Finished the H2H Plus Quilt!

Yay!
I managed to finish this quilt before the deadline and I am so relieved. Plus, I really like how the Plus Quilt came out. It was a fun challenge to have the "blind date" fabric swap and then round out the prints I received with things from my stash.  It's funny too - I just squeaked in the basting and quilting over the holiday weekend before we left for vacation in Alaska. Then binding the quilt yesterday I had a new appreciation for the animal prints with moose and bear!

For the backing I used a solid blue Kona with a strip of scraps from the front across the middle.

This was my first time with spray basting - I had a hard time with it largely for the same reason I have trouble basting anything larger than a crib quilt. I don't really have a nice big space to tape down the backing. Anyway, I worked up quite a sweat smoothing out all the wrinkles and I was worried there would be some unsightly puckers. So I did a free quilting meander - only my second time, so it was good for practicing that skill anyway. But I'd imagined a straight line quilting pattern beforehand.  Anyway, I didn't have any puckers to speak of, and with the washing and drying all would have been forgiven by the end.  I do like this look a lot though, but I guess it isn't everyone's favorite.

Just a little more detail... and below the whole enchilada!

I used some of the green and yellow print scraps for binding. Another new skill attempt with mixed results - machine binding. hmmm. I would start with slightly wider strips next time (I used 2.5") so that more will fold over the back because I had to go back and re-stitch and couldn't really stitch in the ditch to catch the back of the binding. So I think the binding looks pretty sloppy, but I wanted to make sure it would hold up to some abuse once it reaches a child in Romania.  To be honest, this is the second time I did a machine binding, and I will probably go back to hand stitching the backside. Between all the pinning I did and the going back to restitch it didn't feel like any time savings was worth the sacrifice in aesthetics. Maybe if I learn to do this from someone who really knows how I will change my mind though.

Anyway, I hope I can link this up to Sarah's Whoop Whoop! for the week - but since it's Saturday and not Friday we'll see!  Go over there anyway to check out some more impressive posts from creative geniuses!

The Finn Hat - not really a tutorial...

So, I mentioned in my last post that Wild Thing wanted a Finn Hat for Christmas. Okay - seems like something that should be reasonably easy to achieve, although risky since I'm a novice and don't know what I'm doing.  First thing any novice does? I checked the internet for an existing tutorial of course!

There is actually an officially sanctioned Finn Hat tutorial out there, and it looks pretty nifty too. But 1) I couldn't get the .pdf pattern to print out on my printer to scale for some reason and 2) we were looking for the more square version of Finn's hat that goes to his shoulders like a bag over his head with ears sort of. So... I measured Wild Thing's head in all directions and sketched out the look:

Then I drafted a pattern (took several attempts...)

cut the pattern out...and cut 2 pieces from basic white polar fleece...

Marked the face cutout on the front piece and cut out

At this point I forgot to take photos - I stitched front and back together right sides facing, clipped corners of the ears and turned.  At this point I hadn't decided whether to line the hat yet. I guess I was hoping I could get away with just one layer and raw edges of the fleece.  But the face opening was too big and the hat seemed floppy even on my adult sized head. So, I decided to make a lining.  

For this I made another hat just like the first to be the outside and used this first one for the lining.  I cut a smaller face opening for this new outer layer, so that I could turn and stitch the edge to the lining to finish the edges and hopefully make the opening a little smaller.  So below you can see my new opening markings inside the cutout for the front of the hat.

After stitching the second (outer) hat, I put the inner hat inside the outer hat with right sides together and stitched the bottom closed - just like you would do with a lined tote bag or zipper pouch. The face holes provide the opening for turning the whole thing right side out. One nice aside - I didn't need to put any stuffing in the ears with the extra lining ears tucked inside the outer ears.  Once it was all turned and tucked, I finger-pressed and top-stitched the bottom for a more finished look. 

The trickiest part of this project was the face opening for which the front edge had to be turned over the raw edges and stitched in place to the back (hence the smaller opening in the front). 

I used a lot of pins.  

A narrow zigzag stitch seems to work best at a very slow speed.  It also works better if you turn it inside out and stitch from the back, otherwise it is tricky to cover the raw edges consistently.  I know all of this especially because I made a second hat yesterday with a smaller overall face opening since Wild Thing was asking if I could make the opening smaller (not complaining though, just asking). Teen Wonder wanted a Finn Hat too, so she got to have the first draft with the bigger face hole. 

Here is the FO on the table (first try)

And here is how difficult it is to get a Wild Thing to model a Finn Hat!

Overall, a pretty successful project judging by the reaction of the recipient.  I think there are still some dimensional issues that need to be addressed if this were to be a real "tutorial" or pattern - the ears are a little to tall on this version, and a little too square on my second try.  Also it bulges out just below the ears instead of lying nice and flat...though no one else seems to notice besides me.  So I won't personally be making any more Finn hats in the foreseeable future.  If perchance someone out there is interested in the dimensions on my pattern, just leave me a comment and I'll jot them down for you.

experiment with music...

So, if you hate the music thing, just turn it off (player in the sidebar) and leave me a comment. If there were people reading my blog, and they hated the music, then I'll take it off. I'm not sure how much this matters so far. I mean, I do have a follower now (yay!), but not much traffic so far.  

Why the music? Well, I mentioned I've been checking out other blogs...and also adding links to them (also see sidebar). There is a cool one "A La Mode Fabric" where you get music when you go there, and I really like her playlist and also wondered how and where the music was being generated. Which led me to "playlist.com", which led me to create a playlist (stealing liberally from the alamode playlist which you can do with the push of a button) and figure out how to post it here. It's free! And if you like it you can pop out the player and keep listening while you navigate away from my site in a few seconds from now.

it's an experiment, and hey! I am a scientist...