Where art thou Gidgie?

I have been extremely busy lately getting my house ready for my family to visit. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I've been patrolling Craven County for the best curtains, home decor etc. etc. So, I've been everywhere, but on here. I have been crafting, but I've recently becoming much busier than I was before, if you know me personally, you know why I don't have time to sit around and craft all day anymore. Sadly. :(

But! I did promise to talk about the quilt I made, and I sat and tried to come up with a pattern for this quilt, I really did. I could do it, but it makes me look like an idiot. Seriously. I was drawing it out on graph paper, and just thought, wow. People are going to question your crafting abilities, and maybe your mental state if you post this. So if you really really really want a pattern, let me know and I'll email it to you, so I'm not embarrassing myself with my horrible excel and graph paper skills..

Anyways, here are some pictures of the quilt in my extra bedroom and the process. I'm still having mixed feelings about it, I'm not sure if I love it, or if the colors are a little too, I don't know, off? I think once the room is finally put together, it will all tie together nicely.

I used these 5 prints, that top bright one is the quilt back. All of these fabrics I bought at Joanns on Veterans Day last year, for 50% off, 

so I've had this idea in my head for awhile! 

I always lay out my quilts before I sew them together. You'll notice that the quilt got bigger because my husband kept telling me it was too small, so I kept adding on columns and columns! The little squares are 3"x3", the bigger squares are 6"x6" and the green rectangles are all 3"Wx6"L.

I ended up with: 

*9 - Little Square/Rectangle Columns

*8 - Big Square/Rectangle Columns

*Borders

I find that the easiest way to make a quilt is to sew the columns first. So I assembled anything vertically first (for some reason I always confuse the meaning of rows and columns.) So, I sewed the pieces in column 1 first, then labeled it some masking tape, then moved on to column 2, and so on. After all the individual columns are sewn together, I sew them together. So 1 with 2, 3, with 4, and so on. Then I sew the bigger pieces again, 1&2 with 3&4, if you've ever worked with a large quilt, this helps with the handling! 

I hope this helps anyone who wants to sew a quilt because it makes it go by SO fast. Now that I'm better at sewing and assembling, I look back on my first quilt and laugh at my self. I think I've realize why that quilt took something crazy, like over 24 hours to make.

I always buy way more fabric than necessary. So I had some extra little squares, so I decided to sew them together around the outside for a border. I originally wanted 2 borders, but I ended up almost not being able to use the backing sheet!

I ended up with:
-28 Squares sewn together for the columns
-25 squares sewn together for the rows

Now that I'm done with this quilt, it would have been a much smarter decision to add on the border squares to the actual quilt. I wish I would have sewn them on with the columns from the beginning, that way, when I finished the quilt, I would have been done with the border as well.

I hadn't finished the pressing the bottom of the quilt when I laid this one out, so look at what a difference ironing makes! I always thought ironing wasn't that big of a deal, but I pressed the crap out of this quilt!

I also got a new attachment for my sewing machine! I ordered this free range motion quilting attachment for my simple Brother machine, and it worked perfectly! I was a little scared at first, so I practiced on a piece of scrap fabric. It's really hard to get used to, because the faster you go, the smoother the lines are, but you can't move too fast, or everything gets messed up.

I also used two entire spools of fabric on this bad boy, and did I mention this part of the quilting process took me 10 hours??

I will never be able to make a quilt again without "quilting" the whole thing. This one feels like an actual quilt, it's surprising how much sturdier it seems. I need for it to sit in the wash with some downy for a while so that it gets soft. It takes so long to break quilts in!

Of course I forced my husband into the woods near our house for a picture, I was too short to show the finished product! Here is the top!

Backing

Someone on my Instagram said this is a super hero quilting pose. It sure is! My back was sore for days slapping this bad boy together!

Overall, this quilt was fun. I learned so much, just by having to figure ish out on my own. I hope my guests like it as much as I do!

Hobby Lobby ain't got nothin' on this girl!

When I first found out I was moving to North Carolina, I was excited for crafting possibilities! In the south, they have Hobby Lobbys! Now, HL's are now slowly making their way out to California, but the nearest one to me was about an hour away when we still lived there.

So, we get our orders, I start googling everything that I love to see how close by it will be to our new house. And guess what I find out? There IS NO HOBBY LOBBY NEARBY. I was so sad. There wasn't even a Joanns, the nearest place that had fabric? Wallie World!! Which I hate and despise, and secretly sanitize my hands about 10 times when I am forced to go there. Fast forward to a few weeks later, and someone posted online that a Hobby Lobby was in fact opening near our new base. I was tap dancing on my table tops for weeks. Well, I found out about 3 months ago, and guess what?

Hobby Lobby opened last week!!!

If you've never been in a Hobby Lobby, try to think of it like if Michaels and Joanns had a threesome with Home Goods, and could produce offspring, that offspring would be Hobby Lobby. It has fabric, crafts, furniture, decor, etc. etc. It's seriously amazing, and seriously overwhelming. I forgot how hideous some of the stuff there can be. There is one aisle in particular that I've deemed "baby hooker" where everything is hot pink, zebra print, and feathery. Not cute.

Anyways, I went opening day, and bought a ton of stuff. I went up and down every aisle, and just liked to look around at what they had. One thing in particular, caught my eye. It was a piece of old wood that had some wrought iron decor mounted onto it. I seriously considered buying it for $100, but I thought, screw that, I can make that!

I wish I would have taken a picture of it, but it looked something like this:

Hobby Lobby

Anyways, the husband came and found me just as I was pondering the metal decor, and I asked him if he thought that we could make something similar, and he said of course. That man is always up for a challenge, even a crafting challenge! So, we went through the metal aisle, and found one that we liked, and since it was their opening day sale, we got one 50% off and ended up spending an entire 7 dollars on this project!

On our way home, I was staring down the roads trying to find a good pallet. Weathered pallets are hard to find. Someone once told me they get theirs from the backs of stores, but those are just too new, too wood looking. So we are driving along the "freeway" here, and I see an abandoned field next to a church and scream for Guido to pull over.

We had hit the jackpot. There are old white picket fences, bricks, and various sizes of pallets that have been there for what seems like forever. We picked out an extra long one that I haven't seen before, usually they're pretty square, this was one totally rectangular. We grabbed it, and took off before the 5-0 showed up, because honestly, we have no idea whose property we were on.

We removed the pallets from their backing, and actually attached them to some leftover wood. To get the pallets off what originally holds them together, just hit them with a hammer against the opposite side. Usually they pop right off, this one was a little hard because it was seriously weathered.

We attached them to three different pieces of wood. Originally, I wanted to reuse the nails, but this wood was messed up, so we had to add some of our own screws into the new wood we had left over.

We hung up the pallet, and once we thought it looked level, we took it back down, and added the metal piece.

Finished Product

I am so happy with how it turned out. My house is already pretty much completely decorated, except for our master bedroom. No one goes in there but us, so there is literally nothing on the walls. This is the only thing on our walls right now. My mission is to spruce up that place! We have family visiting very soon, so I need to get my ass in gear!

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my Hobby Lobby inspiration, not bad for only 7 dollas!