Kim's Krafts: October 2012

Hi everyone! I am so glad that Sara asked me to test a quilt pattern for her. I had so much fun doing it. I am Kim from Kim's Krafts. I have been following Sara during the past year and then some and love all that she does. I actually did 2 patterns, one has already been done but I wanted to show you my version too!

The first one I did was the Grand Salon from the book Quilts from the House of Tula Pink! If you don't have this book you must get it! It is amazing and super informative.

As you can tell from the pictures in the book, this quilt is a make-your-wall- look-pretty quilt and not so much a get-cuddly quilt. It really does look like a wall with pictures hanging on it. The first thing I had to decide was what fabric to use. I had just recently moved to Indianapolis so this was the perfect excuse to go visit Crimson Tate. I had heard soo much about it and fell in love instantly!! I looked around a million times and kept being pulled to some Amy Butler prints. I finally decide on prints from 2 different lines of hers that all went together, along with my favorite color of blue for the background and some brown stripes for the frames. She even had ribbon to match the fabric!!

This is a bag from the shop with a pic of the too cute Heather on it!!

I love how the brown lines aren't perfectly straight!

The only thing I couldn't find to buy was the buttons. I ended up making my own. It was super easy thanks to the kits I found to make them. And I just used scraps from the fabrics I was already using.

I made the buttons in 2 different sizes for variety.

The pattern calls for 1/4 yd of 8 prints for the pictures. I got a half yard of each because I knew they would be fussy cut and I wanted to make sure I could get good pictures from them. How much you need of your fabric depends on the size of your picture that you want to use. I did have some background fabric left over which is fine with me as I will use it to bind. I also had quite a bit of the strips left over from the frames. I might have mis-cut but maybe one shouldn't cut all of them at one time.

The biggest tip I have when cutting these pieces is STAY ORGANIZED. You will have different sizes of the background and frame pieces and it is very easy to get them mixed up. I clipped the like ones together and the put a note on them so I knew what was what.

Once the cutting was done, it was smooth sailing! Straight stitches with rectangles. This would be a good beginner project as there wasn't a lot that could be messed up. Her diagrams are great and simple to follow. It went together really well and I like the fact that there aren't a lot of seams to line up. It is very forgiving if you happen to have some not-so-straight lines!

I machine stitched the ribbon down with coordinating thread and it was pretty easy. It says not to put the buttons on until after it is quilted but I pinned mine on so that you can see the finished product!

I love how it looks and how the blue pops!!

In the book she has it quilted to look like a wooden wall which I love.

I am undecided as to how to finish it, but I did get this AB fabric from her Midwest Mod collection on sale so I will definitely be using this for the back with the blue for the binding!

Let me know if you have any questions and hope you like it!!

The 2nd pattern I did was Space Dust. When I heard that this was paper piercing, I HAD to have it. I got hooked on paper piercing during Sara's New Y ork Beauty quilt along. Once again I couldn't decide on the fabric and I was cruising out there on Etsy and fell in love with some (you guessed it!) Amy Butler polka dots.

The pattern called for 22 1/4 yds of fabric and as you can see I used 5. I got a yard of 4 of them and 1.5 yd of the cherry one to cover the rest. I had a little of each left (might have had to re-cut some triangles a couple times). For the background I found some awesome black with shiny silver sprayed across it. I only got 2 yards of the background as I didn't want the full sized quilt but wanted more of a wall hanging. (Thanks for the idea Sara!!) I had enough left to cut the binding for it too!

The week that I did this was the week of premieres on TV so I sewed during the day and cut and de-papered at night. It worked out pretty good for me.

I already knew how to piece this together but Tula gives an awesome step by step guide and if you have have never done this before please practice with scraps before you dig into the real thing! As for color placement, I can't just be random- I am one of those plan it out people. I printed a blank copy of the pattern, got my sons crayons, and colored away. It took a few different designs to figure out what I wanted and what wouldn't make me go craaazy!

This was the final picture decided on. I think it came together well!

I had this hanging up during my son's birthday party and everyone loved it.

No clue as to how to quilt it! Nothing I can do to it will compare to how Tula had hers sewn....

But maybe one day I will come up with something that will give it a little bit of justice!!

Thanks again Sara for putting this all together and good luck to everyone out there getting their Tula on!!

So my mother-in-law is in town this week and she wants me to help her make a little blanket for my niece. She couldn't find what she wanted but I looked online and found this

at FGS and she loved it!
Her job was to cut it apart (and she handled that)
I thought she might try piecing it together and I even sent her a diagram...

but she waited for me so we went out and got some pink, yellow, and blue to go along with it.
She has finished one row with only one messup! She is halfway thru the 2nd row. Hopefully she can get most of it done by Wed. We leave to take her home Thurs am!