Vodka? Check!

Shopping List Tote by Lori L. for LAMQG Swap

The back is for when you go to the fabric store. Brilliant!

Shopping List Tote by Lori L. for LAMQG Swap

Thanks Lori! It’s been used for both.

Kite Tails Quilt, Latifah Saafir

This quilt layout completely reminds me of kites in the idyllic image in kids books with the bows on kite tails blowing in the wind. Kinda like this:

So I call it Kite Tails.

I have been struggling SO much to get decent pictures of my quilts. Does anyone else have this problem? Please let me know I’m not alone. But, the stars (and the clouds to be honest) all lined up perfectly today to allow me to easily take a few decent shots.

Kite Tails Quilt

This quilt is pretty small at just 34″ x 36″ but, it was made specifically for the tutorial. It would be perfect for a tiny baby girl though.

Kite Tails Quilt

The backing uses three of my current favorite fabrics. I’m sort of in love with the Timeless Treasures Crosshatch Sketch fabric – like, in all of the colors!! The upper left corner fabric is one of my favorite colors of the Crosshatch Sketch called Citron. To the right of it is Simon & Kabuki Juicy Blossoms Gray Dot (which I desperately need to find more of). And the bottom is Laurie Wisburn’s Modern Whimsy Circles in Saffron.

Kite Tails Quilt Back

The quilting is super simple.

Kite Tails Quilt Detail

The binding is Kona Coral.

Kite Tails Quilt Folded

And, last but, not least my go to label when I’m too lazy to create a real one.

Kite Tails Label

I’ll be back soon!

This week I’m going to show you a few quilts that I’ve made or am working on using HRT’s. Plus, I’ll fine tune the tutorial a bit so that you too can make long skinny HRT’s with minimal fabric waste.

The first quilt in the series is a quick baby quilt made with the long skinny HRT’s that I call the Merge Quilt. Ever since I was able to accept that Green was my favorite color, I always stash great green fabrics when I see them. I also have a pretty substantial collection of grey prints as well. So, when I saw the super cute Green Owl fabric by Annika Wester for Kokka I knew I had to make a quilt with all my green and grey fabric! I love this quilt and think that it is quite unisex. I have an idea for a much larger quilt using HRT’s of the same dimension but with lots more solids and a little less juvenile. If I can only find the time!

(Now that I’m posting this I realize that all of my pictures are blurry.   So I’ll have to update this and share a few clearer pictures with you later. But, I’ll go ahead and post it for now.)

Here’s the clearest shot:

A little detail of that great Owl fabric!

The blurry front.

The back – also blurry.

Merge on a turtle.

I’ll take a few better pictures and post them soon!

XO

I can’t wait until our Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild meeting tonight! My mom is in town and I’m bringing her so that should be fun. And our swap committee has organized our first swap of the year. It’s a white elephant style Tote Bag swap in honor of Earth Month. The main rules are that it has to be awesome and that it has to include some patchwork or quilted element. This is what I made. Well, the bag not all the goodies inside.

Grocery Bag
Not quite a tote but, it’s a great reusable grocery bag AND I made 4 reusable produce bags to go with it so I thought it worked. I chose to make a grocery bag vs. a tote because it can fold or roll down nicely to fit in your car without taking up too much space. When it was finished I thought the bag was a little small so next time I’ll enlarge the pattern. So cute though! I think I want to make a bunch for myself to use to go grocery shopping!

I started to make my own pattern but, in the interest of time I used the Simplicity 2806 pattern for the grocery bag. I liked it because it looks like a grocery bag and it had a lining which I needed because I wanted to include patchwork on the front. The only changes that I made to the pattern were the patchwork piecing on the front of the bag, I didn’t include a pouch, and I added a french seam on the bottom. Easy great pattern though!

I got to use a random combination of a lot of my favorite fabrics. The background is Kona Coal and the lining is Alexander Henry Heath in Tomato. The patchwork on the front includes Art Gallery Pure Elements Lemonade (a new favorite), Lotta Jansdotter Echo Woven in Espresso (love this), more Tomato Heath, Connecting Threads Taupe Solid (yummy), Kona Robins Egg (I use this way too often), Timeless Treasures Crosshatch Sketch in Nectar (perfect in all colors), Robert Kaufman Metro Living Dots Blue (the perfect blue) and last but not least the green is a print from Liesl Gibson’s Lisette Collection at Joann’s (LOVE).

Produce Bags
For the the produce bags I found this great tutorial. I followed it roughly. I used netting instead of the “scrubbie mesh”. I used the rough dimensions. I would probably make some of the bags larger. I made my own ribbons which I would make a little different next time so that they’re not so bulky. But, what I LOVE about the tutorial was the way the bottoms of the bags are sewn. Genius! Overall I love how they turned out and I know what I’ll do differently next time. I need at least a half dozen of these as well. I guess I’ll have to add it to the list!

For the straps I used Lemonade again, Kona Robins Egg, and Persimmon Shot Cotton.

I personally love it! I’m just concerned that everyone else’s “Tote’s” will be a lot more complicated compared to my simple grocery bag. Is it awesome enough? Let’s see how many times it gets stolen tonight! (Question: Ummm, can you steal your own gift in a white elephant gift exchange?) If you’re in LA come join in on the fun!

I’ve been working on my blog relaunch for awhile and the time has finally come! I had neglected it and it didn’t have a real focus so I decided that I needed to take a break, step back and look at it and decide where I wanted to go with it. Being pulled in so many directions it can be hard to maintain a blog. BUT, I decided that it really is important to me. And, I’ve heard from so many of you asking me to do the same. (Thanks for the encouragement!) So, here it goes.

To start out on the right foot, I’ve planned out a fun next 13 weeks for the blog. Each week will have a sort of a theme. There will be lots and lots of quilts and other sewing projects, maybe even a few tutorials, and a ton of giveaways.

Fun Giveaways over the next 13 Weeks!

For giveaways, I’ve pulled a bunch of things from my own stash but, I also have goodies from some wonderful sponsors: Pat Bravo/Art Gallery, Free Spirit, Michael Miller, June Tailor, Moda, and Janome. Lots and lots of fabric, books, rulers, color cards, project packs and at the end of the thirteen weeks, there will actually be a sewing machine given away! I’m thinking of making the sewing machine giveaway through a modern quilt blog scavenger hunt! I’m so excited! More details to come soon!

XO

Remember this quilt top? Well, it got quilted, bound and named “Gossip Girls”. It was then dropped off a few weeks ago as a submission to the fair.

Here it is on display at the LA County Fair:

The funny thing is, my ONLY intention was to have a modern quilt at the fair but, it looks like she has a little ribbon pinned to her!

Next year, I’m going to see if we can get the LAMQG to enter a whole bunch of quilts. Maybe we can get our own section. . . Hmm. . . I think we should get MQG’s all across the world to enter quilts in their County or Local Fairs!

How fun!

Then, the pattern I picked (Simplicity 2668, see below) had the cutest coat that I wanted to make as a lightweight coat for Cici – so perfect for Los Angeles nights. So, I searched for a light to medium weight suiting that would coordinate with the two prints that I had already chosen. No major name brand, just suiting fabric that I found at Michael Levine’s in downtown Los Angeles. I think it’s a wool blend but, I’m not 100% sure. Don’t you just LOVE IT though?

As I mentioned this whole set was was made using Simplicity Pattern 2668.

A few detail shots. . .

The fun thing about sewing patterns is making them your own. I made the dress as is but, I changed a couple things on the coat. For one, I added a lining. Linings make things like coats and jackets hang a lot better and I thought it would feel better on Cici’s skin.

Also, I changed the sleeves. The ruffle at the bottom of the sleeves were actually gathered and not pleated but, I thought a pleated sleeve would look a lot classier.

We all knew the baby’s name and nickname before she was born and I knew that i wanted to somehow incorporate that into the quilt. So, here’s my version of Cici (CC). Kinda reminds you of the Chanel logo but, this wasn’t the idea when I sketched it out! I wanted to make it personalized but, not make it super obvious and cheesy. I think I achieved that!

When I design a quilt for someone in particular like this and have an idea I brainstorm first by just doing rough sketches on paper. I ran across one of these pages recently and thought it was fun to share! This is obviously very far into the brainstorm process because it looks very similar to the final project BUT, there were many, many iterations on paper before the decision was made. And the multi-colored markings on the center of the page are bleed through from other brainstorm pages!

I didn’t get great shots of the back because it was starting to get dark when I was taking these photos BUT, here’s a close up of the back.  As some of you know, I’m a bit obsessive about baby gifts and I almost ALWAYS make more than a quilt. There’s a dress and coat set that I’ll share with you soon. But, I used the leftovers of the two main fabrics I used for the dress on the back.

And, here’s a really dark shot of the whole thing.

More detail. . .

And, yes for those of you that might ask, this is sort of an iteration of the Huckleberry Quilt. The big circle is just cut in half!

So, when I showed this at the LAMQG meeting this month, I mentioned that I was sure this was a specific style of a Log Cabin. I decided to do a little research. And guess what, this happens to be a rectangular version of just a plain ‘ole Basic Log Cabin block. Who woulda thunk? Of course, this is a massive version at around 53″ x 60″! The balance of the light on one side and the color on another side is what is important in the Basic Log Cabin Block design. Traditionally it is not just one block in a quilt like this one but, it is combined with a series of other similar blocks and the contrast in colors on both sides can be used to create many interesting designs.

A not so great picture of "Stairway to Heaven" Quilt top

A few days ago I was in the bookstore and ran across this awesome book by Susan Beal called Modern Log Cabin Quilting. Perfect Timing. I had seen this book on the internet but, hadn’t gotten a chance to flip through it yet. Now, in a seemingly futile effort to keep the secret (or not so secret) hoarder in me at bay I don’t buy too many books but for those of you that don’t have this issue this is a good book to look at. I was fascinated by the history that it told and the fresh modern projects that are great even for beginners!

Off to do the quilting! (I’m definitely thinking very linear quilting with white on the white side and maybe some contrasting colors on the colorful side!)