Starry-Eyed Christmas Quilt

I finished a Christmas quilt in time to actually use it for Christmas! I think I started it early this year, abandoned it and finally dug out the almost finished blocks a few weeks ago to get 'er done.

 

Pattern: Starry-Eyed by Angela of Fussy Cut as found on the Moda Bake Shop.

Fabric: Countdown to Christmas by Sweetwater for Moda Fabrics.  I was lucky enough to pick up a bundle of this fabric after Christmas last year.  And even luckier that another shop had some yardage still left for me to bind it.

 

Here's my favorite part: the quilting.  I free-motion quilted a paisley pattern all over the quilt.  Technique found in Angela Walter's book Free-Motion Quilting. It was a bit tricky to figure out where to go next and how to get there.  You have to plan ahead a little bit, but once I got the rhythm down, it was pretty simple.  I could see how this would be very easy on a long arm quilting machine, but it's a little tricky on a domestic machine because you can't always see where you've been and where you're going.  I got myself into corners frequently, but eventually figured out how to get out of those easily too.

I love the texture the quilting created.

I'm playing roulette a bit with the backing.  I bought flannel sheets at Target when they were on sale for $20 a set . . . that's two quilt backs for $20! This one was a red flannel set and I washed it 5 times, using salt and vinegar to set the dye.  I would throw in a piece of my background fabric in each load.  The first time around it was very pink. By the 5th wash, it didn't look too pink anymore . . . I'm hoping that it was just fuzz from the flannel making it look pink at all.  Cross your fingers for me.  The flannel will make a nice cozy, cuddly quilt, but I hope I don't regret the red.

Bound in the red and white stripe from the Countdown to Christmas line.

 

Finished size: 64" x 80"

Finished Date: November, 2012

Scrappy Halloween Finish

This is Scrappy Halloween.

 

Scrappy Stash Quilt Along at Ellison Lane Quilts.  There's still time, if you hurry.  Here's the tutorial.

In the spirit of scrappy stash, the back is made from fat quarters and left overs found in my stash.

Free-motion quilting by me.  I started with diagonal lines and stitch-in-the-ditch radiating out from the center with the intent of making one large, dense spider web.  But the farther I got from the center, the sloppier it got.  So I added some diagonals and straight lines to the outer sets of 4 blocks and made 9 spider webs instead.

 

This left space between the webs that I filled with hundreds of little spiders and their webby trails.

Finished Size: 49" x 49"

 

Binding: Timeless Treasures Charcoal Sketch

(Now, a word about this fabric.  I bought this upon the recommendation of some fellow bloggers.  Although the print is really fun and a great blender, the fabric quality is atrocious.  I was trying to make hexagons with it and you can feel the difference, not to mention the horrible amount of fraying because of the loose weave.  If you care about quality, do not buy this fabric.)

Christmas Table Toppers Finish

I had hoped to have this quilt finished, but quilting hundreds of spiders is taking a lot longer than I had expected.

 

But the Halloween quilt WILL be finished today, because I need to get the top below done before Saturday.  My sister will be here and we'll be pinning quilts . . . "you pin my quilt and I'll pin yours."

 

 

I did, however, finish these table toppers.  I had some abandoned swoon blocks that were too Christmasy for the quilt I was making.  I just stitched them right sides together to the batting and backing, turned them inside out, edge stitched around the outside to close the opening and give it a good finish and then quilted them free-motion style.  They'll make nice little table toppers for a poinsettia or other little Christmas decoration.

 

 

Linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Warm/Cool Diamond Quilt Complete

A completed quilt!

 

This quilt was made from 238 unique charm squares exchanged in a large color wheel swap.  I paired complementary colors to create the half-square triangles and arranged them in a diamond pattern using the warms and cools as rows.  (Which is the warm and which is the cool when you pair red-violet with green-yellow?--I let the surrounding colors define those pairs.)

 

I needed something colorful and large scale for the backing.  This is La Paloma from Alexander Henry.  I love that there are birds in this print.

Bound in a purple-y print from South Seas Fabrics.

 

Free-motion quilted by me on my li'l ol' domestic machine.  This post describes the quilting in more detail.

 

Wrinkled well in the dryer . . . soft and cuddly.

Finished Size: 56" x 68"

Finished Date: October 10, 2012


Linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

Whoooo Are You?

 

A mini inspired by this quilt block that was inspired by this tutorial.

 

I used the Drunkard's Path Template from here.

 

Fabric: Dots from Riley Blake that I purchased at Westwood Acres on Etsy (great customer service and a well-curated selection of fabrics) and Kona Medium Gray.  Bound in Kona Coal.

Quilting: Free-motion "Allover Leaves" from Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters

Finished Size: about 14" x 14"

Finished Date: October 3, 2012

 

Did I drop enough names there?

Happy Halloween

Another quilt that was finished last year during a blogging hiatus.

 

A Halloween Kaleidoscope Quilt

 

I saw several quilts in blogland a few years ago that used black and orange prints (like this one and this one and this one) and needed to make my own.  At the time, attempts at a bit of wonkiness frightened me, so I found a great, old-fashioned Kaleidoscope pattern (it's been so long, I don't remember where the pattern came from . . . the blocks finish at 12") and got to work.

Now, part of the success of those other quilts is that they didn't use novelty prints (or very little of them), but used the color to express the Halloween theme.  I, however, had bought Halloween prints on sale and so that's what I used.

 

The back was pieced together using leftovers from the front.  And can you a bit of the quilting just below the row of black rectangles?  Does it look like a spider web?

Yep, a spider web.  I wish you could see it better.  I started in the center of one of the blocks that was up and to the left a bit.  I used the lines radiating out from the center of that block to create the spokes of my web.  In a spiral, starting from the center, and about 1-1/4" apart, I free-motioned a spider web.

And what's a spider web without spiders?  In the space that was left to the right and across the bottom of the the web, I quilted a broad meander and several large spiders, as though they were dangling from the web.

Quilt Stats:

Fabric: Wide variety of novelty and geometric black and orange prints.

Pattern: Traditional Kaleidoscope that finishes at 12"

Binding: Various black prints.

Finished size: 60" x 72"

Finished date: November, 2011 



Happy Halloween.

I Spy Quilt Finish

My I Spy Snowball Quilt is finally complete.  I exchanged 5" I Spy charms through several flickr swaps and private trades, adding to my already extensive stash of novelty prints to end with 300 charms for a twin size quilt.

 

 

Backed with a robot print from JoAnns (gasp, I know).  Joe has been watching Wall-E lately, so he thinks these are Wall-E and Eve.

 

 

Straight line quilting and striped binding, channeling Rita of Red Pepper Quilts . . . man that woman has mad skills.  I, on the other hand, apparently, cannot sew a straight line to save my life.  But like my mom always says, "It looks good from the stage."

 

 

And here's the munchkin for whom it is intended.  He'll be turning 2 next week, and this quilt will eventually be for a "big boy bed" . . . but since I've been through this before and he's my baby, I'm dragging out the crib entrapment for as long as I can *insert evil cackle here*.

 

 

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Traditional Snowball (5" starting square, 2" squares sewn across the diagonal for the corners . . . may have done the calculations wrong, needing to cut the 2" on the diagonal and then sew with a 1/4" seam, but I didn't know how to line it up, so 2" squares it was.)

Fabric: A wide assortment of novelty charms, Kona White

Backing: Robot print from JoAnns

Binding: Red/White stripe from the Dr. Suess collection by Robert Kauffman

Finished Size: 68" x 90" (generous twin)

Finished Date: Today! September 18, 2012

Baby Quilt Finish

Early this summer, I needed a quick baby quilt finish before my cousin moved away.  Allison of Cluck, Cluck Sew happened to post about this tutorial for a quick and easy quilt just in the nick of time.  Cutting commenced that night and the top was finished the next day.

 

 

My cousin loved the colors and even suggested using this quilt as a launching pad for nursery decorating.

 

 

Quilting: I tried something new! This elongated, free-motion "finger" thingy.  It was a bit tricky to not get stuck in a corner and to keep the lines even, but was still a quick way to quilt.

 

 

Quilt Stats

Fabric: Lollipop by Sandy Gervais for Moda

Back: from a Riley Blake line

Finished Size: 36" x 40"

Finish Date: June, 2012

 

String-x Quilt Finish

I finished stitching the binding on this quilt last night.  Some early morning sun really makes the quilting pop.  And check out that clear, blue sky.  After a summer of fires, it sure is nice to see the sky.

 

Pattern: String-x using the combo of this tutorial from Quiltville and this tutorial from Nittany Block Party to add the white borders.  I made really long sets of strings and then cut what I need from those.  This made left-over triangles that I turned into flying geese for the border.

 

 

Fabric: Domestic Bliss by Liz Scott for Moda Fabrics.  This was 2 charm packs and a fat-eighth bundle of solids from Pink Chalk Fabric.  I used Kona white for the borders and Kona coal for the corners.

 

 

Quilting: Free-motion quilting by me on my little ol' machine.  I found the idea for the center pattern from a book from my local library.  Wish I remember what it was. I thought about doing some straight line quilting 1/8" from both edges of the white border, but I have not the patience for that right now, so I'm calling it done.

 

 

Backed and bound with prints from the line.

Finished size: 49" x 67"

 

 

Finish date: September, 2012. (Started in February, 2012.)

 

I'm linking up to Amy's One Thing, One Week Challenge.  My goal was to finish this quilt so I could get my pins back ;)

Scrappy Bow-Tie Quilt Finish

I participated in the Scrappy Bow-Tie block swap over on flickr this spring.  It was a fun, new adventrue to participate in a block swap.  Although the quality of what I received was sometimes disappointing, I was glad to be involved in the social experience of swapping blocks and then the exercise of making them all work together.

 

I decided to sort them by color in groups of 4 to create a larger block . . .

 

 

and then distributed the blocks to balance color and value.

 

 

This was destined for a talent auction at our family reunion, so I used a striped sheet for the backing and binding.

 

I free-motion stippled the entire quilt . . . a quick quilting finish.

 

 

And a signature to claim it as mine.

 

 

Quilt Stats:

Fabric: assorted scraps, twin-size flat sheet for back and binding

Pattern: Scrappy Bow-Tie

Finished Size: about 60" x 60"

Quilting: free-motion stippling by me

Finish Date: May 2012

Retro Flowers Quilt Finish

My mother asked for a quilt for her birthday.  A tempting pattern and flickr quilt-along and a stashed fat-quarter pack that matches my mom's style fortuitously came together for this stunning (in my humble opinion) finish.

Pattern: Retro Flowers by The Sometimes Crafter

Fabric: Panache by Sanae for Moda Fabrics, Kona kahki, Kona chocolate

I designed a giant flower to use the large scale prints from the line for the back of the quilt.

Quilting: free-motion feathers. I'm working on a tutorial to show you how I did this.  I'm completely an amatuer at it, but I think it had a stunning effect.

Finish Date: May 2012