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

 

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

W.I.P. Wednesday

A lot of my sharing has been via Instagram these days but today I thought I'd pop in here at the old blog and show a few projects I've been working on that have me very excited!  I dumped out the scrap bin in the last few weeks and decided to do some scrappy improv.  First up, a rainbow block mini quilt, made using the crazy piecing technique from the book 'Quilting Modern.'

This was a LOT of work for me and I'm sure I over-thought a lot of it (straight, symmetrical stuff is what comes natural to me!!) but can I say how thrilled I am with how it turned out.  It's about 27" square and at this point I'm not sure what it will become, but for now it hangs on my design wall and makes me happy.  :)

Realizing that the rainbow blocks in no way depleted the scrap bin I jumped into another project, this time adding to the scraps bits of light neutral solids that I have, not enough for large projects and I don't remember what shades they are anyways so might as well use them up!

 

The picture was taken yesterday and I'm now up to about 30 blocks - these are small and quick, and will finish at about 4" square.  I'm using a tutorial by Faith @ Fresh Lemons called Butterfly Strands.  I was introduced to this tutorial through my bee this month and I love it!  Fast and fun.  :)  Another 'make me happy' project for these dreary winter days.

Looking forward to seeing what the rest of you have up this week!

Linking up with Lee @ Freshly Pieced

Family Passport Wallet

Once again I have pulled out my Family Passport Wallet pattern, designed by Amber of One Shabby Chick (pattern can be purchased here).  I believe this is the 10th one that I have made!  This one was requested by my sister for her friend.  They are a family of 5 so the 6-pocket version of the wallet was in order.

I was given free rein as far as fabrics/colours.  I decided that I wanted to do a colourful pieced outer, and similar to the wallet that I made for my sister and her family, I used scraps to do a bit of patchwork, in this case wonky stripes.  For the rest, I used leftover black/gray fabrics from my Roller Rink quilt.

I really like the purple linen-y strip in the middle, but unfortunately it gets covered up when the strap is closed!!  At least you can see it here!

Thanks again to Amber for such a great pattern - I feel like by now I could make these in my sleep!

Linking up 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!

My first quilt

I have an aunt who is learning to quilt and I must say it's been a lot of fun helping her along.  She's cruising along, making quilts & table runners, machine quilting, applying nice binding, etc.  I've been impressed!!  I mentioned my first quilt to her, in reference to how much I didn't know then that I know now (and wishing I'd had someone I knew in person to ask questions!) and she asked to see it, so Trudy, this is for you. 

To look at, I can admit that it's not too bad.  It's more the technique things and some of the materials used that are a little bit hilarious to look back on.  

Before I started quilting, I made a bunch of bags/aprons/placemats/household things so that's where most of the patchwork fabrics came from.  Also from some skirts that I cut up.  I cut everything for this project with scissors!  What's a rotary cutter????  ;)  I traced every little square (in strips, mind you, so at least I figured that part out!) with a pen onto my fabric and then cut.  It took forever and gave me hand cramps.  hehe

I had sewed other projects before, like I mentioned, so thankfully I already had the pressing part mostly figured out. 

I used polyester batting inside, and 100% polyester bedding materials for the black border and the binding.  The black in particular frayed like CRAZY, didn't have a nice soft feel, and I remember it even smelled kind of weird, but I soldiered on.  :) 

I didn't know how to make a proper binding so I just folded the backing fabric to the front using a tutorial I found somewhere online.  By that point having it all folded over, you are working with quite a few layers of fabric & batting and I could NOT get my machine to stitch it down.  I realize now that I probably had totally the wrong sewing machine needle (and the one I was using was probably dull as who knows what) plus the machine I was borrowing from my mother-in-law at the time was compacted with lint inside which I didn't know until later, so I think the odds were stacked against me on that one right from the start.  I ended up doing a running stitch by hand to secure the "binding", and then my corners weren't too pretty so I put a button on each one.  haha

I tied the quilt, which is not bad in and of itself but I think at the time I didn't even know about machine quilting.  Plus I didn't have a walking foot so it probably would have been a disaster anyways.

Sometimes I feel like I should take the whole thing apart, get rid of the backing, batting, and borders, and use the patchwork panel for something else because I actually quite like that part of it, but then I think that saving it for nostalgia is kind of fun too.  

What was your first quilt project????

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?

W.I.P. Wednesday

This week I've mostly been plugging away at my Octagonal Orb blocks.  I still don't have a background fabric chosen so I've only been working on the coloured sections.  So far I have 5 blocks worth pieced together.  These don't look very octagonal or orb-like yet, but to give you an idea....

Yesterday I received the last of my bee blocks in the mail, so I now have 12 granny square blocks to work with.  I had sent out a variety of scrappy fabrics and a natural solid and the resulting blocks are pretty fun I think!  Here's a look at a few of them, still untrimmed:

And finally for this week, a W.I.P. that is existing only in my mind so far - this duffel bag pattern.  I was lucky to win this during Sew Mama Sew giveaway day, and I'd love to give it a try.  The pattern is put out by Simplicity and is a Studio Cherie design.  She has TONS of great sewing patterns available in her Etsy shop.  Be sure to check them out.

Have a good week all.  I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of you have been up to!

W.I.P. Wednesday ~ the progression of a quilt

During the past week or so I went from this....

to this.....

to this.....

to this.....

I have to say, this turned out much more crazy busy than I expected!  I have mixed feelings about it.  It's scrappy and colourful and fun, but I just wish that the shape of the neutral areas was more pronounced.  I'll have to think carefully about how to quilt this and I hope to come up with something that will give more visual impact to those neutral areas.

We're heading into spring break here soon, and I have a few work days before the week is through, so I don't know when I'll get to the next stage with this project.  For now it will hang on the livingroom wall until I get back to it.

Have a great week everyone.

A time to trim

So the verdict on my question from yesterday regarding half square triangles was clear - pretty much ALL of us enjoy the look/versatility/design options of HSTs, but we don't like to make them, and it's all of the trimming that's at the top of the list of reasons why.  So......anyone want to come over and help me????

W.I.P. Wednesday

While I continue to mull over ideas for my Notting Hill fabric (any awesome suggestions would be gratefully accepted!), I decided to dive into another scrap project.  Does anyone besides me have a love/hate relationship with half square triangles?  I love how they look and how many different layouts you can achieve with such a simple unit, but if I'm honest, I find making them to be a bit of a pain!  But this morning I was looking at this cushion I made way back when....

......and began to wonder what this layout - which I sort of winged at the time - would look like in a multi-block design.  So I went to the highly technical 'Paint' program (hey, I never claimed to be a quilt designer!) and came up with this:

I think it looks pretty cool!  What do you think?  I've started cutting 5" squares from my scraps, enough to make 144 HSTs, which will make a 2 x 2 layout (ie. huge blocks!) of the above block and should result in an approximate 50" square quilt.

And for the first time I'm going to try using a variety of neutrals for the background, rather than just choosing one.  I think (but am not 100% sure) that these are, from left to right, Kona Oyster, Kona Ash, Kona Bone, Kona Iron, and Kona Natural.

That's all I have going on this week.  I've also been trying to clean my house this week which cuts into the sewing time!!

Take care everyone.

Hexagon Bathmat

This seems like a bit of a silly little project, and some might even say it's a shame to use such pretty scrappy hexagons for a bathmat that you're going to stand and drip on, but I'm just happy to finally use my hexagons for something useful.  They'd been assembled into an approximate 27" square since the summer and it was folded and tucked away.  I knew I'd never persevere and make a whole quilt this way so might as well make something useful of it.

I put the hexagon panel and an old bath towel (not worn out, just not being used) right sides together then sewed around, leaving a 6" opening on one edge for turning.  I then pressed around the edges and did a 1/4" top stitch around the perimeter.  I could have left it like that, but decided to add some diagonal quilting lines to secure the whole thing.  Not just to secure the back to the front, but also to re-inforce the hexagons a bit since they are hand-stitched and I don't have 100% faith in how good a job I did at that!

I guess time will tell how well it works out, how absorbent it is, and how well the hexagons hold up.  I'll let you know!

P.S.  My inspiration for this project came from this patchwork bathmat which I originally saw on Pinterest.