Just Before Dawn

The only thing I do just before dawn is ... sleep. But it won't prevent me from making a quilt by that name, designed by This & That Patterns' Sherri K. Falls.


Yes, the fabric I used is distinctly Christmas-themed, and it's May... I'd cut out the project and taken it with me on retreat last November, but barely started it. Recently, I was looking to work on a project and didn't feel like machine quilting or cutting out another project, so I grabbed this as something that I could just get going on. The pattern uses Moda's pre-cut jelly rolls; I chose Holly Taylor's Birchwood Lane and made it in the larger lap-size version instructed by the pattern (requires 3 jelly rolls!).


Overall, I'm pretty happy with the quilt, and found the directions to be relatively straightforward (you just have to watch out because the instructions vary for the two different sizes included in the pattern). Because there is so much piecing, I do wish that some ironing directions had been included; I tried to plan ahead to think about how to keep the seams abutting so that it would lie flat, but I wasn't always successful. And many of my star points are nowhere close to being nice and pointy. Most of them float, some are cut off. Not sure what happened there - perhaps the stitch-and-flip method for creating them was the culprit for me.

Here's hoping I can get this quilted and bound in time for Christmas this year. I think it'll look great hanging in our upper hallway.

4-Layer Cake

Last fall, while I was taking a course at MATC, I didn't have a lot of time for sewing. However, I was able to piece very quickly in December - right before heading to Cape Cod - this lovely quilt at right.

The quilt is made with one layer cake of the Winter fabric line by Minick and Simpson. I loved this line a lot - it's definitely for Christmas (wonderful poinsettias and candy canes!), but doesn't necessarily scream Christmas. And the blue is one of my favorite colors.

The pattern is called 4-Layer Cake, by Legacy Patterns, and finishes at approximately 57x75. It whips up really quickly and could be a very nice option if you're in a pinch for a gift, want to make something quick for a charity quilt, or want to use larger-scale focus fabrics.

Sandi quilted it for me and I love the little Christmas presents (at least I think of them as Christmas presents!) that are in the quilting design I selected.


This now makes two Christmas-themed quilts that I've finished since Christmas (read about the other one here) and can look forward to using later this year!

My parents visited last week and Mom and I squeezed in a little bit of time for sewing.  It's hard when we have so many other things planned and only a few days to do it all! In addition to sewing, we hit Goodwill (where, yes, we managed to spend a full 3 hours!), DSW, Christopher & Banks, a baby clothing resale shop, the quilt store, Bigsby's, the farmer's market, a craft show in Menomonee Falls, etc., while also canning up 42 quarts of apple-pie-in-a-jar and just having time to chat, play cards, fix meals, etc.  

We went to Patched Works on Saturday and picked out some fabrics so Mom could make a new tree skirt.  She decided to go with a beautiful range of blues and use Linda Marcou's pattern based on Marilyn Doheny's 9-degree circle wedge.  Let's just say that it probably would have been easier if I'd had the correct length version of the circle wedge. I had the three smaller versions, but not quite the right one.  Ever the creative bunch, we just added an extension onto the wedge using another ruler and followed the same cutting line.  Mom got the entire top pieced in the afternoon!  Doesn't it look great?  Perhaps I can help her with quilting it at Thanksgiving time.

I chose to work on yet another new project (it's no wonder I haven't gotten anything finished lately - I keep starting new things!): this batik table runner kit featuring some drunkard's path variation (anyone know the actual name of this block?).

 Now I know the layout doesn't look like a runner, but I ran out of room on the design wall (the top three rows represent exactly half of the runner) ... and I'm kinda liking the possibility of making it into a wall hanging rather than a runner.  We'll see, however.  I bought this as a kit from Keepsake Quilting. I ordered it in May and it just arrived about three weeks ago! (Not sure what the delay was, but I had to confirm once or twice that I did in fact still want it.  At least they threw in for free the backing fabric to make up for the delay.)  I'd also purchased one for Mom as a Mother's Day present and thought I'd work on it so I'd be able to help her out with suggestions when she gets to working on hers. 

More quilting posts in the near future; I guarantee!

What Season is It?

Yes, I do realize that today is Easter and that it is (supposedly) spring, but Mother Nature doesn't seem to have gotten the memo and we're just picking and choosing from the seasons as well in our daily life.

Yesterday, we spent the morning finishing up dealing with the foot plus of wet, heavy snow that fell throughout the day on Good Friday (thankfully, Ben was here to help me deal with this storm!). Last evening, we grilled burgers out on the grill in the sun and relative warmth that belied the winter storm we'd had the day before.

And last night, I finished up this Cardinal Season quilt by Gathering Friends (Kathryn Squibb and Deborah Jacobs). Yes, I know it's a Christmas project. Truth be told, I started it well over a year ago but had yet to finish. I made two other ones - one for each of my grandmas - which I gave to them as gifts for Christmas 2006 (just a few weeks late). I'd gotten mine pieced, but just hadn't gotten around to quilting it. I did most of the quilting over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend earlier this year, but didn't rip off the Golden Threads paper until last weekend.

The cardinals were panel pieces and I like them because they feel Christmasy but don't scream Christmas at you and I figure I can leave it up a bit beyond the official Christmas season. I meandered around the birds; the border includes a holly leaf/berry pattern. Note: it's not as crooked as it looks: I've got it stretched a bit between hangers that are a bit too wide, and it's hanging right in front of a bow in the design wall that I put under the hangers. Not necessarily the best photo conditions, but what I've got to work with!

Depending on how you look at it, I've got one Christmas project done well ahead of time!

TripX2

I gave away one quilt for Christmas this year, and here my parents are opening it on Christmas day. For once, I made a quilt for a family member in the the year that I was actually there to watch them open it (this is what happens when you alternate Christmases between your parents and the in-laws).

This was a fun quilt to make, but a TON of sewing. I started it in a class offered at Patched Works last February, finished piecing it over the Easter holiday, and had it back from the machine quilter by the beginning of October. It still took me until December 20 to finish binding it, but at least I didn't have to pull an all-nighter to get it done in time for the holiday. Nothing like starting early and still getting it done in the nick of time!

There's not yet at pattern for this quilt, but one is being developed by Katie Migliano, from whom I took the class. (Actually, there will be a picture of my quilt included with the pattern! How exciting!). The design is based on the Trip Around the World pattern, and all of those lovely squares finish at 1.5" square. One of Katie's versions of this quilt can be seen on the classes page on the Patched Works site. It's a Trip Times Two because for each color set, there is one with a light center moving out toward dark, and a sister block that moves in the same progression from dark to light. My quilt does have a wide batik border on it, but you can't see it very well in the photos we took, due to perspective and the need to crop out some non-quilt matter.

The quilt finished at 93" x 113" and was quilted by Sandi Goulet of Quilted Treasures. It is the first quilt I've had quilted with a wool batting. It had a nice loft, seemed more lightweight than the cotton (and given all of the seams in this quilt, I was looking for something that wouldn't make the quilt weigh a ton!), and, most importantly - it was wide enough to accommodate the extra 8" Sandi needed to quilt it.

I have TONS of partial "trips" left over from this project, so you may see them in some reincarnation in the future.

Purses

I've decided it's time to try my hand at this blogging phenomenon, as I keep meaning to share my quilting progress with friends and family and just never seem to get around to it. Ben created a nice web page for me a while back so that I could post pictures of my quilts and I was terrible about maintaining that - I'd rather be quilting I say - so I can't promise that I'll be good at posting, but I'm going to give it the good old college try.

While I plan to use this to mostly write about my quilting, my first post actually has to do with some non-quilting sewing that I've been doing. Today, my department held our annual holiday party for our students, which consists of ordering pizza or subs and then having professional staff bring in other food items to make a meal out of it. In the past, I'd given my students gift cards to Starbucks, but seeing as I have three lovely and talented ladies working for me this year, I decided to make them something a little special: purses! (This was partially an excuse to buy some of the great purse patterns out there on the market and also to buy more fabric...)

I put in a few late nights, and I did get them done on time! Yay! And they turned out quite nice. The first purse, pictured here, was made for Grete and is based on the Indygo Junction pattern The Samantha. I used fabrics from Erin Michael's Up Town line. This really was a simple purse and went together quickly. I used a fusible fleece as the lining and it had a nice hand, but in the future, I think I would modify this pattern so that there were some quilting or something to provide a bit more texture to the unit. I also wished that there were a way to keep the side units from being somewhat visible on the front. Don't know if that was my ironing job, or what. Got to play with magnetic snaps for the first time ever and think I might have benefited from this tool my mother has for cutting the slit in machine-made button holes for garments. But I made do with a pair of scissors!

The second purse was made for Becky and is also an Indygo Junction pattern. It's called The Metropolitan and I selected the Chez Moi line from Sentimental Studios. This was a fun purse to make also went together pretty quickly. It is lined with muslin per the instructions, which probably is enough, given its style and size, and the top portion is lined with Timtex (which worked wonderfully for that part). I wasn't terribly happy with my sewing job on the trim that I added, but I couldn't come up with any way better than I did. There must be some tool or technique out there that I don't know about and hope to learn about some day.


I have to admit that I wasn't terribly impressed with the Indygo Junction patterns. If you haven't made too many purses or done much sewing, the instructions may not be enough. There are zero illustrations, so you have to have a fairly decent idea of what you are doing from the get go, and I made one misinterpretation in making the Metropolitan that would have resulted in an exposed seam. Fortunately, I was able to save it without too much unsewing!

I had a difficult time giving away the third bag because I wanted to keep it for myself. This is definitely a pattern that I will make again! It's a Lazy Girl Designs pattern called Miranda Day Bag. The pattern was wonderful and provided photos to accompany nearly all steps in the process and there was never any question as to whether I was doing the step in the correct manner. This purse was made for Johanna and again uses Erin Michael's Up Town line. The side panels were machine quilted (by me), and this was the first time I applied fashion handles to a purse (it's way easier than I expected). The lining is some leftover Hobbs 80/20, I think, and that seemed to work nicely. I also used a fusible Velcro on the tab, so hopefully that'll hold up. I'm still hoping that I can find a source for the Bag-E-Bottom recommended so that I can provide her with some support to the bottom once she starts to put some weight in it.

Well, I know this has gone on long enough. I'll have more photos and sewing news soon.