Slide Show

Slide Show quilt, completed for West Suburban
Quilters' Guild charity challenge.

I was undecided about completing a charity quilt for this month's quilt guild meeting.  We've been given a fat quarter of fabric at the September meeting and were told to incorporate it in our finished product. I wasn't particularly fond of mine and also was afraid to commit myself to completing a project because it's more difficult to calculate how much free time I might have these days. 

Around about the 2nd, I decided to fiddle around in my stash and patterns to see what I could come up with. I figured if I chose something simple and worked with what I had, I might be able to get it done in time.  I told myself I wouldn't stress myself out about getting it done, but would do my best (more on that later).


I opted to use Atkinson Designs' pattern, Slide Show because it was simple and I was able to pull everything but the backing and border from my stash. The top went together really quickly and I ran into the quilt shop on a weeknight after work to pick out the border and backing fabric. I wasn't totally in love with it, but it was the best I could do in the time I'd allotted and with a husband and infant in tow! I loaded it on my frame last Saturday night and thought I was pretty good to go, but suffered a bit of a setback when I discovered I had to rip out the majority of a row of quilting due to tension problems.

At that point, I didn't think there would be any way that I could finish a charity quilt in time for last night's guild meeting.  I had a number of other commitments and didn't want to stress myself out too badly.  However, I was so close to being able to finish that I couldn't stand it.  I stayed up just a bit later, had Ben watch Jonah himself a bit longer, washed the quilt to try to hide some of the needle holes from the stitching I had to rip out, etc. and was able to drop the quilt off with Kelli on Tuesday night because I wasn't able to go to the guild meeting last night myself.  I'm sad I wasn't able to see what others did with the challenge fabrics (mine was the multicolored print in the lower left hand of the photo below), but am hopeful that images will be posted to the guild site.

My challenge fabric was the multicolored print in the lower left.

As usual, the Atkinson Designs pattern was well-written, easy to follow, and a pleasure to sew.  It was a great way to do a bit of stash busting too! Hopefully the recipient loves this quilt and feels its warmth in more ways than one.

Confetti!

I'm beginning to figure out how to manage time for sewing in addition to caring for little Jonah, working, and doing all of the other things adults have to do.  I have a number of works in progress that I should be able to blog about soon, but I'm very excited to share this quilt because it is one that I pretty much began (and finished!) this year and it's also the first non-practice quilt that I quilted on my own quilting machine!  Granted, I just quilted it with a meander, but still, it's a learning curve to switch from the domestic sewing machine to the midarm (plus, I had to sew the darned leaders for the machine, which definitely did not motivate me)!

The full quilt.  I really love white quilts and bright colored bindings!

The quilt I just finished is called Confetti, from the book Four Patch Frolic by Barbara Groves and Mary Jacobson of Me and My Sister Designs.  The pattern was sized a bit larger than what I wanted for a baby quilt, so I just bought two charm packs and sized it to a more baby-ish size (44"x53"), using their fabric line, Dilly Dally.  I quilted it with white thread on top and bottom.

Close up showing some of the quilting.

This quilt is set to go out in tomorrow's mail to a new baby, born Jan. 3 (only 2 months late, but better late than never, right??).  Hopefully she enjoys it!!!

Here's some video Ben captured when I first tried the quilting machine on a test quilt sandwich. Looking forward to doing more soon!

My Family Quilt

 

I've been on a bit of a sewing and quilting hiatus, as the arrival of Jonah Robert on June 28th commanded the vast majority of my attention.  Now that he's a bit older and is sleeping longer stints through the night and going longer between feedings, I've been able to make little pockets of time to work on some craft projects.  At the top of my priority list was a project for Grandma and Grandpa's 60th wedding anniversary, October 1.

While Gabby was out and we were at the IQF in Chicago in April, we visited a booth with a display of a quilt called "My Family Quilt" from the Whimsicals book, If Quilts Could Talk. While it featured applique, a technique of which I am not fond, I thought it was perfect as the pictures printed to fabric and text were appropriate for a 60th anniversary, and the size was such that it didn't seem too overwhelming.  Gabby was kind enough to buy the book for me as a gift, and I began thinking about what exactly I might want to do with the project.

I started on this very shortly after Jonah was born, but it has taken me until Sunday to completely finish it.  The main challenge was in getting the blasted photos printed to fabric.  It should NOT be that hard, but our home printer - the ink jet one required for printing to fabric - was having major issues and refuses now to render color properly.  I took the files to work to print on the printer there, but the files were corrupted somehow in the process and I had to recreate them all.  Then, when I was finally able to print again, I discovered that the work printer was also refusing to render color properly.  So the project sat and sat until Ben was able to print them on the neighbor's printer (thank you a million, Kathy Cayen)! From there, it went pretty quickly in terms of the construction.

I used almost exclusively Daiwabos and Daiwabo scraps from my stash.  The trims were purchased from Etsy (thanks to Susan Sponberg for her suggestion to look there).  I'd purchased additional trims, but to be honest, wasn't exactly sure how to apply some of them.  And others had means of application that were just too large for the scale of this project (most of these images are in the 2-3-inch square range and the entire project is about 40" wide by 16" tall).  I love the oversized rick rack, one of several color options I purchased from Tammy Tadd Designs, and the manner in which the border, rick rack, and center were applied was really slick, even if it does "waste" fabric. The rick rack just lies so flat!!

I presented it as a gift to Grandma and Grandpa this morning, and I think they loved it, even if it was nearly two months late.

Lil' Twister

As I'm not entirely certain when my sewing time will come to a halt, I've been working on finishing up some projects and starting only smallish projects. Or at least I've been trying to motivate to do so.  I did drop two quilts off at the shop yesterday to have them quilted - the State of Grace quilt I finished last week and the Just Before Dawn top that I finished a year ago May and have just had sitting around! 

I'd picked up a pattern and template called Lil' Twister (by Country Schoolhouse Designs of Superior, WI) at the IQF show in Chicago in April and thought it looked simple enough to give a start.  You begin by sewing together charm squares in a pleasing arrangement with a narrow border, like so:

And then you use the template to cut squares out from the sewn piece to give the illusion of pinwheels, like so:

Not terribly difficult to do, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't have looked better with fabrics with more contrast.  I do love the Martinique line by 3 Sisters that I used, but the pinwheels aren't necessarily all that apparent. Once I sew the blocks together, I'm thinking of adding on a narrow cream border and a slightly wider red border to finish it off and brighten it up a bit.

State of Grace

I've squeezed in a bit of sewing here and there for the past several weeks, working at a project that I''d had sitting around and cut out for some time. It's the State of Grace pattern (a Moda to Go jelly roll project) using the Shangri La fabric line by 3 Sisters.  I'm thinking that part of the reason I'd set the project aside (because I love the colors and design!) was that I had come up way short when I originally cut it out from the jelly roll. The good news is that I had significant portions of a jelly roll of a more recent line by the same designers - the Glace line - that mixed and matched well enough to allow me to finish the top.


Here's the full quilt (poor Ben did his best to hold it up, but it's on the larger side):


And a close-up.

I love the colors and can't wait to get this one quilted.  Ordered some backing fabric and might be able to drop it off this weekend.  Time will tell, though.

Bathtime Hoodie

At our guild's show in March, I purchased a really cute pattern for a baby bathtime hoodie, designed by RoseHip Lane (two guild members joined forces as this creative duo), along with the yard of toweling required to make it.  On Sunday, I finally made time to sit down to make it up, using 2.5" squares left over from baby's Pearls 'n Pinwheels quilt (isn't it fabulous when you can directly incorporate pieces from one project into the next?). 

I love how quickly and easily it came together and plan to stock up on toweling so that I can make more as gifts in the future.  The most time-consuming part is sewing down the binding and trying to keep the thread from being visible on the opposite side through the toweling (I wasn't always successful at that).

Sailboat Panel Quilt

When Mom and Dad were out a couple of weeks back, Mom pieced a quilt for the nursery to go with the sailboat theme.  We found the pattern and panel at the Fat Quarter Shop. It's the Nautical and Nice line by Sandy Gervais, which matches the Anchors Away hanging I made a few months back. Unfortuantely, due to all of the activity of the weekend, we ran out of time for layering, basting, and quilting the quilt before Mom headed back to Ohio, but I was able to finish it up this weekend so it's all set for the baby's arrival.

Here are a couple of photos.

The full quilt, hanging on the wall:

 Just the center portion of the quilt:

Thanks so much, Mom! He's going to love it!