Eating my curds and whey...

Lorrie, from my SewMod group, came up w/the idea of making a tuffet at one of our sew-ins. Her neighbor was kind enough to cut the base and sink the grommets for the feet for us. Lorrie acquired and cut the foam and the ginormous buttons, so all we had to do was pick out feet, fabric and sew our little hearts out!

My cousin Ashley and I spent the evening 2 Fridays ago rummaging through my stash and were able to come up with these:

They are mostly Amy Butler, but there's a couple of Denyse Schmidt and Robert Kaufman thrown in. I love these so much, and have a ton of strips left over, that I'm going to have to make a quilt out of them as well.

There was a lot of prep involved to make the tuffets. I spent all day Saturday foundation piecing my strips into 8 sections. I tend work slower when I do scrappy projects, agonizing over each fabric placement. I think it's harder than a planned out quilt. I would not have known how to make the foundation peiced sections w/o having previous paper piecing experience either. The directions were not very clear on that part. I eventually got a system in place, and that helped speed things up.

Shelley made her entire tuffet at the sew-in. I was very much impressed. And for some strange reason, everyone of us felt the urge to wear our tuffets on our heads. We were all reminded of that cartoon character on Fat Albert.

Some action shots:

Lorrie, Shelley and Andrea arranging the tuffet cover.

You have to get it on just so, or it will be off center.

Andrea and Lorrie  Pattie putting the feet on. (sorry Pattie!)

Yeah! Andrea clapping at our success.

There are no photos of us putting the buttons on, since it took all 4 of us to push the button in, brace the back of the tuffet against the pushing, tie the button and staple the beejeezes out of the thread to the back to keep the button in place. I pulled a muscle in my buttocks doing it. The lengths we go through for a good project! Pattie had left after we made her help w/the first one, smart woman!

I had to strip piece the fabric for my giant button, because I didn't bring any yardage with me to the sew-in.
Mine is about 17" in diameter and 9" tall. You can alter the height w/different feet. (I added this because I've had a couple of people think they might be pincusions).

I L.O.V.E. it! It's true, I do love it. And yes, Sue, I would marry it! Wouldn't you?

The tower of tuffets:

Top - Andrea used Kate Spain Fandango

Middle- my Amy Butler and friends

Bottom - Lorrie used Amy Butler Soul Blossoms

And all finished (except for Pattie's, because she had to leave early, but which I'm dying to see because she is using Sanae's Arcadia, which is totally gorgeous.)

Shelley's is on the top, she used a wide selection of Kaffe Fasset, of course. (Shelley's a Kaffe-o-phile).

I'm already thinking up what I should make my next one out of! They were all totally fabulous.

But I can't start another one yet, because I have a waste bin liner to work on tonight. That's a different post all together.

Our next group project to tackle will be the Amy Butler Gumdrop Pillow poof. Now I just need to find where I put that pattern!

Lorrie has more in process photos over at the SewMod blog and the SewMod Flickr site.

Sew Mod row quilt challenge

I have a wonderful small group that I belong to called SewMod. There's 7 of us, and we have a great time together. We are all inspired by, learn from, and share ideas with one another. We meet once a month and have sew-ins when we can all get together.

Paige had a great idea to do a group challenge sometime early last year. I think it was summer or maybe spring, and we had a deadline of February 3rd. Plenty of time, right? I'm a procrastinater, but I'm also generally swamped, so I put it off and didn't start until the beginning of this month. I have them all done though!

The challenge is to make a row, using an assigned block (different block for each person) and the fat quarter that the person you are doing the row for provided. By using the fabric that the person provided, there's a better chance that the rows will coordinate better. So I had 7 rows to do for others, plus one for me. I'm waiting to do my row until I get the others, so I can use my row to fill whatever design need I may have.

I had the week off of work last week, of which I thought I would spend 2 days on the rows, and the rest cleaning out my basement and sewing room. No such luck! I literally spent the whole weekend and week on my rows. I made all of them really scrappy, so just picking out the fabrics for each row took forever. This excercise solidifies my resolve to redo my stash and organize it by color.

I did Lorrie's row first, since I knew what I wanted to do. She gave us each a different Halloween fat quarter. I got the bats! I was so excited, since I love bats. The block I was to use for Lorrie was a pinwheel. I got out my Baltimore Halloween patterns and selected items that I thought would make pinwheel shapes well.

Shelley gave us all The Kaffe Fasset fabric on the outer border. (It's no secret that Shelley is a Kaffe fanatic). I had to make a row using flowers, so I chose the 'My Whimsical Garden' patterns by Piece O'Cake. I know that she likes their work as well. It's hard to see, but there's also a bitty little flange as an inner border, becuase you know, I love a flange!

 I had to make flying geese for Paige, so I found a paper piece pattern online and used the freezer paper technique to make them. I'm really thrilled with this pattern, and see more of these in my future. Even though it looks complicated, it went really quickly and easily.

Paige gave us each a different fabric, I got that red w/white dot in the bottome of the goose circle. And look, could it be? Yes, it's another flange! I like how the black sets the row off.

Jennie was part of our group, but moved away before doing the challenge, so we all decided to make the rows as planned, then we will put it together as a group and raffle it off in the late summer / early fall and give the money from it to charity. So stay tuned for the details on how to win it later this year!

 The fabric in the center of the blocks was the one provided and I had log cabins assigned for this row.

Kelly's was the biggest challenge for me since I had never made Dresden Plate's before. Lorrie loaned me her Dresden template, which made it amazingly easy! I have to say, I've always loved Dresdens, so I see more of these in my future as well.

Kelly gave us all the black and white swirl on the left and rightmost blocks shown here. I'm not sure I'm totally thrilled with the satin stitching on the inner curves, but I didn't know how else to finish them off.

I had the wild card block for Andrea, and since she didn't have the log cabin assigned to her, I decided to go with that. I tried to do a 'wonky' log cabin, but kept straightening them up unintentionally!

Andrea provided the fabrin in the middle.

Pattie provided the two Amy Butler fabrics in the middle of these stars. Can I tell you how much I love this row?

When the hubby saw it, he told me that I should make a different row for Pattie, and keep this one to make a table runner for us. Since I have a deadline on the row, I decided against that plan. However, I will be making myself a table runner for myself. I like the way the Kate Spain Fandango coordinates with the Amy Butler fabrics. And the grey just sets them off. Love it! I actually had to do a tester block for the star though, it was a pretty complicated set up.

To see the rows that everyone else in the group made, as well as the ones for me made from the Riley Blake fabric I chose for my quilt, check out the Sew Mod Flicker group.