Progress

Chugging along...

Got just a couple more rows to go before I start joining these together. Woo hoo.

My Strip Easy Quilt Challenge

So Denise at Pieced Brain had this idea to host a challenge where we make things with strips, which, let's face it, we all have bunches of sitting in bins and bags, right? So, of course, I joined right up since I had just been making bee blocks with strips that very week. So, this is what I did:

 I took a bunch of strips and made 4 Scrapper's Delight blocks from the Sunday Morning Quilts book. Each block is 12 1/2 inches. And then I sewed them all together into a 24-ish inch square.

 I made a quilt sandwich out of it and sort of doodle swirly quilted it. Yes, that is a real technical quilting term.

 I backed it with a plain piece of scrap fabric that was a couple of inches smaller than my quilted square and I stitched them together, leaving an opening for stuffing.

 I stuffed it, stitched it closed and photographed it. And now it is on my couch and let me tell you, it is a great size and so comfortable too.

 I might be onto something here. My other couch pillows are 18-20 inches and not nearly this fluffy.

And to think it all started with a bunch of scrap strips and a challenge. Thanks, Denise. This turned out great! Be sure to check out the other challenge quilters.

My Friday Finish-Little Things

So I was able to finish up a couple of little projects this week that had been lingering in the sewing room. It feels good to have something finished. Sometimes it feels like I have so many things started and nothing finished. I am sure you know what I mean.

 First I had to get a pillow case made for Sweet J. I had made one for the other two boys, and when I found this much Jack and Jenny still in my stash, I knew that was it. I love making pillow cases. takes 30 minutes. Seriously.

 Then, I needed buttons for the two towel sets for my girls. I was going to go buy some, but then I remembered these cover your own buttons I bought several years ago. Yes!! So fun to make.

 And here they are in action on the towels. I used Alison Glass Feathers for the towels and I love the way it looks.

Close up of the buttons

 And the same print in black for the other set. I know these will get lots of use in the kitchens.

More button close ups

I hope you have a great Friday. I will be linking up later to CrazyMom Quilts and Sewjo Saturday.

Blogger's Quilt Festival-Number 2

I decided to enter another quilt into the festival under Art Quilts. This one is not really a ROYGBIV, since the color pallet is limited. This is made from a jelly roll of Kona solids in the Sunrise colorway.

First, I took the jelly roll strips and I sewed them together in the order they were in the roll. It really does look just like a sunrise. I trimmed the edges off and then embroidered a dandelion in a dark grey floss. I decided that black would be too harsh.

 After I finished with the embroidery, I got it ready to quilt. I wanted the quilting to enhance the feeling I was trying to get in this quilt.

                So I quilted the breeze blowing the dandelion off into the sunrise.

   And I quilted the rays of the sunrise as it came up over the horizon in all its splendor.

 And after binding in dark grey, I took it to the park on a glorious morning and tried to get photos that included the deep blue of the sky. I tried clothes pinning it to a fence...

...and throwing it over a big rock. But that cut off the top of the quilt. It's hard when you have no one to help. Anyway, I hope you like it. My daughter did and now it hangs in her front entryway.

Blogger's Quilt Festival-Spring 2014

Life has been a bit busy here, and I wasn't sure I would be back in time to post and enter the festival this year. Happily, I am. I have given lots of thought to which quilt to post about. I decided to show the quilt I made a few years ago for my sister, Nina. I like sharing quilts that have a story, and this one certainly does.

 First of all, my sister lives in California and I live in North Carolina. She bought a quilt for her bed that she loved. But when it needed to be cleaned, she took it to the cleaners. When she got it back, all the fabrics were faded and she was crushed! I wish she had asked me how to clean it. So, I did what any quilter would do, I offered to make her a new one. This is a huge quilt. It is pictured on my bed here, which is a Queen. My sister has a King.

 I tried to make a quilt similar to what she had in style. The center had a similar checkerboard style piece. My  sister gave me a list of colors and the cash to buy fabrics. I photographed all the fabrics and emailed them to her for approval before I cut anything. I do not always prewash fabrics, but I did with these due to the deep colors in them.

 The original quilt had some vines and some flowers going all around it. I had never done this before, but I used this as the perfect time to give it a go. I made my bias tape for the vines and cut out hundreds of little leaves. I used a fusible web to attach them and then zigzagged around each leaf to secure it.

 This pattern came from a book, and I don't remember which one, unfortunately, but it is called Pomegranates and Pumpkins. These are also fused and zigzagged onto the quilt top.

 My sister wanted the quilt to be large enough to have overhang and also long enough to cover the pillows on the bed. I added more checkerboard to the top, and then a plain muslin to the top of that, to accomplish this. The outer border is more squares of muslin alternated with colors.

 There is a pumpkin appliqued on each corner of the quilt. This quilt is so large, that I didn't want to quilt the whole thing on my Bernina, which was brand new at the time. What  I did was to quilt it in pieces, and then attach the pieces to each other, carefully butting the batting up against each piece. Any overlap of batting makes for lumps in the finished quilt.

 I wish I could remember how long this quilt took me to make, but I think it was about 3-4 months of steady work. I don't think I worked on much else during this time period. All the fabrics were bought here at my LQS. I know it is hard to see, but they are tone on tone prints and a batik that I used in the applique.

 All the pictures were taken with my old camera, which has since died and been replaced. It was hard to get a shot of the whole thing and I wasn't blogging at the time I made this, so it never occurred to me to take it outside and take the pictures. Most of these I took to send to my sister to show her the progress on the quilt.

She paid for all the fabric, and the rest was a labor of love, plus a great learning experience for me. The white fabric is unbleached muslin. This quilt measured over 100 inches on each side, the largest quilt I have ever made. When my sister and her husband received the quilt, they could only say "Wow!" They loved it. Sadly, my sister has Alzheimer's now, and is in a home. But it warms my heart to know that this quilt gave her such joy and love for a few years.

Friday Finish-Twins!

Sometimes, when a friend is expecting a baby, it turns out to be twins! And that means two baby quilts. And since they are fraternal twins, it means they should have some of the same elements, but still be different and individual.  So now, I have completed that mission.

 Here are the pair of them. What they have in common is the fabrics used for the quilt tops, the binding and they both have Ohio Stars on them. This family lives in Ohio.

 This one is made from lots of scraps of the fabrics, in a sort of stacked coins arrangement. I had so many of these pieces and wanted something scrappy. I have been saving these scraps for years, waiting for a baby quilt to use them in.

 It has a single Ohio star on it, in red since that was the one color I had a bigger piece of. I really fell in love with this pattern while I was making these.

 The quilt is quilted with diagonal lines two inches apart all the way, except for the star which is stitched in the ditch around the star.

This is the back of this quilt. I added the yellow strip to make the one yard of fabric work for the back of the quilt. Love it!

 Here is the other quilt. It has 5 Ohio stars and 4 white squares, which, I suppose makes it a nine patch. Each is 12 inches square.

 All the stars are stitched in the ditch, but the white squares are the outline shape of the Ohio star, stitched as two lines about an eighth of an inch apart.

                                         Here is the front of this quilt.

And this is the back. I had a yard of this Lizzy House flag fabric from the Castle Peeps line and I added the same yellow strip to make it bigger that the other quilt had. I love that little matching detail too.

And now I have a twin set of baby quilts ready to send off to Ohio to the family. The binding is a stripe from Connecting Threads Quilter's Candy line. It has most of the colors of the quilts in it. Yay for a happy finish! Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Friday.

WIP Wednesday-Rocket Age

I have had a very busy and productive week. I know it's only Wednesday, but I have a picnic quilt for a blog hop and two baby quilts quilted and bound and going round and round in the dryer right now. So with all that progress, it's time to go back to work on another quilt.  Remember this?

This is the quilt I am making for V from Riley Blake's Rocket Age fabric line. It is the same pattern as one I pieced for brother B from the Sasparilla line, also by Riley Blake. Lots of piecing in these quilts so it's taking awhile. I have to get myself psyched up for all this piecing. Here's where I stand:

 The pale blue flying geese with the orange stars are all done. They are trimmed and pressed.

 So I sat down at the machine today and I had the stack of dark blue geese with red stars to work on.

Stitching, stitching, stitching. This kind of mindless sewing is not too bad, but I need to put music on the iPod to get through it. Once I start putting together bigger chinks, I am more excited and can focus better.

I get it done fairly quickly by chain piecing and trying not to think about how many pieces there are.

And after 90 minutes this afternoon, between loads of laundry, I am to the trimming stage. Next, I will press all of them.

And progress is made in the Rocket Age! Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.

Sunday Stash #18

So I bought this cute little bundle from Fort Worth Fabrics this past week. They offer these cute little bundles on Fridays and the greens in this one made me fall for it.

The main print is from Blend Fabrics and there were 2 fat quarters of it. The rest of the fabrics were Michael Miller, Art Gallery and others. Not all had the selvedge, so I can't name them. That is one of the drawbacks to buying such a bundle sometimes. But it sure is pretty. Linking up with Sunday Stash at Sewing by Moonlight.