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.