 This week I finished quilting my quilt from Quilt Camp 2016. Yes, you read that right - 2016. It is the Cruisin' Under The Stars pattern (also called Sparklers) designed by Karen Montgomery that requires the Creative Grids Scrap Crazy 6" template set. I love those Scrap Crazy templates because you can do so many things with them, and these blocks go together so easily!  I started out with this pile of fabric. I just LOVED those green batik fat quarters! The yellow you see here is going to be the binding of my finished quilt. The piecing went together smoothly, but when it came to the quilting I hit a road block. I wanted to custom quilt it, but I was stumped by what to do in the border. I had a couple of different designs in there and ripped them out and re-quilted. I'm still not in love with the border quilting, but it is finished. I was kind of stalled on this quilt for about a month. I made a few mistakes, and I was so frustrated that I didn't even rip them out. They are still there, and I'm just glad to be done with this one.  Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the way it turned out for the most part. The yellow fabric was supposed to be a border. That changed, so I decided to use it for the binding instead. It bothers me that it doesn't coordinate with the backing fabric (which I didn't take a picture of), but I'll just keep reminding myself that I got the backing on clearance :-)  The lighting in this last picture makes the pink look neon, but it isn't really, just the sun going down. And there's our boy Butterscotch.
Honestly, quilts don't always finish the way we planned, and sometimes they are draining to work on. Sometimes we are just glad it's over. I'm happy that I'll be doing the binding in the next couple of days and it won't be a UFO. And I have fun memories of piecing this with my mom and aunts. Someday soon I'll be covered up with this quilt on my couch, and all of this negativity will be just a fading memory :-) Aunt Brenda's quilt from Quilt Camp 2016 is the last to be quilted, then I'll show you all 5 together. It'll be amazing! I'm linking up over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Happy quilting everyone!
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 Welcome back, friends. Last week I shared what I made using my new Creative Grids Ultimate Flying Geese Ruler. I loved it, so I made another one using a charm pack of the fabric line Early Bird by Kate Spain. Her colors and prints are some of my favorites, and they give this little quilt a whole different look. See the star up there? I didn't even try to center that middle flower!   I gave a good bit of detail last week about making the table runners and using the ruler, and you can see that post if you click here. Tonight I'll just show you a few more pictures.    Just a charm pack and less than a yard of background fabric was all I needed to make one. I took good notes for myself so I can make some more of these... maybe with Christmas fabrics.
Thanks so much for visiting! I'll be linking up over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday.  I have something really cool to share with you tonight! I got a new Creative Grids ruler to play with - the Creative Grids Ultimate Flying Geese Template and Quilt Ruler. Sometimes making those geese can be so intimidating because of the stress of thinking about making perfect points, misshapen triangles, measuring and cutting odd sizes, snowballing corners, too much fabric waste, or deciding which technique to use. Quilting friends, this new ruler can change all of that. Please read on...  I have several quilt top projects already in progress, so I didn't want to start something big. I thought I would see what I could do with a charm pack and some background fabric. I planned to make some saw tooth stars rather than plain old geese. Have you noticed that the points on a saw tooth star block are just flying geese units? I followed the cutting chart in the packaging (and also conveniently printed right on the ruler itself) to discover that I could make 4 geese units with one charm square with the charm fabrics being the star points The finished size would be 1" x 2". I used the Fast Flying Geese method in the instructions. This isn't a full blown tutorial, and I am missing some steps here and forgot to take pictures of the whole process. I've done this method before, and it seems strange, maybe even like a little magic trick, but you just have to trust that it's going to work. And those little heart shapes can make you smile while you press. You can see the units here being trimmed with the ruler. I really love that "Trim #1" and "Trim #2" are marked on the ruler so you cannot goof up on the trimming. Line up the template markings with the seam lines and trim for perfectly shaped and sized flying geese units.  I did a little math, cut out the other pieces needed for the star block, and made my first stars in no time. These are 4" finished blocks! Aunt Brenda also needed some flying geese units for a quilt she is working on, and she tried the ruler, too. She needed 3" x 6" finished units. Hers also went together perfectly. These shapes are very versatile and used in many different block patterns. There is the Dutchman's puzzle! Aunt Brenda gave this ruler 2 thumbs up, by the way.  That particular sewing day Mom's handsome cat Sammy was hanging around with us. He likes fabric charm squares, too. And this is isn't his first appearance on the Internet :-)  I took my 4 little stars home and made 8 more. After some careful thought about how I could make a table runner and sketching out some different ideas, I made some 1-1/2" x 3" plain old geese with charm squares (this time the charm fabric as the middle goose triangle piece). Background fabric sashing pieces were added, and for the outside border I had just enough charm squares left that could be cut in half and used for that.  If you look closely you can see that the points on those geese are so nice and pointy! I am not a beginner at this, but I really didn't have to try very hard to get that to happen.  The size of this table runner right now is 18-1/2" x 45-1/2". It still needs to be quilted, but I LOVE the way it turned out. I love it so much that I made a second one out of a different fabric line with bright, modern prints. But this blog post has been going on long enough now, so I'm saving the modern version for next week. Please come back to check it out!!!
I'm linking up over at Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday. Happy quilting! |
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