Modern Basics II Blog Tour

Hi everyone! I’m happy to be a part of the blog tour for Amy Ellis’s new book, Modern Basics II. Amy and I have been friends for a few years—I love her quilts and I know she works really hard on her books and other creative endeavors. Amy blogs at Amy’s Creative Side and she is probably best known for the twice-yearly Blogger’s Quilt Festival that she hosts at her blog, along with her first book, Modern Basics. Modern Basics II is a wonderful follow-up to her first book, and includes patterns for 14 beautiful quilts. 

This quilt is called Confetti Crossings. I love this quilt with the warm spring-y fabrics alternating with bold "X" blocks.

Confetti Crossings is made with two different blocks, a 16-patch and a graphic “X” block made from half square triangles. Amy has included instructions for making this quilt in two sizes so you can make a large bed size quilt (93” x 93”) or, if you prefer, a throw quilt (56” x 68”). I think this quilt would look great with a few varying blacks and whites for the X blocks and then total scrappiness for the 16 patches. Or—you could flip the color scheme and make black and white checkerboards for the 16 patches and then use different bright colors with white for the X blocks.

Amy’s asked us to share about a favorite quilting tip or tool. One of my favorite/essential quilting tools is the Kwik Klip. 

I always pin baste my quilts, and I use my Kwik Klip to close the pins. (You just hold the safety part of the safety pin with one hand and use the Kwik Klip in your other hand to push the pointy end of the pin into the safety cap.) It’s fast and easy and saves my fingertips from getting poked and scraped by all those safety pins.

You can visit all the blog tour links below, starting today, to learn more about the quilts in Modern Basics II.

 

Emily Herrick    http://crazyoldladiesquilts.blogspot.com/
Amy Newbold    http://sukiedontyaknow.com/
Dana Bolyard    http://oldredbarnco.blogspot.com/
Amy Webb    http://www.amylouwhosews.com/
Martingale    http://blog.shopmartingale.com/
Victoria Findlay Wolfe    http://www.bumblebeansinc.blogspot.com/
Katie Blakesley    www.swimbikequilt.com
Chelsey K    www.fatquartershop.blogspot.com
Terri Harlan    http://sew-fantastic.blogspot.com/
Mary Kolb    http://maryonlakepulaski.blogspot.com/
Pat Sloan    http://blog.patsloan.com
Natalia Bonner    http://www.pieceandquilt.com/
Candy Glendening    http://www.candiedfabrics.com/
Vicki Christensen    http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/

Then visit this link and complete the form to enter to win an electronic copy of Modern Basics II. There will be 15 winners, and Amy will contact them on March 4. Good luck! 

Quilt blocks + Quilting

I've been working on several different projects at once. Honestly, it's making me a little crazy. So I'm going to focus on finishing some things that are almost done... I have one quilt ready to bind and another that is partially quilted, and once those are done I think I'll feel ok about starting an Easter dress for my girl.

This past week I made my February blocks for do good stitches:

 

These blocks were made with Amy/badskirt's tutorial but using different measurements to create a 12.5" finished block. My 12-year-old gave me the colors for the top block and the second block is colors my daughter chose. These blocks are very easy to make but the linen blend I used for the "triangle bits" is fiddly, stretchy, and complicates it a little bit.

And I've started making some scrappy-trip-along blocks. These are fun and so quick:

 

So far I'm just planning out each block as I go.  The instructions for making this are here; you should give it a try!

And today I machine quilted this creeper for my son (he made it and pin basted it a while ago):

The quilting is pretty much invisible. He wanted me to use green thread on the black parts and black thread on the green, but we had a miscommunication on that so it didn't turn out quite how he wanted. I quilted a squared-off meander with a few square loops in the green, and cursive letter S's in the black. Apparently that's what this creature says. Now that the quilting is done I'll help my boy make the pieces for the pillow back and put it together. 

I have some quilting and binding ahead of me and then I'll have a couple finished quilts to share. Have a good weekend!

Finished Monkey Quilt

I'm happy to share another finished quilt!

 

I finished the top a while back, and sent it to Natalia for quilting a few weeks ago.

 

After it came back, it took me a little while to get the binding complete, as I was working on finishing up my king size quilt.

It's too big to get a good photo on the backyard fence (it's about 65" x 90"), so my girl and I went to the playground down the street to take photos. I didn't take clips or anything, she's holding it up by herself in these pictures and I was hurrying fast to get the photos.

Here's a closeup of the monkey quilting done by Natalia:

 

Isn't it cute? Can you see the bananas? 

I'm going to be finishing up at least one more quilt this week, and I'll maybe do another "quilt blocks" blog post seeing as how I started a scrappy trip-along quilt this past week. My kids have no school this week so we're planning some day trips and hope to keep everyone busy and happy. Hope your February is going well!

Completed King Size Quilt

This past week I finished up the binding and hand quilting on my king size quilt. I was hoping to be able to take photos outside but I need helpers, dry weather, and good light all at the same time to make that happen, and that might not be possible for a while. So for now, here are photos of it inside.

I had to look at photos of the finished quilt top to remember which way I had decided was the top.

The quilt consists of 16 improvised log cabin blocks that are near 16" square. I used flea market fancy fabrics and other fabrics that coordinated with the FMF. The fabric used for the sashing and borders is Moda crossweave. 

I machine quilted the quilt on my Janome QC 4900. There are a few pops of hand quilting too. The main trick for machine quilting this quilt (around 96" x 104") is to not put all the batting in at first.

*For my first chunk of quilting on this quilt, I pin basted a piece of batting that was as wide as the two center rows of blocks, plus about 4 inches on each side. Depending on the design of the quilt, it would be good to try to divide the quilt into thirds and put the middle 1/3 of batting in to begin with.
*Then I machine quilted that section, leaving the 4 inches on each side, and the borders, unquilted.
*Next I attached batting to one of the sides, pin basted the batting in, and quilted it. (But not the borders.) This tutorial of mine shows how my grandma taught me to piece batting and that's how I attached the batting during this process.
*Then I attached the batting to the other side and quilted the blocks and sashing on the other side.
*The final step was quilting the whole border, which wasn't really difficult at all because I didn't have much quilt to the right of my sewing machine needle.

Here are a few close-ups:

I quilted feathers with echo stitching in the sashing and borders. In the borders, the space around the feathers is quilted with small loopy quilting. I thought about doing something fancier, but decided to make it easy on myself at that point.

I like the pink/blue/gray color scheme of this block.

 

I quilted this block after I learned to do the clamshell/paisley quilting design.

 

The feathers and the flowers I put in the feather intersections show up pretty well here.

 

This one has a lot of texture, plus it shows one of the little hand quilted spots in the quilt.

The back of the quilt:

 

Mostly kona solid fabrics, with a couple of extra blocks. We can reverse it if we get tired of the front, I suppose.

A closer view of the little block in the center of the back: 

 

I'm really happy to have this project completed and on my bed! I'm not sure I'll make another quilt this big for quite a while, but I'm glad I made this one and I feel like I learned a lot along the way. 

Other blog posts about this project:

http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/2011/05/blocks-flea-market-fancy-improv.html

http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/2011/05/improv-block-progress.html

http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/2011/06/last-3-blocks.html

http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/2011/06/king-size-quilt-top-finished.html

http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/2013/01/machine-quilting-king-size-quilt.html

Machine Quilting a King Size Quilt

The last couple weeks I've been pushing hard to finish up my king size quilt. I made the quilt top in the spring of 2011 as part of a Naked Bed Challenge on twitter. I got the quilt backing made soon after we moved into the house here in Washington, at the end of 2012. (I don't think I've taken a picture of the back yet, though.) I started the machine quilting at that time too, but lost steam on it and put it away for a while. Then, I was getting all gung ho and ready to finish it up around the end of June, right before I hurt my finger and had to take an extended break from sewing.

So anyway, finishing the quilt is on my sewing list for January, and I'm getting really close! I've been taking photos and posting them to instagram as I go; if you are on instagram and want to follow me, my username is VickiDJL. Here's a recap of the last few days of work:

Quilting a feather in the sashing. 

 

Ironing the quilt back to prepare for adding in the last section of batting. I lowered my ironing board to about 18" tall to do this. It was silly. I'll explain how I did the batting more completely when I blog about the finished quilt.

  

Quilt all rolled up while I was quilting the last section of quilt blocks (the green mug is my thread stand):

  

Center section all quilted, borders still need to be quilted: 

  

Reverse view of some of the quilting. The big feather at the bottom is part of the border: 

  

More of what the border quilting looks like, from the back: 

 

The border fabric on the front and thread are both gray and the quilting doesn't show up well, especially in the evening after the sun has gone down. So I flipped over the border for this picture, and then had a dancing girl who wanted to be in the photo too. If you look closely, you can see the loopy quilting I'm doing as filler around the big border feather. 

I have all the border feathers finished, and just need to finish adding in loopy filler quilting on two more sides of the quilt, and then the machine quilting will be done. There are a few more sections of hand quilting to do, then binding and labeling, and then it will be completed!

New Year Sewing

I've been busy sewing the last couple weeks.

I finished this mini heart hexagon quilt:

 

This is going to be sent to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. I'm planning to make a couple more quilts for them in the next few weeks and then send them all in together. If you haven't made a quilt for AAQI yet, think about it. They sell/auction mini quilts to raise awareness and to fund Alzheimer's research, and they accept quilts no larger than 9" x 12" so it's not really a big commitment to make a quilt and help them out.

****

I already finished my do good stitches blocks for January. Crazy, huh?

 These chevron blocks were made using the herringbone block tutorial from Bijou Lovely.

A couple of other small things:

 

My little girl helped me make this skirt for her doll, Molly. (She pushed the foot pedal on the sewing machine.) I have "1 or 2 doll clothes items" on my January to-sew list and this was fun and quick to make. 

 

And we had been needing a new ironing board cover for a while. I got the fabric at Ikea a couple weeks ago. I used an old towel (trimmed and edges zigzagged) and one layer of cotton batting (scraps I sewed to fit the ironing board) for the padding. I looked at this tutorial on Moda Bake Shop and decided to follow the method described there for finishing the edge and making a casing (even though I didn't make a quilted top like they did there). I just used kitchen string to adjust the cover to fit; it worked great!

Pettiskirt!

I sewed this pettiskirt for my little girl in the evenings after bedtime in the last couple weeks before Christmas.

 

I followed this tutorial from the Girl, Inspired blog. Here are a few changes and other notes on the project.

*I bought my nylon chiffon from this website, and it was 54" wide, not 108" like the fabric.com chiffon used in the tutorial. That was easy to adjust for.

*I made the waistband/yoke a little longer (maybe 4.5" or 5" instead of 3". I can't remember exactly.) I also changed the top tier of the skirt to 6.5" wide instead of 6". I wanted more of a size 4/5 skirt instead of a 3/4.

*I omitted the lining layer. I was in a hurry, and it was late! At least I finished it on the 23rd instead of Christmas Eve. I could still add a lining, but I probably won't. The skirt is fine without it.

*I got a generic ruffler foot from amazon and it worked pretty well. It didn't fit my machine perfectly, and it did occasionally make my needle screw come loose and then things would make loud clunking noises, but as long as I kept checking that and tightening it, it worked fine. 

*One other thing I would change, if I make another one, is to use matching thread. The tiers are stitched with white thread and then I serged the seams with pink. It's what I had, and this wasn't thought out very far in advance of when it needed to be done, but next time I think it will look better with matching thread.

Here's an action shot!

2012 Sewing Review

... plus one knitting project.

Happy end of the year! It was a challenging year in a lot of ways, and I'm glad it's over. Glad I'm almost 6 months out from smashing my finger. (By the way, don't ever do that.) I'm excited for a new year; I love this time of year with the possibilities and new start.

Hearts

Hi! I hope you're having a good holiday season. Ready for the New Year?? :)

I got some cute pastel charm packs for Christmas and I've also been wanting to make paper pieced hexagons again. Here are some that I made yesterday:

I played around with some layouts in EQ and decided to make a heart, out of hexagons. Maybe more than one. Here's a long and triangular kind of hexagon heart:

(The big one, above, takes 59 hexagons. So you don't have to count.)

And here are some short chubby hearts:

I like the pointy ones... but I also like the smallest chubby ones. I think they would be cute on a tiny quilt. Each one is made of just 13 hexagons. 

Let me know if you decide to make a hexagon heart!

Orange/Aqua Star Blocks

Merry (almost) Christmas! And Happy Holidays too! :)
I finished the handmade gifts that were going to make the mailing deadline and sent them off. A couple people are going to get Happy New Year gifts from me. So the last few days I've had some fun working on a star quilt I started a while back. Here's a shot of most of the blocks so far:

  

I have finished 6 more blocks that aren't shown here, too.

I have been crowdsourcing advice on the color scheme for this quilt, trying to decide if I should add pink or not. I made up a block with some blush colored Mendocino octopi fabric, it's sort of peachy pink but has a dark orange octopus in it. So that color is in. I think. I'll have to lay the whole group out again next time it is light and we are home, and see how it looks.

We are excited for our 2nd annual Christmas Eve in Seattle traditions tomorrow; planning on visiting a fun beach and going to a very delicious restaurant too. I'm excited for Christmas and also happy for the solstice and the return of lighter days.

Also--it took me forever, but I finally uploaded photos of my November Believe Circle blocks. The theme this time was orange and gray improv:

 Our group took the month of December off; I'm looking forward to next month!

Giveaway Winner! and Quilted Tote Bag

Hi everyone! The winner of one of my patterns for the Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway was commenter number 81, Allison from Dreaming in Patchwork. I've emailed her to confirm her pattern choice and will send her the pattern she chooses as soon as I hear back!

I also wanted to show off my new quilt-as-you-go tote bag. It was very gray here today so the pictures are kind of dark.

 

And the other side:

 

I made it using the quilt-as-you-go process described on Elizabeth's blog. I used white thread for the quilting on the upper part of both sides of the bag, and navy blue thread on the dark bottom section.

Here's the inside:

 

I made a simple pocket with room for my phone and a few pens. 

Overall I am pretty happy with the bag but there are a few things I'd change if/when I make one again. The handles... I'm still not sure I like them all colorful and think they might be better made from one fabric. Also I think the bag would be better with the handles attached slightly closer to the center of the bag. At least the handles are both the same length and it's a good length. 

The lining isn't quite the perfect fit either, it's a bit too big, but I guess that's better than too small. I think next time I make a bag I'll cut the lining out to match the exterior pieces before assembling the interior. 

Here's a closer view of the quilting:

The bag measures about 13" high and 16" wide (with my church binder and books inside) and it's just the size I wanted. On to last minute Christmas sewing!

Baby Quilt for Brayden

Recently a group of blogging friends and I finished up a group baby quilt for Natalia's baby boy. She was given the quilt last week, which means it's time to blog about the group project now!

So, in order, here's how we completed this group quilt, with participants on both U.S. coasts, as well as in Utah. :)

We used a design by Amy E (Amy's Creative Side), who adapted a pattern from her book, Modern Basics, to make it baby quilt size.

Candy, of Candied Fabrics, dyed the beautiful fabric for the quilt.

Amy E and Amylouwho completed the quilt top.

Rita from Mochi Studios beautifully hand appliqued the baby's name.

And when it got to me it was time for quilting.

First off I had to press the quilt back and top. Isn't this fabric amazing?

This is the back of the quilt. I love it.

And here's the front:

I love how the colors pop against the blue background. 

I decided to quilt a squared-off pattern that would be called "loopy" if it was done without the square corners. It was a new quilting design to me and it went pretty well, but it can be a challenge to quilt square corners when you're used to quilting curves. 

 (quilting action shot)

In the colored rectangles, I quilted outlines and X's, using my walking foot.

This photo, and the rest of the photos were taken after the quilt was washed and had shrunk up a bit. I like how the square loops turned out but next time I do them I will try out a larger scale. 

Also, I hand quilted around the letters using 2 strands of embroidery floss.

After the quilting was done, I bound the quilt using 4 of the fabrics from the colored rectangles (there wasn't enough turquoise, but it turned out fine without it.) Here's the finished project!

And the back:

It was fun to plan out this group project and to have it turn out so well! You can see the adorable baby with his quilt here!