don't call me becky

Jaftex Blog Hop: Harvest Spectrum Quilt & Fat Quarter Bundle Giveaway

2015-09-23T00:01:00.000-04:00

Today's my stop on the Jaftex 85th Anniversary Blog Hop. Jaftex abrics sent me a gorgeous bundle of 20 Studioe Peppered Cottons to use to create a project of my choosing. I love the saturated colors in this line and designed a quilt that uses about a fat eighth of all twenty colors in the bundle.

To create this quilt, I first cut out strips of fabric that were 8" wide. Then I cut the strips into pieces that were 2.5", 3.5" and 5" tall. I arranged the fabrics in a gradient and then altered each column of fabric to make a pixelated design. The finished quilt measures around 54" x 56".

I quilted vertical organic lines to create movement in the quilt. Combined with the fabric's hand, this quilt has such a great texture.

Photo from Kitchen Table Quilting

As a special bonus, I'm giving away a bundle of 20 fat quarters - one of each of the colors featured in my quilt as seen in the photo above. Please leave a comment to be entered into the drawing. I will choose a winner at random on Sunday, September 27. I will ship anywhere in the world, so feel free to enter even if you are not in the U.S.A.

UPDATE: Congrats to commenter number 7, Dudette! I will contact you to arrange for shipping.

Be sure to enter the Grand Prize Giveaway, too!

Jaftex 85th Anniversary Blog Hop!

2015-09-02T22:24:00.001-04:00

This month I'm participating in my first ever blog hop. Jaftex, parent company of Henry Glass & Co., Studioe Fabrics and Blank Quilting, approached me about making a quilt with Peppered Cottons and I happily agreed. I'll be back later this month with the quilt that I created and a fun giveaway.

September 1 – Kim Diehl guest posting @American Patchwork & Quilting
September 2 – Pepper @Pepper at the Quilt Studio
September 3 –Anjeanette @Anjeanette Klinder
September 4 – Leanne @ The Whole Country Caboodle
September 5 –Mark atMark Lipinski’s Blog
September 6 – Heather atHeather Kojan Quilts
September 7 –Heather atTrends and Traditions
September 7 – Martha @ Wagons West Designs
September 8 – Linda @ Linda Lum DeBono
September 9 – Heidi @ Red Letter Quilts
September 10 – Jill @ Jillily Studios
September 10 – Dana @ My Lazy Daisy
September 11 – Penny @ Sew Simple Designs
September 12 – Ida @ Cowtown Quilts
September 13 – Liz and Beth @ Lizzie B Cre8ive
September 14 – Melissa @ Sew Bitter Sweet Designs
September 15 – Yvonne @ Quilting Jetgirl
September 16 – Amy @ Kati Cupcake
September 16 – Barbara @ QuiltSoup2
September 17 – Erica @ Kitchen Table Quilting
September 18 – Leona @ Leona’s Quilting Adventure
September 19 – Margot @ The Pattern Basket
September 20 – Sylvia @ Flying Parrot Quilts
September 21 – Lorna @ Sew Fresh Quilts
September 22 – Kim @ Aurifil Threads
September 23 – Rebekah @ Don’t Call Me Becky
September 24 – Julie @ The Crafty Quilter
September 25 – Mary Ellen @ Little Quilts
September 25 – Mary Jane @ Holly Hill Designs
September 26 – Daisy @ Ants to Sugar
September 27 – Melissa @ Happy Quilting
September 28 – Janet @ One S1ster
September 29 –Jenny atMartingale& Co.
September 30 –Teresa atThird Floor Quilts

Along with prizes offered on each blog stop, there will also be some incredible prizes offered as a grand prize!!!! You can read all about those prizes and enter to win them at the Henry Glass Fabric Blog Here.

January Quilt for Sarah: Blogger's Quilt Festival

2015-05-17T13:42:00.001-04:00

As soon as I saw Liz Harvatine’s January Quilt block pattern, I knew I had to make my own version. Her designs are always so interesting and her piecing skills leave me in awe and wondering how exactly she puts everything together.

I made this quilt at the beginning of April for Sarah's birthday. Both she and Liz have been such an inspiration to me over the years and I knew I wanted to use a special pattern for Sarah's quilt. This quilt probably has over 100 different fabrics in it; I used all of Sarah's favorite colors--blue, green, orange, and red. One common bond we share is our love for cute fabric and, of course, shopping for said fabric. One bond we don't share is my love of purple!

For the back of the quilt, I pieced random strips of fabrics together to form a colorful mosaic. I'm on a fabric fast until the beginning of August and didn't have matching yardage for the backing.

I quilted this on my new Gracie Queen frame that's set up with my Brother Nouvelle 1500s. It was so much fun to quilt and a lot easier to maneuver everything around on the frame. I have a queue of quilts that are ready to be quilted and just need to find some time to tackle my unfinished projects!

In the past couple of years, I've become obsessed with curved piecing. Curves break up the monotony of chain piecing for me and allow me to try out lots of fun new patterns. Some curved quilts I’ve made so far are:

Glam Clam pattern by Latifah Saafir (here and here)
Snow drift quilt pattern by Modern Quilt Studio
Single Girl quilt pattern by Denyse Schmidt
Orange You Glad Liberty quilt
Metro Lattice Quilt featuring the Quick Curve Ruler

If you’re looking to sew with curves, I highly recommend Angela Pingell’s book, A Quilter's Mixology. It’s filled with beautiful patterns and helpful techniques. One new tool I found at Quilt Con is the Bloc Loc Drunkard’s Path ruler set. This is a three piece set with two acrylic cutting templates and one acrylic piece to use to square up your block. The square-up piece has a curved groove the size of your seam allowance, so it locks your block in place for cutting (hence the name!). One of my next quilts will definitely be a drunkard’s path design!

The biggest tip I can share for piecing curves is to place the convex piece face up on the bottom and then concave piece face down on the top. Then slowly stretch and curve the concave piece to fit the convex piece as you sew the quarter inch seam. Having a ¼” foot with a right side guide is helpful to make sure that you’re maintaining a ¼” seam throughout and it gives something for the curved seam to line up against as you sew.

This is my Spring Blogger's Quilt Festival entry in the Scrappy category.

Secret Swaps

2015-04-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

Last fall, I participated in two different mini quilt swaps. The first was our guild's popular "Super Stalker Mini Quilt Swap" in which each member draws a name and then has two months to make a quilt that would fit their partner's interests and tastes.

I drew Hayley's name. We are both book and rainbow nerds, so I pulled together a collection of rainbow prints and coordinating peppered cotton solids to make a rainbow bookshelf quilt for her.

Hayley and I just so happened to draw each other's names in the swap and she made me the most beautiful Celestial Star mini.

The second swap was the Quiltcast Podcast Mini Star Quilt Swap. I was very stumped as to what to make my partner. She listed minimal information about her interests and had no online presence (blog, pinterest, instagram, etc.). If I ever join another online swap, I will make sure that the requirements involve at least making an inspiration board of 3-5 images. It's so tough for a planner like me to know what to do without a particular style or direction from which to work!

My partner listed her favorite color combination as orange, aqua, and teal, so I took those three colors and made a paper-pieced star. I used Elizabeth Dackson's Lucky Stars Block of the Month paper-pieced star collection for this. I saw her finished mini quilt for November, the Arcadian Star, and copied some of her free motion quilting techniques on my star.

My partner, Monica, sent me the nicest double-sided mini! Her paper piecing is so impressive and I just love the organic lines she used for quilting. She also included some embroidery floss to feed my cross stitch addiction and two sweet mini charm packs.

I've hung both quilts in my sewing room and it's so fun to see beautiful inspiration around me as I sew (or just stare at my pretty collections of things, if I'm being honest with myself!)

A quilt for my mom

2015-04-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

Last year, I began stockpiling Liberty of London fat eighths and sixteenths from Queen Bee Fabrics and the Westwood Acres Liberty club with the hopes of combining them all into a floral patchwork quilt for my mom.

At first I settled on a checkerboard patchwork quilt like this from Red Pepper Quilts. Then I changed course and decided to make an orange peel applique quilt using the Orange You Glad tutorial from Crazy Old Ladies.

Here's my thought process while making the quilt:
Cutting and piecing the orange peels: This is so fun. I should only make orange peel quilts from now on.
Turning the orange peels inside out: This is going to take forever. It's a good thing I've got lots of TV shows to catch up on. Thank goodness for that purple thang
Fusing the orange peels to the background fabric: These are coming together so fast. This thing is almost finished.
Deciding to lay out the quilt in a rainbow gradient: Love this. Now I want to make one for myself. I should have bought two of everything.
Basting the quilt: So close to finishing!
Quilting the top: Yep, that free motion foot is not going to work for outlining these curves. I guess I'll have to use my walking foot.
4 hours later: This walking foot is going to take forever
4 hours later: I don't think I can do this anymore
4 hours later: I'm almost halfway done...
Days later after sewing the peels: Finally, finally, finally ready to free motion quilt the rest!

Needless to say, sewing down each of these petals with my walking foot and maneuvering the quilt in a full circle around each of the peels was the worst and most time consuming part of this whole quilt. Luckily, the quilting outlines on the back make up for the hours and hours of turning this quilt around. I have a new found respect for quilters who tackle spiraling circle quilting and know that it's definitely not for me!

I credit my mom with teaching me how to sew and instilling a love of crafting in me, so it's only right that such a special goes to her. After all, the first quilt I made her back in 2006 was a tiny crib-sized quilt. And it's only fitting that I finally got around to blogging this quilt on her birthday (Happy Birthday, Mom!)

The quilt now lives draped on the foot of her bed as a reminder to me that I should probably have made my parents a queen-sized quilt to cover their entire bed. One of these days...one of these days. Her kitty, Charlie, is pleased with it nonetheless!

Quilt Details
Size: 60"x60" - 144 petals in a 12x12 layout
Background fabric: Kona Biscuit
Quilting: Curved line with a walking foot and center echoes with a free motion foot
Started and finished in December 2014

sewing room update & a new machine!

2015-04-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

I’d always dreamed of having a design wall and a counter-height cutting table in the future sewing room of my dreams because I couldn’t figure out how to add them to my current space. After brainstorming for a bit, I came up with a plan that would give me space for a design wall, fabric storage, and a counter sewing and cutting/pressing. In true Rebekah fashion, as Jon says, I came up with this plan on a Thursday and had it all in place and reorganized by Saturday night. Never resting until being fully content is a bit of a problem for me, but it does manifest itself in productivity and finished projects!

I've had a couple weeks to sew and use my new space and I couldn't be happier with the setup. I was even able to fit an extra temporary table in here so my neighbor, Christina, and I could sew together.

Here’s a few older tours of my room (2010, 2014). I’ve had the same furniture in place for 8 years, but have added craft supplies and moved things around a bit every so often. This time, I moved out my beloved 4x4 Expedit shelf and my long work table in favor of a more flexible layout. This room is small, at about 9 feet by 12 feet, and it’s made even smaller because the door is diagonal and cuts out a bit of space on two walls.

To the left of the door, I placed my new design wall, following Elizabeth Hartman’s design wall tutorial. I ran into a few roadblocks with this. Because I thought my room was 9 feet wide, I assumed that two four feet panels would fit side by side. Unfortunately, the diagonal door chopped off the width a bit so I had to cut off one foot of width from one of the panels. Then, because the two twin batting pieces that I had were only 90” long, I didn’t have enough length of batting to wrap around the full height of the foam, so I cut off a foot from each panel. Now I have two panels that, when stood next to each other, are 7 feet wide and 7 feet high. It's been so nice to have a dog and cat free area to place blocks while the layout and design percolates.

On the next wall, I added another thin Billy shelf and moved all of my fabric and a majority of books to this spot. I pulled the mini green dresser out of my closet to place under the window. It holds office supplies and cross stitch supplies.

Next up is my glorious new cutting station. Jon and I built this after seeing a few tutorials on IKEA hackers. I used 6” Capita legs for the base (8 in total), then two pieces of hard oak plywood that’s ¾” thick. In between the plywood, there’s three 2x2 Kallax units. Because the Kallax units are updated, thinner versions of the old Expedit shelves, the width of one unit is not the same as the depth of two units put together, so there’s a 1.5” gap on one side of the end shelf. It doesn’t bother me enough to do something about it, but it is a bit annoying. I used a base of 41”x46.5” and a top of 36”x48”, which fits everything well. On top of table, I’m storing my cutting mat and a pressing board that I made following this tutorial. The wall holds my collection of minis from previous doll quilt swaps, guild swaps, and mug rug swaps.

I organized my closet and got rid of some older tools, supplies and magazines that I no longer plan on using. I added a Gorm shelf to hold the rest and added a few more of these Trofast bins (suggested by Rossie) for holding works in progress. The large metal bin in there holds lots of mini projects and embroidery kits that are all cut out and ready to go. Hopefully these will be finished by the end of the year.

The final wall holds my favorite tools. The old IKEA table I was using was made from separate legs and a base and wasn’t the sturdiest of tables. This table is a little deeper to hold my new sewing machine and does not vibrate at all while I’m sewing. On the new pegboard, I now have a spot for all of my templates and tools. I love sewing gadgets and I love seeing things hung up in front of me to remind me of what I do own, so this is perfect for that.

And speaking of new machines, I bought this Janome Memory Craft 8900 right after Quiltcon at a fantastically low show special from SewVacDirect. I’ve had it for over a month and have already made one quilt from start to finish and four new tops on it. I couldn’t be happier with my choice and feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this can do. I was not expecting to come home with a new machine right after Quiltcon, but I sewed on it for a bit during the last hour of Quiltcon and couldn’t let it go.

Radio Way Quilt

2015-03-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

My dad is a professional night time TV napper who lives in a chilly house. Naturally, his 60th birthday was the perfect excuse to make him a quilt.

I used two jelly rolls from the Zen Chic Figures line, which were purchased at my favorite quilt shop, Stitched Studio Grand Rapids. I found a contrasting solid for the block borders. For someone who really enjoys picking out coordinating fabrics, this was a bit anticlimactic for me. Jelly rolls, while great time savers, just aren't my thing.

Pattern: Radio Way by Jaybird Quilts

Size: 63"x81"

Quilting: free motion meandering stipple with grey thread

Finished: November 2014

Robot Quilt

2015-03-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick quilt that I put together for the Detroit Area Modern Quilt Guild's charity donation to Beaumont Children's Hospital in Royal Oak, MI. My favorite part of quilting is pairing fabrics, and it was fun to come up with a non-girly palette based on a robot print I had in my stash. I pulled everything together back in September and then finally got around to finishing this at the beginning of November.

I used 6.5" squares (final size 6") in a grid of 9 squares by 13 squares. The final quilt is 54"x78" and should cover the entire length of a hospital bed. I backed the quilt in a super soft flannel and quilted it with wavy lines using my free motion foot.

My favorite part of this quilt is the guild label, made by our graphic designer and guild member, Amanda. She did such a nice job on our branding and it was a great way to finish off the project.

Quilt Con 2015

2015-03-03T18:33:00.001-05:00

Sarah and I traveled together to Austin two weeks ago for QuiltCon 2015. The whole experience was overwhelming in the best possible way. I think I'm still in recovery mode and my inspiration and urge to sew is at an all time high right now.

Because we didn't take any classes, we spent most of our time looking at quilts, attending lectures and buying everything in sight at the vendor booths. Looking back, keeping myself busy in classes probably would have been a great way to channel my creative energy and reduce my shopping haul! Of the lectures, Yoshiko Jinzenji's Simple Quilts, Bill Kerr's Details Matter and Susan Beal's Modern Quilt Documentation lectures were the highlights for me.

It was so nice to meet long time blog friends, Shea, Liz and Krista and to connect with so many other people who share my love of quilting. We also had fun catching up with our guild members for meals and drinks each night. For someone who would rather be home binge watching TV shows with Jon or listening to an audiobook and crafting away, I was exhausted after being out and about so much!

Unfortunately we didn't get out and tour much of Austin, but we did catch a few food trucks, the infamous Gourdough's donuts, Hill Country Weavers, Home Slice (home of the Mr. Roger's mural), and the adorable sewing shop, Stitch Lab.

Sarah and I with our hilarious Aussie friend, Melanie. We met on the first night in our hotel lobby and became instant friends. (Melanie is holding Happypotamus The Happy Hippo)

You'll have to trust me that the donuts were more tasty than they were photogenic.

Here are a my favorite quilts from the juried show. You can see my full album here.

Refresh by Anna Boenish

Bird's Eye View by Nathalie Bearden

Arne by Rossie Hutchinson

Coral Reef by Marla Varner

Do Good Stitches-Sunset Stripes

Facets by Liz Harvatine

Flyaway by Heather Jones

Full Bloom by Latifah Saafir

Fuzhou Fujian by Patricia Lutteral

Grand Pineapple-Dichotomy by Alison Lee

Improv Double Wedding Ring by Natalie Sabik

Letting Go by Andrew Steinbrecher

Mahjong by Leslie Schmidt

Paint Chip by Sarah Lowry

Phased Circles by Michelle Wilkie

Pickle Jars by Jamie Gonce

Rocket88 by Latifah Saafir

Spirography by Matt Macomber

Steps by Carrie Strine

Welcome to Colorful Colorado by Katie Larson

The Knit Stitch by Dorie Schwarz

Smithereens by Emily Cier

Somewhat Herringbone by Dorie Schwarz

The New New by Amy Anderson

Tidy Towns-Irish Houses by Andrew Steinbrecher

Tiki Dilema by Jodi Robinson

Primary by Elsa Albury

Lite Brite by Maria Shell

Las Ventanas by Kristin Shields

Knit Snippet by Lotje Meijknecht

Balancing Act by Amanda Hohnstreiter

Half SquareTriangles by Tara Faughnan

iQuilt by Kathy York (winner of best in show)

Akhaten by Shannon Page

...

Modern Quilt Guild chapters were invited to design and make quilts with a predetermined color scheme using an alternate grid. Here are some of my favorites from the charity quilts. I wish these had been labeled with guild names and participants!

Dana, from the Detroit Area Modern Quilt Guild created this pattern and divided the sewing up between several members. I helped by piecing the backing and making a few blocks. Dana worked so hard to coordinate this and I love the design she created! The quilt was quilted by our guild's resident longarmer, Barb.

Quilt 1 from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild - designed by Jenna

Quilt 2 from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild - pattern by Debbie of Esch House Quilts

Pyramids, by the Edmonton, Alberta MGQ. Designed by Stacey Lee O'Malley

I loved the giant pebble quilting on this one. I'm going to try this sometime.

I love these pieced x's and also want to give this a try.

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Half Moon Bay Quilt

2014-10-30T12:03:00.000-04:00

My little sister, who I still think of as being 8, celebrated a birthday a few weeks ago. A week before her birthday, I came up with the crazy idea to make her a quilt.

I had the entire quilt cut out on Friday and then came down with a nasty head/chest cold, which took me out for the week. I ended up cranking this out on the following Friday night and Saturday morning. I had just enough time to take a few pictures of it before heading out to our family birthday dinner.

Earlier this year, I participated in an Echino Layer Cake swap and ended up with 27 different 10" squares of newer prints. The set I received has a lot of fun prints, including some of the linen blend and sateen fabrics. I combined these with some coordinating prints from my stash. The Half Moon Bay pattern from Quilt Dad's Beyond Neutral book was the perfect way to highlight these larger scale prints and the background teal pulled everything together in the loudest way. I quilted this with my standard stippling and backed it with a super soft flannel.

My sister loved the quilt and my dad tried to steal it minutes later, so I'd classify it as a hit.

Posted as part of the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side

WIP Wednesday: Road Trip Case & Hexie Quilt

2014-09-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

An A2MQG guild mate, Amy of Blotch and Thrum, showed off her Road Trip Case at one of our recent meetings and it inspired me to make one for myself. I pulled together an assortment of Cotton + Steel prints for my bag and stayed up a little too late finishing this. So late that I made a lot of groggy, sleep-deprived mistakes. Luckily, the pattern is well-written and forgiving and I still managed to come out with a great finished product.

I've been slowly pulled over to the dark side of English Paper Piecing, thanks to my friend Sarah, and I finally decided to go big or go home. I pulled together a palette of low volume prints, gold, turquoise and navy fabrics and hope to make a lap sized quilt of three ring hexie flowers. This is definitely going to be a long-term project as it will require around 1500 hexagons (check out this great EPP quilt size calculator).

I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday feature with this post.

Plucktember Project Bags

2014-09-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

My husband likes to joke that every time I cast on a new knitting project, I always make an accompanying bag. He's right. Project bags are so much fun to make and it's so nice to have a favorite piece of fabric on display whenever I work on my knitting.

A few weeks ago I put together two large drawstring bags. These are around 13"x13" and hold up to six skeins of yarn (and the accompanying sweater and needles). While I love the outside fabric, I love the purple peppered cotton lining even more. Can that chambray be any prettier?

Since it's the second annual Plucktember knit along this September, I'm spending most of my crafting time knitting the Gnarled Oak Cardigan from Coastal Knits. I'm using Plucky Primo Worsted in the Modern Vintage color. This yarn is an absolute dream to knit with and the color is so vibrant. We'll be in Oregon for a week at the end of the month, so I hope to spend some of our vacation finishing this up.

A quilt for our new little neighbor

2014-09-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

Last summer new neighbors, who just so happen to share many of the same interests as Jon and me, moved in. I never in a million years dreamed that someone who is almost as crazy about knitting and quilting as I am would move in next door. It boggles my mind! It's so much fun to have impromptu craft nights in each other's home after a long day at work.

They're expecting their first son later this fall, so I made him a baby quilt for his new nursery. The quilt is 34"x52" and is made up of 70 log cabin blocks on point. I shrunk this pattern down to size and pulled together a palette of fabrics that should hopefully match the nursery.

Koko had to get comfy with the quilt before I could wrap it up for the shower. She's looking forward to having a new playmate next door. She loves staring at babies!

I quilted this with dense stippling and I'm so impressed with the crinkle factor of the cotton batting I used.

The quilt is bound and backed with some fun alphabet fabric. The librarian in me loves using text prints for babies.

WIP Wednesday: Robot Patchwork

2014-09-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

On Sunday afternoon, I had a cutting extravaganza and cut out fabric for several new quilts. Cutting is one of my favorite parts about quilting and I always enjoy turning a stack of potential fabric into a pieces for a new quilt.

I've got several projects in the queue, but for now I'm focusing my attention on making a patchwork quilt for our guild's charity project this year. My inspiration for this quilt was a fun navy robot fabric that I found in my deep stash. I pulled an assortment of coordinating orange, red, yellow and navy stash fabrics and cut each fat quarter into six 6.5"x6.5" squares. The final quilt will be 9 squares (54") by 13 squares (78") to make a larger quilt for an older boy. I've got a coordinating flannel that I'll be using for the backing and I hope to turn this into a cozy and comforting patchwork quilt.

I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced's WIP Wednesday feature with this post.

Cross Stitching Away or my fondness for Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery patterns

2014-09-08T17:00:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been on a cross stitching kick. True to Rebekah form, I found a new hobby I enjoy, collected lots of thread and patterns, and started several new pieces at once. Luckily I was able to finish up my first large scale piece earlier this summer. The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Cherry Blossom Sampler was a ton of fun to put together. I spent many warm summer afternoons listening to audio books and stitching away on our back patio. The finished piece was framed at a great, friendly local frame shop that does quality work and I'm now hooked on custom framing.

Right now I have three pieces in progress: Stitchrovia's Vegetable Sampler, Satsuma Street's Pretty Little Tokyo, and The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery's Halloween Town Club mystery stitch along. I'm eagerly awaiting the final clue reveal a week from Thursday so I can finish this up and have it framed in time for Halloween. I changed and rearranged elements of the third clue and adjusted the color of the house and door, but everything else follows the main pattern. I'm not really a Halloween fan, but the kawaii designs and pretty colors sucked me into this pattern!

Quarter Square Log Cabin Quilt

2014-08-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

When Radiant Orchid was named Pantone's 2014 Color of the Year, it unleashed the inner purple lover in me. I've always loved cool colors like green, blue and purple, but for the last fifteen years I've swayed more toward green or teal. I've fully embraced my love of all things purple again this year and this quilt is no different. My 7th grade self would totally go crazy for this quilt!

This quilt came together super fast. To recap my WIP Wednesday post, I used Rossie's tutorial (seen here) for quartered log cabins. The centers of each square started at 8"x8", the top and bottom strips were 3"x8" and the left and right strips were 3"x13". For this quilt, I made 48 large cabins and then cut them each into 4 different 6"x6" quarters (196 final blocks). I used up most of 24 different fat quarters for this quilt coming in at a final size of 66"x88".

I quilted this with free motion squares after being inspired by Angela Walter's craftsy class, Machine Quilting: Small Changes, Big Variety. In her class, she emphasized that it's best not to fret over how each tiny stitch looks and to use blending thread so that every seemingly huge mistake is less noticeable. While the quilting has lots and lots of mistakes in it, the overall organic look of the overlapping squares really shows through the errors I made and I love how it turned out. It's great to have another quilting technique in my arsenal, too!

The drape of this quilt is one of my favorite parts. I've been using Pellon Nature's Touch batting for all of my quilts and I really like the thickness of the cotton. The hand of the Andover Alison Glass Sun print backing fabric and the peppered cottons are fantastic too. I think those two factors, combined with the denser quilting, really created a soft and vintage feeling quilt.

I'm debating what to do with this quilt. I love it, but we're reaching quilt capacity in our house, so I think it's going in the gift pile for now. I may need to live with it for a few more months before I can part with it, though.

Common Threads Quilt Bee Quilt

2014-08-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

Back in 2008-2010, I participated in the Common Threads Quilting Bee. I never got around to posting about my second finished quilt due to my two year blogging hiatus, so here it is! Looking over my instructions post from November 2010, I see that I requested patchwork blocks with right angles and sent out a selection of prints and solids that coordinate with this butterfly print.

I loved receiving so many unique and creative blocks! I never would have thought to embroider a butterfly or use fabric paint to stencil a matching butterfly onto the block!

The finished quilt is 58" x 72" inches and has a scrappy binding. This is one of my favorite quilts and is in constant rotation in our tv room. Every time I pull it out, I notice another fun detail in the quilt.

I think these online quilting bees are a quilt blog thing of the past, but my modern quilt guild chapter does do a round robin each month. I'm considering putting some fabric together and joining in later this month, but first I need to come up with a fun concept!

Radiant Star Quilt

2014-08-01T16:34:00.001-04:00

Each summer, my aunt and uncle host my grandma's extended family at their lake house in northern Michigan. As a thank you to them for opening up their home to a 40-50 relatives each year, I decided to make them a quilt.

My aunt is an exceptional seamstress. She has made all of the drapes and many of the pillows in her home and has sewn beautiful clothing for herself. When I was just out of college and moving into my first apartment, she helped to spark sewing interest in me by letting me borrow her sewing machine to sew curtains. I have always been quite intimidated to sew anything for her because of her amazing attention to detail and skill level. Once I got over my hangups, I ordered a selection of yellow fabrics to match her home and then let them sit in a pretty stack for a few months while I waited to settle on a pattern.

I wanted to start with a traditional pattern to match her tastes and thought about enlarging this star pattern to make a one block quilt. After I realized that the white square in the middle would be the most predominant piece showing when the quilt is folded up on her couch, I decided to table that idea. Then I discovered the Designer Star pattern and this gorgeous version of it on from the blue chair and knew it was the perfect pattern.

The finished quilt is 72" square and uses a combination of yellow prints. I stippled the quilt and finished sewing on the binding with about one hour left before we had to leave for the family reunion. My aunt started crying when she saw the bag it was in and it took her a few minutes to even open it up and look at the entire quilt. She told me that she's always wanted one of my quilts but didn't want to ask me to make her one. It was so sweet and moving to receive such a huge reaction like that. She and my uncle have been so supportive of me through the years that it was the least I could do to reciprocate her generosity.

WIP Wednesday: Jumping on the Double Gauze Train

2014-07-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

Several people in the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild have recently been making soft patchwork quilts out of double gauze and I've been meaning to try working with this type of fabric for months now. I purchased a bundle of Framework fat quarters from Westwood Acres in May and I finally cut out squares and played around with the placement this week.

I was going to go with a simple design, but after thinking about it for a bit, I think I'm going to add a thick white inset border to the quilt. This should add more of a focal point and increase the size. As it is above, the final quilt would only be around 48" x 60".

Once the top is put together, I plan to turn this into a long term hand-quilting project. It will give me a chance to enjoy the feel of the fabric and it should help to avoid some bunching that machine quilting might cause.

Gifts for Friends

2014-07-28T07:00:00.000-04:00

My sister introduced us to our good friends, Ben and Hannah, after telling us that we have tons in common and would get along well with each other (she was right!). They moved to South Korea last summer when Hannah accepted a teaching position at an international school. We had one last hurrah stateside in Chicago before we said our farewells.

Here's a quilt I made for Hannah as a graduation present for finishing her master's degree. The pictures are horrible as they were taken in the dark minutes before we had to leave for her grad party (in the middle of December 2012). Ben & Hannah love Asian culture and I made this to reflect their interests and to match their living room furniture. We spent many hours watching Korean dramas, Downton Abbey, The IT Crowd and The Mitchell & Webb Look together, so we became quite comfortable with their couch!

Earlier this year, Jon and I spent 2 weeks visiting them in South Korea. I made some bow ties for Ben and a Super Tote for Hannah, but either lost the photos I took or neglected to take them in the first place. Here's a few pictures where you can somewhat see what I made...

As you can imagine, visiting a cat cafe and dog cafe were some of the highlights of our time in Seoul!

As a thank you gift, I cross stitched a card that says "Thank You" in Korean and has a jar of kimchi and a bowl of bibimbap on it (patterns from andwabisabi on etsy)

I also made a cross stitch magnet with the characters on the IT Crowd (pattern from weelittlestitches on etsy).

Here's a few more pictures we took while visiting Jeju Island and Seoul.

Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul

Taking a break from biking around Udo Island

We were so fortunate to be able to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom!

Celebrating after climbing to the top of Mt. Hallasan (6400 ft). Little did we know that we'd spend the next five hours slipping and sliding down the mountain in agony...

The snow covered trails on the snow-capped mountain were insane.

Jon was in heaven seeing all the bonsai plants in progress.

Power posing

Posing in the Hello Kitty library at Hello Kitty Island.

Much time was spent in the little liquid propane gas fueled car exploring the countryside

Jumping on the selfie bandwagon!

Baby Quilts

2014-07-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of 2014, I found out that two of my college roommates were pregnant and due a day apart from each other. A few months later, they both learned they were expecting boys. I set out to make two different but similar quilts that capture their mother's personal tastes.

Emily is super classic and traditional, so I pulled a palette of navy, gray and cream fabrics. I love the variety of prints and textures in this one.

Amber and I spent our entire freshman year thrifting for the perfect kelly green graphic tee (spoiler alert: we only found one shirt each). We both still enjoy the color green, so I knew I had to feature green in her quilt.

I backed Amber's quilt with a flannel fabric that is so soft. I liked it so much that I stocked up on this print in red and black for future quilt backs. I'd highly recommend using flannel for a super soft and warm quilt. The only difference from regular quilting cotton is that extra lint collects in my bobbin case. Quilting with it didn't create any problems.

I waited until each baby was born to sew on a personalized label with the babies' first and middle names. This is actually the first time I've ever used a label on a quilt. I don't know why I've never done this before and I'm definitely going to make sure that I label my future quilts. My youngest sister, now 25, received a baby blanket when she was born with a label that said "handknit by Audrey Jensen." To this day, we still refer to her blanket as the Audrey Jensen blanket. I love that it has a name and that her blanket is still treasured! I hope my quilts will receive as much love in the future.

For each of these quilts, I used an isosceles triangle ruler with 5" triangles. They're around 42"x60" but I completely forgot to measure these before mailing them off so that's just a general guess.

Work in Progress Wednesday: In the Queue

2014-07-23T07:00:00.000-04:00

Several projects are in the works around here...

Quilting the Quarter Square Log Cabin quilt

Several months ago I purchased Angela Walter's quilting class, Small Changes Big Variety, from Craftsy and I finally got around to watching parts of it on Sunday. I love how she encourages students to just freehand things, use blending thread, and not to worry about "mistakes" because they are so minuscule in comparison to the overall quilt. I decided to try out her overlapping squares pattern and am having fun working on getting those corners just so. It's a nice change up from the stippling that I've done in the past.

Diverging Diamonds pattern from Fabulously Fast Quilts
I've never seen this type of construction before and I'm excited to watch this come together, so much so that the day this book arrived in the mail, I pulled out a set of fabrics and immediately cut the 2.5" strips to get started. The cut fabric sat around for several weeks until I sewed the first pair together at our guild's monthly sew in a few weeks ago. I've paired them into groupings of 8 strips and they're waiting until it rains outside so I can have a chance to sew them together.

Planning to begin a Quilt as You Go Herringbone Quilt
(tutorial at Maureen Cracknell Handmade) in a summer sunset colorway. I think I'm going to turn this into a gradient quilt to make it look like an actual sunset, but I'll wait until I have my pieces cut to plan the final layout.

Working on Clue 2 of the Mysterious Halloween Town from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery
I'm experimenting with house and door colors, which means some ripping out of work until I get it just right. I'm so not a Halloween person (other than liking purple?), but for some reason this pattern totally called my name and I'm really enjoying this project (the owls, the bonsai looking tree, the cute house, the picket fence). I hope to have this finished and framed in time to display during October.

A2MQG Quilt Show this weekend

2014-07-21T07:00:00.000-04:00

The Greater Ann Arbor Quilt Guild's biennial quilt show is this weekend and they're hosting a special exhibit of quilts by the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. Two of my recent quilts were accepted into the show and will be on display this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, July 26-27. If you're in the area be sure to visit the show. I'll be working at the show on Sunday afternoon and am looking forward to seeing some inspirational quilts throughout the day.

Woodland City quilt - see more pictures and details here

Single Girl Quilt - see more pictures and details here

Single Girl Patchwork Quilt

2014-07-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

After cutting out the pieces for my Single Girl quilt, I ended up with nearly a fat eighth of each of the 35 fabrics. I cut the leftover fabric into 3.5" squares and stored them away for a later patchwork project. I loved how the Single Girl quilt came out, but I wanted to see more of the fabrics featured in a new quilt.

First, I took 32 squares from my pile and made a cross stitch project bag.

Then, when I finally got the urge to do a large scale patchwork project, I dug around in my scrap bin to pull out more coordinating fabrics. This quilt used over 500 squares. I started by chain piecing pairs together until I ran out of fabric. After, I chain pieced pairs together to make small blocks.

After the quilt was assembled and basted, I almost started quilting it with diagonal lines. Then my neighbor and quilty friend, Christina, suggested that I use dogwood quilting again. I balked at the suggestion because it takes so.much.work and so.much.thread, but I soon realized that she was right. I'm so glad I took the extra time to densely quilt this one.

It gave me lots of time to enjoy each piece of patchwork that went into this quilt, and it gave Koko and I some great lap time together (yes, it's quite difficult to maneuver around a lap dog while quilting).

I've recently discovered the ingenuity and forward planning that is stocking up on 5 yard pieces of backing fabric when it's on sale. If I stick to buying fabrics I love, I will no doubt be able to use them as a backing in the future. I used this great hot pink Sun Prints x+ fabric from my stash for the back and then used a stripey dotted green for the binding.

As a fun feature in the bottom corner, I added a scrap of pug fabric that my sweet guild mate, Vicki, gave me.

This quilt has been elevated to my living room couch quilt until my next favorite comes along.

Work in Progress Wednesday: Quarter Square Patchwork Quilt

2014-07-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

Inspiration usually strikes me when I'm incorporating new fabric acquisitions into my stash. For this quilt, I started combining colors from a new bundle of peppered cottons and pulled out a grouping of mint, fuchsia, eggplant, steel grey, and black. After adding some coordinating prints, the stack sat in my sewing room for a week or so until I remembered that I had been wanting to make a quarter square log cabin.

I first stumbled across Rossie's quarter square log cabin tutorial on her instagram feed. She created this quick video that demonstrated how easy it was to make quarter square log cabins with an accuquilt die. I later searched her blog and found a tutorial for the process in this blog post.

I used the same measurements for the blocks that Rossie used. The centers of each square started at 8"x8" and the side strips were 3"x8" and 3"x13". For this quilt, I made 48 large cabins and then cut them each into 4 different 6"x6" squares (196 final blocks). I used up most of 24 different fat quarters for this quilt.

I didn't have enough of one fabric to make all of the centers the same, so I stuck with grey and black solids and prints to help unify things.

It took a bit of time to lay out the quilt...more time if you count all the shooing away I had to do to keep Koko from walking over the floor (it's hard to resist that face!).

I ended up using a controlled random patchwork pattern by alternating two block orientations every other row. This quilt recipe is such a fun way to make a patchwork quilt with lots of variety.

The final top size is 12 blocks (66") by 16 blocks (88"). I finished basting the quilt last Sunday night and now I'm letting it sit until I find the perfect quilting pattern.

I'm linking up to Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday for this post.