Sew Inspired

Summer Stars--Blogger's Quilt Festival

2013-05-17T11:12:00.001-07:00

It's time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival again! Amy over at Amy's Creative Side hosts this parade of quilts twice a year; thanks so much for the work you've put into the festival, Amy! I'm happy to have a brand new finish to share this time. :)

Earlier this week I finished up my Summer Stars quilt and delivered it to my friends with the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild. We are having a star quilt exhibit at Island Quilter next month (starting on June 7); if you are in the area you should go see the quilts!

I am thankful for my getting-taller helper. The fence was wet and I couldn't hang the quilt up there like I normally do for photos. The finished quilt measures something like 61"x66".

This quilt is made of 8" and 10" sawtooth star blocks using various new and old orange and turquoise/aqua fabrics. The borders are made from (most of) the half square triangles that were leftover from making the star blocks. I used Kona Aqua colored solid fabric for the borders.

Here's the back:

The Chinese character fabric was exactly the right length so I cut it into two pieces and then filled in the middle with the two leftover stars and some other smaller and bigger chunks of fabrics. The dark turquoise fabric along the top is the hanging sleeve for the show.

I machine quilted swirls in all the stars, like this:

There are 27 star blocks and I quilted a different design in the corner squares of each block. Kind of silly, but it was kind of a fun challenge to keep coming up with ideas.

The following photo shows how I quilted the borders. There are three borders on the top and 2 sides, and five borders on the bottom of the quilt. I did a figure 8 loop for the inner border, circles in the triangle borders, and a double feather in the wider, outer border.

Here's one more photo of the quilting:

along with the little section of turquoise in the orange binding.

Thanks again to Amy for hosting Blogger's Quilt Festival--head over there soon for more quilt eye candy. :)

Giveaway Day Winner!

2013-05-10T21:07:00.003-07:00

The winner of my rainbow scrap pack is #63, Mamma Nene. Congratulations!

Star Quilt Top Finished

2013-05-07T18:09:00.003-07:00

I didn't have great lighting for this... yes it's too sunny and I'm not complaining. Seattle was tied for "hottest major city in the US" yesterday at 89 degrees in our particular neck of the woods. I love it. It's not quite that warm today but it's still beautiful, bright, sunny, warm. I'll get a better quilt photo when I finish up all the quilting. This quilt is going to be part of a star quilt exhibit next month, over at Island Quilter with Seattle MQG.

Putting all the borders on wasn't the most fun ever but I love how it's turned out so far. I wasn't sure what to do as far as measuring the sawtooth borders, so I added the blue pieces to the ends with a little bit of extra length, and then pinned the borders on starting in the middle. Then I trimmed the ends. The plain borders were all measured and done the "right" way.

Next up is making the back and thinking about the quilting. Should I go buy some aqua thread or quilt it in white? Or both?

Giveaway Day!

2013-05-06T19:27:00.002-07:00

Sew, Mama, Sew is having their semiannual giveaway week again! I have a rainbow scrap pack up for grabs. I might still add some pinks... maybe some selvedges too.

To enter, just leave a comment on this post. I'd love to hear what you're working on or what your plans are for summer this year. I'm moderating comments (because the word verification is so annoying), so your comment won't show up until I approve it. I'm willing to ship international. The giveaway will close on May 10 at 5 p.m. Pacific time. I'll email the winner (and post the winner's name here) so make sure you're not a no reply blogger (or include your email address in your comment.)

If you're new, welcome! I have a few quilting and clothing sewing tutorials linked up under the top banner, if you have time, or come back later. :) Good luck with the giveaways!

Don't forget to head over to Sew, Mama, Sew for many more chances to win. :)

Star Quilt Progress

2013-05-01T09:52:00.002-07:00

I'm working on putting the rows together for my star quilt. I am going to use the leftover half-square triangles from making the stars for sawtooth borders. There are two sizes; not sure if I'm going to use the skinny ones or the wider ones, or maybe, some combination of both.

I just realized I sewed the fish block sideways. I think I will leave it that way.

I've ordered solid light aqua fabric for inner and outer borders--I want to separate the pieced borders from the stars so they will be more visible.

What are you working on this week?

Granny Square Quilt, Finished

2013-04-25T22:47:00.003-07:00

I finished this quilt a couple days ago. Maybe I should start keeping track of when I start new projects... this one took quite a while but I just made a few blocks at a time, and then used several of my blocks in my charity version of this same quilt. My sewing machine had a computer malfunction partway through quilting this. I was still able to quilt, but the computer screen is stuck on bobbin winding mode. I have a Janome MC4900... any other Janome users have this problem? It's been at the shop for a few days and I'm waiting to hear what the damage will be.

I free motion quilted a curvy corner-to-corner thing on all the squares, and then did a simple stipple in all the background space. We went to Utah for spring break earlier this month and my mom let me bring home her Juki for a while, so I finished the quilting using that machine. I am liking the Juki, it's so fast!

And here's the back. I started with the pink/orange section in the middle, I wasn't thinking of anything I could use that Amy Butler piece for, and then used a few other fabrics I am ready to be done with to make it wide enough. Then the green... the remains of some of my very first quilt shop fabric purchase are in that chunk. I have moved on from the dusty sage green love of the late 90s, for sure. After I finished up the green, I thought I was going to use a black and white Chinese character fabric for the rest of the back but it wasn't meant to be so I put together another section made from blues and then separated the 3 colors with white/white-ish 6.5" strips.

The binding is 4 colors--aqua, pink, purple, and yellow. I was going to do it all with the aqua/green Heather Bailey bead fabric but it would have used it almost all the way up so I mixed it up a little bit.

Thanks to Blue Elephant Stitches for the Granny Square Quilt tutorial and to traceyjay quilts for the setting triangles directions!

Bee Blocks

2013-04-03T21:22:00.004-07:00

I've finished up my March blocks for do good stitches (because I'm doing all of them on time this year)

These were the easiest bee blocks ever. They are 12.5 inches, not small at all.

And I'm in charge for April so I have those ones done too. I'm requesting scrappy trip along blogs in red, yellow, and blue with your choice of neutrals (white, off white, tan, brown, whatever looks good). And an obviously dark or light strip down the center.

(Since I had to use that diagonal stripe in the above block, I decided green is ok too.)

Easter Dress 2013

2013-03-28T15:21:00.002-07:00

I finished up my daughter's Easter dress last night. Actually I didn't try out the buttons and it turns out I had to remove one and resew it because it wasn't placed quite right. So I finished it this morning.

This fabric is hard to photograph just right in my house; I'll try to get some outdoor pics when she's wearing the dress on Sunday.

I used the Oliver + S bubble dress pattern. It went together fairly easy, and I'm happy with how it turned out. I made the size 3 with the skirt the length of the 4, but it's still pretty short on my daughter.

When I broke my finger last summer, making this dress for my girl was one of the things I daydreamed about at the very beginning. (I had to wait a week between the injury and the surgery so there was a lot of serious pain going on, and laying in my bed, and hardly any sewing for a few weeks.) I'm glad to have it done and will probably make another one. Maybe I'll try one without the side seam scallops next year.

Here's the back:

I have a little baggie in with my sewing notions and found the perfect buttons in there. I have no idea what they were originally bought for, but they match the flowers in this fabric just right.

P.S. I love automatic buttonholes. They are the only thing I unplug the foot control on my sewing machine for.

Craft Tree: Just for Kids

2013-03-25T22:33:00.001-07:00

Last week I got my copy of the new booklet, "Just For Kids"--it's a compilation of 15 sewing projects for kids, published by Interweave.

My Stacked Coin Doll Quilt is the first project in the book. :) I love those puppet/washcloth mitts on the cover too.

I'm thinking about making a couple more of these small quilts for an ongoing charity project through my local quilt guild.

There are several other booklets in the Craft Tree series and I was told they will be available for purchase at big box craft/fabric stores...not sure if they're there yet though. For now you can buy them here.

What I'm Working On

2013-03-22T18:03:00.002-07:00

I've been working on a few different things the last couple weeks:

L's Easter dress. I'm using the Bubble Dress pattern by Oliver and S. It looks cute so far (and no sleeves makes it a bit easier, too.) I'm excited to see how it looks with the skirt "bubbled".

My Alabama Stitch (affiliate link) skirt . I've wanted to make one of these for so long, and I'm glad I finally actually got started on it! I was hoping this would be ready for me to wear by Easter; it might not be. It's coming along, though.

And my granny square quilt back.

I ended up doing something totally different than I thought I would do. I started by making the orange/pink section. I wanted to use up the Amy Butler peacock feathers fabric (too multicolored!) and found some of my older orange and pinks to put with it and get them out of my stash. Then I made the green section, again using several older fabrics. Some of those are from my very first quilt shop fabric purchase back in 1997. Not so much a fan of the muted sage green these days. After I finished the green and orange sections I thought I was going to put a big (whole) piece of fabric in between them, but that didn't seem right so I made a pieced blue section too. And then separated the sections with pieced white/light strips.

I'm not too far out on finishing the Easter dress and I'm plugging away on my skirt. Hope to have a finish to share here soon!

Birdie Ruffle Crush Quilt

2013-03-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

I have a new baby niece and I finished up her baby quilt a few weeks ago. I finally got it labeled and sent off to her, and now I can share it here.

I used my Ruffle Crush quilt pattern to make this quilt. My sister-in-law chose most of the fabrics--I pulled the small squares from my stash and from the leftovers from her other daughter's quilt. There's even a piece of the striped fabric from her son's quilt in this one, too. The binding is Kona pomegranate.

The back is just one fabric this time.

I sewed the ruffles on this quilt with my ruffler foot and it was challenging to keep the non-ruffled segments of the quilt straight and square that way. It turned out ok, but I think when I make this quilt again I will do the gathers by hand, in order to have a quilt with all right angles.

I did echo quilting around the birds in this section.

And figure-8 loops in the pieced strips and swirls in the orange dots.

You can find the Ruffle Crush Quilt pattern in my Craftsy shop. If you make one, I'd love to see it.

Claiming

2013-03-15T23:21:00.001-07:00

I still think the big G will reverse their position on reader... but I'm switching anyway.
Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I have a quilt back and front to show you, and tomorrow will be cutting out an Easter dress for L and a skirt for me. Hope you have a great weekend!

Finished Circle Quilt

2013-03-03T19:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finished up the binding on my circle quilt. I am trying to make a dent in my UFOs and am glad to have this one done.

(my helper's arms were not quite long enough to hold the quilt out straight; it's a big quilt)

The quilt is 60" x 80", and I quilted it in a spiral, mostly using my walking foot. I had some issues with the layers shifting, even with the walking foot and having the presser foot pressure loosened. Part way through, I undid the remaining basting pins, smoothed the layers out again, and rebasted it, with the pins closer together than the first time. Then I loosened my presser foot pressure a little bit more and started quilting again. It went better after those changes, but there was still a little bit of minor shifting.

The center of the quilted spiral was quilted last, with my free motion quilting foot. I was really nervous about how that would go, but I was able to quilt it more smoothly than I expected.

The back of the quilt is pretty simple with red and yellow fabrics I got from Connecting Threads, and blue kelp I got on sale a while back.

Most of the binding came from my binding scraps (I had a lot of brown) and I added some red, yellow, and blue fabrics. It was nice to have most of the strips cut and pressed already.

This is my second circle quilt; my first one was a baby quilt made for my niece in 2010. When I made that quilt I wrote a couple of tutorial blog posts about designing your own circle quilt and drafting the patterns/templates for this block. Back then, I also promised a "how to figure yardage" post... and then I never wrote it. So I'm thinking I will go ahead and write that soon--let me know if you think it's something that would be helpful!

Modern Basics II Blog Tour

2013-02-25T03:30:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! I’m happy to be a part of the blog tour for Amy Ellis’s new book, Modern Basics II. Amy and I have been friends for a few years—I love her quilts and I know she works really hard on her books and other creative endeavors. Amy blogs at Amy’s Creative Side and she is probably best known for the twice-yearly Blogger’s Quilt Festival that she hosts at her blog, along with her first book, Modern Basics. Modern Basics II is a wonderful follow-up to her first book, and includes patterns for 14 beautiful quilts.

This quilt is called Confetti Crossings. I love this quilt with the warm spring-y fabrics alternating with bold "X" blocks.

Confetti Crossings is made with two different blocks, a 16-patch and a graphic “X” block made from half square triangles. Amy has included instructions for making this quilt in two sizes so you can make a large bed size quilt (93” x 93”) or, if you prefer, a throw quilt (56” x 68”). I think this quilt would look great with a few varying blacks and whites for the X blocks and then total scrappiness for the 16 patches. Or—you could flip the color scheme and make black and white checkerboards for the 16 patches and then use different bright colors with white for the X blocks.

Amy’s asked us to share about a favorite quilting tip or tool. One of my favorite/essential quilting tools is the Kwik Klip.

I always pin baste my quilts, and I use my Kwik Klip to close the pins. (You just hold the safety part of the safety pin with one hand and use the Kwik Klip in your other hand to push the pointy end of the pin into the safety cap.) It’s fast and easy and saves my fingertips from getting poked and scraped by all those safety pins.

You can visit all the blog tour links below, starting today, to learn more about the quilts in Modern Basics II.

Emily Herrick    http://crazyoldladiesquilts.blogspot.com/
Amy Newbold    http://sukiedontyaknow.com/
Dana Bolyard    http://oldredbarnco.blogspot.com/
Amy Webb    http://www.amylouwhosews.com/
Martingale    http://blog.shopmartingale.com/
Victoria Findlay Wolfe    http://www.bumblebeansinc.blogspot.com/
Katie Blakesley    www.swimbikequilt.com
Chelsey K    www.fatquartershop.blogspot.com
Terri Harlan    http://sew-fantastic.blogspot.com/
Mary Kolb    http://maryonlakepulaski.blogspot.com/
Pat Sloan    http://blog.patsloan.com
Natalia Bonner    http://www.pieceandquilt.com/
Candy Glendening    http://www.candiedfabrics.com/
Vicki Christensen    http://www.sewinspiredblog.com/

Then visit this link and complete the form to enter to win an electronic copy of Modern Basics II. There will be 15 winners, and Amy will contact them on March 4. Good luck!

Quilt blocks + Quilting

2013-02-22T17:25:00.003-08:00

I've been working on several different projects at once. Honestly, it's making me a little crazy. So I'm going to focus on finishing some things that are almost done... I have one quilt ready to bind and another that is partially quilted, and once those are done I think I'll feel ok about starting an Easter dress for my girl.

This past week I made my February blocks for do good stitches:

These blocks were made with Amy/badskirt's tutorial but using different measurements to create a 12.5" finished block. My 12-year-old gave me the colors for the top block and the second block is colors my daughter chose. These blocks are very easy to make but the linen blend I used for the "triangle bits" is fiddly, stretchy, and complicates it a little bit.

And I've started making some scrappy-trip-along blocks. These are fun and so quick:

So far I'm just planning out each block as I go. The instructions for making this are here; you should give it a try!

And today I machine quilted this creeper for my son (he made it and pin basted it a while ago):

The quilting is pretty much invisible. He wanted me to use green thread on the black parts and black thread on the green, but we had a miscommunication on that so it didn't turn out quite how he wanted. I quilted a squared-off meander with a few square loops in the green, and cursive letter S's in the black. Apparently that's what this creature says. Now that the quilting is done I'll help my boy make the pieces for the pillow back and put it together.

I have some quilting and binding ahead of me and then I'll have a couple finished quilts to share. Have a good weekend!

Finished Monkey Quilt

2013-02-17T20:33:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to share another finished quilt!

I finished the top a while back, and sent it to Natalia for quilting a few weeks ago.

After it came back, it took me a little while to get the binding complete, as I was working on finishing up my king size quilt.

It's too big to get a good photo on the backyard fence (it's about 65" x 90"), so my girl and I went to the playground down the street to take photos. I didn't take clips or anything, she's holding it up by herself in these pictures and I was hurrying fast to get the photos.

Here's a closeup of the monkey quilting done by Natalia:

Isn't it cute? Can you see the bananas?

I'm going to be finishing up at least one more quilt this week, and I'll maybe do another "quilt blocks" blog post seeing as how I started a scrappy trip-along quilt this past week. My kids have no school this week so we're planning some day trips and hope to keep everyone busy and happy. Hope your February is going well!

Completed King Size Quilt

2013-01-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

This past week I finished up the binding and hand quilting on my king size quilt. I was hoping to be able to take photos outside but I need helpers, dry weather, and good light all at the same time to make that happen, and that might not be possible for a while. So for now, here are photos of it inside.

I had to look at photos of the finished quilt top to remember which way I had decided was the top.

The quilt consists of 16 improvised log cabin blocks that are near 16" square. I used flea market fancy fabrics and other fabrics that coordinated with the FMF. The fabric used for the sashing and borders is Moda crossweave.

I machine quilted the quilt on my Janome QC 4900. There are a few pops of hand quilting too. The main trick for machine quilting this quilt (around 96" x 104") is to not put all the batting in at first.

*For my first chunk of quilting on this quilt, I pin basted a piece of batting that was as wide as the two center rows of blocks, plus about 4 inches on each side. Depending on the design of the quilt, it would be good to try to divide the quilt into thirds and put the middle 1/3 of batting in to begin with.
*Then I machine quilted that section, leaving the 4 inches on each side, and the borders, unquilted.
*Next I attached batting to one of the sides, pin basted the batting in, and quilted it. (But not the borders.) This tutorial of mine shows how my grandma taught me to piece batting and that's how I attached the batting during this process.
*Then I attached the batting to the other side and quilted the blocks and sashing on the other side.
*The final step was quilting the whole border, which wasn't really difficult at all because I didn't have much quilt to the right of my sewing machine needle.

Here are a few close-ups:

I quilted feathers with echo stitching in the sashing and borders. In the borders, the space around the feathers is quilted with small loopy quilting. I thought about doing something fancier, but decided to make it easy on myself at that point.

I like the pink/blue/gray color scheme of this block.

I quilted this block after I learned to do the clamshell/paisley quilting design.

The feathers and the flowers I put in the feather intersections show up pretty well here.

This one has a lot of texture, plus it shows one of the little hand quilted spots in the quilt.

The back of the quilt:

Mostly kona solid fabrics, with a couple of extra blocks. We can reverse it if we get tired of the front, I suppose.

A closer view of the little block in the center of the back:

I'm really happy to have this project completed and on my bed! I'm not sure I'll make another quilt this big for quite a while, but I'm glad I made this one and I feel like I learned a lot along the way.

Machine Quilting a King Size Quilt

2013-01-18T08:16:00.002-08:00

The last couple weeks I've been pushing hard to finish up my king size quilt. I made the quilt top in the spring of 2011 as part of a Naked Bed Challenge on twitter. I got the quilt backing made soon after we moved into the house here in Washington, at the end of 2012. (I don't think I've taken a picture of the back yet, though.) I started the machine quilting at that time too, but lost steam on it and put it away for a while. Then, I was getting all gung ho and ready to finish it up around the end of June, right before I hurt my finger and had to take an extended break from sewing.

So anyway, finishing the quilt is on my sewing list for January, and I'm getting really close! I've been taking photos and posting them to instagram as I go; if you are on instagram and want to follow me, my username is VickiDJL. Here's a recap of the last few days of work:

Quilting a feather in the sashing.

Ironing the quilt back to prepare for adding in the last section of batting. I lowered my ironing board to about 18" tall to do this. It was silly. I'll explain how I did the batting more completely when I blog about the finished quilt.

Quilt all rolled up while I was quilting the last section of quilt blocks (the green mug is my thread stand):

Center section all quilted, borders still need to be quilted:

Reverse view of some of the quilting. The big feather at the bottom is part of the border:

More of what the border quilting looks like, from the back:

The border fabric on the front and thread are both gray and the quilting doesn't show up well, especially in the evening after the sun has gone down. So I flipped over the border for this picture, and then had a dancing girl who wanted to be in the photo too. If you look closely, you can see the loopy quilting I'm doing as filler around the big border feather.

I have all the border feathers finished, and just need to finish adding in loopy filler quilting on two more sides of the quilt, and then the machine quilting will be done. There are a few more sections of hand quilting to do, then binding and labeling, and then it will be completed!

New Year Sewing

2013-01-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

I've been busy sewing the last couple weeks.

I finished this mini heart hexagon quilt:

This is going to be sent to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. I'm planning to make a couple more quilts for them in the next few weeks and then send them all in together. If you haven't made a quilt for AAQI yet, think about it. They sell/auction mini quilts to raise awareness and to fund Alzheimer's research, and they accept quilts no larger than 9" x 12" so it's not really a big commitment to make a quilt and help them out.

****

I already finished my do good stitches blocks for January. Crazy, huh?

These chevron blocks were made using the herringbone block tutorial from Bijou Lovely.

A couple of other small things:

My little girl helped me make this skirt for her doll, Molly. (She pushed the foot pedal on the sewing machine.) I have "1 or 2 doll clothes items" on my January to-sew list and this was fun and quick to make.

And we had been needing a new ironing board cover for a while. I got the fabric at Ikea a couple weeks ago. I used an old towel (trimmed and edges zigzagged) and one layer of cotton batting (scraps I sewed to fit the ironing board) for the padding. I looked at this tutorial on Moda Bake Shop and decided to follow the method described there for finishing the edge and making a casing (even though I didn't make a quilted top like they did there). I just used kitchen string to adjust the cover to fit; it worked great!

Pettiskirt!

2013-01-07T21:14:00.001-08:00

I sewed this pettiskirt for my little girl in the evenings after bedtime in the last couple weeks before Christmas.

I followed this tutorial from the Girl, Inspired blog. Here are a few changes and other notes on the project.

*I bought my nylon chiffon from this website, and it was 54" wide, not 108" like the fabric.com chiffon used in the tutorial. That was easy to adjust for.

*I made the waistband/yoke a little longer (maybe 4.5" or 5" instead of 3". I can't remember exactly.) I also changed the top tier of the skirt to 6.5" wide instead of 6". I wanted more of a size 4/5 skirt instead of a 3/4.

*I omitted the lining layer. I was in a hurry, and it was late! At least I finished it on the 23rd instead of Christmas Eve. I could still add a lining, but I probably won't. The skirt is fine without it.

*I got a generic ruffler foot from amazon and it worked pretty well. It didn't fit my machine perfectly, and it did occasionally make my needle screw come loose and then things would make loud clunking noises, but as long as I kept checking that and tightening it, it worked fine.

*One other thing I would change, if I make another one, is to use matching thread. The tiers are stitched with white thread and then I serged the seams with pink. It's what I had, and this wasn't thought out very far in advance of when it needed to be done, but next time I think it will look better with matching thread.

Here's an action shot!

2012 Sewing Review

2012-12-31T15:32:00.000-08:00

... plus one knitting project.

Happy end of the year! It was a challenging year in a lot of ways, and I'm glad it's over. Glad I'm almost 6 months out from smashing my finger. (By the way, don't ever do that.) I'm excited for a new year; I love this time of year with the possibilities and new start.

Hearts

2012-12-27T19:58:00.003-08:00

Hi! I hope you're having a good holiday season. Ready for the New Year?? :)

I got some cute pastel charm packs for Christmas and I've also been wanting to make paper pieced hexagons again. Here are some that I made yesterday:

I played around with some layouts in EQ and decided to make a heart, out of hexagons. Maybe more than one. Here's a long and triangular kind of hexagon heart:

(The big one, above, takes 59 hexagons. So you don't have to count.)

And here are some short chubby hearts:

I like the pointy ones... but I also like the smallest chubby ones. I think they would be cute on a tiny quilt. Each one is made of just 13 hexagons.

Let me know if you decide to make a hexagon heart!

Orange/Aqua Star Blocks

2012-12-23T16:52:00.002-08:00

Merry (almost) Christmas! And Happy Holidays too! :)
I finished the handmade gifts that were going to make the mailing deadline and sent them off. A couple people are going to get Happy New Year gifts from me. So the last few days I've had some fun working on a star quilt I started a while back. Here's a shot of most of the blocks so far:

I have finished 6 more blocks that aren't shown here, too.

I have been crowdsourcing advice on the color scheme for this quilt, trying to decide if I should add pink or not. I made up a block with some blush colored Mendocino octopi fabric, it's sort of peachy pink but has a dark orange octopus in it. So that color is in. I think. I'll have to lay the whole group out again next time it is light and we are home, and see how it looks.

We are excited for our 2nd annual Christmas Eve in Seattle traditions tomorrow; planning on visiting a fun beach and going to a very delicious restaurant too. I'm excited for Christmas and also happy for the solstice and the return of lighter days.

Also--it took me forever, but I finally uploaded photos of my November Believe Circle blocks. The theme this time was orange and gray improv:

Our group took the month of December off; I'm looking forward to next month!

Giveaway Winner! and Quilted Tote Bag

2012-12-10T17:11:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone! The winner of one of my patterns for the Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway was commenter number 81, Allison from Dreaming in Patchwork. I've emailed her to confirm her pattern choice and will send her the pattern she chooses as soon as I hear back!

I also wanted to show off my new quilt-as-you-go tote bag. It was very gray here today so the pictures are kind of dark.

And the other side:

I made it using the quilt-as-you-go process described on Elizabeth's blog. I used white thread for the quilting on the upper part of both sides of the bag, and navy blue thread on the dark bottom section.

Here's the inside:

I made a simple pocket with room for my phone and a few pens.

Overall I am pretty happy with the bag but there are a few things I'd change if/when I make one again. The handles... I'm still not sure I like them all colorful and think they might be better made from one fabric. Also I think the bag would be better with the handles attached slightly closer to the center of the bag. At least the handles are both the same length and it's a good length.

The lining isn't quite the perfect fit either, it's a bit too big, but I guess that's better than too small. I think next time I make a bag I'll cut the lining out to match the exterior pieces before assembling the interior.

Here's a closer view of the quilting:

The bag measures about 13" high and 16" wide (with my church binder and books inside) and it's just the size I wanted. On to last minute Christmas sewing!

Baby Quilt for Brayden

2012-12-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

Recently a group of blogging friends and I finished up a group baby quilt for Natalia's baby boy. She was given the quilt last week, which means it's time to blog about the group project now!

So, in order, here's how we completed this group quilt, with participants on both U.S. coasts, as well as in Utah. :)

We used a design by Amy E (Amy's Creative Side), who adapted a pattern from her book, Modern Basics, to make it baby quilt size.

Candy, of Candied Fabrics, dyed the beautiful fabric for the quilt.

Amy E and Amylouwho completed the quilt top.

Rita from Mochi Studios beautifully hand appliqued the baby's name.

And when it got to me it was time for quilting.

First off I had to press the quilt back and top. Isn't this fabric amazing?

This is the back of the quilt. I love it.

And here's the front:

I love how the colors pop against the blue background.

I decided to quilt a squared-off pattern that would be called "loopy" if it was done without the square corners. It was a new quilting design to me and it went pretty well, but it can be a challenge to quilt square corners when you're used to quilting curves.

(quilting action shot)

In the colored rectangles, I quilted outlines and X's, using my walking foot.

This photo, and the rest of the photos were taken after the quilt was washed and had shrunk up a bit. I like how the square loops turned out but next time I do them I will try out a larger scale.

Also, I hand quilted around the letters using 2 strands of embroidery floss.

After the quilting was done, I bound the quilt using 4 of the fabrics from the colored rectangles (there wasn't enough turquoise, but it turned out fine without it.) Here's the finished project!

And the back:

It was fun to plan out this group project and to have it turn out so well! You can see the adorable baby with his quilt here!