June 1, 2010
Finished Quilts

Baby Blues Quilt

A few weeks ago I finished up the Baby Blues quilt for my good friend.  We went to their house for dinner and she opened here present and loved it! :)  Yay…always a good feeling!!!

I love the colors, and I really liked how it turned out.

I marked this quilt for straight line quilting, and I have to honestly say that I’m not sold on marking my quilts prior to quilting.  I also used flannel for the backing, and while it is soft and cozy I’m not sold on it either.  If you use flannel, PREWASH it!!!  Even if you don’t prewash your fabrics, ALWAYS prewash your flannel.  Flannel shrinks so much more than regular quilting fabric, and the weave is bigger.  Once you wash it and it shrinks, it shrinks the weave, which makes the quilting stitches much more secure.

May 21, 2010
Blogger's Quilt Festival

Spring 2010 Blogger’s Quilt Festival!

Spring 2010 Blogger’s Quilt Festival

Now this is exciting!

It’s like show and tell!

I’m Showing and Telling about Urban Nature.

My sister-in-law asked me to make her a quilt last summer.  I was very flattered because I had only been quilting for about 6 months.  I figured it would be a lap quilt, which I could totally manage, but she requested a queen size quilt.  Even though I had never made anything that large I was up for the challenge.  She purchased some hand painted fabric scraps from an etsy store (I can’t remember which one), and in July she gave me the scraps and we brainstormed about what to do with them.  Over the next few months I searched and searched for the perfect coordinating fabrics.  Believe it or not it was a bit tough finding the coordinating fabrics…the fabrics had to be solid, with no pattern, and I didn’t want to venture away from the earthy browns, greens and creams, but I also wanted there to be variety and contrast.  I love that she gave me so much creative freedom and trusted my choices.

I absolutely love how it turned out!

The big thing I learned while making this quilt is that I could actually quilt a 95 x 95 quilt on my home sewing machine.  How’d I do it?  With a method called low carb quilting.  What’s that you ask?  I made the entire quilt top, and when I got the quilt sandwich ready I cut the batting into thirds.  I place one third of the batting down the center and quilted the center, about 36 x 100.  It made it so much easier (and lighter) to maneuver the quilt.  Once I finished the center panel I used a joining foot and joined the right side of the batting to the center batting panel.  I used a zig zag stitch, which is very secure, and by using a joining foot, there is absolutely zero seam bulk.  After I did the right side I did the same thing to the left side.  And viola!

My sister-in-law also asked that I make a pillow, but I couldn’t just make one, especially since it was for a queen size bed, so I made 3.  The pillows look so cool with the quilt.

I love the quilt and pillows so much, and am very proud of myself for designing this quilt and actually quilting it all by myself!

May 18, 2010
Quilting Adventures

30’s Squared Quilting

I managed to hammer out the quilt top using the Snippets layer cake 2 weeks ago.

The quilt top stayed nicely folded for some time, because I couldn’t find the time to actually quilt it.  When I quilt I like to have a big block of time to just sit down and quilt.  Sometimes those big blocks of time are few and far between.  Most of the time I quilt when Steve is out of town on business.  He had a series of canceled trips, so no quilting time for me.  But now he’s on a trip, so after my kiddos were in bed last night I decided to quilt.

Today’s project is binding.

May 2, 2010
Quilting Adventures

Slicing the Layer Cake

I stocked up on Snippets layer cakes when they were in closeout at Cotton Patch Quilting.  I knew I would eventually put them to good use.  I broke into one of those layer cakes this weekend and can’t wait to to get the quilt top together.  I’ve got the blocks done, but I still have to lay them out.  I’m excited about this quilt.  For starters, I love the fabric…the 30’s reproduction that reminds me of feed sacks.  And secondly, it’s a super easy pattern that uses 1 layer cake plus some yardage of a neutral, and the pattern is all mine! 🙂

Hopefully I’ll make good progress in the coming days, that is of course as long as my 4 year old gets over the virus she has.

April 15, 2010
Backing, Quilting Adventures

Yikes

What a night!

I started sewing the binding onto the Baby Blues quilt, and I got to about 10 inches from the end and looked at the back of the quilt and this is what I saw:

I gasped!  That stitching line closest to the edge of the fabric was the stitching line for the binding and at it’s narrowest spot is less than 1/8 of inch…certainly not enough to hold the seam for the binding.  How could I have made such an error?  The backing wasn’t big enough!!!!!  All I can figure was that when I sandwiched it together I forgot that the batting was wider than the backing and I centered the top on the batting instead of the backing.  Luckily it was just this one spot that was the problem.  So I ripped out the binding and was thankful that the quilting was straightline and that I didn’t quilt up to the edge of the quilt top, then I added some extra backing and then reassembled (it took a few tries and I ripped out seams 3 or 4 times).  Had I done my usual meander quilting this error could’ve been disastrous!!!!

The backing is flannel.  It’s the first time I’ve used flannel, and while it feels nice and cozy, it was really difficult to work with.  It’s pretty bulky, and even with a walking foot I had a hard time with it.  I especially had a hard time getting the sandwich underneath the walking foot.  Not sure how much flannel I’m going to be using in the future.  Time will tell.

April 15, 2010
Quilt in Progress

Baby Blues

I put the Black, White, & Red All Over quilt aside (for now), and started on a baby quilt.  My friend is due the beginning of June, and she’ll likely deliver sooner, so I wanted to be sure and get this done quickly.  She requested a blue and brown quilt, and never haven worked with those colors before I was excited….I love that color combination!!!!

I used the boy pattern of the Baby Mine pattern, and I got the whole thing pieced. It took me a few days to figure out how I wanted to quilt it.  Usually quilts “speak” to me and tell me what what I should do, but not this time.  Bah!

I’ve never marked a quilt top for quilting before, but I tried it this time.  I wanted to do some straight line kind of stuff.  I’m still kind of on the fence about marking, and while I really like how some straight line quilting turns out, by and large I’m an all over meander quilting kind of gal.

I’ll show pictures of the quilting soon.

April 7, 2010
Quilt in Progress, Sandwich

Black White and Red All Over Quilting

I can’t believe it’s April already!

Over the weekend I put the Black, White & Red All Over sandwich together and pin basted it.

Then last night I got totally stressed out when I realized we are in April and I have to finish this quilt for a summer wedding, I have to start and finish a baby quilt for a friend’s baby due in June, and I have to start and finish another quilt before the end of June.  All this and I’m about to get super busy at work.  Needless to say I was a bit of a stress basket case last night, especially when I looked over at my newly pin basted Black, White & Red All Over quilt in which I used all of my pins to baste it.  So now, I certainly need to quilt that quilt, so that I can have the pins handy to do the other 2 quilts that need to get completed before the Black, White & Red All Over (and I most certainly was not about to take out all those pins!!!!).

Luckily today was a nice day and my daughter was outside playing with her friend, which meant I had some time to just quilt, and quilt I did!  The whole quilt is now quilted, yay!

Now I’m going to put this quilt aside so I can work on the other more pressing quilts.  I generally like to finish a quilt before I start another one, but I’m going to have to make an exception.  The binding and label will have to wait for another day.

March 30, 2010
Quilt in Progress

Black, White, & Red All Over

I’ve always thought that the black, white, and red colorway was so striking.  But those colors aren’t very me in the sense that I wouldn’t really make a quilt for myself with those colors, but still, I’m always drawn to quilts with those colors.  So I decided to go ahead and make a quilt with these colors.  I’m really loving it, although this quilt isn’t for us; however, I’m certain that the recipients will love it too.

Here’s the layout.  The top is sewn together, but I don’t have a picture of the quilt top.  Hopefully I can get this sandwiched soon, because I’m excited to see the finished project!

March 10, 2010
Finished Quilts

Urban Nature Quilt and Pillows

This quilt turned out better than I had hoped!

Does anyone get nervous when they put the quilt in washer for the first time?  I always hold my breath when I open the washer and hope and pray that when I open the lid the quilt is still in one piece.  Never before had I hoped and prayed as hard as I did when I washed this quilt, because it was such a labor of love, and from start to finish took well over 40 hours to complete.  It was such a relief when everything was intact!

The prewash measurements were 95 x 95.  The post wash measurement is 88.5 x 88.5.

Here it is in all its glory (it’s a queen size quilt shown on a king size bed).

In this center vertical row there are 3 blocks where I decided not to quilt over the painted flower, because I didn’t want the quilting to take away from the flower.  I thought that darker fabrics with the darker painted flowers needed to stand out and I thought the quilting would obviously compete with the flowers.  So the brown painted flower on brown fabric framed with cream, as well 2 and 3 blocks above this block are the ones I left the flowers unquilted.

I arranged the blocks so that on the diagonal starting from the top left all of the blocks are the same color…can you see that?  It might be more visible in the second picture.

Southern Quilter - Theme by Grace Themes