Wonky Rainbow Burst Mini Quilt

I could not be any further behind with my blogging!! I'm here and sewing... although sewing lots of things that I've already shared here before. I am finally caught up with custom order requests and even managed to squeak in a Caribbean vacation this month with the hubby. Back in December I mentioned joining a rainbow mini quilt swap on Instagram. It was my first swap and so much fun! This quilt was featured at Richard and Tanya Quilts!

I made this mini quilt over winter break. My partner mentioned that she liked Heather Bailey and low volume fabrics. I had a jelly roll of Up Parasol by Heather Bailey and a bunch of prints from my stash that played really well together.

Thankfully my partner also likes wonky and since I've been head over heels in love with Greenleaf Goods wonky pinwheel tutorial for awhile it was a chance to try the pattern on a mini scale and a fresh layout similar to Wavelengths by Lee at Freshly Pieced. If anyone is wanting to see detailed construction on this mini let me know I'd be happy to put a tutorial!!

Capturing the rainbow was the trickiest part of the mini but this layout finally won me over! I had the perfect backing for a quilting enthusiast. The swap required a label, which is something I never do, but it does make it special doesn't it?! Plus I got to use my 'fancy stitches' on my Pfaff to attach the label, something I almost never get to do while quilting. I should make more labels I think...

 I quilted the mini in one big concentric circle. I started at the teal center and did a free motion circle until I reached the edge of the quilt and then I switched over to my regular walking foot to quilt the rest, restarting at the end of each arch. I changed thread colors with the rainbow.

On the theme of rainbows I added a rainbow binding too

I sent my mini to Australia several weeks ago and recently received my swap package; head on over to instagram to check out the amazing mini package I received!  Can't wait to join a new swap now that I'm finally caught up with almost everything.... except blogging!

Link Parti's 

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Purple Pinwheel Quilt

At February's modern quilt guild meeting I was the winner of block lotto! Each month we make quilt blocks and bring them to our meeting where a winner is chosen randomly. The winner gets to take all of the blocks home to make something amazing!

January colors were shades of purple with a little bit of pink thrown in. There were two pinwheel block variations which added a fun little twist. We did a modern pinwheel

and traditional pinwheel

The blocks were fairly large and there were a good 20 or so. The simple thing to do would have been to just put them together but I wasn't feeling that... and I wasn't planning on a great big quilt. I decided to deconstruct the traditional pinwheels by trimming them from 11.5 inch blocks to 6 inch blocks. With the extra fabrics I put together 6 inch improv blocks and then laid them out haphazardly with the larger modern pinwheels. One of my goals this year was to make a quilt with differently sized blocks; this was just the ticket!

I loved that this project forced me to do things I wouldn't normally think of!!  Like use purple for instance, like a lot of purple! I decided early on that this quilt was going into my own collection. Since our living room is yellow with purple accents this was going to need a little bit of yellow... with my massive mustard crush lately my selected shade of yellow can't be much of a surprise!

I managed to get snails, mushrooms, flowers and birds into the backing! A pieced backing of course!

The quilting was done with my walking foot in a random wavy pattern in light orchid aurifil thread. It took quilt awhile to do but I do love how it looks in the end. Can't wait to see what it looks like all washed and crinkly.

It didn't seem right to leave the front a mustard free zone so I selected a mustard colored thread to attach the solid purple binding!  Just right!

This finished out to be a small lap size quilt, around 40x45. I'm planning to take it to our next guild meeting later this week and then we can use it!

Link Parti's 

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Promise Circle February Blocks

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I was invited to participate in do.Good Stitches Promise Circle and I’m still pretty excited about that! My month to be the quilter is February which came up really fast! Yay, so glad it’s here already! I wanted to keep it simple since I only had a few days to come up with a color scheme and block. I decided on improv log cabins in two variations. I first dove into improv log cabins when putting together my pink log cabin pillow – those three little blocks were super fun. Promise Circle quilts benefit orphaned children through Threading Hope.

I selected colors in hot pink, mustard, white, navy and mint/light teal.

One of my 2015 goals was to put together a quilt with different sized blocks – making a quilt with several other people seemed like a good opportunity to get at that. The ‘large block variation’ is 12.5x12.5 unfinished. I started with a 3 inch square in the middle and added strings in varying widths between 1 - 2.5 inches with no particular rhyme or reason although I did alternate colors at each turn and kept the logs somewhat straight instead of wonky.

The ‘small block variation’ is made up of 4- 6.5x6.5 unfinished improv log cabin blocks with a total unfinished size of 12.5x12.5 just like the large block. I started with a 2.5 inch square in varying colors and used the same pile of strings for the large block variation using mostly 1 - 1.5 inch wide strings although there were a few that were wider.

Each bee mate will make 2 blocks. I plan to let my bee mates decide which block variation(s) they want to make. That way it will be a fun surprise to see what shows up! I’ve never made a whole quilt with improv log cabins as it seems daunting but I have always admired them. The finished quilt will be donated to charity and should be ready in April.

If you are a beginner to improv log cabins take a look at the tutorial by Heather Jones at Sew4Home My blocks are a little more scrappy and had smaller beginning center squares but the general idea for construction is the same. Do what you like bee mates – it’s going to be amazing no matter what!

Link Parti's 

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Silly String Quilt In Progress

Just before the New Year I started a 'leader and ender' project using up a few pink and teal strips from other projects.

After a lot of hmming and hawing and moving pieces around I finally decided on a layout. An original design, yay! I shall call it Silly String. Just because.

I selected a cute print from Life is Tweet by Stephanie Marrot, for the backing and basted it. These polka dot feathers are so cute! The lime and purple give the quilt a little more color too.

And then wouldn't ya' know I couldn't make up my mind how to quilt it. At all! I even took to instagram to get some insta-feedback! Still nothing. I've never had a quilt sit and sit just starting at me for days before....  Phht. Last night I had a few minutes and thought darn it, I'm just going to meander this thing and get it off my floor.... I seriously need some meandering practice anyways!

Not too bad - hardly any square loops this time! I had purchased a Supreme Slider from Amazon and used it for the first time on this quilt. Wow, I have been missing out - no wonder I had square loops, I haven't been able to move my fabric very well. It's hard to know the difference until you quilt with it and without it. I had initially bought the Supreme Slider for quilting with minky which is a little harder to move than cotton fabric. Hope it works this well for minky too! Maybe I can even tackle the pebble or bubble quilting someone had mentioned!

Now onto the binding... which I had selected quite awhile ago while I pondered the quilting. I was thinking of a teal with white pin dot - same fabric in the quilt top.  Although now seeing the backing with the front I'm wondering if lime or purple might work and bring it all together.... Or if that would just be strange?!  I might need to hold an instagram binding audition.

Link Parti's 

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January Guild Meeting

Last month I joined my local modern quilt guild and have two sewing projects in progress for the upcoming January meeting this week. The first is our January block for block lotto. I'm not exactly sure how block lotto goes but I gather we bring blocks (or a block) using a specified quilt block and color palette. A winner is selected and then the person gets to keep all the blocks to make something. Sounds like fun! This month we kept the block simple doing HSTs in red, aqua and tan with white. I'm not too sure how many we are to bring so I just did a few until I got bored...

Pretty! I had not thought of bringing in tan with red and aqua before. Learning already!

Some time ago (last year?) the guild did name badges. The group was 'warned' to wear them to upcoming meetings - I hope the warning meant something good is going to happen! Since I'm new I didn't make one with the group but figured I better go ahead and have one... plus no one knows my name so probably a good idea.

Mine is kind of an eclectic mix of my favorites. Lots of cute fabric scraps in solids, polka dots, birds and whimsy prints from some of my favorite designers like Dear Stella and Art Gallery, plus others. Mustard, teal and pink of course! I even broke out the fancy stitches using my Pfaff, haven't put that on a quilt before! Pow!

Link Parti's 

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Wonky Work In Progress

It has been a busy week! Hardly any sewing, boo. We have been in California - our son graduated from Marine bootcamp, yay! We had a few days in the sun before returning to the cold weather. Thankfully no snow yet. Before I left I did manage to decide on my next project and even sew up a block to see if I liked 'the plan.'  I stumbled across the wonky pinwheel tutorial by Greenleaf Goods; I really liked the idea and saw a number of variations on Pinterest. It took me awhile, seriously days, to decide on what I wanted to do here. I finally decided on solid Kona Navy surrounded by teal prints. Yum!

I like it! I'm thinking about doing a larger starting square; these were 3.5 inches and seems like it might take forever and ever before a quilt would emerge. My test block above is 6.5 square, it will be 6 when finished. The benefit of using the smaller starting squares is that you can use up even small scraps... a trade off, forever and ever before a finish or using up small scraps. Don't know, gonna have to ponder this one.

Using the dark centers is really no trouble at all, I just used my pink sewline to mark the lines

I can't wait until this is finished. I don't know what it will end up as but I'm excited to see! In the meantime I'm doing another dog quilt that will hang in a dog rescue! Instead of pastels the request for this quilt was 'bright and fun.' I had a couple of ideas, Lily Ashbury always comes to mind when I hear 'bright' but didn't think her awesome florals would work here. I decided on V and Co Simply Style. These fabrics are bright and fun and not too girly or boyish. I think the colors will really pop against a bright white background. I'm planning to use Kona White as the background fabric. I'm working on a plan for the background and borders.

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Country Girl Improv Quilt

Whew, it's finished and just in time for finish up Friday linking! What started out a quick and simple disappearing nine patch quilt turned improv quilt (here too) is finally finished. Really, I'm super glad it's done. I ended up deciding on the white minky backing with a pale pink binding. It is smaller than I originally planned but that's to be expected since I chopped out all the feather fabrics. It still measures 27x34 so baby quilt or nursery wall hanging size.

I'm happy I decided to go with the white minky instead of the charcoal. I've never made an entire quilt improv style. Tons of fun, hope to do it again... hopefully not because of another quilt disaster, err, quilt learning experience.

I think there will be a little country gal somewhere that will end up enjoying these little pink pigs! I've put this little quilt in my etsy shop.

Used my good ol' loopy loo free motion quilting for this one. It's my 'standby' fmq pattern. And here is the backing

Link Parti's 

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Flippin Quilt In Progress

I've made some good progress on the disaster nine patch, err, disappearing nine patch blocks I've deconstructed and put back together. In fact, I've got the top all put together! I realized during this process that I must have a design wall - all the cool kids do. The room I've been sewing in has long been a spare bedroom; however, we've lived here for four years and we've never had all spare bedrooms full. My hubby took down the bed and we temporarily hung a flannel lined tablecloth on the wall to use as my design wall. Yay! Now the room is just a sewing room. If we ever need to we can put the bed back up. It was a little sad actually as the bed was my sons childhood bed and before that it belonged to one of my brothers growing up... now its packed away waiting for another use.  Anyhoo... my design wall. I'm thankful I don't have to lay my quilts out on the floor anymore - this should significantly reduce the amount of dog hair I'm lint-rolling at the end of each quilt. One can hope anyways! Here's my first quilt top made using a design wall

This feels much better than my initial attempt at the nine patch. I'm going to try that pattern again using more than nine fabrics - seems like a great scrap quilt to use up loose charms.  This quilt measures about 27x34 a good size for a baby quilt or even a wall hanging. I spent some time last night pulling together binding and backing fabrics and came up with the following

Since the front is so busy I'm considering something simple for the back. I'm leaning towards the charcoal minky dot with one of the grey and white fabrics for the binding. The white minky leans towards vanilla which doesn't feel right on this quilt. Color inspiration

(source)

Link Parti's 

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Fixed it!

In my last post I mentioned the troubles I was having with my latest quilt. I got some good advice
(thanks ladies!) and pondered on the issues for a couple of days. I flipped the blocks around a few more time but it wasn't happening. I considered making dog crate quilts and liked the layouts for those a lot better. But it sorta felt like giving up... letting that pattern beat me and I just couldn't let that happen! I'm glad I didn't as I'm liking the new quilt blocks so much better

I'm actually a little bit in love with the new block. Whew - I fixed it!

I turned this into an improv parti! Yep, I whacked up those disappearing nine patch blocks totally randomly removing the feather fabric along the way... see what happens when you don't behave over here, watch out! Not to worry, there will be a use for the feathers, they are safe in my scrap bins. I'm planning a low-volume postage stamp quilt in the near future so it's only goodbye for now.

Planning to spend much of my weekend sewing this bunch of scraps, strips and remnants back together. I haven't made an entire quilt improv style so this will be fun. The bright pink and navy fabrics are by Dear Stella, the green is Tarragon by Kona.

Link Parti's 

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Best,
Heather

A Gaggle of Ghastlies!

Ok, 'gaggle' technically refers to at least five geese according to wikipedia.  I don't have five geese here but I do have five finished Ghastlies mini quilts!  Gaggle sounds appropriate anyways so totally using it... and with gusto! Here's the finished gaggle of Ghastlies mini quilts. This gaggle was featured at Richard and Tanya Quilts: Finish Up Friday!!!

The two minis on the top were made for Halloween last year. The three on the bottom were new additions this year. The little girl on the right gave me the most trouble, I think because of her sharp angle at the bottom but in the end she turned out just fine. My favorite is probably the fellow with the pink martini, followed by the gal with the umbrella. The backings were all done in coordinating prints - I love all of the backings!

These were a lot of fun to do and I'd love to do a full size quilt with this print in the future. I don't think I could bear to part with it though. I quilted these guys all in simple straight lines, some in the ditch, some in a top stitching fashion and some just-winging-it style.

I'm still hoping to finish my Ghastlies pillow cases before Halloween too. I hope I'm not saying that a month from now! Here's a peek at the pink scallop edging I created with my mom a couple weeks ago for the pillow cases

Before they are attached to the pillow cases they will be folded in half to create a double scallop or cut in half and then attached for a single scallop look. Not too sure how its going to work out just yet... In the meantime I've been working on my orange, teal and grey quilt project. The charcoal minky backing arrived yesterday from fabric.com. I have all the white squares marked down the center with a pencil line, just need some serious sewing machine time to sew together all the squares.

I'm looking forward to sewing the squares and my goal would be to have them all sewn together by the end of the weekend so that I can start sewing together blocks sometime next week. Looking forward to some fall activities this weekend, football, more football, and maybe even spending a little time at the apple orchard picking out mums, apples and winter squash! It feels like an apple crisp kind of weekend!

Link Parti's 

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Sew much to do!

I think it's fair to say that this weekend was our first fall weekend here in southern Wisconsin. We turned on the fireplace, I dug out my wool socks and flannel shirts, switched from white to red wine and made chili for the Packer game today - sounds like fall to me! I love fall so all is good! I had planned to work on my Ghastlies pillow cases this weekend but we had a busy Saturday. This was the weekend of the cocker spaniel fundraiser we have been looking forward to. We woke up around 5am on Saturday to make the two hour trek to the event. My hubby and I both volunteer for the rescue with a bunch of other great folks - we all worked hard yesterday and accomplished a lot. My hubby's favorite job for the event - Mascot.  He loves it!

The weather was cool but not rainy, there seemed to be a lot of people in attendance and an excellent time was had by all. My hubby and I came home with lots of goodies from the silent auction. The dog quilt I made sold in the silent auction too - It felt really good to have made something for the auction.  We have enough dog treats, toys and collars until the next event in 2015. I cannot tell you how cute our Laci and Peanut were when we unloaded the stuff and started unpacking. It was like Christmas for these guys. There are toys laying everywhere right now!  My favorite part about the event was taking our 12 year old Peanut to the lure course. If you aren't familiar with a lure course - it's an instinct testing event where a flag or squirrels tail (fake, fake, fake) is pulled around a large course on a string by a pulley system. Some dogs are in love with the 'chase' - Peanut loved the chase and the catch. For an older guy he bounded after that tail barking all the way until he caught it and then shook it up and then did it again, round and round he went. Laci understood the concept - she chased it but quickly decided it wasn't very lady-like to chase squirrel tails and sniffed the grass instead. They were both cute cute cute in their different ways!

Ghastlies Improv

Last year about this time I made two mini quilts using Ghastlies fabric by Alexander Henry. They ended up being my first improv blocks ever!

 

I especially like the guy on the right carrying the pink martini! I've had these two guys listed in my shop for just about a year and finally sold them on Friday. The buyer asked that I made three additional mini's to complete the set. Even though it wasn't the Ghastlies project I was planning on, it seemed like pretty good timing. My stuff can always come later (tell that to the material I bought for my purple spring throw pillows)! I got to work today on creating three different mini quilts, starting with the following prints from the Ghastlies fabric

Once I had my girls picked out and cropped from the fabric, I grabbed my scrap bins of orange and grey/black and got to work.

Each one will have a totally different personality. I've put together and ripped apart twice the 'pointing girl' on the left. For some reason her shape is tricky to me... or I just keep making really bad choices with her... maybe she isn't really pointing, but giving me the finger instead (the nerve!). I might take her apart again or scrap her altogether if she keeps it up. Ah hem, the other two are coming along quite nicely.

I also had some time to work on the teal, orange and grey bundle I showed you a couple weeks ago! Here's a little work from today on those pretty fabrics. I've ordered some charcoal grey minky to complete this quilt.

The Ghastlies mini's and teal, orange and grey quilt will be my wip this week. I plan to complete the mini's by Friday and hope to get a solid start on completing the teal, orange and grey quilt with a planned finish of sometime next week for that one.

Getting Linki With

Quilt Story: Fabric Tuesday
Sew Can She: Show off Saturday
Stitch by Stitch: Anything Goes Monday
Tweety Loves Quilting: MOP
Val's Quilting Studio

crazy mom quilts