Dottie Dresden {a finished quilt}

In the beginning of November, Rachel of Stitched in Color announced a scrap challenge from one of her sponsors, Lark Cottons.  The fabric was a sweet fat eighth bundle of polka dot fabrics.  The only rules were the project had to be finished by November 30 and you had to use all the fabrics in the bundle (you could add your own fabric). 

I wrote a tutorial detailing how I made the dresdens.  The blocks each measured 15” unfinished.  Then I decided to sew up the rest of the scraps to make wonky sashing to go between the blocks.  That’s my favorite part of the quilt!  I tried a new fmq design called “Ribbon Candy” by Angela Walters and it is magical!  It was easy to do and looks so good.  The light was coming into my sewing room so brightly and just illuminated the stitching in this photo.

Deciding how to quilt everything was the hardest part, because I still always want to just stipple everything and not try a lot of new things.  But I really went out of control on this quilt.  I used Aurifil cone thread in Dove.  Love!!!

I stitched flowers in the center of each plate, several sections of pebbles, and some teardrop shapes.  Then I tried to make scales in the negative space.  I’m not sure if I like how the scales turned out, but overall I’m happy with the texture of the quilt.  It is surprising that the quilt is not stiff at all, but still nice and soft.  I haven’t washed it yet, but I bet it will be even softer!

The back of the quilt is one of the bird prints from Heather Bailey’s line Up Parasol.  The fabric reminds me so much of our cockatiel, so of course I had to use it for something!  The binding is an unidentified light solid pink fabric I found in my stash. 

I had a slight problem putting the binding on the quilt…I couldn’t find my Clover Wonder Clips anywhere!  Finally I remembered they were in a tote bag.  We were asked to share fun quilting gadgets at the last guild meeting and I never emptied out the bag.  After I found the Wonder Clips, binding was a breeze!

I’ve been using the Wonder Clips for over a year, but just a few weeks ago I figured out that I could clip the mitered corner and sew a continuous line all around the binding without backstitching and stopping at each corner.  Duh!

Tada!  A pretty good looking corner!

The finished quilt is 30” x 30”.  Originally I was going to use this quilt as a wall-hanging, but now I can’t make a decision.  It’s so soft and has a lot of fun fabrics, so I think it might make a nice baby quilt. 

Thanks for visiting and I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Blowin’ in the Breeze

I tried to get a photograph of the three blocks I’ve finished so far for my Tone It Down quilt, but the weather has been quite uncooperative the past few days.  Rain, snow, & now strong winds are not  making it easy to take a photo!

Somehow I missed the Quilt Along associated with this quilt.  I’m not sure how it worked, because the pattern was in a February edition of a quilting magazine and from what I see online, the QAL was last year in November or December.  No matter, I’m enjoying making these blocks one-by-one at my pace.  This quilt does not need to be finished until July, so there’s no hurry.

Despite the terrible weather continuing well into the end of March, the spring cleaning bug has bitten me and I painted another room yesterday.   This bedroom is now a home office.  A light shade of blue from the mistints at Lowe’s transformed the walls.  We still need to hang the artwork and move some shelves in, but I’m hoping to keep this room clean and uncluttered.  Fingers crossed!  Now I’m ready to start painting my daughter’s room finally.

Hope you are having a wonderful (and spring-like) day!

Lots o’ pumpkins!

Here are a few more tablerunners I finished up before Halloween.

What fun it was to pick fabrics and make each one unique!

This low volume version was my favorite of all of them.  The binding is a beautiful 30’s inspired basketweave pattern.  The same fabric also comes in blue, yellow, and green.

I wrote up a super tutorial for making one of your own and will be posting it soon.

We collected quite a few other pumpkins this Halloween!

Bea has teeth fit for a Jack-o-Lantern!

I let her carve most of the pumpkins this year.  Seven is old enough to use a steak knife on a pumpkin, right?  At final count, we tallied up 13 pumpkins on our front porch.

She also did her zombie/vampire make-up all by herself. 

We did the annual corn maze and pumpkin patch visit.

Esther makes a darn cute pumpkin.

There aren’t even enough head holes for our entire family anymore.  Here is Bea our first pumpkin patch visit when she was just one year old.

I’ve got all my penny patches sewn together for the quilt along and can’t wait to share them as soon as I get some photos.  Have a wonderful weekend!

A Little Giveaway Game

Lately I’ve  been obsessing about which fabrics to choose for my projects.  In the past I mostly used already coordinated collections for my quilts, but I seem to gravitate toward quilts that have a scrappier and more eclectic style, a certain quality I think can be lacking when I only use an entire range of a designer’s collection.

Enter the newest pumpkin tablerunner (is this one word or two!???).

Which fabric should I have chosen for the binding?  I took these photos to help me decide.

#1 Orange

#2 Green

#3 Yellow

Okay, now for the giveaway…which binding did I choose?  Everyone who chooses the one I picked will be entered in a drawing.  Make sure I have a way to contact you, and I’d love if you became a follower of my blog, although that’s not mandatory.

The prize is going to be 4 fat quarters, but I’m not sure which yet.  The local quilt shop is closing :( and I’m heading over there tomorrow to check out the fabric.  It’s all on clearance and they do have many fat quarters to choose from, so I’ll be picking them out tomorrow.

Good luck!  I’ll announce the winner Wednesday. 

PS.  Mary of Needled Mom was the winner of my Fabric Fest loot giveaway.  Thank you to all who entered.  The package has been mailed and you should receive it Monday or Tuesday, Mary.

Guess Where I Was! {plus a giveaway}

Last week I had a little adventure…

Yes, my sweet husband let me out of the house for four days of sewing bliss in Las Vegas!  Fabric Fest happened to coincide with my birthday, which is about the best present a quilter could ask for.

One of the highlights of the week was meeting Amy Smart of Diary of a Quilter.  Hers was one of the very first sewing blogs I ever followed and so for me it was like meeting a celebrity.  She taught a class called “Scraps, Scraps, Scraps!” which was so much fun and helpful.  I made a basket that just happened to match my outfit that day (totally by chance).

I enjoyed making it so much that I made one at home.  I changed the design a little by adding scrappy piecing, handles, and an embroidered label.

I just crazy pieced (is that even a term?) a bunch of scraps I had leftover from a quilt.  I cut dresden plates from all the big scraps to hopefully use one day for another quilt, and then I used all the little bits to make the basket.

I included some pink because I will be mailing this along with some other surprises to a friend.

And the generous folks over at Riley Blake sent me home with some goodies including a jelly roll for my birthday.  I thought I’d share some of the loot with a lucky reader.  If you are the winner you’ll be receiving this cute “emergency thread” set from Coats & Clark, a set of 10 Clover Wonder Clips, and an Ashbury Heights jelly roll.

Just leave a comment on this post to be entered.  I will ship anywhere, including international.  I will be doing a few more posts with some other photos and various projects I made at Fabric Fest, so I’ll be waiting to pick a winner until October 1st.  Good luck!

Between Heaven and Texas Star Value Block

Have you ever tried any of Melissa Corry’s tutorials?  Last spring I followed along with her Starburst Quilt Along.  The starburst block was probably the most difficult piecing I’d done up to that point, and her professional charts for cutting directions and the tutorials helped me get through it with only a few mishaps (totally my own mistakes and nothing to do with her).  Finishing up that quilt gave me the confidence that someday I’ll be able to make that Swoon quilt I’ve always wanted to…

This block is another of Melissa’s creations.  She chose this block for her month in the Beejeebers bee. 

It does take a wide variety of fabrics—cream, gray, and bright colors.  The bright colors can easily come from your scrap bin but I had a little difficulty coming up with a large variety of the cream tone-on-tones and grays because I tend to use solid white or gray instead in most of my quilts.  The entire block is made up of 64 3” squares.  The tutorial can be found here.

All of my points didn’t turn out exactly perfect, but it still looks pretty good.   A few times I wanted to call it “Between Heaven and Hell” but I’m glad I can notch this one up as a hst block under my belt.  I can’t wait to see the entire quilt top put together!

Pink Lemonade

  

Melissa of Happy Quilting is hosting a Starburst Quilt Along that ends in a few short weeks. That this quilt has been challenging for me would be an understatement.  Melissa’s tutorials and directions have been clear and well written.  I think this is just my first quilt that I’ve had to follow the directions exactly and that’s where I have a little trouble…and of course picking the appropriate fabrics is always hard.

I ended up having to go with scrappy star centers because I made a few mistakes sewing pieces together.  I was short enough fabric to fix the problem, so I just decided to go scrappy.  It worked out to my advantage though because I had cut 3 green stars and 1 pink, so I was able to balance them out  and make it 2 and 2.

Then the adventure began when I put the blocks together and I realized the burst points were unbalanced, too. So I scrapped one of the blocks and remade it.  The top is complete and once the weather cooperates, I’ll take some photos.

If you have a moment, you should check out the Starburst gallery on Flickr.  There are some real beauties!