This Weekend...

I have taken a break from working on all of my different QAL blocks to whip a a little quilt for the granddaughter of a co-worker.
The little girl in question just turned 3 the other day and I thought she might like to have a little quilt.
I didn't have as many kid type prints in my stash as I thought I did, at least not little, little kid.
I decided to go with these mostly Michael Miller prints, with a few others thrown in for variety.

The pattern (free) I am using is called Lemon Squares from Fresh Lemon Quilts. I've only made mind 5 blocks x 5 blocks, something a little one should be able to drag around without too much difficulty.

I really like the Lemon Squares pattern and hope to make it again some day using some of my sheet fabrics.

May Bee Block

Here's my block for May's half square triangle block of the month over at In Color Order
This one is made using the new DS Quilts Meadowlark fabrics.

Sunshine Quilt Finished

It's finally done. I delved into a bit of hand quilting with this quilt, my first time ever. It's pretty primitive, but it was a relaxing experience. I only hand quilted on the 4 blocks with the applique suns on them. The other 12 blocks I machine stitched various sun themes, all stitching done with variegated thread and floss.
The back is from one of my ever present thrifted sheets.

Delilah Baby Quilt Finish

I finally finished this over the weekend. It would have been done sooner, except I had to take some of the stitching out and redo it due to a fold over piece on the back. I went with Riley Blake's Sew Cherry plaid print in green for the binding. I think it works nicely with the greenery going on with the roses and stands out a bit. I've got it up for sale in my Etsy shop and am now working my way through some other quilt finishes, plus a couple of new quilts I've started.

I'm working on hand quilting the sunshine blocks in my sunshine quilt. I've had some variegated threads that work with this color scheme perfectly. It's imperfect and slow going, but I do like the way it looks puffier when done by hand.

In addition to the My Precious quilt that I started this weekend, I also began an Apple of my Eye quilt. As soon as Julie of The Intrepid Thread posted about this new fabric being in, I knew I had to have it. And luckily, she had the whole FQ bundle at a very nice price. I chose the shooting squares block to use for this quilt. I've made one test block, seen below, but I'm not sure if I'm sold on this block for these prints.

It might be a case of needing to see several blocks together before knowing for sure. I just hate to waste fabric. Which ever block I end up going with, I hope to have a few blocks of appliqued apples, like I did with the sunshine blocks in my CTMS quilt.

Progress

It was return to work this week which did not leave me much time for sewing. I finally got to sit down at the machine yesterday and I was able to finish putting my Can't Take my Sunshine quilt top together. I didn't mention it before, but it's another baby quilt, and only about 38" square, so it was pretty quick to make. I already know what I'm going to back it with, so hopefully this weekend I'll make considerably more progress on this.

WIP Wednesday: Central Park

For this WIP Wednesday, I have my Central Park quilt top finished. I got it done last night, and took it outside to the laundry line this morning to take a picture. The laundry line is my new favorite way to take pictures. I think I'll have to raise it up a bit though.
As soon as I decide on what to back this with I'll be able to hopefully get it finished before vacation is over.

Also in the works: The first row, which is actually the middle row of 5, of the quilt for my husband. I'm making this as a surprise, and he's on vacation with me, too, so not too much progress on this for now. It's a combo T-shirt/fabric quilt. Because of the shirts, my blocks are about 17" square! The design is based on the one on theSunshine?Paradise? blog. I think it's going to suit this quilt well, as I have 5 t-shirt blocks, and that quilt has the 5 large fabric square blocks.

And finished yesterday, my purple vintage sheet baby quilt. Blogged here

For some reason Blogger turns my pictures of this quilt to the side, but not any other pictures. Linking up with at Freshly Pieced.

Vintage Purple Baby Quilt Finished

I finally finished ripping out all of the quilting I had done on this quilt and redid it all. The first time I quilted, I used a dark purple thread. This time I've used a lighter lavender and I think it suits much better.
This was made with squares from vintage sheets and the backing is a piece from a more modern purple polka dot sheet.
Straight line quilting along the seams. No binding, I did the inside out method then sewed two rows of stitches all along the outer edge. Measures 38"x38 and is in my Etsy Shop

Linking up with:

Plus Quilt Finished

Just a few finished pictures of my Plus quilt. I believe the final measurements are 68"x73". This will be sent off to my brother-in-law. After this I only have 2 more family quilts to make and I will be done with making at least 1 quilt for every person I promised one to.

The backing is a marble print yellow sheet. Being lazy, and not having a satisfactory print in my stash, I used the same fabric for the binding that I used for the backing. Simple straight line quilting after every other seam horizontal and vertical.

Happier Quilt Finished

In the past few days I've managed to finish up a couple of quilts, get some cards made and rearrange the living room so there will be room for the Christmas tree.

Here is the first of the quilts I finished. This one is for my 8yr old grand niece. It is made from one charm pack of Happier by Riley Blake. The hot pink sashing is from a bed sheet, and the polka dotted backing is also a bed sheet. The binding is another Riley Blake print, Sweet Nothings. I decided to do some simple wavy line quilting on it; my compromise between straight line and practicing my free form. This little quilt measures about 47x47.

W.I.P Wednesday

I've been working on a small quilt for my 8yr old grandniece using up a Riley Blake Happier charm pack that I've had for awhile. I'm using a free pattern from Made-by-Rae.com called Story Time Squares.
For the life of me, and despite using a 1/4in. sewing foot, I can't seem t sew a consistent 1/4in seam so I had to add a little piece to one of my blue squares. Maybe I will try that tape on the plate trick.

I've got another go around of print squares followed by another pink border and then that will finish the top.

W.I.P Wednesday

I've been working on several projects during the week; trying to divide my time fairly.

First I have started my second Christmas quilt. It has a star block and a 16 patch block. All the pieces have been cut and I'm just taking my time making the blocks.



I've also been working on this apron (Butterick)using Alexander Henry's Farmdale prints. This is my first apron and I did not realize (i.e. didn't read the pattern first!)that I was going to need tons of piping and rick rack. Luckily I had the rick rack. I found how to make some piping online, and I made some, but I didn't like how that turned out, so I'm using all rick rack. I still have to put the waistband and ties on. Here's my husband modeling it for my picture.


And here's my fist Christmas quilt. All pinned and ready to be quilted. I'm just undecided on how I want to do it. I'm a bit tempted to give FMQ another go, but I'm not 100% sure that I want to go that way.

My First Christmas Quilt

I've had some Christmas fabric for several years now. I'm not sure what I planned to do with it since I don't recall ever wanting to make a Christmas quilt. That changed last weekend when I came across this quilt at Jaybird Quilts.
Initially I wanted to use my stack of grey and citron fabrics but my daughter talked me out of it. That's when I remembered the Christmas fabrics and so my first Christmas quilt was born. Here are the first three rows with a total of seven to complete it.

Red and White Pinwheel Quilt

This is my current quilting project, a red and white pinwheel quilt for my Nephew. I have this sort of goal to make everyone in the family a quilt and this one is for him. Earlier this year I had made a blue and white pinwheel quilt that used only one print. It turned out nice enough, but since there was only one print there was no definition of the pinwheels. I really wanted to try the pinwheel again, and this seemed like a good design for a guy. I used about 12 different prints for this, and while I have a bit more definition, I'm still not completely happy, so I think I will be trying this again in the future.

I also did not mean for this to end up with the patriotic red, white and blue colors. I had intended to use some Kona Ash for parts that are blue, but my store did not have any and I was too impatient to order some.

The backing is a blue and white gingham sheet that I had from my thrifted sheet collection. I like to use whole sheets when possible simply for their simplicity.

Here's a glimpse at the completed top.

Update on the Delilah Heart Quilt

Last time I posted I was working on a quilt for my Mom's birthday in May. I have made progress on that quilt, but it still isn't complete. I really ran into some snags trying to design my own blocks. Namely they didn't end up being uniformly sized. This probably would be a problem for a veteran quilter, but I'm still a newbie. Also, I tried free motion quilting for the first time with this quilt. That went so-so, and I still have a bunch more to do, but I think I prefer in the ditch quilting. So, here's what it looks like as of a few months ago when I last worked on it. Hopefully I'll be motivated to finish up before too long.

On the Road to Spring

Here's a better look at my On the Road to Spring quilt. I followed the quilt along from I Have to Say... blog. I wasn't really thinking about spring when I decided to make this quilt. You may think from the colors that I was thinking about Christmas! No, I just liked the look of the greens and reds I had on hand and decided to use them. I initially wanted to throw a third color in the mix but couldn't decide on which one, so I left it alone.

The binding for this quilt is actually some wide ribbon I had on hand. I'm not sure how it will hold up to repeated washings, but so far so good. The quilt back is made from the patterned part of a thrifted king sized bed dust ruffle. I had to sew about 4 strips together to make the back and I like the way it turned out.

If you look down in the left hand corner, you'll see Miss Parker, she loves to "supervise" all my projects.

Postage Stamp Quilt

I thought I would show the postage stamp quilt that I finished a week or two ago. I followed the instructions for this quilt from the quilt along at P.S. I Quilt. The fabric I used is a set of six prints from the Picnic Parade line by Jenean Morrison. The backing fabric is Topsy Turvey Dots by Legacy Studios.

This quilt took about a month for me, the longest I've spent on a quilt so far. For the first time I tried to use a quilting method other than in the ditch. I did quilt as you go, block by block, then added another layer of of whole batting before attaching the back. Since I added the second layer of batting, I also used hand tying, each center square per block to hold that batting down.

I really like the dotted backing fabric and how the dots happened to match the colors in the Picnic Parade fabric.

W.I.P Wednesday

Okay, so here's my real W.I.P. Wednesday post! I've been working on a Paintbox quilt as seen on Oh! Fransson. I've just completed the top and need to decide on a backing for it as I don't wish to do the one that she did with the quilt a long.

My quilt top measures 78.5 x 98.5. I decided to make the center block 4.5in as I needed bigger blocks over all. This quilt is for my daughter, and she wanted the blocks placed randomly and that's what she got!
This was my first time with sashing and I'm quite pleased with how that went, but it is a bit time consuming.


My other W.I.P. for today is a quilt inspired by the heart shaped blocks on Tall Grass Prairie Studio.
I'm making a quilt for my Mom's birthday using mostly Delilah prints from Tanya Whelan. I've mixed in a couple of solids and some other scraps of print that I have to round out the blocks.
I'm going with a combination of the heart blocks and simple 9-patch blocks interspersed with plain white.
I've had to come up with my own layout for this one as I hadn't a quilt a long to follow, so I hope that it will all look okay once together.

Long Time Gone

So it's been quite some time since I have posted! Last year I was making all excited making cards and other crafts for a craft show I was participating in. I'm sorry to say that the craft fair was a big disappointment. I did make my table fee ($55) plus a bit more, but nowhere near what I put into it. I started a new job a week before the fair so I was really unable to take off weekends to do more fairs the rest of the holiday season.

I think my crafting spirit got wiped out for awhile, as I didn't do anything crafty again until late February. So far this year I've been not in a card making mood, but a quilting mood. I've completed 3 quilts since March and am at work on my 4th with plans for several more.

When I started making the quilts this spring it was my intention to use of fabric I already had in my stash without spending a bundle on more. Oh how foolish of me to think that would be possible. Of course I had to start looking at all the pretty fabrics on the 'net, plus looking at quilting blogs and seeing what others were using fueled my desire as well. Needless to say, I'm the sheepishly proud owner of lots of new fabrics and vintage sheets, which I am determined to use up! Right?

So, hopefully I'll be doing a little more posting, showing off some fabrics and sharing some shots of the quilts.

Here's a small picture of the 2nd one I made. This one actually is made out of all stash fabric. It's about 45x60 and is going off to live with my Grandniece soon.

This quilt was made following this Quilt a-long