Orange You Glad It's Finished?

Well I sure am!  The Vertical Chevron Quilt is finally finished. This quilt will be a crib quilt for a special addition coming later this fall/early winter. It measures right around 32x48.

The last time I mentioned this quilt it had been quilted and I was awaiting a binding selection. We decided on the Stitched Road Granite by Art Gallery - what a great binding this made!

This quilt is made up of fabrics from my stash. Since teal is one of my favorite colors and I am always drawn to teals when just browsing I had ample teals. I did have to purchase most of the bright orange fabrics as I didn't have many of my own although I knew I wanted to take a look at a few fabrics by Lily Ashbury, she has amazing selections when looking for fabrics saturated in colors especially pinks, orange and greens. The white paisley on orange is one of her fabrics from the Folklore line which I adore! I headed down to my lqs and found some great Botanics in tangerine that went great with this quilt as well.

This particular crib quilt was straight line quilted and lined with a super soft minky dot backing in Charcoal. Thankfully I did not experience the minky pulling through to the white front fabrics this time around! Remember the dog quilt with they navy minky - I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. Thankfully everything worked out just as it is supposed to.

Perfect for a winter baby! Since I enjoyed working with these fabrics so much and had a few scraps leftover, I went ahead and made a coordinating pillow using the fabrics from the quilt top. This pillow was featured at Quilt Story: Fabric Tuesday!!!

If you guessed this pillow had an invisible zipper you would be right on. Honestly I will use every opportunity to practice the invisible zipper! The backing of this pillow is coordinating charcoal minky dot. The pillow is a bit of a surprise so I hope it will go over well.

This was the first 60 degree triangle quilt I've done. This pillow was small - only 16 inch square. The triangles were '3 inch finished' - I'm still not really sure what that refers to but I saw it on the ruler I was using. I'm thinking it must be the horizontal top (or bottom) of the triangle as my math was way off and I ended up needing way more rows both horizontally and vertically to make up a usable pillow sham. I did straight line quilting across all the seams, which is a look I really like on this type of quilt.

Don't mind the lumps - I don't have a 16 inch pillow insert so its just some folded up towels in there!

Link Parti's 

Take a look at the linki parti's I get down with here or by clicking on the Linki Parti's link above. Linking up to Stitch by Stitch, Quilt Story My Quilt Infatuation, Richard and Tanya Quilts, Whoop Whoop Friday, Quokka Quilts and crazy mom quilts 

Best,
Heather

The Same Breakfast Every Day

I didn't quite make my goal for Finish Up Friday - at least not the goal that I had set out to complete! I got pretty close though and I'm not 'in' to rushing just to get done especially if the quilt is for someone else. I did finish the quilt top and added straight-line quilting to the Vertical Chevron Quilt, formerly known as the aqua, orange, grey quilt (I also named the quilt!). Just the binding and lots of clean-up; minky dust is absolutely everywhere! I'm waiting on the new mama to let me know about the binding and I'm planning something a little extra before I send this one out the door next week.... I am just not finished with these pretty fabrics yet! This quilt will be the crib quilt for a special addition this November/December.

Speaking of babies - our son Tyler has been at Marine Core boot camp since August. Sounds like things are going alright for him; he doesn't have a lot of time to write and hasn't been allowed to call since the first week. He is not used to the '20 second showers' and 'same thing for breakfast every single day,' but says that he 'doesn't mind the yelling' - I guess we must have broke him in for the yelling bit. And what's so wrong with eating the same thing every day for breakfast? I've been eating half an English muffin with peanut butter for breakfast for literally years! Sometimes I have my peanut butter with oatmeal or steel cut oats instead, but always, always peanut butter. Moving on. He was quite sick when he got there and had to go on Rest but has been feeling much better lately. We'll be seeing him on his graduation from boot camp in early November... it sorta feels like a long way off even though September has just flown by. When he left in August he only had the clothes on his back, no cellphone, gaming system, favorite snacks, not a thing. After graduation we should be able to speak with him more regularly as I think he can have his cellphone back. Here we all are at his 'Good-bye & kick-ass Tyler' party this August - it is one of my favorite pictures ever! And look, there's my hubby, sans the dog costume!

And here's the cake, because there is always cake! That's how we roll

Link Parti's 

Take a look at the linki parti's I get down with here or by clicking on the Linki Parti's link above. Linking up to Sew Can She, TwoLoQuilting, Blossom Heart Quilts, Fresh Squeezed Fabrics, Sew Fresh Quilts and Freshly Pieced 

Best,
Heather

A Winning Streak!

I have really been on a winning streak lately... it's a little creepy. I hope it stops soon because you know how things have a way of evening themselves out.... and I'd hate to see what the opposite of this streak is!  On my birthday post I mentioned winning a gift certificate from Pink Chalk Studios - an awesome prize! Reminds me that I need to do a little shopping over there...  A week later at the dog walk I won a raffle prize which was about a years supply of dog treats, also very awesome.  A couple of weeks ago I visited Nancy Zieman's blog - now Nancy is a Wisconsin sewing staple, she also is a huge deal at the Madison Quilt Expo which I mentioned in an earlier post - Nancy was giving away all kinds of awesome stuff to promote her new book Quick Column Quilts. I headed back over there on Saturday to take a look at the winner list and wouldn't you know it I won the mother of all prizes, a new Baby Lock Tempo Sewing Machine!! There was much screaming, squealing and heart palpitations followed by taking deep breaths. All I can say is wow! Maybe I should just buy a lottery ticket or two just to make sure the streak is over...

Quilts

Since Nancy's new book is about column quilts I thought it would be appropriate to share a recent column quilt finish of mine. The Glimma Quilt was a kit from Fat Quarter Shop - they have the best kits over there! 

This quilt was supposed to have an a white border between the green stripe fabric and the binding, which by the way is Michael Miller Couture in Mermaid. It was already big enough for a twin size bed so I nixed the extra border....  The fabrics are from Glimma by Lotta Jansdotter.  There were lots of scraps leftover so I pieced this backing with Kona Ash and Michael Miller Couture Mauve. I like the backing enough that I would use it as a front! 

 

And, all folded up nicely - gosh I love a teal binding! 

My favorite part of this quilt is the quilting - it took forever, but totally worth it. I free motion quilted the sashing in a random square pattern. I quilted each block differently. The texture is really cool. It's killing me not to wash it to find out how it will look when washed, but I've added this quilt to my shop so I'd rather send it to its new home crisp and new! Someone else will be able to enjoy the amazing crinklyness of this one. Yes, I am sure that crinklyness is a word - I have just used it. The solids totally show off the wonky, improv-y quilting on the backing. Here's a close up of the free motion quilting on the front

When finished with the quilt I still had enough scraps to make another project. I used them to create this improv log cabin block quilted pillow. Actually I pieced and quilted this pillow before quilting the bed quilt... it was also a bit of a practice piece since I hadn't used this square quilting pattern before!  

And I still have more leftover scraps from this kit! Fat Quarter Shop is always generous with their kits - thankfully because I've had plenty of whoopsies  and needed that extra fabric! Sometimes I have even used up all the fabric! I can't say enough good things about Fat Quarter Shop! The Glimma Quilt and Pillow are both available in my shop. 

With all the excitement I've still been able to make some great progress on my teal, orange and grey quilt. Blocks are all lined up on my design wall - ok, its actually the floor - and several rows have been sewn together! I hope to have it ready for Finish Up Friday. I don't have any progress photos - I sew in the basement and it gets dark early now so my photo time has been greatly reduced... And now you know, I sew in the dark, in the basement, I am a vampire sewer. Oh well, suits me just fine and I'm happy to have my own space even if it is dark and in the basement. Summer has returned to Wisconsin again... I've been out enjoying it so progress has been a little slow. I did some last minute tweaking of the fabric so I'll leave you with that

Link Parti's 

Take a look at the linki parti's I get down with here or by clicking on the Linki Parti's link above. Linking up to Quilt Story, Fresh Squeezed Fabrics, Freshly Pieced, My Quilt Infatuation, Two Little Aussie Birds, Richard and Tanya Quilts, Can I get a Whoop Whoop Friday Vals Quilting Studio and Sew Fresh Quilts.