christmas. Perhaps a couple of pillows and maybe a mario quilt?

Next post will be about my first commission piece which turned out awesome. It was also the first time I have done applique and it was KING SIZED! Crazy big! I am also starting a new project as soon as my fabric comes in. This is a special piece that will be included in a gallery show. Big stuff happening in candy land haha.