I've been working on some quilt blocks the last few days. First up, I made this star block for the Believe circle of do. Good Stitches. It will go in the mail tomorrow, last minute again.
It's 16.5 inches square, "boy" colors were requested.
Granny squares... I've been working on these off and on for a few weeks:
I need to get a better collection of gray prints. Oh I made one more of these today too, it's green and gray. So pretty.
And finally I added a bunch of blocks to my scrappy block pile:
This is an ongoing project that I'm not in a huge hurry to finish. I think I've been making blocks like this for about a year, whenever I feel like it. The blocks are 6.5" square and I have 42 of them done so far. I'm shooting for 80 for a nice throw size quilt. I sorted them into rainbow order last night and I only have 2 purple and 2 or 3 pink, so those are colors I need to focus on in the next little while.
I have a bunch of quilting I need to do. I have one quilt with the quilting partly done (my king size quilt) and 4 other quilt tops that need to be quilted. (And at least 2 quilts in my head that I really want to make that aren't started at all.) I might look into ordering batting online and then I can get quilting!
We had a little break in the rain yesterday so I could take pictures.
This quilt was made for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary that was last month. I wrote more about it a couple weeks ago, if you're interested. The supernova pattern is from Freshly Pieced, and my color scheme was inspired by Lee's finished quilt that can be seen here.
Here's a closer shot so you can see the quilting better:
I did figure-8 type loops in the diagonal and straight color strips, spirals alternating with spiral flowers in the center 9-patches, and (sort of) straight line quilting in the gray triangle background pieces. The border is quilted with names. Our family includes me and my 5 siblings, our 6 spouses, and we have 16 kids all together. 16... is that right? Everyone's names are quilted in that outer border. But not my parents' names. I put them on the back:
I'm so glad this is finished. One day I think I might make another one for me to keep. These colors were so fun to work with and it was fun making a secret project for my mom and dad. I've been working on some other projects and I'll be back to share more about them soon!
I'm so excited to have something finished to share at Amy's Sew & Tell today!
Yesterday I was quilting and I needed a break (sometimes my wrists hurt, I need to work on better ergonomics) so I decided to sew up a little skirt for my girl.
I bought the DS Quilts plaid and dot fabrics a while back and it was finally time to sew it up. I just love the plaid fabric, it's perfect for my pink-loving girl.
I used a pattern from the book "Little Girls, Big Style" and modified it a bit by adding the band at the hem and lengthening the yoke about an inch. Next time I think I'll have to make her a size 4.
Sometimes I love quick projects; the feeling of finishing something is a good one.
I've been quilting, and I'm really loving this quilt that is almost done. I have a few quilting progress pics for now and I'll show the whole quilt as soon as it's ready, in just a few days I think.
The story of this quilt: Back in February I decided to make 40th anniversary quilts for my husband's parents and my parents--both sets have their anniversaries in May. I gave the Swoon quilt to my mother- and father-in-law when they visited us for spring break, and then started working on my parents' quilt. My siblings were planning a party for their anniversary and I was invited but was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to make the trip to Utah. At the same time (for several weeks) my grandfather was very ill, and old too, and I was hoping I would be able to attend his funeral (also in Utah).
Well, my grandpa passed away on May 29, and the funeral was set for last Sunday and Monday, and we figured out a way for me and my kids to get there and back (thanks Dad and Cory for driving with me!) Last Sunday was also the day the anniversary party had been planned so I was also able to be there for that. I got my mom and dad's quilt as close to done as I could and took it to show them, planning on keeping it to finish the quilting. They loved it.
The visit to Utah was good for me and my kids; I just wish my husband had been able to be there with us. The funeral was sad but actually it was the least sad funeral I've been to. He was so old (just over 96 years old) and ready to die; he had been ill for so long and it was a blessing that he was finally able to go. Visiting with my siblings and their kids and my parents was wonderful. We were also able to spend some good time with my inlaws; I love my family!
I am finishing the quilting in the gray triangles and there are 20 spots left to do. I'm also starting my first project inspired by the Alabama Stitch books... got some stencil plastic and fabric paint today; I'm using a thrifted $3 tee to refashion into a beautiful one for myself. I'll be back soon to show off the finished supernova quilt!
The winner of the triangle mug rug was #104, Sasha.
I'll be emailing her shortly and will send out the goodies in a couple days.
Thanks everyone for stopping by and entering the giveaway!
I hope you're having a good weekend and that you can do something fun if it's a holiday weekend for you. We went on a quick camping trip yesterday... it was fun but the night was cold and I'm so happy to sleep in my own bed again tonight.
Good morning! It is wet, chilly, and gray here today. I'm hoping for a little bit of sun later in the week. I decided to make a little mug rug/mini quilt for the Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway. It's not quilted and bound yet, but it will be by the time I send it. I used some of the leftover triangle squares from the supernova quilt I'm working on:
I will include a few notions from my stash for the winner, too. :) And the giveaway is open to everyone--I'll ship internationally if needed.
To win, please leave a comment telling me one thing you're planning or otherwise looking forward to this summer. Make sure you aren't a no-reply blogger; if you're not sure what that is then include your email address in your comment. If I can't contact you, you can't win! The giveaway will be open until May 25 at 5 p.m. Pacific time.
Thanks for stopping by and don't miss all the wonderful giveaways over at Sew, Mama, Sew!
One more thing--if you're new to my site, I invite you to look around a little bit; I've written several quilting and other sewing tutorials that you can find linked up in the menu bar... or just click here for the tutorial list. Have a great day!
It was made using the Spring Promise fabric collection by Ana Davis, for Blend Fabrics. The free PDF pattern (designed by Mary Kay Davis) for this project is located here. This quilt will be part of Blend's display at Quilt Market; I'll be looking for it in pictures on twitter and the blogs. (And yes, I am bummed even more than normal this weekend that we moved away from Kansas City last fall.)
Here's a close up of the quilting:
I did S-waves in the turquoise border and loops in the pink border. The outer border is quilted with regular stippling and I did a new-to-me sort of flame-like meander in the main body of the quilt. It is hard to see in this photo... I have one more picture of the quilting on the back side:
It's still kind of hard to see. It was pretty quick to do though and fun to try something new! I will definitely do this style of quilting again and next time I will get better pictures. :)
If you're new to my blog, I hope you look around for a little bit. I have made a bunch of tutorials for quilting (basting, binding, free motion quilting) and for some other projects too; check out the "free tutorials" link at the top of the blog. Or click here. :)
Don't forget to stop by Amy's Creative Side and see all the quilts people are sharing in the Blogger's Quilt Festival! Thanks Amy, for all your hard work!!
I've been planning out this quilt (mostly in my head) since February. Life has been busy though.... I finally got the Kona coal background fabric and some more bright-ish fabrics at the end of last week and here's what I've done so far:
It's very clearly explained and I've enjoyed making these four blocks. The main thing I do differently is I can't bear to cut the whole thing out and then sew. I did the first two blocks one at a time, and then cut and pieced #3 and 4 together. (I also don't press my seams open, to the side works fine for me.) They go together pretty quickly, too.
I am still figuring out the fabrics for the next group of blocks and plan on making two more today.
I also decided to start making some more granny square blocks, for myself this time. I got three done while I was waiting for the supernova fabric to arrive:
Fun, huh? I have a bunch more 2.5" squares cut out for this, but I'm cutting them one color at a time. Still need to get to red and purple and gray.And regular blue.
Also I wanted to share one more thing. Back at the beginning of the year when I did the Focus on Free Motion Quilting series of blog posts, I had my friend Elizabeth (who blogs at Such and Sew and Sew) as one of my guest posters. After her blog post here, she created a tutorial for her free-motion quilted swirls and I wanted to share that with you guys, if you haven't already seen it. The free motion quilted swirl tutorial is here and Elizabeth's other tutorials can be found here. Thanks again, Elizabeth! and my apologies for not linking up to this earlier.
Now I've got to go look at fabric and get ready to sew!
A while back I signed up with the do. Good Stitches {a Charity Bee} group on flickr. If you haven't heard of this group before, it's a large group of quilters that make quilts for various charities. A couple weeks later I got the email that a new circle was being formed (we're called the Believe circle), and I am one of the quilters for the group. April was our first month and (at the very last minute) I made these two Octagonal Orb blocks:
I got to choose the block for May, and I have had my eye on the granny square block for a while. I think it's such a cheerful block and I'm excited to see all the blocks our group makes! I sewed mine up this afternoon and I think I'll be making more of these soon, too.
Hi everyone! Hope you are doing well. We've been enjoying longer days and blue skies, at least some of the time. It's been spring break this week and we've visited an airplane museum and gone to see the locks in Seattle too. We were lucky to have my husband's parents and sister visit us for a few days, it's sad to see them leave.
I finished this quilt up the other day:
And even had sunlight for taking some pictures. Maybe this photo's a little too bright but I like it anyway. We waited so long for sunny days this winter.
A few notes:
*I used Basic Grey's Curio fabric collection for the blocks and a JoAnn's quilter's only solid for the background. I am disappointed because the quality of the quilter's only solid has really gone down since I last bought some, probably a couple years ago. It has a much looser weave and lower thread count, and I won't be using it again.
*Pieced and quilted with thread from Connecting Threads; I have been really happy with their thread. I used the Essential Pro thread and will be ordering more soon. (Also they have some really cool circuit board fabric that I'm going to use to make a Kindle cover for my son.)
*Blocks are 18". The finished quilt is around 62" x 68".
*I quilted it by stippling in the background areas and doing some swoopy outline quilting around the edges of the block pieces. Here's a closer picture of the quilting:
I'm happy to be done with it and excited to be working on my next project. :)
I haven't had a lot of sewing time the past couple weeks but I was able to get this sweet dress finished up for my girl.
The pattern is Simplicity 3511, in size 3 with just a little length added by not doing the full 5/8" seam allowance when I sewed on the bottom eyelet band. I got the Oliver + S fabric at the amazing Hancock's of Paducah remnant table when we were passing through on our drive to Florida last year. And I had the eyelet remnant on hand, but not enough for lining the yoke, so I just used white muslin for that. I still have to put the buttons on but other than that it's done.
Here's something funny we saw the other day in Seattle:
It's an Angry Bird ready to be launched off the Space Needle. A giant Angry Bird. Photo credit to my 11 year old. :)
Hope you're having a good Monday!
I finished the swoon quilt top a few days ago. I did the sashing as block borders instead of dealing with long strips throughout the whole quilt. I did put long strips on all four outer edges though, no way around that really. Here it is:
I am working on something fun for the back, and hope to get the back done and quilting accomplished soon!
These have been fun to make. The last block will be blue and green (with some pink) and is already cut out. Guess I'll get to work on that one right away. How's your day going?
This past week has been busy with my parents coming to visit for a few days and the boys off school for mid-winter break (something I'd never heard of before coming to Washington.) We ate out with my parents a couple times, and went to the science museum; the 3D movie we saw was pretty good! And on Friday I ran all over town with the kids. I wanted to check out this one thrift store that turned out to be really stinky so we went to another tried-and-true thrift store in another part of town. I got the Footloose soundtrack on CD for $3 and we found some like-new jeans for kid #1 so it was a good thing we went.
My parents took some baby gifts back to Utah for my brother and sister-in-law and their sweet new baby girl. She's not even a month old; I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing her baby quilt so soon. Here it is, my first zigzag quilt:
I asked my sister-in-law, Laura, what she might be interested in for this baby's quilt and she said she liked purple and green and butterflies and dragonflies. I didn't have any butterfly or dragonfly fabric on hand but was able to find some good greens, purples, and a little pink to put this quilt together. For the quilting, I did stippling in the colored zigzags, and straight lines in the white. I have since learned that I can loosen my presser foot pressure *even more* than I did for this quilt and it takes away all shifting issues. I am still kind of a beginner as far as any kind of straight line quilting goes.
Oh, and if you want to make a similar quilt, I used 5.5" squares and made them into half-square-triangles with the drawing the line down the middle method. I didn't trim the squares at all. This quilt ended up slightly larger than 36" x 44".
I have big plans this week including dentist appointments, starting the search for an orthodontist, and getting my Swoon quilt top all put together. I'll share my progress on that soon, maybe tomorrow even! Hope you're having a good Sunday.
I love the grunge fabric (the yellow there if you don't know what I mean) that's in all of the Basic Grey fabric lines. So pretty. They have a really good green in this line, too.
Here are the 4 blocks I've finished so far:
I like them better together than individually. I'm working on 5 and 6 today.
Hi friends! Hope you are having a good weekend. I have been working on some gifts that I can't share here yet, but will soon! And I've started my swoon quilt. Here are the first two blocks:
I'm using the Curio fabric line by Basic Grey, and have the fabrics picked out for the next two blocks. I want to have a smaller finished quilt (the pattern makes an 80" x 80" quilt), so I resized the blocks to 18" instead of 24".
Also, I finished up my mermaid swoon pillow yesterday:
I just finished it up with a simple envelope back, but with a double layer of fabric (unquilted) for the back pieces to make it a little sturdier. It looks really cute on my little girl's bed.
I'm hoping to get back to free motion quilting my king size quilt again this week. My wrist has been sore and I've been kind of waiting, hoping for it to feel better. I don't want to aggravate it with too much quilting.
Thanks to everyone who participated in Focus on Free Motion Quilting last month! I really appreciate my 4 guest bloggers and the sponsors, along with those of you who read along and commented. I was excited to see the completed projects posted in the link-up and had my son put some numbered papers in a bowl to draw the winners. And here they are:
Prize #1, 4 Cones of Essential Pro Thread in Natural from Connected Threads goes to #6, Storied Yarns
Prize #2, Hawthorne Threads $50 Gift Certificate goes to #3, Pat in Oregon
Prize #3, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #5, Beth
Prize #4, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #1, Richard of Richard Quilts
Prize #5, Fat Quarter Shop $50 Gift Certificate goes to #7, Sonia
I will be emailing all winners immediately after publishing this post to get your contact info for the sponsors. Thanks again and keep quilting!
I can't believe it's already the end of January! I hope you've enjoyed my Focus on Free Motion Quilting posts, and that you've taken some time to practice your free motion quilting this month.
I worked some more on my Mermaid Swoon pillow block, and got the quilting finished.
I decided to quilt the rest of the main (outer) part of the block with the curved outline stitching I started with, and then I did some more detailed stitching in the center square. You can click on the photo above to see it on flickr if you want a closer look. It's definitely not perfect, but I'm planning on practicing this type of quilting some more and I have faith that I'll improve over time :).
This photo (above) shows the orange/turquoise plaid that I'm going to use for the back of the pillow. It's from Connecting Threads, and I think it's a pretty good match. I might use it for binding, too. Maybe on the bias?
So now it's time for you to show off your free motion quilted projects! Here are the rules:
*Post a link to a blog post or flickr photo showing a free motion quilted project you finished this month. The project can be something that was started earlier than this month.
*Link to a specific blog post, not your blog's main page. (Click on the title of the blog post to get to the page for that post.)
*The link-up will be open until 10 p.m. (Pacific time) on February 1, and prizes will be drawn (and posted on my blog) with the help of the random number generator on February 2.
Here are the prizes:
One set of four cones of their Essential Pro polyester thread in Natural from Connecting Threads.
Links to all of the blog posts in this series are located in the "Focus on Free Motion Quilting" tab below my blog header image.
Today I'm excited to share a post from Candy Glendening of Candied Fabrics. Here she is!
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I'm so happy that Vicki asked me here to share my take on
"Focus on Free Motion"! What I want to show you is how my free motion
quilting has evolved in the past 5 years. I spent a good 5-10 years BEFORE that
learning how to Free Motion quilt like this:
Also in those early years I also evolved from a traditional
style quilter to working with my own hand dyed fabrics and making quilts that
come from me, rather than a pattern. The fabric that I dye has a luscious
visual texture that I really want to emphasize, and I realized that I didn't
want to cover that texture up with a whole 'nother layer of texture via the
quilting. So I began trying to figure out how to do that. One of my
transitional pieces is this "Falling Leaves" quilt:
I'm using free motion quilting as a line to outline the tree
and leaves, giving it a "sketchy" style that I admire in artists who
combine water color and pen and ink - with a wash of color underneath a
sketched shape. I really liked working in this style, but at this point, I
couldn't bear to not use my "fancy" free motion work at all, I'd
worked so hard to learn how to do it! My hope was that using it this way, as a
smaller part of a larger whole, I could allow the free motion quilting pattern
shine when I did use it.
Although I like “Falling Leaves”, I ended up not doing much
more work combining the two styles of quilting. Instead, I became more and more
enamored of that strong line created by retracing my quilting line 2, 3 or 4
times, not following the same line each time but missing it on purpose: what I
now call Free Motion Machine Sketching. After using this style in many many
small art quilts…
I looked for a way to emphasize this sketching even more.
What is beautiful, worthy of contemplation, perfect and imperfect at the same
time? Flowers! I started FMMS flowers and leaves a couple of years ago, and
this is a subject that I have only scratched the surface of!
I sell my work online, and also at local art festivals. In
both places, I talk about how I do what I do, but have found that a moving
picture is worth 1000 words! Here’s a video of me doing some Free Motion
Quilting:
and one of me Free Motion Machine Sketching:
Believe me when I say that I can NOT sketch with a
pen/pencil AT ALL! When I want to sketch a new flower, I just take a quick look
at the species I want to sketch (usually a Google image search), grab a scrap
quilting sandwich and give it a whirl. Usually after one or two tries, I’ve got
the shape I want to sketch worked out and I’m ready to go!
Here’s a quilt I made last summer that features some of my
favorite botanical sketches:
There you have it - Free Motion Machine Sketching! I’ve been
sketching flowers for a couple of years now, and I don’t see myself stopping
any time soon!
I hope this is provided you all a peek into yet another type
of free motion quilting. Vicki, this is a genius idea, and all your “Focus on
Free Motion” posts are going to be great references for lots of quilters for a
long time to come!
**********
Thanks again, Candy! Your free motion sketching is such a unique and beautiful approach to textile art and quilting; I'm so glad you shared this with us! I might need to make my own botanical sketch quilt one of these days (some of you might not know that I was a botany major and studied the ecology of a rare plant in college.) Please visit Candy's website and her shop to find out more about the things she makes AND don't forget to check out her brand new fabric dyeing e-course!
I hope you are almost ready to share your finished free-motion quilted projects on January 31, which is next Tuesday. You'll need to link to a finished, free motion quilted project that was completed this month. Prizes will be drawn randomly later next week. Thanks to the sponsors who are providing our prizes!
