Dreamcatcher {a finished quilt}

This quilt was made with Kate Spain’s new Daydreams line from The Intrepid Thread.  The colors are deep purple and pinkish corals with a hint of orange thrown in for good measure.

I modified the Criss-Crossed Quilt from February to make this quilt appear to have wonky 4-patch blocks, like this:

Or wonky crosses like this:

I don’t know which one my eye sees better when I look at the quilt.  But either way I like it!

What do you think of the texture of the quilting?  This double loop pattern came straight out of Angela Walters’s first free motion quilting book.  I never was able to do loops on my domestic machine, but I practiced on a drawing pad and then drew a diagram on an index card which I taped right on the front of my longarm machine.  After a few minutes I was able to take the index card off.  My brain knew what it was doing (for the most part).  Of course my quilting is nowhere near as good as Angela’s, but not too shabby for a first try!

The back is pieced with leftover gray fabric and pink striped fabric long forgotten but re-discovered to finally fulfill its destiny as the back of a quilt, along with a big section of Arcadia in Scarlet.

Arcadia features hummingbirds, rabbits, butterflies, and roosters and has such a fanciful feeling.  One thing is for sure, pieced backs always take longer.  I put this one together with four girls running amuck through the house this past Saturday and, for the hour or two it took, questioned my sanity several times, but the effect is worth the effort in the end…right?

I framed the cloth label in leftover purple and coral.  This quilt is for Veronica so I will write her name on there with an indelible fabric marker and date it.

She loves the quilt and even volunteered for a photo using it.

It finishes at 70” square.  The binding is Kona Punch.  The lattice is Kona Silver and the background is mostly Kona Shadow, but I ran out and had to improvise with some other grays from my stash.  I owe one to Bea for coming up with the idea of ombre.  How did she even know that word???!!!  I tried to cluster the darks in the bottom corner and have the color attenuate into light gray.

What do you think?  Would you classify this as a modern quilt?  Wonky with an edge?  I loved every part of making this quilt and hope it shows.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts and Fort Worth Fabric Studio on Friday. 

Endgame

definition: the final stages of sewing together a quilt top

I don’t know how to play chess, but that word can apply to quilt making too.  It always pops into my mind the minute I start collecting all the blocks off the floor in careful order, labeling each pile with a post it note and pinning the stack just so.  Then heading to my sewing machine to piece together the rows.  On one hand, it’s the most boring part of quilt making for me, but it’s also exciting as I feel my heart flutter each time I join together another row and more of the quilt top is revealed, bit by bit.

Just last night I had a realization that my sewing skills have vastly improved over the past few months.  I sat down to my machine, lowered my presser foot and needle, and put the petal to the medal.  The speed control was on high, and it wasn’t fast enough.  That’s when it dawned on me that I had the speed lever all the way to the right.  Little by little, over the past few months, I’d been sliding  it over, not even thinking about it.  For years I’d been plodding along on the slowest setting possible, and even that felt a little fast sometimes.  Now I am wondering, can this machine sew any faster??? 

Today I had to head out to Joann’s for a few supplies and lucky me, I came upon this Kona chartreuse remnant (1 yard for $3.20) and a Dear Stella basketweave fat quarter.  Did you know Joann’s sometimes has name brand fat quarters in their bins?  It’s hit or miss, but I’ve certainly found some good deals over the years. 

The Kona chartreuse will come in handy because it seems like every single person I know is having a baby boy in May or July.  I love this shade of green with a dark blue or turquoise.

I also picked up a few stash builders (two blues, a cream, and a gray) and the rest of the bolt of some owl fabric.  It will make a cute quilt backing someday, right? 

I’m hoping to have another quilt finished up this weekend so I can get started on these baby quilts.  The first shower is in two weeks, so I need to get my game on!  I was thinking of making a coordinating basket for the baby’s dresser.  Any ideas of what I could put in it?  Shampoo and lotion?  Washcloths?  Board books?

Daydreams Quilt aka “Spine”

I won a copy of “Sunday Morning Quilts” from Connecting Threads earlier this year.  This is my favorite quilting book ever!  I love all the quilts in the book, and especially the part where the authors give ideas to make the quilt your own—things you can do to make your quilt unique and one of a kind.

When I saw this quilt in the book, I knew I had to make it.  I tried to follow the spirit of using up scraps to make this quilt, so I used mostly 1/4 yard cuts that I had in my stash.  In fact, I ended up making so many stripes that I have enough left over to make another quilt. 

The fabric I used is called Woodland by Natalie Lymer.  The fairies and toadstools and gnome homes are just so adorable!  The finished quilt measures 61 x 73, not quite a twin, but I have to quilt this on my home machine, so that was really the biggest size I felt comfortable trying to quilt.

See, I am giving this quilt as part of a birthday gift today to a five year old neighbor.  This will mark the first time I’ve given away a quilt to anyone but a family member.  I’m not even sure my neighbors know I quilt!  I am a little nervous about giving it away because it’s not perfect.  My fmq could be a little better, and the binding is not super, but it’s probably the best I’ve ever done.  There’s not a lot of waviness and the stitching looks good.

The background is Kona aqua.  I used spray basting which I will always use in the future.  It made the basting so easy and fast and there was virtually no shifting when I quilted it.  Trying to use up my stash, I used several big pieces of leftover fabric from other projects to piece the back.  And I even used some leftover thread from other projects to do the quilting.  I wasn’t sure what color to use, so I used up two (yes 2!!!) spools of rainbow Sulky thread that would be perfect for a little girl.

The binding is a super awesome Quilter’s Candy polka dot from Connecting Threads.  The little girl who this quilt is going to loves the color green—even her bedroom is painted green.  Then a few days ago she informed me that her favorite color is now red.  Uh-oh!  There wasn’t much red in this quilt, so I knew the binding would have to be red and this polka dot fabric finished it off perfectly.  I really hope she likes it.  I haven’t washed it because I want it to look crisp and new when I give it to her.  I’ll include a couple Shout color catchers in the gift bag!

I am linking this up to Amanda Jean’s linky party celebrating everything scrappy.