Terrain Star Mini Quilt

Little bit by little bit, I'm whittling away at my beloved Terrain layer cake.



Now that my youngest is in kindergarten I've got a few quiet hours to myself a couple days a week, so it felt like I whipped this up in no time!



I had fun piecing together a back with the extra HSTs from the front. Sometimes it's hard to decide if I like the front or the back better!



With the last few quilts I've made I've been in a hurry to finish and opted to machine stitch the binding onto the front of the quilt. With this one, I went the old fashioned route and hand stitched it to the back. I like the results so much better! I've got to remember that it's worth taking your time with the finishing.



I made this quilt as a gift for our realtor who helped us sell our old house and find a new one this past spring. We've been in the new house almost 3 months now (how can that be?!), so I've been a bit slow in thanking her. But I hope she likes it nonetheless.

Christmas Star Quilt

I did it! I finished this quilt before Christmas!



I finished it several days ago, but the weather has been so overcast and gloomy lately on the days that I've been off work, I haven't wanted to take pictures. The only reason I was able to take photos today is because I'm home with a sick kid sleeping on the couch. I tricked the sun- it knew I wasn't supposed to be home today!



Lots of straight line quilting, because I still keep talking myself out of free motion quilting on a "real" project. Those practice sandwiches are piling up though!



Now it's back to the mad rush of finishing the handmade gifts I have planned! The list keeps getting "amended" each day we get closer to Christmas... Happy Holidays Everyone!

Christmas Quilts: Making Progress!

Which is a good thing, since Christmas is TWO WEEKS away. Yikes.



I finished this wreath block into a mini quilt and gave it to my mom as an early Christmas gift. The quilted circles gave it a modern feel that I hadn't intended, but I like it just the same!



You can find the pattern here.

And I'm quite close to finishing up my Christmas Star quilt.



I went with option A, if anyone's keeping track. ;) I hope to finish it up in the next day or two, otherwise I'll barely have time hang it up before Christmas has come and gone!

Mario Quilt

Even though his current video game obsession has shifted to Minecraft, the kiddo still loved the Mario quilt I made him.



Inspired by Cut to Pieces' Mario quilt, but the interfacing technique I used for piecing was more similar to Oh Fransson's tutoral (which I also used for my Scrappy Postage Stamp quilt!).

This past summer has not been great for my blogging, but I hope to get back at it more this fall! Stay tuned for more updates soon! :)

Modern Meadow Pillow

When I saw the announcement for the Modern Mini Challenge a couple of weeks ago, it was just the motivation I needed to finish my Modern Meadow pillow!



I decided to take some photos sans pillow because you can see the quilting better when it's not stuffed. And the quilting is my favorite part of this pillow! I just love the texture all these straight lines create.

The quilting plan for this quilt evolved over time. A couple months ago, it looked like this:



It started with vertical lines in the pieced sections, but I wasn't quite happy with it because I was going for wonky uneven spacing between the lines, but it just looked sloppy (to me anyway). I soldiered on though. I stitched the angles in the negative spaces on the sides, which I loved the look of. But then the project sat for a looong time and I didn't know where to go next.

The "wonky" lines continued to bother me, so I bit the bullet and pulled out the seam ripper a few days ago. This gave me the opportunity to continue the angles into the pieced panel and I love the results!



And here it is with the pillow. While working on this project, I always pictured it vertically but with the pillow insert I'm thinking it might work better with the strips running horizontally. What do think- portrait or landscape pillow?



Check out all the wonderful mini entries over at Ellison Lane!

WIP Wednesday - 2/13/13

I'll start with a finish:



If you click over to my post from yesterday, you can download the foundation pattern for the arrow block!

And now for the in-progress:

I'm still chugging along on my Modern Meadow HST quilt, but trimming all those squares can get tedious. So, as a little distraction, I pulled out some of the scraps and started piecing. The strips are 6" long, but none were more than 1.5" wide. I'm thinking of cutting this into strips and making some sort of pillow with the same neutral fabric used in the quilt.



Am I a hoarder for keeping such small scraps in the first place? How small is too small too keep? Seriously, I'm like a twitch away from being on a TLC show.

I've also pieced my little spools together. And I've got a project in mind for them too- Noodlehead's Open Wide Zippered Pouch.

Archery (and a free pattern!)

I settled on a design for my arrow blocks...



It screams "Valentine's Day!" a bit more than my original vision for these arrows, but we can enjoy it for a few more days!



I did some simple outline quilting around the arrows and heart. I thought about adding more straight line quilting to the background, but after trying out a few lines I decided it was too busy. If you look closely you can still see the little holes from the quilting I ripped out. I tried steaming them with the iron and it helped, but the holes are still visible. Any suggestions on how to get rid of them??



The arrows and the heart are all foundation pieced. I drew the arrow in EQ7, and I'm sharing the pattern with you! You can download the pattern here. The finished size of the block is 8" wide x 5" high. Make sure when you print the PDF that you have Page Scaling set to None. If you use the pattern, I'd love to see it!



Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

WIP Wednesday - 1/30/13

I've made a couple more arrow blocks.



But now I'm not quite sure what to do with them. The layout I had in my head seems a bit boring now. Kinda wish I had used some varying shades and/or patterns of grey for the background of the blocks. May have to sit on these a bit until inspiration strikes.

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Just for fun, I made a couple of little spool blocks yesterday. Aren't they just the cutest?!



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I finally committed to a layout for my Modern Meadow HST quilt and it feels so good to actually be sewing these blocks together!



I decided to go with layout #2 (of the three that I posted last week). I had a few more blocks in reserve, so I added blocks to the right and bottom to make the X more off-center. Now that I've sewn about half the rows together, I've really got the motivation to finish this quilt!

WIP Wednesday - 1/23/13

I've had the idea of an arrow quilt block rattling around in my head for a bit. Yesterday I sat down and drew out a few different versions. AND I managed to stitch one up too.



I'm thinking of making a few arrows in different shades of pink for a Valentines mini quilt.

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In other work-in-progress news, I've decided my next "big" quilt project will be to finally finish my Modern Meadow HST quilt. However, I'm still not totally sure which layout I should choose:

#1


#2


#3


I looked at the dates on these photos and they were taken almost two years ago. Sheesh am I indecisive. Luckily, I still love these fabrics! I think I'm leaning toward layout 2, but what do you think?

Mini Tree Quilt

I made a little Christmas tree quilt... with enough time left to actually enjoy it a bit before Christmas. It's a holiday miracle!



Back in November, I mentioned that I saw this plate at Target:



And thought it was the perfect inspiration for a quilt. I'm so proud of myself for actually getting it done! So many times, I see non-quilty objects and say to myself, "That would make a great quilt design!", but that's as far as it goes. Nice to follow through for once!



This quilt was a nice distraction from all the holiday gift sewing I've been doing. Too many late nights, and a bit of rushing, has made for some frustrating work. The seam ripper has been working overtime lately. Luckily, this was a problem-free, relaxing project. But now it's back to my elf-ly duties as I desperately try to finish all my half-finished gifts!

Flannel & Minky Baby Quilt

Last week I finished a quilt for one of my closest friends who just had a baby. Baby #4 to be specific! When you have 4 kids, you pretty much have all the baby stuff you need, so I think it's nice to make something special and one-of-a-kind for the newest member of the family. This quilt is flannel on one side and minky on the other—perfect for cuddling a little one!



I started two other baby quilts before finally settling on this one (you can see the other two in-progress here). I'm glad I choose this one to finish because I just love how it turned out. I had bits and pieces of two different flannel collections from Hoffman- To the Rescue and Beep! Beep!. I think the biggest piece I had to work with was about 10" x 15". So it was just a matter of putting up pieces on the design wall and seeing how it could all fit together.



I left out the batting, because I didn't want to make it to heavy which I think can happen when you're using minky. I also kept the quilting fairly light (just large diamonds) and it has a wonderful drapey feel. My only regret is that I didn't take better photos of this quilt, but I was in a bit of a hurry to give it to this little guy!

Weekends Tumbler Quilt

I finished my tumbler quilt about a week ago and I love the way it turned out!



While blogging has helped me get a bit more motivation to finish projects, it's also made it possible for me to look back and see exactly how long ago I started something. I first cut out those tumblers way back in February.

This quilt came together slowly. At first I was just using the the green colorway of this fabric collection, but all the patches just blended together. It needed more contrast so I added the solid aqua. Better, but not quite enough. So I cut some more tumblers from the violet colorway and it worked! Adding the violet colorway also allowed me to get in some more of those little bike prints. Squee!



I tried a finishing technique with this quilt that I've never done before. Rather than binding the quilt, I finished it with a facing (using this tutorial). I had wanted to bind it with the solid aqua, but I didn't have enough left. And this fabric had been sitting in my stash for ages, so I didn't have a color name/number, and I couldn't find a good match in any of my local fabric shops. So facing, with no fabric showing on the front, was the perfect solution.



I quilted it with simple straight lines, about 1/4" from the seams. The solid aqua tumblers got an extra outline stitch on the inside. You can see the quilting really well on the back. I like the back almost as much as the front!



And, just for fun, a peek at one of my little helpers:

WIP Wednesday - 11/14/12

Done:
My Weekends tumbler quilt! I'll be writing about it soon.



And to celebrate corduroy day, I made a sunglasses case.



In Progress:
I've had battling baby quilts up on my design wall for a couple of weeks.



I couldn't decide which one I wanted to finish for an expecting friend. She ended up having her baby a week early, so the pressure was on. This weekend I started a brand new baby quilt, and I'm almost done quilting it!



It has minky on the back and feels soooo cozy. It's gonna be hard to give this one up. But it is baby-sized so if I used this quilt, it would only keep a third of me cozy.

Future Projects?
I was at Target last night and saw this cute plate:



And now I want to make a quilt inspired by it. Will this actually materialize? Odds aren't good, as the number of things I want to make and the actual time I have to make all these things don't match up. But here's hoping!

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Giveaway!
I posted a little giveaway yesterday to celebrate my 100th post, so please hop over and leave a comment to enter!