Tiny Blocks

After finishing up "Folk Flower" I wanted to sew a little over the weekend, but not start any major new projects. This block, called "Wild and Goosey" is a Bonnie Hunter design, and made with tiny little scraps that are paper-pieced. Each block is only 3 1/2 inches big, so we're talking SMALL here!

This is a perfect use for those little triangle bits that get lopped off when making other things. I used to toss them in the fabric trash bin, but no more! Making four of these took me almost an hour, so this will be a long-term project for sure.

Somebody was throwing these nifty boxes out at work the other day. I grabbed a few and they work great for keeping a project like this organized. I have a compartment for my finished blocks and ones for my fabric scraps. So handy!

Friday Finish: Folk Flower

This quilt wasn't on my plan. I saw it, wanted to make it, and made it all within about 4 days. I like being able to shift other things aside to make room for serendipitous creative bursts that come from random inspirations - this is one of the great pleasures of quilting for me!

I quilted this in an all-over spiral, and bound it in the same material as the setting triangles on the front, and the backing.

These bright scrappy flowers make me happy and got me through a patch of winter doldrums a few weeks back. I'm glad the snow is gone and we can enjoy flowers and leaves again!

Another new hobby

Well, I always joke about how I need new hobbies (NOT!), but somehow that doesn't stop me from signing up for classes or getting books or watching tutorials on how to do something new and crafty. This time, it's a community ed class on rug weaving, and also the purchase of a Needle Punch embroidery pen brought on by a random instagram post.

The Needle Punch pen is still being shipped from Amazon, so that's a future post, but the Rug Weaving class was a few days ago, and I think I love it! This was a Twine Weaving class, so a different technique from latch hooking, or other types of weaving. It's worked on a loom, and the thing I love so far about it is that it's easy, but mostly that it uses tons and tons of fabric scraps!

I'm about three inches away from finishing my first rug, and so far I see this craft and my quilting living nicely with each other, as one habit will feed the other and everybody will be happy!

Quilting

During this time of snow and ice, I've been working on quilting up my Color Wheels and Folk Flower quilts.

For Color Wheels, I put on my walking foot and have just been cross-hatching it in free-style straightish lines. It's finished now, except for the binding.

Folk Flower got the swirly whirly treatment. This is my favorite pattern to free-motion quilt. I find it really relaxing, and I'm decently good at it. I'm about halfway through with this one, and am hoping to finish it up by the end of the week!

Minnesota Sucks

We got a foot of snow today, with another 6 inches expected overnight. I'm not a fan.

A Little Spring

MN is being stupid right now, and refusing to cooperate with the fact that it's now springtime. We got a foot of snow dumped on us last weekend, another few inches last night, and temps have been in the teen/20's for last two weeks!

When faced with snow and wind and cold in April, the only thing to do was create some spring in my sewing room.

This quilt design by Anna Maria Horner caught my eye a couple weeks ago, and I made my own version of it based on the pictures I saw. I burrowed through my scrap bins and pulled out lots of floral prints, then appliqued them using the Lori Holt interfacing method. The original quilt only had circle-shaped flowers, but I thought it would be cute to throw some tulips in there too, so I ended up doing 1/2 and 1/2. The stems and leaves were also made from scraps, and then the whole thing got sewn together on the diagonal. I used a large-scale floral print for the setting triangles on the end of each row - it was something I've had in my stash forever, and I think those big flowers work so well with this design!

Friday Finish: Pineapple Slice

After getting this basted last week, it only took me three hours to quilt! I debated over if I should do some straight line quilting with my walkfoot, or free-motion quilting. The free-motion won out, and I used the same angular boxy stipple that seems to work well with modernish quilts.

The backing is a snazzy butterfly fabric, and I used a deep salmon solid for the binding (hand-finished!). I quilted this with a white thread, because there's so much white in the background. I was concerned about how the white would look on the dark navy backing, and debated on if I should use a different color in my bobbin. That was a short-lived plan once I experimented on a test swatch, as the darker bobbin thread showed right through on the top! I'm glad I tested it before I dove right in - sometimes I'm smart like that.