 Today is Halloween, and one of the best treats I could get is a day of quilting! Mom, Aunt Brenda, and I had sort of an impromptu day of quilting in my kitchen. We were joking that there are flash mobs, flash sales, and we could call this flash quilting. Mom has had this beautiful cardinal fabric that she has been wanting to feature in a quilt, and she chose this pattern called Folklore by Villa Rosa Designs. She wanted to put the beautiful birds in the center of each square. Last Friday the three of us went to a local quilt show, and Aunt Brenda purchased this gorgeous snowflake batik fabric there. She decided she would frame each snowflake and add sashing and borders. I had purchased some fabric while on vacation at the Outer Banks back in 2013, so I dug it out of my stash and wanted to feature the lighthouse fabric in my blocks. However, I followed the block design of Folklore, but I didn't add borders or sashing. This morning we had our fabric cut and ready to sew. Below are pictures of our individual blocks.    We made our blocks and pieced together our tops in one day! Now I have some longarming to do. Mom's is going to be quilted on the Innova with the Holly Berries pantograph, and I need to find some gold thread. Brenda said she may quilt hers on her Bernina at home with some snowflake designs she has. I plan on practicing some free motion designs on mine on the longarm machine.    We had a good day of quilting and chatting. I also love how our quilts are based on the same pattern but turned out so differently.
Those are three pretty finishes for Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts. I hope you have a good weekend and are able to get some quilting done. Thanks for visiting!
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 Today I finished this quilt, and I love it! It is made with all polka dot fabric and white background. Mom and I went to the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo back in August that was held in Monroeville, PA. There were some really spectacular quilts to see, but there was also a lot of shopping with the many vendors that were there. What I purchased that day was the Sweet Tooth quilting book and some jelly roll 2-1/2" fabric strips that were all polka dot fabrics. This was a homemade collection that one of the vendors put together herself, and I thought her fabrics were really fun.  Above you can see the book. It is written to be used in conjunction with the Strip Tube Ruler. I found the ruler and also the additional blue polka dot fabric for the border at one of my favorite local shops, The Little Foot. The pattern I used from the book is called "Tube Cake." Below you can see some of the process. You sew the strips together to make pieces with 3 strips each. Then you put those face together and stitch them down both sides. This makes the tube of fabric. You line up the Strip Tube Ruler on the fabric tube just right and cut. When you open them up you get these lovely squares. It is a lot of fun to open those squares up and see the colors together. This is also a nice quick process to make the blocks needed for this quilt. I am also really pleased with the quilting design on this one. I tried another new pantograph called "Tail Feathers." I thought it suited the playful polka dots just perfectly. I used white thread, and the backing on this quilt is white flannel. So if the photo looks a little fuzzy, that's because it is a little fuzzy! This is a really cozy quilt. Below you can see the backing, and the quilting stands out pretty nicely. For the binding on this quilt I had enough portions of strips left over that I used them for a scrappy binding, and I love the result.   I must admit I had a difficult time getting nice pictures today. It was late afternoon, and the lighting just wasn't right (both inside and outside), and the wind kept kicking up (just outside, thankfully :-).   That's my Friday finish. I would recommend the book and ruler, especially if you like quilts that go together fairly quickly and use precut fabric bundles. I hope to show you some other projects from the book in the future!
I'll be linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday. Thanks for visiting!!  Why am I starting more new projects?? I have many, many boxes (some neat and others a mess) full of fabric and partially finished stuff, yet I continue to cut into more fabric. There must be something wrong with me. May be I need to see a therapist? Wait - I consider quilting a form of therapy. I call it sewing for my sanity... There, I feel so much better now :-) Well, truly there is nothing like some Kate Spain fabric to brighten your day. I decided to try my hand at the Disappearing Hourglass block from the Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial using a layer cake I have had in my stash for a while: Honey Honey. It's just beautiful.  Aunt Brenda thinks these "disappearing" kind of blocks are ridiculous - sew the squares together, cut it apart, sew together again, cut apart, repeat sewing and cutting some more - yet we do it anyway and love making them. So in this process you make some hourglass blocks like the 4 above, then you cut them apart just so, spin some things around, and sew them together again.  And you get something that looks like this. I have just 38 more to go!  In those many, many boxes I mentioned earlier I have tons of scraps. A couple Saturdays ago Aunt Brenda and I took a little class at The Quilt Company on how to use the 8" Creative Grids Curvy Log Cabin Trim Tool. I pulled out some pastel floral scraps and paired them up with a solid dark blue. I only made 3 blocks in the class, and they were sold out of templates at the store. My wonderful mom surprised me and ordered one online and had it mailed to me this week. Thanks, Mom! I also got the new 6" Curvy Log Cabin template. I was playing around with it and thought I'd try some of my Christmas scraps. I made 4 blocks over the weekend. I need to make a lot more, but you can see there are so many ways to arrange the blocks to make different patterns. This is so much fun to play with, and it is great for hoarders like me for using up small strips of fabric. I hope you enjoyed that! I have a lot of things to keep me busy around here. I'm not the only one who has all of these works in progress, am I?
Today I'm liking up over at WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Happy sewing!  This week I finally quilted my winter mystery quilt from winter 2014. This was a really fun mystery quilt put on by The Quilt Company. My mom purchased for herself, Aunt Brenda, and me a brown paper bag full of fabric (one for each of us) as a Christmas gift, having some idea of the color scheme but not seeing the fabric inside, and we received instructions throughout the winter to piece the top. This was one of the most fun gifts I received in a long time. She would not let us open our bags of fabric until Christmas Day, and the suspense was exciting! We also had fun working on our quilts together when received the next instructions. So I quilted mine with a matching brown thread and one of my new pantographs called Trumpet Vine. I am really loving this design. I think I will bind it with the green fabric that I have left over.    Here are pictures of our other finished mystery quilts. Mom's is hanging on display beautifully in her kitchen right now, and below you can see Aunt Brenda's quilt in action on one of the comfy chairs in her living room! That is Zeus, feline king of the castle.  Today I updated my site to include the new pantographs that I have available. I am currently using Lyrical Bells on a customer quilt on the Innova right now. I also got one with Holly Berries, and I can't wait to try Snazzy Snowflake. Check them out here.
Right now I have a 2-3 week turn around time on quilting for customers, so If you need something finished for the holidays, please contact me soon! Local customers often bring quilts to my home studio, but I am happy to meet you at one of our local quilt shops or any other agreed upon location, and mailing is always available if you are not close by. It is Finish It Up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts. Go ahead and check out some other great finishes over there. Thanks so much for taking the time to visit!  My favorite thing about Halloween is definitely the fabric! I know some people are crazy for spooky stuff this time of year, and I admit it can be fun, but it just isn't a "thing" for me. Little snack size candy bars are nice this time of year, too, but one thing fabric won't do is cause weight gain.  I just finished up two Halloween table runners that I made using the Creative Grids Scrap Crazy 6" template set and the pattern that can be found in the Scrap Crazy 6" book with instructions for projects using the templates. All I can say is you wouldn't believe how easy these were to piece. Click here for a link to the video demonstrating the templates to find out more about them. I love them! I'll just show you some pictures. One of the table runners is pieced with batiks, the other with Halloween prints. They were quilted on my Innova with gray thread and a wiggly line pantograph. I really like the way they turned out. If you'd like to have one of these for yourself, feel free to visit my Etsy shop. If you'd like to make one of these for yourself, head to your local quilt shop, purchase the templates, and get busy with your scraps! I got mine at The Quilt Company. They are a lot of fun.
It is Finish It Up Friday, and I'm linking up at Crazy Mom Quilts today. Thanks for reading, and have a great day! |
This is me...I LOVE to quilt, and every day I must sew for my sanity! Archives
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