Bloom Quilting

Last summer I participated in Lori Holt's "Bloom" quilt sew-along. This was a really fun quilt to make and I enjoyed the fun retro fabrics and appliqueing all the cute little flowers.

I basted this two weeks ago and finally started quilting it over this long weekend. I decided to use my walking foot to stitch long rows on the borders around each block, which so far has been the hardest part. I remember why I don't like doing straight line quilting - it takes FOREVER and there is constant wrestling with your quilt to move it through the machine.

That part is over now, thank goodness, and after I take a few advil for my sore neck and shoulders, I'm going to do finish up by echoing around each applique shape and then doing a micro stipple in the cream background. I've done a few blocks already and I like the way it's looking. A few more hours and this baby's done!

Friday Finish: Postcard from Sweden

This quilt has been finished for two weeks now, but we've had nothing but rain and dreariness here in MN and there never was a good time to get a picture of this beauty.

I think the colors on this quilt are just stunning. I  love the saturation and the way the warm and cool tones all blend into each other and somehow it works.

I quilted this using my walking foot with just organic wavy lines. The binding is finished by hand, because I've been doing that lately - it's fun to hand-sew sometimes! The backing is a print from "Connecting Threads" that I got on sale awhile back.

I like the simplicity of this quilt - the design is just half-square triangles! It's nothing fancy or technical. This is all about color and just enjoying that without any distractions.

Scrap Update

After sewing up my rows of random scraps, I decided to pair them with nine-patch blocks set on point. I used a light pink floral print I had in my stash for the background, and I'm liking this so far.

I decided to arrange the rows of nine-patches by color, so I have a row of pink, blue, orange and purple so far. It needs one more row, so I think I'll do green and that should be it.

Not sure about borders yet for this one - I think I'll get it all sewn up and then see if it still needs something else or not.

Scrap Project

So, I finished the Clambake quilt top, but guess what - I still have too many scraps! The other night I dumped out some of my bins and started slicing scraps into strips and then sewing strips into sets. These types of quilts are called Chinese Coins quilts, and they eat up scraps quite nicely.

I have an idea for incorporating some patchwork blocks into alternating rows, but for now I'm just having fun sewing the strips - no seams to match, no tricky points to maintain...just straight seams sewn fast!

Amish Medallion: Rolling Stone and Jacobs Ladder

The next two parts of the Amish Medallion quilt are making these traditional Jacob's Ladder and Rolling Stone blocks. The twist is that each of these large blocks is made up of four miniature ones all sewn together. The impact they make is pretty cool, especially with the bright contrasting colors.

These take awhile to sew together - so many little half square triangles and little four patches! I have to make four of each kind of big block and I'm about halfway through.

Clambake Quilt

I keep all my scraps in color coded bins. When I can't shut them anymore, I know it's time to use them up in a project.

Camille Roskelley wrote a clever pattern for a clamshell quilt using half square triangles to make an angled curve instead of the traditional curved piecing technique, which is beautiful but fiddly.

This is just a happy scrappy quilt with not a lot of rhyme or reason - it's fun to make a dent in those bins!

Friday Finish: Baby Quilt Commission

My sister asked me to make a baby quilt for one of her friends. She didn't give me any direction aside from saying it should be aqua and grey and it was needed in May.

After saying yes to this, I then forgot all about it until April 27th when I had my "Oh crap, I need to make that baby quilt!" moment. Thank goodness the weekend was coming up then and I knew I'd have a couple days to knock something out.

I had the grey background material already on hand, and I was a little unsure how it would look once it was cut up - would the black birds still look OK or would they be creepy? Would the white branches going in various directions look weird? I think it turned out pretty well though.

I used various aqua scraps to make the star blocks, and then punched it up with the orange and yellow irish chain blocks going across the quilt.

The backing is a pretty navy and aqua print I found at Joann Fabrics, and the binding is something I already had in my stash. I was about 4 inches short of the backing, so I added a narrow strip of the binding fabric to make up the difference, and I think it adds a little pizazz to the back too.

I quilted this in a quick stipple, and finished the binding by machine just for added durability as I expect baby quilts to get washed pretty frequently.

Amish Medallion: Stems

I haven't been doing a ton of work on the Amish Medallion quilt the last couple of weeks, but I did take a few minutes and applique some bright green stems that will go in some flower blocks later. These were supposed to be raw-edge appliqued according to the directions, but I don't do raw-edge applique because it requires that you zig-zag stitch around the shapes and my trusty Juki sewing machine is straight stitch only.

Instead I printed the design out on freezer paper, ironed the shiny side to my material and used glue to baste the seam allowance around each design. This is kind of hard to explain, but it's my new go-to method for applique and saved my behind when I was working on all the little flowers for the Jinny Beyer block-of-the-month quilt.

I'll set these aside for the time being and they'll get used in a few weeks.

New Ironing Board Cover

All the ironing I do is hard on my ironing board covers. Big dark spots develop, and the fabric gets more and more shiny and brittle. Finally the other night a part of it split right open and I knew it was time for a new one!

My solution is very low-tech: Find new piece of canvas, cover the board and tape it to the underside. No fuss no muss!

Now I have a nice new cover and I should be good for another 6-9 months.

Quilt on Exhibit

About 9 months ago a friend sent me a notice she spotted from the city where I live asking for submissions from local artists to be hung at city hall. I thought, what the hell and submitted a few of my quilts for consideration - Aviatrix Medallion was one of them.

Today I went to city hall with my quilt and watched proudly as it got hung! It'll be on display through August and is in a prime location right off the main entrance outside the City Council Chambers.

They purchased a nifty magnetic hanging system specifically for my quilt since it's the first one that's been displayed, and I was impressed with how easy it was to slide the metal bar into the hanging sleeve on the quilt, and then click it to the magnets attached to the wall with command strips. Easy-peasy!

I was nervous about whether or not the quilt would hang straight. Sometimes quilts have waves or weird puckers despite our best efforts to keep everything straight and square, and this one was too big for me to block ahead of time. But look at it - it's just about perfect!

It makes me happy to think that this quilt will be seen by so many people over the next four months, and proud of the work I did to complete it.