The next level

I finished up a quilt for a friend’s daughter who is turning 9 (which means my oldest will  be turning 9 too—not ready for that yet).  This marks the first quilt I’ve quilted on my longarm with more than one design.  Usually I do an allover meandering pattern, probably the easiest way to quilt something for me.  Finally I felt experienced enough to dare something more complicated on my new machine.

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and this quilt is so busy that it’s really forgiving when I made a mistake.

Loops are really stressful for me because I get discouraged when they aren’t uniform.  This time they were much better looking.

I also quilted flowers in the center of the blocks.  I changed this photo to black and white because in color the stitches are really hard to see on the busy background.  (Which is nice because mistakes are harder to see!)

The sun is finally out after a few non-stop days of rain so photos of the finished quilt to come soon..

Linking up to Fort Worth Fabric Studio today.  Have a nice weekend!!!

Scrap Attack

Eeeeek!  A big orangish spider scurried out of my scrap basket when I was sorting through it to find scraps to make this mini.

I literally used all scraps (except the border and binding) for this project.  Even the back was technically a scrap—an old yellow linen shirt of mine from back when I worked that I hadn’t worn in years.

It was fun picking out scraps for this project.  I tried to find mostly 30’s repro fabric, but a few are solids or more contemporary (like the orange pot). 

I had a lot of problems making this mini.  I am going to hang it in my sewing room, but in a corner and I hope no one ever inspects it up close.  

The inspiration came from this magazine cover and I just kind of winged it.  I am linking this mini up to the Festival of Scrappiness at Stitched in Color.  Good luck to everyone who entered!!!

On a roll…

With a jelly roll quilt.  This quilt has been dubbed by my five year old “Roses of Beauty.”  She picked out a jelly roll at Joann’s earlier this year.  For some reason, she equates roses and flowers with the ideal of love—I’m pretty sure because of the Disney princesses.  Anyway, we made a quilt top from the book “Jelly Roll Quilts” that is basically Chinese Coins.  I think it’s called Bars of Gold in the book.  We had made the bars in the beginning of the summer, so I just added the light pink strips and border.  She picked that out too at the LQS.  It’s a Moda Bella solid.

Here’s a close-up of the fabrics:

I pieced the strips according to the directions in the pattern, but it was difficult to figure out a way to lay out the columns without two of the same prints being next to each other. If you look close there are 2 or 3 places where two of the bars are the same next to each other in the row.  Oh well!  I also noticed that all the sample quilts in the book “Jelly Roll Quilts” have wider borders and thinner sashing than the pattern.  I just went with the 3 1/2 inch all the way around as the pattern says.  The top quilt is the pattern diagram and the bottom is the photo.  Notice the sashing and border width differences.

Two blogs I follow are having giveaways.  I have recently bought fabric from 1 Choice 4 Quilting and was very happy with my purchase.  One of the fabrics I ordered ran out before they fulfilled my order, and as a bonus they added a free “Flurry” charm pack.  How awesome is that?  Enter here.
And The Intrepid Thread (a blog that has some good tutorials) is having a giveaway here.