Green Bay Packers Quilt

Whew I made it! I finished my modern Green Bay Packers quilt just in time for the first game of the season. Green and gold fabrics are Cotton and Steel basics; I would use them again for another Packers quilt.

This football quilt was one of the most challenging quilts I've ever completed! I'd put it in the modern sampler category with the different sized blocks, asymmetry and traditional blocks combined with improv blocks.

I really like the football blocks - I didn't have a pattern but I was inspired by cluck cluck sew's Touchdown pattern so I just winged it. I also added one great big Swoon block, starburst blocks, and letters from the Spell it with Moda tutorials which are all over the place on the internet and sort of tricky to find. The rest of the blocks are random improv or simple pinwheels, HSTs and hourglass blocks. The flying geese blocks were made with the Quilt in a Day ruler in 4 and 8 inch blocks - this is the first time I have used the ruler following the instructions - boy did that make ALL the difference! I can't see using anything else for flying geese... I must acquire all sizes of the ruler now. Crisp points every time!

The tiny cross block is 3 inches finished, very small pieces in that block! I went with straight line quilting every 1 1/4 inches in a gold colored Mettler thread. Since I backed the quilt in chocolate colored minky I wanted something that would't give my machine lots of trouble due to the impending deadline. I also did a scrappy binding in solid green and gold fabrics. It measures 55x57 - great size for game day

Although I truly hate to part with it I decided to donate this quilt to Shorewood Cocker Rescue annual fundraiser this weekend in southern Wisconsin. The chocolate backing goes great with the footballs and also our beautiful foster Mya, who has been with us since May of this year waiting for her forever home!

We have a very busy weekend planned - Rescue fundraiser on Saturday, football on Sunday and today is my birthday so celebrating of course! Wine, cake and yummy food I hope! My hubby brought home an orange flower arrangement with gerbera daisies, roses, sunflowers, lilies and other things I can only identify as very pretty so we are off to a good start!

This quilt is an adventure and most definitely one of my favorite quilts of the year!

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Sunday Swoon

I finally made a swoon block!

I guess you can also tell it's football time in Wisconsin!!  We love our Packers!

I have been working forever on this quilt top and finally finished it up yesterday, which felt really amazing! My initial plan was to make a quilt to donate to an upcoming fundraiser for the Cocker Spaniel Rescue that my hubby and I volunteer for. Not sure where it is going to end up since the event is coming up in just a couple of weeks. I didn't plan on all of the planning time that would go into this quilt. Lots of math and graph paper and pondering.... Sometimes I would head down to sew and just move things around on my design wall for awhile... no sewing.

I tried to keep most of the blocks to dimensions of 3 inches. The footballs, letters and flying geese were oddballs... in other words, lots of oddballs to work around! Borders are always the answer! The block above is a 6 inch starburst.

Almost all of the fabrics are Cotton and Steel. I'm really like the metallic and little bird fabrics - although the star in the corner was really bright for the photo, jeesh! This is one of the loudest quilts I've ever made but I'm really happy with how it has turned out so far!

Love the tiny string blocks on the side - great use for all of the scraps I made with this quilt. The letters are from the Spell it with Moda free tutorials. I'm planning straight line quilting and a football brown minky backing to pull it all together. It should be super warm for game days!

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August do.Good Stitches Block Tutorial

I cannot believe it is my turn to be queen bee again! This summer is flying right by. July was crazy! Vacation, visitors, more visitors and a couple of custom quilt orders! It's no wonder August snuck right up! Here's a quick block tutorial that we'll be using for Promise Circle do.Good Stitches this month.

I recently came across a similar design done with paper piecing by Amy Ellis.... I haven't quite mastered paper piecing yet so I figured out another way to make it.

Materials for one 6 1/2 inch unfinished star block:
White background fabric
4 - 1.5in x 3in rectangles
Plus white scraps to complete the points

Fabric for stars
4 - 3 inch squares
1 - 1.5 inch square

Take one of your 3-inch squares and measure 1 1/4 inches on both sides of a single corner. On the wrong side place a small mark at each of the 1 1/4 inch lines. Do this for each of the four 3-inch squares.

Grab your ruler and, starting at the opposite corner of the corner with the two marks, draw a straight line to each of the marks. These will be your sew lines.

Grab a white scrap and place it right sides together with your marked square. Follow one of the sew lines. Before sewing you might want to take a quick peek and make sure you have enough white fabric to re-trim the square, this part can be a little tricky the first few you make.

Next trim the excess off 1/4 inch from your sew line

Open and press

Trim off excess white scrap so that you have a 3 inch square again

Do the same with your second marked sew line so that you end up with a 3 inch square with your color fabric in the center surrounded by your white background fabric. Complete this for each of the four 3-inch squares.

Next assemble the star blocks.

Trim block to 6 1/2 inches

Hopefully I captured all the important steps - if you have questions let me know and I'll be sure to answer them! I've added a link to this starburst quilt block tutorial to my Tutorials page.

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Promise Circle Finished Quilt

I've finished my first do.Good Stitches quilt with the amazing Promise Circle! This quilt was featured at My Quilt Infatuation Needle and Thread Thursday!!

Do you see the green grass up there - spring is really, really here, finally! My month to be the quilter was February; I selected improv log cabins in hot pink, navy, teal, white, mustard and mint.  I'm thinking I may need to do another quilt in these colors soon.

I love doing improv log cabins; sometimes randomness is just the thing!

It was such fun to see the different fabrics and variations of the block from the rest of the Circle.

I quilted in a meandering pattern, my practicing has been paying off! For the binding I selected a textured solid in mustard from Andover, I think the actual color is called Hay Stack which is fitting.

I pieced a backing from solid mint and hot pink flowers with tiny lime colored centers, all from my stash. It feels so good to finish a quilt without buying anything! Just another one of the good things about do.Good Stitches - stash management.

The blocks were 12.5 inches unfinished, some contained one large log cabin and some made up of four small log cabins. The finished quilt measures around 50x68. do.Good Stitches is an online charity quilting bee; this finished quilt will be heading to Enchanted Makeovers. One more indoors shot - these bright colors were tough to capture... probably needed to push more buttons on my camera... which ones though?!?

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Free Motion Quilting

At February's modern quilt guild meeting last week I brought home a charity quilt top that needed quilting. Members can take home blocks to be pieced, quilt tops to be quilted, and/or quilts to be bound. The finished quilts will be donated to a local charity. I'm in need of some serious free motion quilting practice so I chose a quilt top that needed quilting.

This charity quilt is made up of 15 large squares in different shades of grey with pops of bright colors. I selected an Aurifil thread in a very light blue/grey which goes well with all of the blocks. I'm planning to quilt it using motifs that I've never put on a quilt before. It was just me and Angela Walters Free Motion for Beginners this weekend. So far I have practiced concentric circles (the type that are supposed to touch), pebbles, flowers, loopys, and paisleys. I have to say that some of these seem to look much better in photos than in person! So far the most difficult for me is the paisley. My thread kept breaking on this fmq design, likely because of my inconsistent speed and/or wild changing of direction while quilting. It's also easy to get trapped in a place that you can't get out of with this pattern. I ended up missing a few big areas and had to go back fill in later too. That said, I can see using this in small spaces again because it does look pretty good.

I started with the pebbles in one of the wonky star blocks. Pebbles take forever! I can't imagine doing pebbles in that scale all over on a large quilt - if I decide to do that on an entire quilt its going to be stones or large rocks for me! On the plus side they look good and were pretty easy to do for a beginner. The one motif that I really want to perfect is the concentric circle. For me it isn't easy to get those circles to touch... and I never quite get close enough to the edge so I have big gaps that I end up filling in later... and usually in a strange way. I also have several enormous circles... how'd that happen?! I'm thinking each row will need a few circles because I'd like to add that to my list of 'go to' free motion quilting patterns.

I think I perfected the flower pattern. I could see using this design on a large quilt. It's easily the most fun pattern so far. 

And the current 'easiest' free motion quilting pattern so far is loopys. I've seen this fmq pattern on many full size quilts and wanted to use it for awhile but never had just the right quilt top for it. I would use this pattern again, its quick and effective. I imagine it will be even better once its washed and crinkly.  

I have eight blocks finished so far. One of the things I noticed after an afternoon of quilting my muscles started to fatigue, once that happened most of my control went out the window... my lines were shaky, I couldn't stay within the boundaries, round things were square, square things were round, you get the idea... even though I had more energy mentally, my muscles were done and I had to take a break. 

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Doggone Progress

I've still been playing catch up from our trip to California last week. My family did Thanksgiving last weekend so we were out of town again. Hoping to catch my breath this week! I did manage make a trip to the grocery store, the first in three weeks! And make some progress on my current dog quilt

I've been struggling with selecting the base for the dogs so I've left it off for now. The rest of the pups should be finished by the end of the week so I've got to figure it out!  Below is the base for the dogs; it sort of acts like a colored sashing. Here's a pic from the last time I made this quilt.

The base is a pretty major component since it's repeated in every block. Below are a couple of options I have auditioning on my sewing room floor aka center stage at my house!

Coral solid or print

Mustard solid or print with teal

I think both the mustard and coral prints are a little bit busy for this quilt. I'm also still thinking about the borders and binding. Usually I have all these things pulled together before even starting.

There are a number of green, teal and blue colored dogs and hardly any coral, grey or mustard which is why I'm leaning towards the less dominant colors as the base. I've also considered doing bases of all different colors??  Thoughts? Which do you like?

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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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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