Trip Around the World

A few weeks ago, I saw Jan's blog post about her trip around the world quilt, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I went back to her blog and saw that she posted again about her project, which led me to the Brigitte Giblin Quilts facebook page and eventually to me joining Brigitte's second Trip Around the World challenge group. The challenge is to hand sew a trip around the world quilt, using squares that are cut 2", with a "red spot" fabric for the center and then certain other rows. It took me a little while to get a hold of 1/2 yard of a good red dot fabric, but I did, and here's what I have so far:

It is getting a little more challenging as the rows get longer, and I'm a little scared about the length of the later rows (from looking at some of the photos from the first challenge group, I'm guessing it might end up with 27 "trips" around the center maybe.) But it's a good project to keep my hands busy while I watch a show and it has been really fun choosing the different fabrics for each row as I go. 

If you're interested in seeing more of the challenge photos, the hashtag for the challenge is #bgtawc. I love seeing all the different versions of this quilt.

Modern Quilt Guild Challenge Quilt--Entomology

Today's the deadline for the latest Modern Quilt Guild challenge, and I got my quilt finished and posted in the MQG forums early this afternoon. I had a hard time getting the colors to show up right in my photos, so I'm including pictures taken both outside and inside.

It's titled Entomology.

I made three paper pieced moths using the challenge fabric for the wings and a gray solid for the bodies. I designed the moth pattern, just to see if I could, inspired by an old scientific insect drawing that a friend pinned on Pinterest. This blog post on Shape Moth was very helpful for figuring out how to draw the pattern in EQ7. Sewing the moth blocks was pretty labor intensive, but by the last one I had figured out some tricks to speed things up and make sure everything fit together correctly.

The antennae were embroidered with embroidery floss in a basic chain stitch. I decided to hand quilt the moths with perle cotton, and then machine quilted the background. I got about 6 pokes that drew blood while hand quilting over the last couple days, but didn't get any on the quilt!

This quilt was kind of an exercise in using what I had on hand. I had thought about buying a light gray fabric for the background, but still had a large chunk of the aqua solid (Kona ice frappe), so I decided to use it even though I've used that same fabric in my last three mini quilts. Same with the quilting thread--ideally I would have used a slightly lighter aqua thread for the machine quilting, but I used what I already had and I think it turned out fine.

Here's the back:

And one more photo of the front, outside (on the shadier side of the backyard) this time:

I'm really glad I was able to participate in this challenge. I learned a lot and might even try making more paper pieced insects someday. Thanks a bunch to the Modern Quilt Guild and Michael Miller for providing the challenge fabrics!

Vacation fun

We've had a busy couple of weeks! The 4th of July was really fun, starting with meeting up with some old friends from Kansas for breakfast.

 

The food was very, very good. The kids' menus had eggs to color on the back and the kids had a lot of fun with that. This one is Rainbow Dash.

  

Later on, we had friends over for dinner and visiting, ending with watching our city's fireworks show. It was pretty good!

Then we got up at 4:30 a.m. the next morning and got on an airplane to California. We stayed with my sister-in-law at her (very kind and gracious) mom's house for a few days and then went to San Diego to a family reunion where we celebrated my grandpa's upcoming 90th birthday. I also got to spend time with a very good friend that I hadn't seen since 2008.

We went and watched the sunset one night. It was so pretty. And much earlier than where we live.

We saw airplanes and a Ripley's Believe it or Not exhibit at the Air and Space Museum.

And Lego Doctor Who, when we ate at the mall food court. Bowties are cool.

 

I made quilted zipper pouches and brought them for my sisters and SILs that I saw on the trip. I need to make one of these for myself, soon!

 

And I made bibs for two cousins who are expecting their first babies.

It was so good to get reacquainted with siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins, and everyone else. These feet belong to a really cute and sweet 2 year old niece. I came home feeling exhausted but also full of so much love for my whole family. I'm so glad we were able to spend time with all our loved ones.

 

Kitchenaid Miniquilt

My oldest is finishing up 8th grade in the next few days, and his cooking teacher has been one of the bright lights of his middle school experience. My boy took cooking in 6th and 7th grades, and TAed for the cooking teacher for two trimesters this year. I decided to make her a mini-quilt using the Kitchenaid mixer pattern by Erin from Why Not Sew. (I've had this pattern pinned for ages and this was just about the perfect situation to finally sew it up.)

 

I decided to go with hand quilting, and I think I'm going to do a bit more quilting in the mixing bowl, and I'll probably finish off with a gray binding. I hope the cooking teacher will like it!

Fox-Geese Miniquilts

A few weeks ago, I signed up to participate in the mini quilt swap held over at Schnitzel & Boo. Everyone participating filled out a questionnaire about things we like in our mini quilts :) and then a few days later I got my assigned partner. It's a secret swap in that the makers know who they are making for, but nobody knows who is making the quilt they will receive. It's fun because there are two assigned hashtags (#makeaquiltmakeafriend and #schnitzelandboominiquiltswap) and lots of gorgeous pictures are being posted at instagram (and in the flickr group) while people are designing, deciding, and making their projects and extra goodies.

Here's my progress so far:

 

The adorable fox pattern is from Sonja at Artisania. It was a little tricky with all the angles, and I had to unpick a few times, but it worked out in the end. I have had flying geese on my mind for a while, so I decided to add a row of them on one side of the fox block. And then bordered it with a greenish aqua from a solids layer cake I have in my stash.

And... I'm making a twin quilt to keep. I've done this once before in a swap, and there's one I made for a swap that I still want to replicate for myself because it turned out so cute. So here's the second fox-geese quilt:

 

The geese blocks are a little darker, and I gave this one a gray border.

Next up is embroidering eyes while I watch a show, and then layering and quilting. I don't know how I'll quilt them yet. 

 

 

Blogger's Quilt Festival--Simple Squares AMH Quilt

I finished up just in time to enter into the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I hope you've been enjoying all the quilts this week! Thanks so much to Amy for hosting the festival again! 

  

(my quilt holder is getting so tall...)

This quilt is for one of my oldest friends, Shawndra, who I met in 9th grade soon after I moved to Provo. It's not my typical palette of colors but when we talked about what she wanted in a quilt, she said I could do whatever I wanted. And the saturated colors, mostly from the Anna Maria Horner Dowry line, remind me of her.

  

The back is pieced with a mix of leftovers from the front, a trailing rose fabric from another Anna Maria Horner line, and the blue and yellow damask was supposed to be included in the quilt top but it didn't quite match. I think it fits well on the back though.

The binding is a dark purple with a section of Tula Pink dot fabric.

  

I free motion quilted an allover swirl pattern. The quilting took 2 hours and 39 minutes and 3 1/2 bobbins.

This quilt is made from my free Simple Squares pattern; it's the 4th quilt I've made with this pattern. It's a good one for large scale prints and goes together quickly.

Here are links to my previous Blogger's Quilt Festival entries:
Scrappy Trips
Summer Stars
Supernova
Spring Promise
Matching Quilt
Rainbow 9-Patch
NICU Charity Quilt

Y2K10
Turtle Quilt 
4-patch Baby Quilt

Thanks again to Amy, and don't forget to go check out all the quilts!

Finished Star Quilt

Here's the star quilt after I quilted it and my friend Jenn R. did the binding:

(Photo taken at the church, with my phone.) The organization we made the quilt for is the VA Puget Sound Fisher House. It's a place that serves veteran and active duty military families when they have a loved one in the hospital. The young women from church made enough blocks for a second quilt, and our church group donated quite a bit of other household items as well to help the Fisher House out. It was great to learn more about this organization and I'm sure we will make more quilts for them in the future.

I've also been buckling down on another quilt from my Simple Squares pattern. I'm making this one for a good friend, and hoping/planning to get it finished this week, in time to enter into the Blogger's Quilt Festival. Here's the top before I put the borders on:

 

Borders aren't my favorite. But I got them done, and the back made, and the quilting is almost 75% done so far. I'm doing big free motion quilted swirls; here's a section of the back:

 

So I have more quilting and then binding in my near future. 

One more thing--random.org chose Lee B. as the winner of my Giveaway Day potholders. I'll be starting on them very soon, thanks for being patient, Lee!

 

Giveaway day!

Hi friends! Thanks so much to the folks at Sew, Mama, Sew for hosting Giveaway day for us, twice each year! This time I decided to make some selvage potholders for my giveaway--you choose the colors you want.

I made this set for our guild swap last fall, and then I couldn't attend, so I ended up keeping them for myself:

They have one layer of insulated potholder batting and one layer of warm and white batting. To enter, leave a comment that includes what colors you would choose. (Rainbow is an option.) One comment per person, please, and I have comment moderation enabled so don't worry if your comment doesn't show up immediately.

*The giveaway will be open until Friday, May 16, at 5 p.m. pacific time.
*I'll email the winner when I close the comments.
*I'll ship the potholders next week.
*Giveaway is open to all (including international).


Don't forget to visit Sew, Mama, Sew and check out all the amazing giveaways this week!

edit: the giveaway is now closed and the winner was #90, Lee. Thanks for entering!
 

What I'm working on

A while back, my friend Kris and I talked about making charity quilts with other women from church, and this morning I finished up our group's first quilt top.

 

(Oh flickr why do you keep changing stuff?! I keep thinking I have the new setup figured out and then they change it again...)

I'm not actually sure where we are donating the quilt so I'll update on that when I know. We had 5 people contribute blocks to this quilt and hope more will join us next time!

I also started swapping x+ blocks with my Seattle MQG friend Tracey. I started making x+ blocks last year for myself, but I want them all scrappy and unique and I lost the energy to keep going with making just one of each block. I'm so glad Tracey agreed to swap with me!

 

Our colors for March were yellow, pink, turquoise, purple, and green. We each made doubles of four blocks and then swapped, so we each ended up with 8 different blocks. We're using the badskirt tutorial for these, fyi.

Tracey chose navy blue, red, orange, turquoise/aqua, and grey for our April colors. I have half of my blocks done and need to get going on the other two sets.

I have been working on a quilt for a friend and thinking about working on my rhino quilt #2. I'm planning on doing a little sewing project with the preschool kids too. What have you been working on lately?

Rhino Quilt

So, I made a rhinoceros quilt.


It was a gift for my brother. (He likes it, by the way.)

I pieced the rhino using 2.5" squares cut from a Kona New Classic roll-up. The background is made of 12 cream neutral pieces (6 different fabrics). The rhino is machine appliqued to the background.

I machine quilted the rhino with swirls and variegated thread, and the background with a fairly open stipple and off-white thread. There are some detail lines hand stitched on the ear, eye, legs, and tail, but they don't show up very well.


For the back, I pieced together the rest of the Kona strips in relatively rainbow order, and then put that rainbow in between a blue solid fabric from Connecting Threads and a tan fabric I got from a giveaway at guild meeting a while ago. The binding is an eggplant purple solid from Connecting Threads.

Here's a close-up of the quilting:


I started this quilt back in the summer and had a different (crazier) plan before I decided on the random color placement. I was hoping to finish it for a Christmas gift and then my sewing machine had to go to the shop for most of December. I thought I might be able to get it done for my brother's birthday in February, but I didn't. I did finally finish it and send it, but before I did, I decided I liked it so much that I needed to make another one to keep. I'll show you my progress so far in a couple days.

I would love to hear about the craziest quilt you've ever made!

Rainbow Scrap Quilt

I finished up my rainbow scrap quilt on Friday night. I started sewing 6.5" scrap blocks in the summer of 2011 when I still lived in Kansas, and ended up with 120 of them at the Seattle MQG quilt retreat at the beginning of February. I made one more block at the retreat and sewed together the quilt top there. It's about 54" x 78".

 

 

This quilt has scraps going back a long way, here's a short list:
*fabric from my 4-H shirt (that went with lavender stirrup pants) when I was 12
*purple poly/cotton calico that I used to make a Barbie dress when I was 10
*a blue/red print that my mom made a dress for me out of when I was 5
*fabric from at least 3 baby dresses I made for my daughter
*fabric from my 9-year-old's baby blessing outfit
*fabrics from many of the baby quilts I've made for my kids and their cousins
and lots of other good stuff.

  

I used the famous Ikea numbers fabric for the back. I was really happy that it was wide enough for the back of this quilt! I love making pieced backs for quilts, but it was nice to not worry about that this time. There is enough happening on the front of this quilt, I think.

  

I decided to do a more open quilting design this time, and came up with this flower and loop free motion quilting design. I think it was more difficult than doing a simpler all over design like loops or stippling, because I had to look ahead and figure out where the next flower should go. And the quilting wasn't always easy to see with such a busy quilt top. I kept track of my time and it took 207 minutes to quilt, and 5 bobbin changes. 

 

 

The binding is a sort of grungy gray dot fabric. And... there's a funny mistake in this picture, want to see up close?

 

While I was quilting, the edge of the backing fabric got flipped over and caught in the quilting stitches. I just trimmed the fabric close and left it for now. I was not in the mood to unpick anything when I got to the end of the quilting.

I'm so happy this quilt is finished!

And now I'm planning to try something else with my scraps for a while. I've already started cutting 2.5" squares from a lot of my scraps. I don't know what I'll make with them but I'll figure out something good.  What are you doing with your scraps?

New York Beauty Zip Pouch--Riley Blake Challenge

I finished up my little project for the MQG Riley Blake Challenge the other night.

  

I had been thinking about this idea for a little zip pouch for a while, and then realized the orange, yellow, and light blue challenge fabrics would work really well. I hand quilted it with orange, yellow, and aqua embroidery floss.

  

The back is another one of the challenge fabrics. This one is quilted with gray perle cotton. I quilted it while we watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

I made a big mistake when I was getting ready to assemble the bag, after the quilting was finished. I've made several zip pouches with machine quilting, and I always use my rotary cutter to trim the edges of the quilted pieces so they will be the same size. I didn't even think about it before I rotary cut some of the slightly crooked edges off the front piece for this bag... then I realized that cutting hand stitches is a bad idea. I ended up pulling out a couple inches from several rows of quilting, enough so I could tie a knot, and then requilting the areas I had needed to undo.

I'm glad I fixed it--the quilting stitches should all stay in place now--and I won't make that mistake again!

Valentines and Winner

I made some simple Valentines for my family today. We still have leftover pink construction paper from a birthday party a couple years ago, and I used a glue stick (to baste) and then free motion "quilted" the hearts to the paper. If my machine had been set up for regular sewing, I might have zigzagged them or done a cute decorative stitch.

  

Random.org says that the winner of the Seams Unlikely book giveaway is #2, Vicki W. I've already emailed her. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Seams Unlikely Book Review + Giveaway

I was asked to participate in the blog tour for Nancy Zieman's autobiography, Seams Unlikely: The Inspiring True Life Story of Nancy Zieman, and today's my turn to tell you what I thought.

And here's what I think: Nancy Zieman is an amazing example of hard work and determination and has endured significant physical and medical challenges to become one of the most recognized names in the sewing industry. She built Nancy's Notions, her sewing supply mail-order business, from the ground up starting in her basement, and has had a successful sewing television show for over 30 years. She is a true inspiration.

In her book, Nancy describes health challenges that started when she was a baby, including Bell's Palsy, knee problems, and multiple surgeries. She describes her life living on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and the work ethic instilled in her by her parents. I especially liked reading about her experiences in 4-H because I took sewing 4-H for four summers too--and I got an amazing education in apparel sewing through 4-H, even though I was so young.

It was very interesting to read about the growth of her business over time as technology changed and her customer base grew.

I appreciated reading about Nancy's family as well, and I loved the chapter near the end that described the adoption of her younger son (and her older son's reaction to the new baby... so, so sweet.) Nancy worked with her husband for many years and was honest about the challenges and benefits of them being in business together.

Visit Nancy's blog to read her explanation of why she wrote the book, and to enter in her giveaway of 20 copies of the book.

And I have a copy of the book to give away, too. Comment on this blog post and I'll choose a winner on February 14.

You can read more about Seams Unlikely at the other stops on the blog tour:

February 4          Nancy Zieman           http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog

February 5          Eileen Roche          http://dzgns.com/blog/

February 5          Pat Sloan          http://patsloan.typepad.com/

February 6          Melissa Stramel          http://melissaslilaclane.blogspot.com

February 6          The Long Ladies          http://www.mariemadelinestudio.typepad.com/

February 6          Tori Thompson          http://totallystitchin.net

February 7          Amy Barickman          http://www.indygojunction.com/blog/

February 7          Melissa Mora          http://mellysews.com

February 8          Shari Butler          http://www.doohikeydesignstudio.com/blog/

February 8          Vicki Christensen          http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/

February 9          Carolina Moore          http://alwaysexpectmoore.com

February 9          Kate Mclvor          https://theconfidentstitch.squarespace.com/blog/

February 10          Amy Ellis          http://amyscreativeside.com/blog/

February 10          Melissa Mortenson          http://www.polkadotchair.com

February 11          Ilene Miller          http://happyvalleyprimitives.blogspot.com/

February 11          Liz Hicks          http://blogerisms.blogspot.com/

February 11          Rachael Pannepacker          http://www.jaybirdquilts.com/

February 12          Bill Gardner          http://www.quiltersnewsletter.com/blogs/insideqn/

February 12          Elizabeth Evans          http://www.simplesimonandco.com

February 13          Amy Webb          http://www.amylouwhosews.com/

February 13          Lindsay Wilkes          http://thecottagemama.com/blog/

February 14          Gertie Hirsch          http://www.blogforbettersewing.com

February 14          Veronica Philips          http://cloverusa.wordpress.com/

February 15          Jenny Gabriel          http://www.sewvacoutletblog.com

February 15          Laura Wasilowski          http://artfabrik.blogspot.com/

February 16          Frieda Anderson          http://friestyle.blogspot.com/

February 16          Rita Farro          http://ritassewfun.blogspot.com

February 17          Cindy Cloward          http://www.rileyblakedesigns.com/blog/

February 17          Joan Hawley          http://www.lazygirldesigns.com/blog/

February 17          Patty Young          http://modkidboutique.blogspot.com

February 18          Nancy Zieman          http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog/

 
Disclosure--this blog post contains an affiliate link. I was given a free copy of the book. All opinions are my own.
Comments are now closed.

Seattle MQG Retreat

I spent this past weekend at the Seattle MQG retreat on Vashon Island. I had a great time, sewed a ton, ate good food that I didn't have to make, didn't sleep enough, and came home happy to see my family and watch the Big Game last night.

One of the things I've been wanting to make good progress on is my scrap block quilt. I started making 6.5" scrap blocks sometime in 2011(in Kansas) and have worked on them off and on since then. I've made about 35 since the end of December. Here's the final stack:

 

I had a number in mind when I was finishing up the light blues and dark blues, but I ended up with more than I expected. I had to make one more block at the retreat to finish up the last row, and it was kind of fun to use scraps that a few different people gave to me for that.

This is the final layout:

and then here's what it looked like all sewn together (but not pressed yet.)

 

This was an instagram photo and the bottom row is cut off. The quilt has 117 blocks in it.

I pressed all the row seams open this morning and I'm hoping to get it ready to quilt later on this week. 

I worked on a couple other things too, here's a few more scrappy trip along blocks:

 

I have 21 of them now, not sure how many I will end up with.

And I participated in a group Improv Round Robin session which was a ton of fun. We had groups of 4 people, and each person started with her own fabric and then passed it to the next person in the group a total of 3 times, so we all ended up working on each others' quilts. Here's my mini after Louise, Debbie, Chandra and I all worked on it:

I'm not sure if I'm going to add more piecing or not, but it's a beautiful start and it was so fun to work with my group on this. I think I'd like to do this on a bigger scale someday, too. 

Overall the retreat was such a good experience. I didn't know anybody in the group really well before going, but I feel like I made friends and it was so cool to get to know people better in a setting of sewing and chatting all day long.

 

Finished Christmas Pillow

I finished up this Christmas pillow cover yesterday. I had to take my sewing machine in for a tuneup early in December, and when I got it back home I thought I would have time to finish this up, but my machine started squeaking partway through the quilting. So it went back to the shop for another week. The second half of the quilting was squeak-free, thankfully.

I had originally thought I would make the pillow with big triangles on the front, but decided I liked the smaller ones better. I had a bunch of the large ones cut out though so I made the pillow back with them. The back pieces overlap by about 5.5" and are made of a double layer of fabric, but not quilted.

I kept the quilting pretty simple, I like it. 

I cut out a few quilt blocks while my machine was back in the shop and that's what I started working on today. I hope to have some more finished projects to share soon!

p.s. I edited my Made in 2013 post to actually show my mosaic, changes over at flickr have been messing up my blog a little bit! 

Made in 2013

Hello, and happy almost New Year! Here are most of the projects I finished up in 2013:

I finished up 6 quilts by May (one baby, one king, two twin and the other two in between) and then slowed down a little bit after that.

I feel the need to point out that I did the machine quilting but not the piecing on the blue quilt in the 3rd row down, and that the scrappy trip quilt (also on the 3rd row) was a collaborative quilt with my do good stitches bee.

My main sewing machine has been out of commission for most of December and I've been sewing scrap blocks with my Hello Kitty machine (an accurate seam allowance is less important for these blocks.) I'm getting really close to having enough of them for a throw-size quilt and hope to show them here on the blog soon. Or you can pop over to instagram if you want to see sooner.

I have some cool things I've been working on that I'm excited to share during the first few months of 2014 so stick around, ok? I'm hoping my sewing machine comes back from the shop (again) very soon and that it will be functional and not squeaky so I can get lots of stitches in soon. Happy New Year!!

Finished Red & White Scraps Quilt

(I am challenged when it comes to creative names for quilts, I know.)

I finished up my red and white quilt for the Seattle MQG Binary Challenge a week and a half ago.

 

For binding, I used a white fabric that has textured dots for the binding. With three tiny red segments on the left. 

Here are some close-ups of the machine quilting:

 

 

 

I added some more red hand quilting after I took this photo.

The binary quilts will be on display at Island Quilter in January; I'll let you know as soon as I find out the exact dates.

The winner of my giveaway was #97, Heather. I've already sent her magazine on its way.

Happy quilting!