An exciting weekend!

So let me tell you about my weekend- and I won't mention how Friday was my birthday and I had an absolutely horrible day!! 

Saturday morning we were woken up by Roman(my son) coming into our room and saying that the carpet was really wet. We then hear the roar of rushing water. Seems the water softener that the owners put in in the spring was spraying water everywhere and it had flooded half the house. Not how I wanted to start the weekend. Once the water got stopped we realized how bad it was. The owners were out of town for the weekend too. We got as much water out as we could and then the guy that installed that water softener come out and we pulled up the carpets, removed the soaking wet padding, tried drying the concrete, and propped up the carpet to put fans under it to help it to dry. All has dried except the spare bedroom. The humidity in here has been horrible and is starting to smell! It is like an obstacle course to get down the hall and through the living room.

The hallway

 The Living Room

Anyways, this week's blocks are 43-45

43 has some flying geese....still can't stand these guys!

44 came out a little wonky but once connected should be ok....I hope!

45 was pretty simple

This far in I hope you remember the drill.....link them up and share them and maybe win a prize.

Hope you enjoyed the weekend and stayed dry....indoors and out!!

~K

3 more blocks!!

Here are this week's blocks. Be sure to check out the tips from Gina and Kim too!

40

41

42

I have started working again to help us cover costs on the house we are building. It was supposed to be part-time but they are short of help and I ended up working 11 days in a row. Needless to say I was tired. I then had 3 days off so I made 2 bags (to be revealed later) and I finished all of these blocks. If you would like to see them all as well as what my wall looks like with all 100 on them, feel free to check out my Facebook page. 

Take care and happy sewing!!

~K

Blocks 13, 14, and 15!!

These are the last 3 blocks for this month. The big drawing is on the 30th (Sunday) so be sure to link yours up by then. These 15 blocks make up the section in the book dealing with crosses. Next month we will be diving into rectangles!!

Here are mine.

I can't believe that there are only 85 more blocks to make!! Take care and good luck to all- hope you win something amazing in the drawing.

Have a great day!!

~KIM

Blocks 1-3....I'm a little behind!

Blocks 1-3 of the Tula Pink City Sampler are being featured this week. I am still cutting and bagging my blocks. I will be working on them in a week and a half when I travel to the Windy City to hang out with the ever-marvelous Sara Lawson. Hope you can wait until then. I only got a box of 50 snack bags, so I think I will need to swing back by the Dollar Store and get another box!!

Happy Sewing and be sure to keep up and join in on the Sew A Long!!

I'm Ready, Are You?

It has started! 
I am soo stinking excited to see what everyone does!
Sara's first post is here and it is all about picking your fabric.

Here is my pile of goodies to get me going. Do you need all this? Probably not, but let me tell you why I do!

First we have the book! Amazing as I have already mentioned. For my fabric I got a charm pack of 2wenty Thr32. It is by Eric and Julie Comstock for Moda. I love the pink and grey and yellows. These blocks also need something with a small print and/or pictures and this line is perfect! I have 42 5-inch squares to play with, so I went thru the book and put in the squares for the blocks I wanted to use them in. Now, you are probably thinking that the book has 100 blocks and I only have 42 squares so how will this work? I also thought about that. Some pieces with only have a little bit used so I will have scraps and I also picked up a couple fat quarters along the way to use!

I then had to go about getting the solids to coordinate with the line. I was able to pick some up at Pink Castle, as well as Fat Quarter Shop. Oh, and I got a good deal on some yardage over at Stash Modern Fabric. I am still waiting on the rest to come in but it will be here soon and I can't wait!

The next item I needed to address was storage. I swung by the Dollar Store and picked up some snack zipper seal baggies. This way I can cut and keep the pieces together for each piece until I was ready to sew them. I used masking tape on the baggies so that I know what number block it corresponds to and then put a mark in the book so that I know that I already had a bag with it. There are only 50 bags but they will definitely be re used. I then need a place to keep the baggies and my finished blocks. While at ye olde Dollar Tree, I tried to fine a container where my blocks could lay flat but none of theirs were big enough. So I scrounged around at home and found a container with a lid that was big enough. This way I can keep everything together. I have been trying to stay more organized with the 10 projects or so that I am working on. Usually I would just have piles everywhere and then I would lose stuff. I have some extra containers to keep it all contained!!

Well I believe that does it for supplies. I have a few...maybe 9 or so...other projects to work on while I wait on my fabric to get here. If you are participating be sure to let me know what fabrics you are using and to post your blocks over on Flikr. 

Have a wonderful day, night, afternoon, etc.......

~Kim

Tula Pink Pattern Reviews

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 York 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!!