Blogger's Quilt Festival!

Welcome to my post for the Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2012!

I'm sharing a quilt that I've posted about here before, one I made for my new baby boy earlier this year.

I've seen many wonky star quilts on Flickr, and have wanted to make one for nearly as long as I've been quilting.  When it came time to make a quilt for the baby boy I was expecting, nearly immediately I decided on this design.

I was drawn to the aqua, gray and lime color scheme for his nursery, and decided to make the quilt to match.

The star blocks are 9" finished.  Each star block incorporates all three colors - aqua, lime, and gray - in some combination.  One color for the background fabric, one for the star fabric, and one for the thread used to quilt an outline around the star.

I finished the quilt four days before my son was born this March, just in the nick of time!

I love how it turned out, and I am now taking a picture of my son on the quilt every month to document his growth.  I just know I'll look back on those photos someday and treasure not only watching him grown, but also documenting the quilt I made for him!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures: 36" x 45"

Special techniques used: wonky, improv piecing

Quilted by: me!

Best category: Baby quilt, Home Machine Quilted quilt

Thanks for stopping by!

Some quick and easy sewing

Since my maternity leave ended and I went back to work three weeks ago, my sewing time has been greatly reduced (obviously!).  Because I only have short its of time here and there, I've made a few quick projects so I could finish something.

First, I had a vision of a small pouch in linen with some Liberty and lace trim.  I decided to use the Inset Zip pouch pattern from Michelle Patterns.  I've made this pattern before and it is fabulous.

After searching through my stash, I decided on a grey Moda Crossweave (linen-like but not linen!), some blue/purple Liberty, and some sweet crocheted trim I picked up at Joann's.



I LOVE how this turned out!  The strips of Liberty on the front, with the crocheted lace peeking out, are just perfect in my mind.

I used a navy zipper to match.



And used one of my VERY precious larger pieces of Liberty that I got in my Purl Soho rainbow bundle for the lining.  The piece I had was 9"x12" and was JUST big enough to cut out the two lining pieces for this smaller pattern size.  The lining matches perfectly!!



I also added a small strap to the pouch, to make it a wristlet.  This isn't part of the original pattern but I added in following instructions from another of my Michelle Patterns.

Well, this first project started the ball rolling.  Next up was an Easy Grocery Bag.

I've got so many half yards of fabric, and a half yard is the perfect size for both the outside and lining of the largest size in the pattern. (Although the pattern says you need a larger piece, you can get away with 1/2 yards for both outside and lining if you use a third fabric for the handles).



I used Alexander Henry Farmdale for this one.  These are the larger scale apples.  How perfect is that for a market bag?



The lining is the matching crosshatch from the same line.

And I didn't stop there!  I decided to make a little matching pouch, following Michelle's dumpling tutorial.



So cute! I only had a 12" zipper, so I had to make the smaller "harder" size.  But it wasn't hard at all.  The tutorial was very clear and so easy, and I finished this up in about an hour or two.



Isn't it cute and tiny? I can't wait to make more of these!  Perfect for all those fat quarters you've got sitting around.  I just realized this post sounds like an ad for Michelle Patterns--but I just love them! They're so clear and easy to follow and I've loved everything I've made.

It's so nice to have some quick finishes! I've actually finished one more zip pouch, from a Noodlehead tutorial, but don't have any pics yet.  I seem to be on a zipper kick. I'm about ready to place an order from Zipit on Etsy so I can make more! :)

Dream On quilt finished!

I finally finished my Dream On quilt!



And I love it!  This quilt has been in the works forever. I started it at the beginning of last year, and of course soon became distracted by other projects.  These last few weeks, while winding down my maternity leave, I vowed that I would finish it before I returned to work! And I did! I just barely made it, finishing it late Thursday evening, and I go back to work on Monday.

It's about 52"x70", made from 4 charm packs of Dream On by Urban Chiks for Moda.  The background is Kona Ash, and the layout of offset diamonds was inspired by this quilt.  I had originally planned to arrange the half square triangles in large concentric diamonds (kind of like this) but as I set out to sew them together I changed my mind!

The backing is yardage of one of the prints from the Dream On collection.



The binding is a pink Kona from Joann's, I think it's just Pink (or maybe Baby Pink? I don't remember).  I quilted it with gray Gutermann thread, with a light pink Gutermann in the bobbin for the back, and for the machine stitching of the binding.

I love it! And this one is mine, all mine! Well, until my 4 year old daughter steals it from me--with every quilt, it's, "Ooh, mommy, is this one for me?"  If she asks, how can I resist? :)

In progress

I've got a few projects in progress right now.

First up, I'm almost finished with a quilt I posted about way back when.  I've got the quilting all finished, and today my goal is to sew on the binding.



I've already had a few false starts. I'm trying to machine sew the binding, following the tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts, but I'm having some trouble.  My walking foot doesn't have good visibility as far as keeping my stitches in the ditch, I keep wandering onto the binding fabric, and then having to tear it all out.  It's a bit frustrating but I'll keep persevering.

I've got another quilt in progress at the moment as well.  I'm following the Ruby, Pearl & Opal recipe from the Moda Bake Shop, using Basic Grey's Hello Luscious.



I'm about halfway through the last piecing of the blocks, then it will be time to sew the blocks together into the completed top.  I should be picking this up again in the next few days.

And of course, I'm dreaming of new projects.  I've pulled this stack of beautiful navy and pink prints for a new quilt.



I love this color combo, it's inspired by this photo I saw on Flickr.  I'm thinking scrappy herringbone blocks, following this tutorial.  I don't know when I'll get started, but I'm itching to cut into these fabrics!

I've also got an urge to sew some bags.  I may let myself get distracted by that after I finish up the binding today. I think I need a quick project!

Where have I been?

Hello again!

Oh my, where has the last year gone?  It has been a year, over a year, since my last post.  What happened?

Well, not too long after my last post last year, I got pregnant!  And pregnancy and me--don't agree.  I get very sick and pretty much lose all desire and ability to do anything.  Combine that with a full time job, which I have, and you get lazy evenings and weekends where I did nothing but lie in bed with no energy to quilt or blog.

So the bulk of the last year was spent pregnant and sick and tired.  But happily, in March I gave birth to an absolutely beautiful baby boy, and am now feeling back to my old self.  Unfortunately, two small children plus a full time job (which I'll be returning to from maternity leave in about two weeks) will probably not leave much time for quilting or blogging, but I'm going to try!  My drive to sew is back, although my time may be limited.

I do have one finish to share, and it's one I'm very proud of (I wish I would have thought to blog a few days ago, this would have been a great entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival).  When I found out I was having a baby boy, I began thinking about color schemes for his nursery and what kind of quilt I wanted to make him.  Because even though I was tired and not feeling great, I was going to muster up the energy needed to make him a quilt!

I decided on a gray, aqua, and lime color scheme, along with a wonky star pattern, inspired by all the beautiful wonky star quilts I've seen on Flickr, but most especially this quilt.  I decided to use the various aqua, lime, and gray mini dots from the Ruby line by Bonnie and Commie for Moda for the backgrounds of the stars, and pulled a big selection of aqua, lime and gray prints from my stash for the stars.  I did a little bit of easy math to figure out the number of each color block to make sure I had an even distribution of colors, and to make sure I ended up with all three color backgrounds and all three color stars.  

And three days before the baby was born, I finished the quilt!

I love it SO much.  It turned out exactly as I envisioned it.



To quilt it, I quilted on either side of each seam between the blocks, and also outlined each star.  I love the way the quilting looks from the back, as I used an aqua Moda Bella solid for the back, and so the quilting of the stars really stands out.



I just love it.  It's perfect.  And I'm using it as the background to take monthly photos of the baby to show how much he grows every month.  I know I'll love seeing it when I look at those photos in the future.

So that's where I've been.  I'm hoping that now that things are back to normal, health wise, and we're slowly settling into the new routine with the baby, that I'll have time for quilting and blogging again. I definitely haven't stopped buying fabric (!) so I need to get quilting and use it up!

(And oh my goodness, as soon as I hit publish on this post, I realized it's my 100th post!  How funny! Yay me.)

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

Finally, I have a quilt that I can share for the Bloggers' Quilt Festival! I've been around and watched the past few festivals, but never had something to share at the time.



The quilt that I am sharing is probably my favorite out of all the quilts I've ever made (not that there are that many, but I still love it!). I don't have a clever name for it, I just refer to it as the Purple Nine-patch Baby Quilt.

I was inspired to make this quilt by this one I found on Flickr. I just loved the gray and purple together, and wanted to use that color scheme and nine-patch style. Around the same time, I decided to make a baby quilt for a friend of mine who was expecting a baby. She and her husband are huge Lakers fans, and so I knew the purple (although technically, yes, it isn't Lakers purple) would be a perfect choice for their baby girl.

I collected purple fabrics for some time, picked out a handful that coordinated well, and paired it with some Kona Ash.

For the back, I did one large 5x5 square in the middle, again inspired by the style of the original inspiration quilt.



I quilted it with an allover stipple, and once I washed and dried it, it crinkled up so wonderfully and was sooo soft and snuggly. It was so hard to send it away, but I just know its recipient will love it and get great use out of it.



Also, after I shared the pictures of this quilt on Flickr, it was chosen to be shared on the Modern Day Quilts blog, which was great! I felt very flattered!

All in all, it was a super simple quilt to make, but I think the end result is just fabulous!

Thanks again for stopping by!

A little non-quilty sewing

Yesterday and today I've had several glorious hours of alone time.  My husband's at work, and my daughter is off with grandma, who is in town visiting, at my sister's house.  I decided to put my time to good use and make a few things I've been wanting to make, but haven't had enough time to set aside to make them.

Both patterns I made are from Keyka Lou Patterns.  She has some amazing, super cute patterns, and I finally bought a few this past week while she was having an anniversary sale.

The first one I tried was the Ditty Bag pattern.  I made the medium size.  The pattern was very well written.  It turned out very cute, although I did mess up a little.  When I attached the back of the bag to the front pieces, I put it together upside down.  You'll see that the hanging tag should be at the same end of the bag as the zipper pull, when the zipper is closed.  Instead, it's the opposite.  Oops.  And that's why the flowers are upside down, they should be facing the other way.  But that's okay.  It's still cute and functional, and so I'm going to leave it as is.  A good reason to make a few more in the other sizes!







The next pattern I made was the Laptop Sleeve.  I made this with the intention of modifying its size to make it smaller to fit my new iPad.  I used the instructions referenced for how to modify the size, but again, I screwed up somewhere! :)  But I was able to eventually make it work.  Although in these pictures, the velcro is in the wrong spot. I need to move the bottom pieces down a few inches so the flap attaches lower (in the spot it's in in the pictures where it's closed).  But that should be fairly easy and then it should fit fairly well.  Just a hair too big, but that's okay.  Again, the pattern itself was awesome, it was just my lack of spatial understanding that prevented me from being able to change the dimensions.  Overall, it turned out great, and I am super happy to have a cute new bag for my iPad.  Plus, it uses some of my most favorite fabrics, especially the Alexander Henry Farmdale blossom, so I am really happy with it.









I have to say that I would highly, highly recommend these patterns.  Very thorough and easy to follow.  I have one more I'm going to try today (the Inset Zipper clutch and pouch) and I will most definitely try others in the future.

Hello bandwagon, room for one more?

Holy cow, a month and a half since my last post?  What the heck happened?  I have no idea.  I'm sorry!

Anyway, last week, I, along with half of the online quilt blogging/Flickr community, had a collective freakout when we realized fabric designer extraordinaire Denyse Schmidt had released a new line of fabric at Joann Fabrics, of all places.

I gathered up my coupons like a good little shopper and hightailed it over there on Friday, after some of my lovely modern quilt guild buddies let me know that the fabric had arrived.

On my first go around, I picked up this lovely stack of my favorite prints out of the bunch.

Aren't they pretty?

Then I gathered up some more coupons and headed back over today to pick up a few more of the prints.

I still don't have all the prints, but at this point I think I have all the ones I like.

And while I was there today, what else did I find?  Some lovely Alexander Henry Farmdale prints!  The aqua blossom print is one of my absolute favorite fabrics of all time, so I splurged and bought a whole bunch.  I don't ever want to run out of this fabric!

So, yes, I have been stashing fabric, but not doing a whole heck of a lot of sewing.  I do have one more finished quilt to show, plus another quilt top and back ready for basting and quilting, but I need to get some pictures.  Soon!

And this time, I promise it won't be another month and a half before I update again! :)

No progress.

That's what I've got to show you.  Nothing.  No progress on any projects.  Why?  Because I haven't been sewing.  I have been absolutely overwhelmed by work.  I can't remember ever having this much work to do before at one time.  It's exhausting, and by the time I get home (on the days when I actually do get home, and am not out of town) I am too tired to do anything.

I am hoping this will all let up in the next few weeks.  I'm almost through it all.  The biggest stressor of all will be over with and done next week, then a few other things to finish up in the week or so after that, and then hopefully things will be back to normal.

In the meantime, what do I do when I am stressed and busy and can't sew?  I buy fabric to make me feel better. :P

Last week, Purl Soho had a huge sale.  They had tons of great prints for just over $5/yard, some lovely flannels (Anna Maria Horner!) for just over $6/yard, Echino for $10/yard...it was great.  So of course I couldn't pass it up.  Look at the lovely stack that came to live with me.



One yard each of the Modern Meadow prints (the top four), five yards of the Folksy Flannel on the bottom of the stack, and then 2 yards and 3 yards of the other two flannels.  The Modern Meadow prints are great stash builders and I cannot wait to use the flannels as some very cozy quilt backs for all the quilts I plan to make with my overflowing AMH stash.

Ahh, fabric.  It's amazing how it lifts the spirits!

My next project

I have made tons of progress this week on different projects, and now I want to move onto something new!

First, to recap, I finally pieced a back for my Hunky Dory 9-patch quilt.  No picture right now, but hopefully soon once I get it basted and get to work on quilting.  It's the first time I've done a pieced back and it was so fun!

I also finished the back for this purple 9-patch baby quilt I've been working on. I think I've mentioned this quilt here before but haven't shown any pictures.





Now I've got to get to quilting on that one too!

The only backing I have yet to get ready is for my Bliss quilt.  I have some flannel for the backing and I honestly only need to cut the length of the yardage in two and then sew them together to make the backing, but I haven't done it yet.  Maybe later today I can get to that.

But in the meantime I've decided to start another quilt! I think I'm putting off all the basting and quilting for the others, to be honest, those parts are my least favorite of the whole process!

For this quilt, I decided to work with my Dream On charm packs that I've had in my stash for a while.  I've seen a few quilts on Flickr that paired up Dream On with Kona Ash, and I loved how it looked.  I'm not really into sashings in non-neutral colors (like pinks or yellows) for some reason, so the only other option I was considering for this line was white.  But I feel like these fabrics would fade into the white background too much, and you'd lose some of the definition of the prints.  So Ash it is!



Given that I have charm packs, I thought it would be fun and easy to just do a ton of half-square triangles, and then see what kind of pattern I can come up with.  Maybe a diamond radiating out from the center of the quilt?  I don't know yet, we'll see what they look like once I get them all made.

Right now I'm in the midst of marking all my squares.  Once that's done, I'm going to settle in for some serious chain-piecing!  I'm hoping to maybe get them all done today. Is that possible?  We'll see!