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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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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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!

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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!

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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!

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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.

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What's In a Name

I had a tiny handful of WIPs unfinished in 2014 and my name tag for my guild meetings was one of them. I did manage to finish it up just in time for our January meeting!

I didn't have much of a plan in creating this. I started with a small white rectangle of Kona white, apx 3.5x5, and just added my favorite scraps until I was happy with how they looked. I moved the whole mess onto a piece of scrap batting and backing. I free motion quilted the little scraps in place starting with those closest to the back. There was a little deconstructing and reconstructing involved with that. I free motion embroidered my name to the dark teal solid with a piece of stabilizer behind it and then attached it to the top of all the other scraps using the special stitch, which reminds me of bird footsteps, along the bottom and straight stitch around the top and sides. That was my second attempt at my name... the first attempt had a better R at the end but messier is other places. Hope its legible! Or close enough! I mean really, its the fun colors and prints that matters the most isn't it!?

And look, there's that design wall I was yacking about awhile back. Seems like a good place to hang it up so I don't forget to take it along... we'll see if that works anyways! Sort of brightens up the space too!

I don't think the Kona white was entirely necessary but it forced me to stay within my limitations otherwise I would have just making it bigger and bigger - I had lots of other 'favorite' scraps waiting in the wings. As it is I'm already going to need a bigger chest to display this beauty! I didn't think to measure that...

I backed it with more little birds and attached a scrap piece of teal binding... always love a teal binding!

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Holiday Mini Improv Quilts and Dog Progress

Lots of catching up this week after the holiday last week! I've made quite a bit of progress on one of my dog quilts. The grass and sky have been pieced. I've cut all of the applique pieces using Wonder Under 805 which I have used since Steam a Seam II disappeared earlier this year although it looks to be back now; if anyone has given the new stuff a try I'd love to hear about it. I have just a few applique pieces left to attach including the eyes which are the most difficult to place. Temporarily I'm using scotch tape to attach them... and hoping I don't run over the tape with the iron!

This gal had some pretty floppy ears with the left one laying flat and the right one flipping out a little. I decided to give the right one a little dimension and added some fluff between the layers. I had worried about the batik dog fabric as I don't use a lot of batik but I think it really works here.

I do my applique with my Pfaff (love her!). It can be a slow process especially on rounded corners where the fabric needs turned every couple of stitches. Maybe I won't do such round-y letters next time!?! I'm using both Mettler and Aurifil threads to do the applique.

This will be my third time making this quilt. So far I'm really liking the 'Hildy' version!

Holiday Mini Improv Quilts

Just before Halloween I did a custom set of mini Ghastlies quilts for a client. Now there is a matching set of Christmas Ghastlies mini quilts! 

I love doing improv with the Ghastlies; you don't really know where you're going until you've arrived. They are all different but coordinate well together. They have been shipped off just in time for the holidays! I can't get over the gold polka dot fabric by Dear Stella; I lucked out and had a few large scraps of the gold and red snowflake fabric that went really well the the gold polka dots too.

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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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