Sneak Peek

1. Finish quilt for Moda Bake Shop. *check*
2. Take pictures during lunch break. *check*
3. Write tutorial.

I'm off to write up the free pattern and get my posting date...I'll let you know when to expect it on their site as soon as I know!

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Tag Team Quilt

I'M FINISHED!!! One year later, and I finally finished this quilt for Ulrike!!! And I hope she doesn't mind, but I went ahead and named it the Tag Team quilt since she made the top, and then "tagged" me to go in and finish the rest :)

For those of you not familiar with the story behind this quilt, about this time last year my friend Ulrike contacted me about finishing a baby quilt for her. It was for a mutual friend who lives in the States, but it would cost a royal fortune for her to ship a finished baby quilt from Germany to the U.S., so she mailed me just the top, and I created the backing and put it together for her :)

The top was so fabulous that it took me MONTHS to decide on how I wanted to style the back, because I really wanted it to complement the front (and do her gorgeous work justice!). By the time I got the back done, the holiday season was upon me, and I was in full-on handmade Christmas present mode from then until the end of the year. I emailed Ulrike at the first of January to let her know finishing this quilt was priority #1, but a week later all my neck craziness started, so that pushed this quilt back another two months.
 

But I'm happy to say I finally finished binding it this weekend, and this beautiful quilt will be on it's way to a new mom tomorrow morning :) The thought of a chubby, happy baby rolling around on this quilt makes me incredibly happy. I can just picture him staring at all the bright colors and shapes, and finding little pieces in the quilt that will be his secret "favorites" as he grows up - Ulrike did such a fabulous job :)



I free motion quilted this using a cyan Sulky thread. I normally use Gutterman, but Sulky thread quilts like a dream when you're doing FMQ!

And below you can see my favorite bit of the entire quilt! I love that wonky little Owl & the Pussycat block...so sweet and whimsical :)

And here ladies and gentleman, is the back I made for the quilt! Again, the thought of pudgy little baby legs rolling around and pointing at the numbers and letters makes me wanna squeal! (I have a serious case of baby fever right now, in case you hadn't noticed, lol!)
 

I paper pieced the numbers & letters using templates from Kumiko Fujita's 318 Patchwork book, and I meticulously fussy cut those rainbow strips from an Ann Kelle stripe print. Her fabric is so perfect for kids projects and I have an obscene amount of it hoarded for future babies (not to mention serious yardage of her red & black Scottie print for Sir Whiskers projects!)

 For the binding I went with the new gray dot print from Denyse Schmidt's Aunt Edna line for Joann's. LOVE how it turned out - I seriously couldn't be happier that everything finally fell into place with this quilt! I think this is the first time I've ever made a quilt, and in the end felt like there's nothing I would go back and change. And it's the best feeling ever - I feel so creatively satisfied when I look at these pictures :)

And since the letters are a little hard to see from the shots above, here's a closeup of all the paper pieced text. Mmmmm....scrappy goodness!!!

Hope you all had a lovely Easter! I had a beautiful day full of worship, family, photographing quilts in the beautiful sunshine, peanut butter cookies, napping on the sofa with Ray and Sir Whiskers, and Indiana Jones/Jurassic Park movie marathons...all in all, the perfect Sunday :)

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Sweet Caroline Quilt

Remember the last-minute present I was working on last week? Weeeelllll the thing is, I bit off a little more than I could chew when choosing the pattern (the Stamps version of Elizabeth Hartman's More Simple Modern Baby Quilts), so I didn't finish it until Saturday morning.

I finished basting it late Thursday night, and was fully prepared to pull an all-nighter in order to finish in time for the baby shower on Friday. But the hubby intervened and told me I was being a mad woman...and I chose to listen to the voice of reason for a change. My hubby takes such good care of me :)

I did, however, stick the basted quilt in a baby-themed gift bag and bring it to the shower. And before she "unwrapped it", I stood up and yelled across the room "it's not finished! I just didn't want you to think I didn't get you anything!" And when we were all standing around looking at it at the end of the shower, one of my coworkers said "this is an interesting way to finish it *makes face*...what's this weird flannel stuff sticking out of the ends?" Apparently I'll have to scream a little louder next time (which shouldn't be a problem, because I'm pretty much a megaphone with legs).

The binding is Nicey Jane Welcome Road in Pink, and the backing is from Denyse Schmidt's newest collection for Joann's. I'm totally in love with the back of this quilt! I'm not usually a fan of pastels, but this Sugar Creek print is pretty freaking fantastic...I had my friend Kelly run to her local Joann's and pick up 5 more yards for me because it's the perfect baby quilt fabric. I'm kind of regretting not getting the whole bolt.

Aren't the colors delicious? I named this quilt Sweet Caroline because I kept singing that song while I was making it....the colors make me think of candy and sunshine and fluffy bunnies munchin' on clovers :)

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DWR Quilt Along: Layering, Quilting & Binding the Curved Edges

This post will be short and sweet, because there's really only one part of this process that might be foreign to you (sorting out the binding at the curved corners). 

To prepare the backing, you'll cut your yardage into two 1 1/2 yard pieces. Sew together down the length to make one large panel. Baste, quilt (I did free motion) and trim off the excess batting and backing.

Prepare your bias binding using your preferred method. Personally, I love these instructions from The Dread Pirate Rodgers. Her method looks a little scary at first, but her instructions are amazingly detailed, informative, and there's virtually no fabric waste, which I love.

Start pinning your binding on one of the end rings, making sure to leave a tail. It's best to start at an end because you'll have plenty of room (without any pesky corners) to attach your tail ends once you've worked your way around the quilt top.

Pin until you reach a corner. Now there may be a better way to do this, but this method is what's worked well for me in the past. Make a baby miter, finger press, and pin in place. You don't want to do a full-on miter with all the folding (like you would with a regular square corner) because it gathers up way too much fabric at the corner, and it's nearly impossible to miter the back side.

You may have to work your binding a little bit to get everything in place before you pin. 

Once you've finished pinning the entire top and begin sewing your binding down, this is how you'll need to navigate the corner. I made 1/2" binding, so I sewed until I was 1/2" above the corner and pivoted to go down the next curve.

Once you've finished sewing down the top of the binding and start flipping it toward the back, here's how you'll situate the fabric at the corners. At your first corner, go ahead and clip down the binding that's on either side of the corner into it's rightful place, so there's not a bunch of excess fabric floating around. Grab the fabric bunched at the corner...

...and following the natural inclination of the fabric from the miter you made earlier, tuck the right side under the left using your finger until there's no excess and the binding wants to lay flat with no puckering.  Once you have the front in place, the binding should naturally fall into place on the back as you fold it over.

 If you machine sew the back of your binding (like me), you'll sew down one side and pivot at the corner, just like you did for the top.

And voila! You're finished! I immediately wash and dry my quilts after binding because it crinkles up nicely and hides most of my flaws - there's nothing like a good run through the machine to hide your quilting sins ;)

And here's a crapload of pictures. I document every last inch of my Double Wedding Ring quilts because they're so difficult to make!

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Color Burst Quilt Pattern

The pattern is up in my Etsy shop!

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Color Burst Quilt

 

I finally did it! I designed my first quilt pattern and I'm crazy excited about it. I feel like Will Ferrel in that scene in Elf when he runs in, flings his hat across the room and shouts "I'm in love! I'm in love! And I don't care who knows it!"

Even better, I'm putting together a pattern and hope to have it in my Etsy shop within the next week or two. Super excited!

I made it for the Modern Quilt Guild's Project Modern: Challenge 4. I've been wanting to try my hand at patterns for a while, especially throughout the different Project Modern Challenges, but always ran into two problems...1) I never had the time because I was busy working on a bajillion other projects, and 2) the designs that pop into my head rarely translate well into fabric. But one day, when I was driving home from work, I randomly started thinking about bar graphs...and how cool that might look as a quilt block. One thing led to another, and I ended up with "bar graph" blocks set at a 45 degree angle that formed little bursts! It was a beast designing them in EQ7, and even more of a beast deciding on the construction. I went through about 4 different piecing methods starting with 18" blocks set on point and trimmed, and ended up with a much easier (and more accurate) paper piecing method.

For the back I used Kona Ash and the leftover prints from the front. I cut them into strips and pieced them so they'd look like a precariously stacked tower of books. I wanted it to look wonky, but just sturdy enough to stay upright (if it were a real stack of books).

The binding is more of the red Joel Dewberry Baskets

 

I was feeling lazy when it came time for the quilting, so I almost copped out and did free motion as usual, but I felt this quilt deserved some straight line quilting to augment the design. I'm so glad my laziness didn't win out this time, lol!

And since it's kinda hard to make out the block design from the first photo, here are some more detail shots  of the front. Each "burst" is made out of 4 blocks, so there are 16 blocks total (finished quilt measures 48" x 48")

 

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Record Time

I had a total "oh crap" moment on Monday when I remembered we were having a "Grandbaby" Shower for a coworker today at lunch. She's a a really sweet lady and I still wanted to make her a quilt despite the time constrictions, so I went with a really basic strip quilt and put this together in about 7 hours!!! I'm pretty sure that's some kind of record, lol

What is a "Grandbaby" shower, you ask? Well my friend has been divorced for about 10 years and lives alone. Her only daughter is having her first baby in a few weeks, so we all got together and decided to have a baby shower of sorts for her, since her grandbaby will be at her house all the time! I think it's such a fabulous idea, because now her family won't have to cart bulky baby items back and forth between houses :)

I've dubbed her quilt the "Blueberry Hill" baby quilt because of all the bright, summery blues and grassy greens. Here are some closer shots of the prints and binding....

On the back I used my favorite baby fabric ever - Alexander Henry's 2D Zoo! Isn't it precious? I love the thought of her little grandson crawling around on this quilt, looking at all the different shapes and colors of the animals :)

I'm definitely gonna have to pick up some more of this basic dot too, because I love how it works as binding. I only bought a yard of the blue and purple, and a month later I'm almost out of both!

And just for good measure, here's a gratuitous puppy shot! Notice anything new? We're going to be watching my brother-in-law's Jack Russell puppy for the next couple months...she's only a year old and COMPLETELY INSANE, although very sweet! Our life has been more than a little chaotic the past week, but Whiskers has taken to her presence swimmingly. He's happy as a clam and they spend most of their time racing down the hallways, sliding on the wood floors, and wrestling. It's so funny hearing their little claws click on the floor as they run :)

Her name is Rimshot, which seems completely random unless I tell you that she's named after the Jack Russell puppy from the Ernest movies. Remember Ernest Worrell from Ernest Goes to Jail, Ernest Scared Stupid, Ernest Goes to Camp, etc? They came out when I was in elementary school and we all loved them :) No? Well here's a picture to help refresh your memory. In Ernest Scared Stupid she was turned into a wooden statue by the evil troll (and later saved by Ernest, of course!) What would Ernest be without his plucky sidekick?

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