Butterfly Strands

My second ever Instagram post (if you follow me there) was of a table topper I had made for our TV/electronics cabinet near the time that I started quilting, and at that point I was thinking that something new was in order.  I actually do still like the old one (also one of my first blog posts, you can see it here) but I've come a ways in my skills and in what my current style preferences are, and I just wanted a change.  The top for this new one was made entirely out of scraps, colourful ones and neutrals as well.

For the blocks, I followed Faith's Butterfly Strands tutorial.  They were fast, easy, and used up loads of my scraps, in particular those skinny strips that aren't always useful in a lot of projects.

I really really liked using the variety of neutrals in this project, something I'm not sure I've ever done before, and taking the same idea into the borders and even the binding.  That cross-hatch piece of binding that you can see above is the only piece of neutral that isn't a solid, my attempt at adding an extra modern flair to the project.  ;)

For the quilting, I went with the same design I used on this recent large quilt finish, though on a much smaller and denser scale this time.  This design has quickly become a favourite of mine as it seems to suit so many different projects, in my opinion anyways!

I discovered that I had a nice piece of a blue tone-on-tone fabric leftover from some other quilt back (can't even remember which one!) that was just the right size, so I'm happy to say that I didn't buy a single supply for this project, it was all from scraps and other leftovers.  The best kind of project for me these days!

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  23" x 33"
Pattern: Butterfly Strands blocks, tutorial by Faith of Fresh Lemons

Fabric:  all manner of scraps and fabric leftovers!

Quilted by:  me, using Aurifil 50wt cotton thread #2026, in my variation of Crybaby Meander

W.I.P. Wednesday

This is what I've been working on this week, in between a whole ton of spring cleaning...

I'm onto binding now so should be a finish very soon! 

Linking up with Lee @ Freshly Pieced

2014 Pantone Quilt Challenge ~ Radiant Orchid

Do you know what Pantone is?  I'll admit a couple of things....first, I had to look Pantone up to find out exactly what it is (look it up if you don't know!)....and second, I didn't start this quilt project at all with the intention of entering the challenge, it just happened to meet the criteria and there are great prizes!  Entries are open until March 21/14 and there are a variety of categories that you can enter in, if you're still considering it.

This quilt is a gift for someone who is going through a tough time.  I hope that a little bit of cozy quilty love will help.  :)  Today was very very windy, also bright and sunny, which doesn't make for easy picture taking, but nevertheless here we go....

I paired the orchid with various shades of blue (and honestly, various shades of orchid) and I think it works nicely.  The background is a nice creamy neutral, as is the backing.

I really really enjoyed free motion quilting this one, and with each quilt I do it continues to feel more natural and my repertoire of designs I'm comfortable with is expanding, so yay for that!  This one is based on a design called 'Crybaby Meander' but I added more of a hook whenever I was moving on to the next shape, but unfortunately you can't really see that in these photos.  It's a neat look, trust me.  :)

For the first time in a long time I used a store-bought flat bed sheet for the backing.  I was a little apprehensive about it but it actually turned out great.  I did pre-wash the sheet even though I didn't pre-wash any of the other fabric because it felt a bit stiff and was very very wrinkly out of the package, and when all was said and done the quilt washed and dried really nicely and hardly shrank at all.  I'll definitely do that again for an inexpensive quilt back.

Finished quilt size: 64" x 75"

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday @ Quilt Story

{almost} wordless update

{the front}

{the back}

Pattern:  Stack & Whack Wonky Block tutorial by Kati @ from the blue chair, 48 blocks to make a twin size quilt
Fabric:  Mostly Kate Spain 'Cuzco' with a few other prints thrown in for fun (note the Spoonflower owls, SO cute!)
Quilting:  Double loops overall meander in Aurifil thread.  About 1/3 of the way finished quilting.

Stay tuned!

Will be linking up with Lee @ Freshly Pieced

Roller Rink ~ finished

It's been almost exactly two months since I unrolled and sorted my Comma jelly roll, and finally we have a finished quilt.  For some reason this quilt seemed much more time intensive than some of the others I've made (even though really it didn't take any longer!).  Maybe it's that I had in mind that jelly roll = quick & easy, and because of that it didn't come together as fast as I thought it would.  All that said, totally happy and satisfied with this project now that it's done.  Pictures...

 

At first I had in mind to make something based on the project in the book, maybe a section of blocks and then wide borders of negative space, but in the end I went with the pattern as written and increased the number of blocks from 65 to 85.  In our family, a bigger quilt is always better than a too-small quilt!

A very windy day for taking photos outside!

The overall geometric quilting design that I used (ahem...finally got up the guts to try...) was great!  It seems like a pretty forgiving design and one that makes it pretty difficult to get stuck or work your way into a corner.  I started in the middle of the quilt and the nature of the design sort of caused my quilting to proceed in rows.  This was okay, but I had a few instances of almost puckers on the back when quilting towards an already quilted section, and honestly I'm not sure how to avoid this entirely.  Once I realized what was happening I was more conscious about not quilting too close to an already quilted section - the areas where I came within 1/4" or so of previous quilting were where the puckers almost happened, and if I kept it to 1" or so away then the problem was a lot less.  I find this tricky since I can't always see exactly where I'm going, but it's a learning process!

For the backing I used a tone on tone black print, incorporating my leftover strips of Comma to make it just a little bit more interesting.

One final note about this project - for the second time, I used a 100% bamboo batting.  Last time I did, I found that the quilt shrunk a lot, about 4" in each direction.  That was not something that I ever really took note of before but in this case I made careful note of before quilting, after quilting, and after washing/drying dimensions.  This one ended up shrinking about 2-3" in each direction.  Maybe this is typical and to be expected, considering none of my materials are pre-washed.  Food for thought.....

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  65" x 77"
Pattern:  Roller Rink, from Modern Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman

Fabric:  Comma by Zen Chic for Moda, Kona Steel, Kona Iron, tone on tone 'quilting blender' from Fabricland (backing), green print from Ooh La La by Henry Glass (binding)

Quilted by:  me, using Aurifil 50wt cotton thread #2610 in the pattern 'geometric overall' from "Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters"

Linking to Finish it up Friday @ Crazy Mom Quilts

WIP Wednesday

My big project lately, as most of you know, is my Roller Rink quilt.  I worked so hard over the last few weeks to get the top finished and now I'm totally stalled out.  I even have it basted and ready to go but it has sit for 3 or 4 days now since basting and I haven't touched it.

I think I'm feeling nervous about the quilting.  My plan is to do a geometric overall design, like this practice piece....

....which actually wasn't too difficult but I'm nervous about starting in on it on such a large quilt.  This week....hopefully.

Also holding me back is that I was feeling like I should get my bee blocks for this month finished before I set the machine up for FMQ.  Jaclyn asked for two broken herringbone blocks, choosing one colour for each block and using different fabric strips of that colour to complete each, sashing with white.  I don't have much fabric stash at all, and my scraps aren't often conducive to cutting big enough pieces for projects such as this, so for this month I have had to make do with what I have and I hope that the blocks will be to Jaclyn's liking.  My pink block is finished:

And my light/medium aqua block is in the works (the fabric on the left is much more aqua than the photo shows....I think it was on the shadowy side of my picture...):

That's it for me this week.  Hope you are all doing well!

One more w.i.p off the pile!

This is quilt finish #3 in the last month, and I'm not sure that I've ever been this productive.  Well, I probably have been but somehow finishes feel much more productive than any of the mid-project work, at least to me it does.  :)  Without further ado, the quilt...

The quilting is not very evident on the above photo, but here's one that shows it about the best (it also shows my almost-dead summer grass, so don't look too closely at that part!):

I used my free motion foot to quilt dense lines going back and forth in just the neutral areas.  I had a lot of misgivings as I was quilting it, not feeling at all sure about how it would turn out and whether or not I'd like the non-quilted areas (all of the print fabric sections are left un-quilted) but now that it's done and washed, I've breathed a sigh of relief.  It actually turned out fairly well!

The quilt shrunk quite a bit, which is okay because I wasn't really going for a specific finished size, but the amount of shrinkage kind of surprised me.  It started out as a 48" square top.  Once I finished quilting and trimming it was about 47" square, and now washed and dried it is 44" square!  I'm not sure if it's because of the dense quilting, or the bamboo batting, or a combination of the two - I just found it interesting since normally I lose an inch or two at the most.

A close-up of the texture-y quilting.....

And the back.....

I have one, yes only one W.I.P. left on my pile and it is these jumbo granny squares I made ages ago, and I am just not feeling like doing anything with them.  Does anyone know if there's a charity or flickr group or anything of the sort that collects orphan blocks?  Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by!

Pulling out another W.I.P.

It's been a good month for me, finishing two languishing projects - my Granny Square bee quilt, and my Octagonal Orb quilt (which can I say, is my new favourite quilt ever!).  Having nothing new in mind just yet I figured I might as well pull out another work in progress.  Anyone remember this quilt top?

This was an idea I had a while back, to make a scrappy quilt using the same half square triangle block layout that I used for this cushion top....

....but use a variety of neutrals rather than all one colour, and obviously scraps of all sorts for the other halves of the squares.  It didn't come out quite as I imagined - I think my neutrals were too varied, so the design doesn't show as much as I'd hoped and it looks rather muddled.  So what I've decided to do is free motion quilt straight-ish lines back and forth only in the neutral areas, leaving the print areas completely unquilted.  Starting in the middle, here's what I have so far:

I like how it looks, but am still not sure how it will work over the whole project, also not sure how I will feel about the print areas being poofy and the neutral areas being densely quilted, but I figure at this point I don't have much to lose and it's a matter of whether this project gets finished...or not.

Thoughts?

Octagonal Orb ~ finished!

It was back in May sometime that I decided to make a quilt using Elizabeth Hartman's Octagonal Orb block tutorial and my lovely stack of Joel Dewberry's Notting Hill (my Christmas present from myself to myself!).  I had starts and stops along the way - waiting for fabric to arrive, bored and needing a break, summer fun that had a higher priority than sewing, etc., but I'm pleased to finally show you the finished quilt, and I couldn't be happier with it.  I'll spare you a lot of the details, since I feel like I've been talking about this project for months and months now and most of the details can be found in my recent blog posts.  I'll let the photos do the talking.

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  56" x 75"
Pattern:  Octagonal Orb by Elizabeth Hartman

Fabric:  Notting Hill by Joel Dewberry, Kona Natural, Kona Ash (backing) and Kona Kumquat (binding)

Quilted by:  me, using Aurifil 50wt cotton thread #2021 in the pattern Echo Shell

Have you ever had to re-baste a quilt?

I'll give you the pretties first....

I'm now making great progress on quilting this quilt, but it has not been without its challenges!  I was merrily quilting along, using up a half bobbin that I had and then a full one (ie. a good amount of progress!) when I took a break only to realize that I had quilted over a big fold in my backing fabric.  Eeek!  It was folded over about 1/4" onto itself, and probably 6-8" long.  Fortunately it was at the top of the section I had completed and not smack in the middle, but let's just say my seam ripper and I got well acquainted yesterday!

I ripped out a whole bunch, tried to re-smooth and re-pin as well as I could, gave it another go (this time checking the back frequently!), and the same thing started happening in the same spot.  

Hmmmm.  Enter a little frustration.

Thinking about it, I started to realize that the only way to really fix this would be to re-baste it.  My oldest son, being the thoughtful guy he is, helped me remove all of the pins.  Then I taped the backing down as well as I could (easier said than done when a portion is already quilted), used spray to baste the batting to the backing and then still re-pinned the whole thing, using pins way closer together than I had originally done.  That's where I ended off at bedtime last night.

Today I took another go at quilting and it seems to staying in place nicely.  I'd say I'm nearing half way done and there's no sign of any folds or puckers, so I think I'm in the clear.  

I'm still not sure why it happened but I'm thinking that perhaps free motion quilting promotes more possibility of shifting layers than using a walking foot?  I also have another theory, which is difficult to describe but in my limited experience I'm thinking that you have to be more careful with FMQ designs that require you start on an edge (like this one), as opposed to designs that can be started in the middle of the quilt and then work your way out (like the spirals I did recently), which I think would redistribute any excess fabric or shifting a little better .

Any thoughts??

Quilting plans

A pin basted quilt.....

A free motion quilting design chosen ~ Echo Shell from Leah Day ~ and sketched....

.....and practiced on a FQ size sample....

Now, to get up the nerve to try it on the real thing - the 60" x 80" real thing!!  One section at a time, right?  Wish me luck!

Granny Square bee quilt ~ finished

I received the granny square blocks for this quilt from my bee mates in the Don't Worry {Bee} Happy group on flickr, plus one from Holly when she and I did a little swap, and two that I made myself.  My month was January, so these blocks have been sitting in a nice little pile for more than half a year.  Now was a good time to pull them out and the rest of the project came together quickly.  The quilt finished at approximately 33" x 44".

I found this super sweet backing fabric at my local Fabricland, and at $6/m on sale, I can't complain!  The binding fabric is comparable to Kona Grass, though the colour is not coming out true in the photos for some reason.

As you can see, I tried my hand at some free motion quilted spirals on this one.  I could easily be self-critical about how it turned out but I'm deciding not to go that route because overall I am SUPER happy with how it came together.  More about the free motion quilting a bit later (I'm going to be asking for some tips, so get your thinking caps on!.....)

The above photo captures the quilting fairly well, but I also really like the next one for showing the spirals and the texture of a newly washed quilt, taken in the light of the setting sun.

Okay, so back to the free motion quilting.  I hadn't done any FMQ in a long long time but I was happy to find when I was doing my practice piece that I could actually still do it.  My speed was good, my tension was good.  Check, and check!  

What I really struggle with still though, is figuring out the best way to do it so I can actually see where I've been and see where I still need to go.  This became an issue on this quilt, and it was manageable since it's a baby size and could easily be turned/pivoted as needed, but what about on a larger project???  What's the best strategy?

Also, the spiral motif required a LOT of 'traveling' (ie. stitching back over where you just stitched) and I found that to be so difficult.  Part of it is related to the above point, I couldn't see where I was going so sometimes I'd hit the mark and sometimes I'd really miss.  I'm thinking that a lot of it is practice practice practice, but if anyone has any tips for traveling stitches when FMQ, I'd greatly appreciate it!!

Wordless Weekend

Proverbial QAL ~ Sleep

A finish to share today ~ we have a few moments of sunshine after a week of dreary fall weather, so I rushed outside with my completed "Sleep" quilt for some photos.  This post is a little photo heavy, I hope you don't mind!  One explanation: on the back you'll see that I added a bright little circle of Laurie Wisburn's Brrr! fabric.  It was a bit of a happy accident.  I had quilted the swirls and then looked at the back and there was a very obvious flaw in the backing fabric in that spot, which I hadn't noticed before.  It was exactly on the spot where a swirl was so I unpicked those quilting stitches, cut a circle of Brrr! and affixed it using a sewable Heat 'n Bond product, re-did the quilting in that spot and voila!  A fun little surprise on the back.  :)  This quilt is now listed in my shop.

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  34" x 51"
Pattern:  Proverbial Quilt by Denyse Schmidt (QAL on flickr, here)

Fabric:  variety of colourful scraps, Kona Oyster, Kona Cloud, Sweetwater Reunion Sally's Skirt (background sections of letters), Michael Miller Backyard Babies 'Samaras' (binding), gray/white pin dot backing

Quilted by:  me, using Gutermann thread in light blue and off-white