Bloggers' Quilt Festival!

This is my first time entering a quilt into the Bloggers' Quilt Festival and it's very exciting! This is a quilt that I made for my brand new nephew Patrick. I'm going to meet him next month and I can't wait to give it to him - well, he won't know the difference, but I think his parents will like it! :) At 68"X73" it's a pretty big quilt for a baby, but I want him to have it forever, and considering that he's already 2 feet tall I think he'll grow into this quilt just fine! I still have to hand stitch the binding, but I love it and didn't want to have to wait to post it on here!

A close-up on the blocks and the stippled quilting. I wrote about the process of making this quilt in a previous post, but pretty much all of the prints in the quilt top came from my stash, which works well for my very small fabric-buying budget... I feel like I'm finally getting a feel for free-motion quilting and getting a lot fewer aches and pains from doing it!

My neighbors might have wondered what I was up to dragging our dining room chair outside onto the lawn...but I think this shot shows the quilt more "in action" than lying flat on the grass, which is definitely not its natural state!

I pieced the back, as (almost) always, and like the way it looks with the blue polka dot binding too. My friend Laurie turned me onto these whales and I'm so in love with them! The whales and the argyle are both Ann Kelle prints, from the Urban Zoologie and Remix lines respectively. The solids are all Kona, but I'm not very good about remembering the names of the colors...


Thanks for looking!

Quilt for baby Patrick!

Warning: if you are one of Patrick's parents, stop reading. I want you to be surprised. :)

Well, big news! I'm an aunt! And as a New Englander "aunt" rhymes with "flaunt," not "pant." Just saying. I found out almost 9 months ago that Patrick was on his way and it was such a big secret to have to hold in for those first few months! My brother called me at work and asked me if I could make a baby quilt. I thought this was weird because my sister in law also quilts, but then it all came together in my (slow) head and I started crying, so happy!

I started his quilt when we first got to Seattle. I know this because these first photos were taken in my then-"studio" before the neighbors told us it was right above their bedroom. So because I like to sew late at night I now have a permanent setup in the living room. I'm not bitter or anything. Okay, blah blah, let's get to some pictures.

I decided I wanted his quilt to be scrappy, but I don't really have enough scraps, so I cut strips from my stash. I only bought a few fabrics for this quilt - sashing and fabric for the backing, which I'll show later - so I felt good about really using fabric from my stash. I used a few solids, which I sort of regret now, but all-in-all I like how it came out.

Even though I hand selected this palette of fabrics, I still wanted it to look random, so I put all the strips in a bag and picked from it to determine placement of the strips. I allowed myself a few vetoes, though. I can't give up all the control!

I considered laying it out like this with no sashing, but I decided it would be too small, or would require way too many blocks and might be a little crazy. I added navy blue sashing and this thing is HUGE! Granted, Patrick is already almost 2 feet tall, but he could probably take this thing to college. I'll show finished pictures once I finish the binding.

You can see a photo of the quilt pre-basting "by the hearth" in this posting. I got real photo-happy that day and showed too much too fast. I thought I'd go a little more into the process of making this quilt in this posting. Looking at this picture right here I think I do want to do a nice scrappy log cabin quilt with no sashing. Maybe I'll add that to my ever-growing quilting to-do list!

Thanks for looking!

Busy bee!

Now that I have time on my hands I have been so busy sewing! I was very sad to leave my friends at the New England Modern Quilt Guild, but am really happy about the new friends I've made in the Seattle branch! To stay connected, I'm participating in a bee with the New England folks and I wanted to post pictures of my blocks here.

Jill asked for blocks based on the Friendship Star block and sent some great old Amy Butler prints. I just had to make 2!


And Jen wanted a star block on this white grunge fabric I hadn't seen before and sent along these jewel-toned fabrics for it:


This is my first bee and I think it's really fun figuring out a block that the person will like but that also has a bit of yourself in it too.

The wonky star block that I made for Jen is a block I just learned the other night at a class with Katie. It's easy and a fun way to use different scraps together! Being the first to arrive at her class I even got to take a goodie bag of scraps away with me! How lucky am I! I have decided I love Amy Butler now that I have a good chunk of her fabrics in my stash!

Here are some of my fave new scraps!

Thanks for looking!

Quilt "to remember me by"

I showed a little bit of this quilt back in the summer before I moved and now since my mom has received it I can show more of it! This pictures are from when I gave it to her at our going away party. She bought me a gift earlier in the summer and said it's to "remember her by" when I am living far away (like I could forget about her!) so I joked with her that this quilt held the same purpose. The funny thing about this is that she had sort of seen it before because it was folded up in my old apartment and every time she came over she would say "Oh, I LOVE that one!" (even though she could only see one row of blocks) Well, that made me feel more confident that she would love the whole real thing - even though she's absolutely the type of mom who loves anything I make for her!

The fabric is all from the Nouveau by Sentimental Studios line for Moda. I don't usually make quilts all from one line, but this was an online purchase from way back when and the fabrics really go well together. I pieced the back, as usual, and I did add in a light green polka dot not from the line (also from my stash! Don't ask me why I had almost 3 yards of anything "on hand."). I used the no-triangle zig zag technique and although it took a lot of space to lay it all out, it was super easy to piece together. I will say it was difficult to predict how large it would be. I ended with a fairly narrow quilt that was freakishly long. I had to hack some off the end and it will still be plenty long enough to cover toes on the couch.

I quilted it by following the zig zag lines with the outside edge of my walking foot. Quilting was minimal for a few reasons - one I wanted it to be really soft and sometimes a lot of quilting makes it feel stiff to me. And two, I was under a bit of a time crunch since I was about to move!

I miss my mom! (Can you tell we both like green?!)

Thanks for looking!

Unemployment

So I have moved to a new city where I don't really know anyone and don't have a job. Well, day to day that is really scary, but overall I'm trying to look on the bright side. When else in my life will I have free time, with a (dwindling) savings, in a beautiful city, with a giant stack of fabrics in my stash. I have bought some fabric since I got here, but pretty much only to finish projects - maybe a fat quarter or two just to treat myself... Since I arrived in Seattle a month ago I have finished a quilt top for me and Buddy's bed....

started and finished a quilt for my brand new nephew Patrick (only a sneak peak here until he receives it)...

And I started my project to submit to the Project Modern competition.

I have done a few other things that I might blog about later. Considering I pop up on here so sporadically I should probably spread it out a bit.

Anyway, I thought unemployment would give me all this time to quilt and blog and be free. Turns out the blogging part has been missing, but I'm going to try to do better. I wonder what percentage of my posts involve a sentence or two about me committing to blogging more. haha. Well, to my 3 readers out there, you might have something to look forward to in the coming days.... Might!

Thanks for looking!