Not my Best Work

To be truthful, I never thought this top would get finished.  It was definitely a test of my patience and I'm a bit surprised I stuck with it.  It was made using the Ballerina pattern made by Jaybird Quilts.  If you follow the pattern, the pieces go together beautifully. Unfortunately,  I miscut a number of my blocks so the entire quilt had to be reworked so the blocks would fit together. 

Not all the points come together as well as I like them to be but once it gets quilted and laundered, it will be less noticeable.  Right?

I really like the fabrics in this quilt top.  I mainly used Jason Yenter's Winter Solstice fabrics and back filled with some fabrics from my stash.  

This will be a Christmas gift so now I need to get it on my quilting schedule.  Any fun ideas on quilting?

Previously this year, I had quilted a quilt from the same pattern for a friend.  I like the texture of the straight line quilting in a few of the swirls.  The quilt above is far busier and I am not sure the quilting will show much.

Too many decisions!  Thankfully I have a few months to figure it out.

Linking up with Connie at Freemotion by the River, Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story and WIP Wednesdays at Freshly Pieced Quiltsy and Esther's Blog..

To Boston with Love

Today is the day of the Eugene marathon.  Following so closely after the Boston marathon, all those hit by that tragedy are in my thoughts.  It is so senseless that events like this even occur. I think when bad things happen, many of us are left wondering what we can do to help. I was very pleased when I saw the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild organizing To Boston with Love ~ a call for flag bunting that will fly in Boston this summer to bring support to their city.

Making these three little flags was very therapeutic and fun.  I hope their bright colors and loving message help to heal a city so violently shaken.

There is still time to make your own flag.  The instructions are here.  If you don't want to ship to Canada, I believe Amy from During Quilt Time is also working on flag collecting. 

Shipping details are here.  

No Quilting Required

As many of you who follow my blog know, I lead a group called Project:Quilt that meets once a month and makes a quilt for a local organization.  For April, the group wanted to learn how to do rag quilts so I came up with a little twist on the traditional rag quilt and thought I would share it with all of you. 

I first used some freezer paper to draft up some simple designs.  I wanted the blocks to end up about 11" square so I drew each shape to size.

The designs were lightly transferred onto a 12" solid square.  The shapes can be cut out of the  freezer paper, ironed onto the fabric and traced with a fabric marker. 

I used the Frixion pens which will disappear with a hot iron but you can also draw lightly with a pencil..






As we wanted the quilt to be light weight as the organization really needed just a quilt for comfort and not for warmth, we decided not to include batting.  Two solids (with the marked design on top) and a flannel backing all cut into 12" squares are stacked and pinned together.

Using a fun contrasting thread, the design was top stitch through all three layers.











Then, being very careful not to cut the second layer fabric, make a slit in the top solid and cut about 1/4" inside the sew line to expose the color underneath. 

With sharp little scissors, "fray" the edges along the sew line.









There are so many designs and color combinations. You can really get creative.



I fell in love with this little house block.

To finish, sew all the blocks together just like you would for any other rag quilt.  The stitching of the design will stabilize the block.

Here it is after being laundered.  I love all the bright colors and fun shapes.

This quilt is being donated to an organization where it will be used in one of the interview rooms where children are being asked difficult questions.   Hopefully it will bring a little comfort to them as they go through the process.

I have used this same process using denim material for the top layer, solids for the second and flannel for the backing.  I cut away stars and kept most of the blocks whole just stitching an X in the block.  It made a great quilt for my nephew.   Of course now that he is nearing 6 feet, I doubt he gets much use out of it.

I will be sharing this project with Quiet Play for Let's Get Acquainted,  Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River, and WIP Wednesdays at Esther's Blog, Quiltsy and Freshly Pieced.

English Paper Piecing

So sorry for not posting anything in nearly a week.  My to-do list just got so long, I just couldn't get to everything.  But I do have some fun projects to show you today!

Usually after standing at my longarm quilting machine all day, I rarely go into my sewing room and piece quilt tops.  In the evening, you usually find me on the couch with some hand sewing.  When I don't have bindings to sew, I am usually english paper piecing (EPP).  I thought I would share.....

My first EPP projects were usually pretty simple.  I would use the "flowers" as embellishments on various projects. 

Here is a fun potholder I made as a gift and I loved it so much I kept it for myself....







I then started creating "fabric" using EPP and making some larger items. 

This is one of the pillows I made for in my livingroom using the larger 2" hexagons.  I have plans to make many more.

One day I got the crazy idea to make a queen size quilt using a bunch of my jewel toned scraps and tiny one inch hexagons.   You can see the quarter sitting there to show you how crazy that idea truly was.

Needless to say after a couple years, I am close to having it built to about a lap size quilt.  This is definitely one of those "one in a lifetime" projects!

And lately, because the tiny hexagons were getting to me, I have been putting together one of the snowflake projects using the larger 2" hexagons.  Each of the snowflakes end up being about 18" tip to tip so it goes together fairly quickly.

I am hoping to have it finished by the holidays!  We shall see...

The weather here in the northwest has been lovely lately and spring has certainly arrived.  I am looking forward to when it is warm enough to sit in my gardens in the evening and work on hand sewing there.

I hope you are all starting to see signs of spring!  Thanks for stopping by.

A Great Match

As a long arm quilter, you get to see so many wonderful projects made from great fabric combinations.  One combination I have been seeing quite frequently are the 2wenty Thr3e and Comma fabric lines by Moda.

My sweet neighbor brought me over a baby blanket she had made using these two lines in combination.  She has just started to sew and simply pieced up large blocks of the fabric.  It was easy yet adorable as the fabrics did a lot of the work.

And I just finished up this customer quilt made from jelly rolls.  Once again, the two lines really do work well together.









I have plans to make my own quilt from this little stack of fabrics.  I won a charm pack from I Don't Do Dishes a few weeks back on a blog giveaway so of course I had to get more fabrics to go with it.

(Thanks Elven Garden for the giveaway!)


I will share the finished project once I get some time to sew.

Is there a fabric line you are seeing a lot of and have plans for a project? 

Finally!

I have finally finished a quilt I started about 5 years ago. Sorry about the poor picture but we had rain all day today so I had to snap this one inside.

Every time I went to work on this quilt, I would discover I had "stolen" some of its fabric for other projects so I would have to rethink how to proceed.

That usually resulted in it getting thrown back into a bag and stored.





For the quilting, I did simple vertical lines in black thread then added detail lines in red thread and randomly placed circles and triangles.

I think it matched the vision of the quilt quite well.

I had quite a bit of fabric left over from this project and as I had been working on it for so long, I just couldn't bear putting it back in my stash.  So I decided to throw together this scrappy quilt with the leftovers.

I had no plan when I started and placement of each fabric was dependent on how many squares I could cut of each fabric.







I really didn't think much of the quilt top after I finished it but I quilted it with an orange peel design with a little twist and fell in love with it.

Now it hangs in my living room and brings me joy.  Isn't it great when that happens!

Linking up this week with:

Let's Get Acquainted

Linky Tuesday at Freemotion by the River

Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story
Show and Tell Tuesday at I Have To Say...
WIP Weds at Freshly Pieced

and Free Motion Quilting Friday.