Bunny Quilt

Again, I've been sadly absent from writing this blog and have a couple of finishes to share over the next day or two. 

First is this quilt that I made for a friend having a baby girl. I loved this because I used almost all the pinks in my stash for the scrappy border and used the solid gray background from my stash. You can't see in this picture, but the bunny is made of different tone-on-tone whites.

I used this as inspiration, but made the blocks 4 inch blocks. It finished at just about 50x50. 

I forgot to piece in blocks for the tail, so I appliqued on fuzzy fabric with some satin ribbon around the edge to make it taggy and fun for baby. 

As far as timing, I delivered it to my friend's house about 10 hours before she left for the hospital to deliver the baby!

Latest finish--quilt for a friend

I've been totally off the blog for over a month, partly because it's been a really busy time at work, and partly because I have been sewing up a storm!

Part of the challenge of meeting my self-imposed goals of finishing old WIPs is that new quilt opportunities keep arising, and I end up making unplanned quilts.

For the quilt I'm going to share today, it was a sad reason that came up. A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with colorectal cancer at a young age. She is actually beginning chemo treatments today, but she has been in my thoughts since she first shared her diagnosis. Other friends of ours helped put together a great care calendar to help her and her husband with meals and childcare for their two children while she is fighting this disease. I am not a good cook, though, so my first thought was to make her a quilt. Other friends who have fought cancer have shared with me that chemo can make you cold, and that it's comforting to have a nice blanket to wrap up in. And when I don't know what to do, I make quilts.

So here it is:

I used this tutorial from the Cloud 9 Fabrics website, and I used the collection of Piper fabrics I bought with a groupon from G Street Fabrics. The background is Kona Smoke, which might be my new favorite Kona neutral. It is a great contrast to the pinks and purples and yellows of the Piper fabrics! At 55x63", this is one of the larger quilts I've made, but it was still pretty easy to quilt on my machine.

What I loved about this quilt is that it was actually incredibly easy to piece. The worst part about it was putting the fabric into order so that directional prints went the right way. 

I backed it with more Kona Smoke with the leftover strips of the Piper fabric breaking it up. It is bound with Kona Crocus, which was a really great match for the purples. And is so bright and cheery.

It is quilted with organic straight lines in the ribbons and a FMQ meander in the backing areas. I adore how the straight lines create a really nice cross-hatch on the backing, and I'm glad I used a solid so that shows.

I also wanted this to be very special, so I free motion quilted my friend's name into one corner. I haven't quilted words since a baby quilt a few years ago, but I was really happy with how it turned out. 

I actually cut, pieced, quilted and bound this in about 2-3 weeks, and was able to deliver it to my friend when she had gotten home from the hospital after her surgery. As I wrote in her card, I hope that when she wraps up in the blanket she feels wrapped in my love and healing thoughts.


Linked up to:

Made by Me Wednesdays

May the force be with you

A fellow quilt guild member, Melinda, designed a GORGEOUS patchwork Death Star paper pieced pattern. It's on her blog: http://quirkygranolagirl.blogspot.com/2014/04/patchwork-death-star-pattern.html?m=1

I have never done any English paper piecing other than my hexies, so this was a huge leap out of my comfort zone. 

I have been sharing my progress on Instagram with Melinda's hashtag #patchworkdeathstar.

Anyway, I finished the handsewing tonight. Now I need to think about how to quilt it. I have never hand quilted so I may try it out. But I am thinking about some machine stitches that might improve the look of my Death Star. 

Here it was before I sewed the two halves together. Sewed together it looks a little stretched out and misshapen but I know it will be fine once I block it and press it .

Creative process-rainbow quilt finish

I have had a few friends ask me how long it takes to make a quilt and how I come up with ideas, so I am going to write a little bit about my process using a recent quilt (that I just gave to the recipient!) as an example.

Step 1: The first step is deciding to make one! 

Then I need to figure out these three things - pattern, fabric, recipient. That usually happens in one of these ways - I see a beautiful fabric collection and must own it; an event/situation is occurring where I feel that a quilt is an appropriate gift; or I see a quilt pattern that I am interested in making. So depending on which one of those happens first, the other steps happen, too (although I occasionally end up with recipient-less quilts which are lurking in my house waiting for recipients).

In the case of my Dark Star rainbow quilt, around November or so a friend of mine was having a tough time while the holidays were drawing near. I wanted to do something to let her know that she has a lot of friends cheering her on and wishing her the best, so I decided to make a quilt.

So in this example, I had the recipient first and then had to figure out what to make her.

She is a Grateful Dead fan, and I immediately thought tie-dye! I started googling and pinteresting tie-dye quilts, and got a few ideas. So I drew out a rough pattern and figured out that I'd need 50-ish squares of each rainbow color, so about 350 total, so I started shopping my stash, and reaching out to fellow quilters/sewists to fill in gaps (I don't have a lot of yellow or purple in my stash apparently). Then I thought about how I wanted it to look and decided to add a wonky black star in the middle. I made two of them because I had an idea about adding a layer of red to one. That didn't look right for the front, but I held onto it.

This first step is my favorite step because I get to think about friends, look at beautiful fabrics and just think about what might be possible. And to be honest, this is where I sometimes get stuck. I have so many fabric collections, and patterns I want to make, and there are always babies being born who need warm quilts to snuggle them.

Step 2: Cutting fabric

Then I figured out the actual dimensions, and started cutting fabric. That always takes a while, but I do it in front of the TV in the evening, usually. I actually love cutting fabric, especially when I'm using up scraps. For this step with non-scrappy quilts, I usually pre-wash and press, which is not as much fun.

Step 3: Piecing

Once I had my stacks of rainbow squares, and my white strips, I took them upstairs to my sewing room and started chain-piecing. I also pieced the wonky black star for the middle. Even though this quilt has so many pieces, it was still fairly straightforward and easy piecing, so it only took a couple of hours of chain-piecing and pressing, but then it was all together. This is my second favorite step, because I love to see how it all comes together. I also start a count-down for seams, so at some point, I'll know I only have 20 seams to go and I race myself to the finish line. I am not a precise piecer at all, and I am a fairly terrible presser, but for something scrappy like this, it doesn't matter that much.

Step 4: Choosing backing/Piecing backing

This sometimes happens in Step 1, but when I'm doing something scrappy, I tend to wait until I see how the top has turned out. For this quilt, I knew I wanted something neutral for the back, so I picked a really nice textured gray. Because the quilt's dimensions are about 50x50, I needed to piece the backing, so I used the other wonky star on the back, along with some of my favorite 2.5 inch strips pieced together to break up the gray. I tried to stagger them and pick complementary colors, and was really thrilled with how it turned out.

This is a step where I get stuck a lot, and I currently have a number of WIPs with no backing chosen/made. Partly because I tend to buy 1/2 yard cuts or fat quarters for my stash, so I don't have a lot of yardage that's enough for backing.

Step 5: Making the quilt sandwich

This is my least favorite part of quilting. I started pin basting this one, and pretty quickly decided to go out and get a can of spray adhesive. My husband hates spray adhesive because of the VOCs, so I only use it when he's out and I can open windows to get the smell out. Once it was done, though, it was time for Step 6.

Step 6: Deciding how to quilt

My fallback quilting is to free motion quilt a random meander. For this quilt, though I was intrigued by the idea of trying out a variegated thread, and had found a nice rainbow variegated thread at the fabric store. So I decided to straight(ish) line quilt following the rainbow spiral. That didn't seem like quite enough quilting, so I went back and did more lines in white thread in the white spiral. The colors disappear into the front, and the difference between the variegated and white shows up on the back so subtly - it ended up looking very intentional.

Step 7: Actually quilting

I know this is a favorite step of a lot of quilters, but I am usually pretty nervous about actually starting. This one went pretty quickly, though, as it was straight line. I had some puckers, but nothing too bad.

Step 7: Binding

Another not favorite and one that often makes me procrastinate. For the rainbow quilt, I picked out a black pattern, but when I started to sew it on, I quickly realized that a) I didn't like it and b) I was a couple of inches short, and had no idea where I'd bought the print to buy more. So I used a black pin dot that was in my stash, and I fortunately had just enough. And now I have binding ready to go for a smaller quilt!

Step 8: Wash and dry

This is pretty self-explanatory, and probably the easiest of all the steps!

Step 9: Bury threads

I don't bury them as I go along because I lose the flow of quilting, so that usually means an evening in front of the TV burying threads. Not a favorite, but it's easy, repetitious and fairly mindless, so not a burden either. However, this is another step where I get hung up, so I now have three recipient-less baby quilts waiting for me to do this. My husband wants them gone, so I need to get to work!

Step 10: Photograph the quilt!

I am trying to be better about getting pictures of my quilts so I can keep track of them, but sometimes waiting for the right day to take pictures can delay getting a quilt to its recipient. With the snowy winter we've had, it's been hard to take photos outside. I usually take photos with both my phone and our nice DSLR, but I am terrible at getting them uploaded from the DSLR to a place where I can access them for this blog, so readers get the iphone photos.

And finally - give to the recipient.

I think this is my favorite step. I don't always get to give them to people in person, but with this one, I did, and it was great.

Third quilt ever - made in 2011

This quilt came from a quilt magazine I bought when I was pregnant or when my son was very little. They had this argyle quilt pattern and I loved everything about it. Looking at it now, it's pretty good for a novice. I like my color choices (although I took a lot of inspiration from the magazine), I definitely didn't do points well, and the ruffling was difficult for me and turned out kind of unevenly, even with a lot of pinning. And I didn't have a free motion quilting foot yet, so I straight(ish) line quilted it.

I remade this quilt pattern a few months later with ribbon instead of ruffled strips and this was the result:  

This quilt actually won a blue ribbon in the county fair in 2012 in the baby quilt category. The judges' feedback was to work on my points and binding (which is fair enough!). I absolutely adore this quilt pattern and think it's such a great, modern-feeling quilt. It was also my first blue and orange quilt!

I have quilty bucket list plans to remake it in boy fabrics - reds, yellows and blues. I have been on the hunt for some specialty ribbon -- trains, construction equipment or rocket ships -- to make it really fun. 

Both of these are now living in my guest room. I don't want to give up the blue ribbon quilt, and the first one isn't good enough to give away. I have contemplated requilting it, because that's the main thing I am not happy with, but it is way down on my priority list.

Blue and orange quilt finished! - 2014 finish #3

In my last blog post, I mentioned that I was working on a blue and orange quilt for a friend who is a big Syracuse fan. It is finally done! This is finish #3 for 2014 (blogged). I have two more finished except for burying threads, and will post those very soon.

I was inspired by the bento box patterns I've seen around the internet, but I modified it by varying the width of the strips. I love the movement it gives to the quilt.

I quilted this with a squared meander. I was having a heck of a time quilting - my thread kept breaking and I was cursing my machine. I finally got through it after changing my needle, rethreading, etc. Then I started quilting another and the same thing happened--so I changed my needle again to a larger size and it was all better. The quilting could have been much nicer if I had thought to do that earlier, but I'm not going back.

I am giving this to my friend tomorrow night - he and his wife moved to the DC area about a year or so ago and we haven't seen each other yet. We all became internet friends more than 10 years ago on a Usenet newsgroup, and met in person a few times. I lost touch with them but found them again through facebook. I'm excited to see them, and hope they like the quilt and the thought behind it.

Front of quilt - they are about 15.5 inch blocks, so it's 46.5 x 62 or so.

Closeup

Backing- I love these giant polka dots by Marrimekko.
The Crate and Barrel outlet usually carries multiple colors.

Linked to:

Work in Progress--March 19

A friend is fighting cancer and because I am generally helpless about what to do in these situations, I decided to make a quilt. He loves Syracuse and wears a lot of blue and orange, so I looked on Pinterest for inspiration. A bento box quilt came up and I decided to make it.

As always, I'm too cheap to buy a pattern, so I winged it. Everything was from my stash, and the blue plaid I had actually gotten from a freecycled bag of fabric. I love my oranges and they are set off so well by the blue. 

I've made four blue and orange quilts now. The first two were aqua and orange and the second navy, aqua and orange. So using this medium blue shade is new, but I love how it turned out. It turns out I only had these two prints in my stash as I apparently don't buy that color blue;  luckily it was enough (and I have some left).

I am backing it in a giant orange tone on tone polka dot from the Crate and Barrel outlet. And bought a blue polka dot for binding.

I cut and pieced basically in one day. Because I'm a sloppy piecer, my squares didn't line up very accurately, but overall, I love how it looks.

Linked to

Sewing while traveling

I am flying to California for work tonight, so I'm going to try English paper piecing hexagons. I'm a terrible handsewer, but I'm excited to try something new!

Throwback Thursday - First Quilt

I've seen a few bloggers do this, so I am going to do it too!

When I was pregnant with my (long-awaited) son, I wanted to decorate his room in a woodland theme. I couldn't find bedding that would work, so deluded by pregnancy  hormones, I thought "How hard could it be to make something?"

So I googled easy baby quilt and found a strip quilt that looked simple, got my mom's old sewing machine that is as old as I am, and went off to Joann Fabrics. I wanted orange, blue and green.

I remember being very careful about the measurements of the strips so they were exactly what the tutorial said. Now, 35 quilts later, many of which are improvised or figured out as I go along, that makes me smile.

I straight line quilted it with my regular sewing machine foot, and did the binding that way, too. It took me several hours to finish over a few days.

It lives in my son's room still - more than three years after I made it. He has never really slept with it, but he carries it around sometimes, and uses it to play with. I am sometimes tempted to grab it and "fix" it, but I won't.

I do want to do a better photo shoot, though-- I took this right after I finished it.

New scrap-busting works in progress

I am not helping my UFO situation! One of my favorite things to do is combine fabrics and when I had a cute boy print left over from backing my Riley Blake quilt from February, I quickly realized it would look great with some bright yellows, oranges and reds from my scrap stash, with a few cool tones mixed in.

So I started cutting the scraps into 5 inch squares and here's where I am:

I think I'm going to take out the navy blocks and replace them with a lighter blue. I'm going to use a light gray for the sashing assuming I have enough left of the Moda Zen gray I used for a recent quilt. If not, I have a pale yellow that will work. 

In the process of mining my scraps, I found a piece of a cute cream, teal, yellow, green and blue dinosaur print and decided to cut coordinating charm squares for it:

I took these pictures late at night. I'll use a natural/cream sashing for this one. I have a ton in my stash. I also decided to pull a couple of prints from my swap bag because the colors worked and I'll use those for a pieced backing. 

I have made this pattern before--it's easy and fun and is using up scraps!

The hazard of having a boy is that I buy cute boy fabric whenever I see it and so I'm going to have about 5 stashed boy quilts on hand for baby gifts or to give to charity.

Riley Blake Modern Quilt Guild Challenge Quilt - 2014 Finish #2

The nice folks at Riley Blake fabrics set up a challenge with the Modern Quilt Guild. Rules were to use the fabrics given to you to make something quilted. You didn't need to use all of the fabrics, and you could add solids or Riley Blake prints.

So I started with a lot of fabrics that weren't necessarily what I would have chosen, but that's why they called it a challenge! I loved each of them individually, but together I was scratching my head. I know I didn't have to use them all together, but after seeing some great projects online, I decided to go for it.

When I hear Riley Blake Fabrics, I think chevrons, as their line of chevrons is extensive. I also have wanted to make a chevron quilt, but haven't tried it out yet. So the solution was obvious! I didn't have enough to make full rows, so I decided to stagger them for a fun look. I did order more of the charcoal solid to use as the background. I have recently moved away from using white as my backgrounds and four out of the last five quilts I've made have had colored backgrounds.

I ended up leaving this too late, and didn't have time (or extra fabric) to match patterns very well, so the stripes and chevrons aren't matchy. I also knew by the point I was finishing that I was not going to be a contender for the challenge, so I picked up my backing and binding fabric from JoAnn instead of ordering Riley Blake fabrics online and having to pay for shipping. I love the print I bought for the backing -- it makes this perfect for a little boy and the colors matched perfectly with the Riley Blake fabrics. The binding is a Denyse Schmidt for JoAnn bias print plaid and it's gorgeous and makes beautiful binding. It's fifth from the bottom in this picture.

I think I will hold onto this for the next boy baby who comes along and needs a quilt.

Linked to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Work in Progress - February 19

I am working on a quilt "commission." I put that in quotes because my aunt requested it for my cousin Ian. She asked for robin's egg blue, yellow and brown. Trying to remain true to my fabric fast, I shopped my stash first, and was happy to find about a yard of a pretty blue, some brown left over from another project, and an assortment of blue and yellow squares from my scrap stash (I did cut a couple from yardage). I also was grateful to receive some yellow squares from some guild mates and quilting friends for my rainbow quilt, and the extra were perfect for this.

I am trying to be better about documenting my "process," so here are some pictures!

Here are the blocks as I was laying them out. I still needed to cut more blue strips for between the brown blocks on the bottom, and to measure for the brown side pieces for the brown rows. I think I also moved a few blocks around to balance the colors.

Laying out the rows.

While sewing rows together. I sew in our guest room, so the guest bed is an integral part of the process.You can see a few old quilts piled up in the background. I'm trying to figure out what to do with some of them -- it might be time for a big Project Linus donation.

Finished quilt top (and a nice view of my son's play toolbench)! I need to find a good backing fabric for this - I have a brown wood grain in mind that will make a nice binding. This was a pretty fast finish. It's based on the Chain Linked pattern by Amy Smart at Diary of a Quilter, but I kind of figured out the proportions on my own.

As I mentioned, this is for my cousin, so I will be trying to finish it up soon to get it shipped out to Ohio for him.

Linked up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and Sew Fresh Quilts Let's Bee Social and to Fabric Frenzy Friday.

Back to the blog

I skipped a few weeks after getting sick and then busy with work. Sorry!

It has been really snowy here:

I took today off as a fun day and spent basically the whole day sewing! 

I quilted my Riley Blake challenge quilt and a layer cake baby quilt, and sewed together a wonky star baby quilt and pieced 23 framed squares for a chain-link quilt. 

I hope I can bind the two quilts and sew together the blocks over the rest of the weekend!

Linked up to:

Quilt finish #2 from 2011

This is the second quilt I ever made and I finished it in early 2011. I made it for my son

I followed this tutorial: http://www.cluckclucksew.com/2009/12/raw-edge-circle-quilt-tutorial.html?m=1

I was clearly a novice and hadn't accumulated a ton of scraps yet, but I actually like this still. It's small--about 30x30, maybe, but it was perfect for a stroller/car seat blanket.

There were a lot of things I tried with this--self binding, mitered corners on the borders in the backing and raw-edge appliqué. I used a double layer of batting to make it puffier and it has held up really well.

We still use this as a car blanket for my son and he definitely knows it's his quilt, made by Mommy :-)

Feeling a little blue

My quilt guild is doing a show at a local gallery. I submitted three quilts, all of which have absorbed a lot of time and energy, and none was chosen.

I knew two of them weren't likely to get picked because they're not really "artistic," just made with meaning to me. The third I thought might fit the aesthetic of the show, but I'm not willing to sell it--it was made for a friend going through a rough time. So since it's a gallery show and the gallery is making money off the sales, I doubt they'd waste space on something not for sale.

Still, I guess I wanted that external validation from the quilting community. My friends, who aren't quilters, say nice things about my creations, and I value that feedback. But getting kudos from those who understand the time and thought poured into what is really just a bunch of cut-up fabric sewed back together again is something else. 

Oh well, maybe next time.

And in the meantime I'll have virtual quilt shows here on this blog.

Another 2013 finish--Helix quilt

I saw this in a quilt magazine over a year ago and thought it was gorgeous! I love orange and decided that aqua would be a great complementary color. Everything was from my stash.

I don't have a design wall, so I generally use the floor or sometimes the sofa.

Once the criss-cross blocks were made, I arranged them on the living room floor.

Then added side panels and quilted with an overall stipple.

I took pictures on a cloudy day, so this next one is filtered but shows the colors a little better.

Close up of quilting:

This was probably one of my best documented quilts. I loved making it and it went to the brand new daughter of a friend from college. 

I might make this pattern again someday but it was time-consuming for me--the points were numerous and while I got them to almost all match, it was definitely not a great pattern for someone like me who is more improvisational (meaning I don't have the patience to press and match points all the time!). Technically, this is one of my best quilts yet, although I can still point out quite a few things I missed or would change if I could do it over again.

linked to http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-quilt-for-my-brother.html