Blogger's Quilt Festival, Spring 2015 - Farmer's Wife Quilt {large quilt category}

I'm excited to be entering my Farmer's Wife Quilt in Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2015, being hosted by Amy over at Amy's Creative Side.  This quilt was almost exactly a year in the making, and is the largest quilt I've made to date.  Quite honestly, I don't think I'll ever go bigger than this!!  Its finished size is approximately 86" x 96", and I'm actually hoping for a bit of shrinkage once it goes through the wash!

I enjoyed (almost!) every moment of making the actual blocks, and working with Denyse Schmidt's Chicopee fabric line certainly helped!  I love the bright colours and patterns in the fabrics that don't seem like they should go together, yet they do.

I had Chelsea (www.chelseaquilts.com) do the quilting for me, knowing that I could never manage to work this beast through my normal household machine, and I'm so glad I did.  She did a wonderful job.

I used Carolyn Friedlander's Widescreen Crosshatch fabric for backing, which ended up being just wide enough to use without having to piece any other fabric into the backing to bring it up to size.  Phew!  I was relieved to not have to deal with that for such a big quilt.  The binding fabric is Moda Bella Solids in Scarlet.

Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to visit the Blogger's Quilt Festival and check out all of the other entries in many categories.  Have a great day!

Blogger's Quilt Festival ~ Spring 2014 {ROYGBIV category}

Realizing just this morning that each blogger can link up two projects in the Blogger's Quilt Festival, I'm excited to share this second entry.  My other entry, in the large quilt category, can be found here.  Thanks again to Amy for hosting this event each year.

This quilt was a huge challenge for me being that it is improv based, which is something that definitely does not come naturally to me.  It did come together though, and I'm more than happy with the result.  This quilt now graces the wall of my kitchen and it just brightens everything up!

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  27" x 27"
Pattern:  Improv blocks based on crazy piecing technique described in "Quilting Modern" by Katie Pedersen & Jacquie Gering

Fabric:  Colourful scraps from my overflowing bin!  Michael Miller "Old Script" binding.

Quilting:  Spiral quilting using WonderFil Tutti 50wt Egyptian cotton
Festival Category:  ROYGBIV

 

Blogger's Quilt Festival ~ Spring 2014 {large quilt category}

It's time for another Blogger's Quilt Festival.  This is an online event hosted by Amy, once in the fall and once in the spring.  Looking back in my blog I was surprised to see that this will be the sixth time that I've participated!  It's a lot of fun to see the beautiful quilts that fellow bloggers choose to feature.

This time I am featuring my Roller Rink quilt.  This was not a pattern that I planned to make, more it was that I had a jelly roll of Comma by Zen Chic for Moda and then set out to find a pattern that made use of 2.5" strips.  The pattern is Elizabeth Hartman's book "Modern Patchwork", and honestly it was not one of my favourites in the book, but it fit the bill as far as making use of the jelly roll so I went ahead with it.  It has turned out to be a real favourite and is used daily in our house.

 

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"
Festival Category:  Large Quilt

Blogger's Quilt Festival ~ fall 2013 {throw quilt}

It's Blogger's Quilt Festival time again over at Amy's Creative Side.  I can't believe this is the 5th festival I've participated in!  It's a chance for all of us to showcase favourite projects in many different categories.  There will be a lot of posts to visit if you check out Amy's blog today so I will get on with my entry.  

This quilt is my favourite that I've made so far this year, and dare I say it could be my favourite ever.

I had a lovely FQ stack of Notting Hill by Joel Dewberry just sitting and looking pretty for the longest time and I had such difficulty figuring out what to do with it.  There were many many possibilities but in the end I settled on Elizabeth Hartman's Octagonal Orb block.

There were many starts and stops in the making of this quilt, whether it was waiting for more of my background colour to arrive, going on summer vacation, having the kids home from school, and some frustrating moments in the process which had me set it aside at times, I kept coming back and was so pleased to finally finish it a few months ago.  

I'm not normally a pieced back kind of girl but I had such big chunks of fabric left that I wanted to use.  It was a lot of work - way more work than I'm used to spending on the back of a project - but in the end well worth it.

This project was also my first foray into free motion quilting anything larger than a baby quilt and overall I couldn't be happier with it. 

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

 Category:  favourite throw quilt

I hope that you'll stop by Amy's blog this week and check out what so many others have decided to share this fall.  And if you would like to enter but haven't had time to do so yet, there's still time (oh, and there's prizes....)!  The linky remains open until October 31.

Thanks for stopping by!

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Spring 2013 {bed quilt}

First off, to anyone visiting my blog for the first time, welcome!  And to all of my faithful quilty friends, thanks for coming back and continuing to support me (even when I fall off the face of the earth for a little while sometimes!).  And now, on with my quilt festival entry.....

Fussy Fairytales was my biggest quilting accomplishment since the last quilt festival, by far.  There are very few people that I think I would agree to make a bed-sized quilt for, but this family definitely qualifies.  The quilt was made for my little friend Eva, the daughter of one of my very good friends.

All of the supplies for the quilt were purchased by my friend, which was a first for me.  Usually I agonize over fabric choices, for weeks or even months sometimes, but this time I just got to enjoy using what someone else picked out.  It was awesome!

The blocks were a lot of fun to make, and they went really quickly using a stack & slash type technique, creating two blocks at a time.  Part of the fun was deciding which fabrics from the bundle to pair together, and which solid to use for the skinny frame in each.

The backing for this quilt was inspired by this photo on flickr.  It was a bit of a stretch for me as I'm used to doing very plain backings for quilts, but in this case of course the effort was worth it.  It makes the back just as fun and pretty as the front!

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  64" x 84"
Pattern:  Fussy Fairytales, by Kate Conklin

Fabric:  'Pretty Little Things' by Dena Designs for Free Spirit, a few Heather Ross prints and even some Echino, Kona Snow background, wide variety of Kona solids for skinny block frames, Kona Buttercup, Camellia & Petal for backing, Kona Cerise binding

Quilted by:  me, using off-white Aurifil 50wt cotton thread

Thank you all for visiting, and I hope that you'll go over and visit Amy's Creative Side to check out many of the other entries in the festival, in many different categories!  Just follow the link below by clicking on the button....

Blogger's Quilt Festival ~ Fall 2012

It's festival time again!  Thanks to Amy, of Amy's Creative Side, for once again hosting this fun event for us bloggers.  I'm looking forward to seeing the quilts that the rest of you have chosen to enter.  The festival link-up will be open until October 31, so you still have time to put together a blog post if you haven't already.

My festival quilt this year is one that I completed recently, and have recently posted about, but for those of you visiting my blog for the first time, this will be new to you!  Thank you for visiting, and I hope that you will stay and take a look around.  This quilt is currently listed in my shop.

This baby quilt is one of my own design.  Some of my favourite fabric lines are the ones put out by the Sweetwater girls, and for this quilt I used my very last pieces of Hometown, and some of my last bits of Reunion as well.  I used a tutorial by Badskirt Amy for the quick and easy circles.  This was a first for me, and was a lot of fun.

I played around with the arrangement of the circles, on the backdrop of Kona Bone, and finally decided on this layout.  Then, I machine stitched the circles to the background fabric.

Next came the decision on how I would quilt this project.  I've recently been learning how to free motion quilt and knew that I would want to try a new design on this quilt, especially given how much negative space I had to work with.  I found this 'crybaby meander' design via Pinterest (video tutorial here) and when practicing I found it to be a design that flowed easily and was fairly quick to do.  I decided to quilt around the circles, which proved to be a more challenging task than I thought it would be, but in the end I was so happy with the result and the extra effort was worth it!

For the back, I found this really sweet tiny floral fabric that coordinated so well with the Sweetwater prints, and I planned to just do a plain back.  As luck would have it, the piece I bought was not quite long enough, so I ended up piecing it with some of the Reunion pennant prints, and I love it.  Adds an extra little touch that I think is a lot of fun.

I chose to bind the quilt with some gray gingham fabric I had leftover from the backing of another project.  It goes so well with the esthetic of the Sweetwater fabrics.  It's also gender neutral, and I think this quilt would be well suited to a baby boy or a baby girl.

Quilt stats:

Finished size:  32" x 40"

Fabric:  Sweetwater Hometown & Reunion, Kona Bone, unknown 

small floral backing, gray gingham binding

Quilted by:  me, using Aurifil 50wt cotton thread
Category:  baby quilt, home machine quilted

Bloggers' Quilt Festival ~ spring 2012

Thank you for stopping by my blog!  This is my second time participating in the Bloggers' Quilt Festival, and I look forward to checking out many of the links this time around as well.  Last spring, I jumped into the world of making bed quilts.  First up were quilts for my two boys' beds. After those were finished, I knew I wanted to make a queen size quilt for our bed as well but was having a hard time choosing a design.  That was when Camille Roskelley's "Swoon" quilt pattern came on the scene and I was smitten with it as soon as I saw it popping up on blogs.  

I also fell in love with the Hometown fabric line, by Sweetwater for Moda.  I love the colours in the line, the varied designs - tiny floral, dots, whimsical flowers - and knew that I wanted to use this fabric for our quilt.

The making of this quilt was not without its bumps, including a few cutting mistakes (oops!), sewing machine troubles, and the general awkwardness of quilting a queen size quilt on a home machine, but in the end it all managed to come together.  Phew!

I chose a simple vertical straight line quilting design.  It's subtle, and nothing fancy, but I think it totally works and allows the large blocks and the colours of the fabrics to really shine, and honestly I think it was all I could manage on a queen size quilt!

Using the leftover HSTs from the flying geese units in this quilt, I put together some throw cushions for the bed, and then veeeeeery recently I made new pillowcases for our pillows and finally the ensemble is complete.  

Honoured

I was surprised yesterday to receive an email from Amy, of 'Amy's Creative Side', letting me know that me and my Blogger's Quilt Festival Quilt had been nominated to be featured on her blog! I answered the interview questions, emailed them off, and lo and behold this morning already my feature was up on her website! Head over for a read if you feel so inclined. I am truly honoured.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And in other news, I have decided what to do with my fat quarter bundle (of which I now have two....I found the exact bundle while shopping the other day so now I have two fat quarters of each print, YAY!), and thanks to those of you who left suggestions on my Tuesday post.

I am going to participate in the Sparkle Quilt Along, being hosted by Megan of Canoe Ridge Creations, and Jeni of In Color Order. With the fabric I have, I should be able to make the largest size Sparkle Quilt since the instructions say that 2 sparkles can be made from 1 FQ. I'm looking forward to it, but feeling impatient as I'm not used to having to wait for the instructions to be released, week by week!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! It's chilly here, and maaaaybe we'll be getting some snow this weekend {which I always like the thought of, but the reality sometimes not so much!}. We have very little in the plans for the weekend, asides from a soccer game tomorrow and church on Sunday, so it should be a nice relaxing few days. How about you?

Blogger's Quilt Festival ~ Fall 2011

I only learned about Blogger's Quilt Festival yesterday, literally. I didn't know such a thing existed, but I am glad I was told because I think it's great! One place for any quilt bloggers who feel so inclined to show off one of their finished quilts, and get to see everyone else's best/favorite/cutest/modern/traditional/etc. quilts. Awesome.

I've decided to show the quilt that I made for my son, Owen, completed summer 2011.


I have posted about it before, but will post it again! This is the quilt, of the few I have made so far, that I struggled with the most, because it wasn't "perfect" (whatever that means in quilting!), but I pushed through and in the end, love how it turned out. And so does Owen, so that in itself makes the effort worth it!

Owen had told me the colours that he wanted (red, green, blue & orange! Wow!) and together we chose the Shoo Fly Quilt by Malka Dubrawsky after looking at many many options that he didn't like! I chose all of the fabrics from the clearance section of Connecting Threads, picking out 2 different prints from each of the colours that Owen had selected. He was disappointed when the fabric arrived because apparently he was expecting solid colours. Oops. But I got to work and turns out that all of the fabrics met with his approval by the end.

I struggled with getting my points to line up when joining the blocks, to the point of putting it all aside for quite a few months. But eventually I decided to just get the blocks together whether or not the points matched up and probably no one but me would notice, and you know, I was right. It felt so good to get this one finished!


The last touch was the pieced back (first time for that too) and a bright green binding, again at Owen's request, and finally he had a new cozy quilt for his bed. It's bright and colourful, just like he is!


Make sure you head over to the Blogger's Quilt Festival web page and check out everyone else's beautiful work!