The Lone Starburst

My first paper piecing venture, besides a string quilt. Success! (Mostly. My center isn’t quite as perfect as I would like, but, it WAS my first try…)

I am having a lot of fun digging though my scraps to put these together (I have started an orange one now!). And while I have a gazillion green scraps, apparently a lot of them are multicolor or very different from each other…

I got the template here at Six White Horses. I found her blog through the link on Fresh Lemons, and let me say, she has some awesome stuff! I am dying to try her wonky chevron tutorial, too.

I have wanted to try out some paper piecing for a while, and I’ve seen some cool stuff, but as soon as I saw this star, I HAD to try it. Like, immediately printed out the template and sat at my sewing machine the first chance my children gave me. So much work, but so much fun! And it’s nice to be doing something a little more creative than the constant chain piecing that I’ve been doing lately.

This will definitely be an ongoing project, since it takes so dang long, but I am slowly going to whittle away at my scraps (probably add more to them than take away in the process, but, whatcha gonna do!) I will try to post my progress :)

Scrap War Zone

What I should be working on:

What I dove into instead:

No regrets!

More on my paper piecing adventures soon!

A Garden Fence

I have lost track of how long ago I finished the quilts I am finally posting now…but the important thing is, they are done!

I first posted about my garden fence quilt way back in August. Really? August? Sheesh…sorry, internal dialogue there.

I made this quilt from a bunch of Michael Miller fat quarters I had around and kept drooling over, and one print of Jenean Morrison’s Silent Cinema. I am glad that fabric designers are such geniuses. I don’t know if I would have ever put lime, teal, and gray together on my own, but it looks pretty dang cool.

I quilted with an all over meandering flower, and bound with a teal Michael Miller dumb dot.

I did “borrow” a little bit of yardage from my wonderful mother for the backing. I didn’t have quite enough of the amazingly awesome large scale print that is most of the back, but mom had some of the stripey print, so I added a bit in :)

My garden fence finished at 55” x 66”, and is listed in my shop here.

And the rundown continues!

Brityn’s Quilt

I made this awesomely pink quilt for one of my friends when I found out she was expecting a little girl.

Ok, really I finished it right in time for the shower, and had to take pictures of it last minute that morning while I was out at a craft fair. And the surroundings were ugly. And it was ridiculously bright. Anyways, I knew I still had to have some sort of documentation!

I pulled all sorts of pinks from my scraps and stash, grabbed my favorite zebra stripe (need to get more of that…), and that other super cute black and pink print, and went to work on a disappearing 9 patch. I debated on the sashing, but I’m glad I took the time to add it, because I love the way it looks.

I backed in my favorite little pink dot print that I wish I had an entire bolt of (Bubblegum Basics), and bound in a Mingle dot. Wish I had a bolt of that one too!
I quilted in an all over meandering flower, which turned out pretty cute.

It is really hard to tell from the pictures from the front, but I quilted the baby’s name into the corner.

There’s the back, where you can actually see it :)
I gifted this one back in October.
And now I am down to just one more backlogged quilt! Oh wait, never mind, I just remembered a few more that never made it to the blog…wow…
I will continue backwards later then!

I know it’s February…

…but I didn’t get my two Christmas quilts blogged, and I want them recorded too! And since it IS February, I will combine the two in one post.

First up is my lovely wonky stars quilt:

I made this from a fat quarter bundle of Riley Blake’s Christmas Candy (with quite a few scraps left over!) Originally, every other block was going to be a wonky star. I even had all my center blocks and white blocks cut out for them. But, while I love wonky stars, I get bored with making them rather quickly…so I decided to see how it looked with just what I had made up, and decided it looked pretty cool.

Now I LOVE it! I’m pretty glad that I got tired of making those stars, cuz this looks so much cooler than that would have!

I quilted it with diagonal stripes that mimic a candy cane; the “Christmas Candy” name to the line inspired me :) And the red and white dot in this line is PERFECT! I am kicking myself for not getting more yardage than what I needed for the binding, because while I was binding, I fell in love with it! And by then the shop was out of it. Lame.

See? Awesome dot!

I stayed fairly simple with the back: Kona Kiwi with two fat quarters that I didn’t use in the front pieced in. You can see the quilting pretty well in this shot.

This one finished at 54” x 63”, and is up in my shop here.

Next comes a quilt that I have mixed feelings about. I love how it looks, but it isn’t my favorite purely because this is the quilt I sewed my finger on…

Ok, ignore how I took these pictures with a smear on my lens and didn’t realize it until later…Whoops!

Anyways, this one was 2 Ready, Set, Snow (Me and My Sister Designs) charm packs, white kona, and Ready, Set, Snow yardage.

I free motioned with all-over double loops; I wanted it to be reminiscent of snow flurries. Though, what do I know about snow flurries? I live in the desert!

I love the square print on the back. It kind of inspired the whole quilt idea in the first palace. And once again, I had extra squares, so into the back they went! The solid green is once again Kona Kiwi.

This one finished at 60” x 75”, and is available in my shop here.

Oh yeah, and I had a few more extra squares, so I threw together a table runner too. But I didn’t get this one listed in the shop before Christmas, and figured it probably wouldn’t sell until next Christmas, so it isn’t up for sale yet, but here’s a quick picture:

Happy Friday!

Basting

Today’s activity.

I almost finished pinning before they woke up!

Continuing on…

Let us travel a little further back…to October now. My BFF Melanie was expecting a baby boy, and had a lovely baby shower to get her so cute boy stuff (she has 2 girls already). I presented her with this quilt (though it was only in flimsy form…I was a little behind!):

So, 3 days after Mel’s super cute boyish shower, she has a late ultrasound, where they discovered that their boy was most definitely….a GIRL!

Being me, I couldn’t give a little girl this distinctly boyish quilt, so I kept it and finished it to throw in the shop :) By the way, Mel’s cute little girl still doesn’t have a finished quilt, but I did start it last week.

This backing made me so mad! I was going to go easy and just use a solid piece of fabric, but I cut it wrong! So, I pieced in that solid green kona, and now it is pretty :) By the way, the blue and green print is from Kate Spain’s Flurry line, and it is SO SOFT. Seriously cuddle-worthy.

I quilted a diagonal grid through the blocks. No real reason, I just liked it. Oh yeah, did I mention that my mom ended up cutting and piecing most of this one for me too? I really was trying to hit that shower deadline! I finished piecing the top and did the rest though :)

This one finished at 42” x 53”, and is up in the shop.

Working Backwards

So, I figure I will work backwards through my backlogged quilts that need to be blogged.

I finished this one up (with the help of my lovely mom, since I was super prego and had lots going on!) back in November for all my boutiques.

Well, I still have it, but I hadn’t gotten any good pictures of it until this week.

I made this (once again, with help. Mom pieced the top and basted for me!) with a Verna honey bun that I was hoarding. My favorite LQS happened to have what they had left of Verna in their clearance section right when I figured out what to do with the honey bun. Fortuitous, as I didn’t have any yardage of the pinks, oranges, or yellows that I wanted for the backing, border, and binding.

I practiced some more free motion quilting and covered this one with big flowers.

I used the fun flower dots for binding, once again machine stitched, love!

I love this cute yellow flower print, I think it works great for the back.

This baby quilt finished up at 37” x 46”, and is now listed in my shop here.

I have had a request to write up a pattern for this one. What do you think? Anyone else want a pattern for this quilt, possibly with different size options? I like feedback :)

I want some Girl Scout cookies

I am FINALLY showing off a finished quilt! Don’t even ask me how many I have done that I haven’t blogged yet…

This gorgeous quilt is headed off to Canada today!

When Stephanie contacted me back in November about making her a custom quilt, I was rather pregnant, and busy with the holidays on top of that. But she was kind and patient enough to wait until I had evicted my little parasite (they are still parasites Grandma!), and we designed this beauty in January.

It took me a bit longer than I wanted, what with it being my first quilt started and finished with two kids hanging around, but I sure do like how it turned out!

Oh, and I found a nice new spot to take pictures…my in-law’s front porch! They have a nice, handy swing. Though, seeing as those lucky brats people are in Maui right now, they don’t even know I used it yet :)

Oh yeah, back to the quilt…So, the tan and brown prints were the inspiration for this one, and they are from the So Sophie line from Riley Blake. We then added in the yellow grunge (Basic Grey Origins), and the green prints(um, a whole bunch of different ones). The green solid is Kona Peridot, and I am in love with it. It is the solid in Jocelyn’s quilt in the last post, too. Oh, and I am completely converted to machine stitching binding. I will have to do a small show and tell on how I do mine some time.

I kept the quilting fairly simple; I love how it accentuates the lines and simplicity of the whole design. And I love the little X’s in the brown sashing :)

I had a few blocks left over, so I threw them into a strip in the back. I hate having orphan blocks sitting around, and I love how they look in backings!

This one finished up at 62” x 72”. Thanks again Stephanie for being so patient with me!

Miraculous

I don’t know which is the bigger miracle; that I am blogging, or that I got this quilt completely quilted and got the binding sewn to the front in ONE naptime. Though, it helps(and drives me insane) that Zoey sits in her bed and talks and yells for FOREVER before she actually naps now. Today it took her 2 hours to fall asleep. And Jocelyn slept at the same time. Another miracle!

Anyways, this is the custom quilt I am working on right now. Full pictures once it is done! Which will hopefully be very soon…

Goings on

So, I am totally stealing borrowing this straight from Camille’s blog, because I think it is an awesome way to document! Though, her photographing skills are WAAAY better than mine. But, I do what I can :)

Hard to believe this munchkin is already a month old (well, a few days ago, I’m slow!), time just flies!

Well, in that time, I completed that awesome quilt top that my slightly uncooperative model is posing on. It is finally ready to be basted, but I haven’t had my table cleaned off since it has been done. This quilt actually gets to stay in my house! Well, for about 18 years or so…this one is for little miss Jocelyn. It is fun to sew when you know you get to “keep” it!

I also just finished the quilt top today for a custom quilt I am in the middle of; no pictures of that one yet. I was getting the backing ready tonight and realized I didn’t have enough of one of the fabrics for what I had planned for the backing, so now I’m trying to figure out an alternative. Good times great fun!

Hopefully I will drop in again in less than a month, but no promises; the girls have a talent for staggering their naps almost perfectly to cut out ALL of my sewing/playing time. Wish me luck!