Yearly Archives: 2016

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Free Motion Quilting

This week I finished the quilting on the light yellow/orange quadrant of my Star Light Star Dark quilt. Then I set it aside in favor of finishing my other two baby quilt gifts so I could deliver them.  Here's what Star Light Star Dark looks like at the moment.

 

Finishes

Then I went on to finish two baby quilts that I shared about in recent posts: Caterpillar Fizz and Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is already being enjoyed by the baby girl who it was give to and Zoom Zoom, which I finished last week, has gone to her big brother. I didn't end up seeing the third recipient as I expected I would, so Caterpillar Fizz will be delivered in the next week or so. Here's the pile of those quilts all pre-washed and ready to give.

 

Bee Blocks

It's a new month, so I have two new bee blocks to make. The pick for my do. Good Stitches group is improv curves in a very Fall color palette. I chose a couple beautiful Alison Glass fabrics to go with my neutrals.

The inspiration for the Quatrefoil blocks we're making for my Bee Hive group is water lilies. I may tweak my palette, but my initial fabric pull features more Alison Glass fabric (I just noticed that! I really love her fabric.). I'm planning a purple flower with orange and yellow center.

 

La Passacaglia

I made a bit of progress on my La Passacaglia project. I'll tell you, I'm not loving basting the tiny triangles. And there are 50 of them in this rosette. Please, nobody tell me how many of them are in the entire quilt. That said, once I managed to baste them, it was super quick to piece the stars together. Now to baste the other 40 triangles. ;-)

 

Thanks for visiting! I'm linking up to Midweek Makers and Needle and Thread Thursday.

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Another day, another baby quilt. I actually finished both of these quilts on Saturday (never mind that my labels say September... at least it was close). I was able to deliver this one to a sweet baby girl yesterday. And her 4-year-old big brother received Zoom Zoom. Yay for quilt gifts!

Baby Girl has a room decorated in coral, salmon, mint and aqua, with grey accents. That meant shopping for fabric, since these are not colors in my stash (except the aqua, I suppose). I think the backing fabric is perfect and I was happy with what I found to accompany it, though I found the task a bit of a challenge. The background fabric on the front is a digitally printed fabric from Hawthorne Threads. They produce a wide variety of prints in many one-color options. Once I realized they had the right mint green, choosing the hummingbirds was easy. Baby Girl's parents' wedding featured a hummingbird motif, so I knew it was just the right print.

I designed the quilt before I decided on the fabrics. Initially my grey areas were pieced from two rectangles, but when I decided on a two-way directional print for those sections I redesigned it to be pieced from squares in alternating directions.

I chose to quilt with walking foot quilting. I'd planned free motion quilting for every other project at the top of my "to be quilted" list, so I thought I'd change it up with this one. I began by marking a line at a 60 degree angle with blue tape for my first line of quilting. Then I used the guide on my walking foot to make parallel lines with 1 1/2" spacing. I initially planned a second pass in the opposite 60 degree angle to make crosshatch quilting, but I ended up holding after the first pass. Sometimes done is better than perfect... or less detailed, in this case, is better than twice the quilting time. ;-)

I'm uncertain why my stitch length is so irregular with walking foot quilting. Perhaps it has to do with my tension. Thoughts?

I cut into my backing fabric to try it as the feature fabric in the center of the front of the quilt. Then I decided to stick with my initial plan of the poppies. That left me with a backing fabric too small to back the entire quilt. :-/ I decided to piece in my label instead of adding a secondary fabric in the backing. (Name and birthdate removed from the photo.)

Then all that was left was to roll it up and wrap it. I hope Baby Girl loves it. I know her mom does. :-) It was so hard to keep this one a secret. I just knew that if I shared even a glimpse, my friend would recognize her color palette and my surprise would be ruined.

Thank you for visiting!

I'm linking up to the Q3 Finish Along finishes party. See all my Q3 WIPs in my goal post.

A pattern is available for my Knock Knock baby quilt pattern (shown above) in one size, 36 1/2" x 36 1/2".

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I have two more Very Hungry Caterpillar quilts to quilt and bind, but this one is done! It's even wrapped and ready to be gifted.

I've loved this fabric line since I first saw it before I had kids. I've used it numerous times. One of my current unfinished projects is a twin-sized quilt for my son. When I decided to make him a twin sized quilt, I was also at the point that I decided I was beginning to feel done with this fabric. (I've been using it over the past seven years.) So while I was making Fat Quarter Fizz blocks (free pattern from Fat Quarter Shop) for his quilt, I just kept making more. I ended up having enough blocks for an additional small lap quilt and this baby quilt. I even made a doll sized quilt with the leftover pieces when I ran out of blocks. I'm not actually out of the fabric, but this made a very large dent in my Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric stash.

I was inspired by Cynthia's quilting, and used these large spirals, which are rounded corner rectangles on the outside and become ovals in the center. Our motifs are a little different because my centers don't come to a point like hers do... this was just a result of not taking another look at my inspiration when I was actually sitting down to do the quilting. I found this pattern easy to quilt on my domestic machine. There were just a couple places that I ended up with a bit of wonky space and had to fill in with a non-spiral. I don't think I got any shots of those "creative areas." ;-)

I backed the quilt with this wonderful rainbow fabric. I may love the back even more than the front.

Since the front was very colorful and the back is a vibrant rainbow, I opted for a black an white (with a spec of red) fabric for the binding.

I named it Caterpillar Fizz, a nod to the pattern name. Here's my simple label. I attach my labels before quilting, so they're extra held in place by the quilting stitches.

This 36" x 36" quilt is going to a little 6-month-old and I hope he loves it to pieces.

Thanks for visiting!

I'm linking up to the Q3 Finish Along finishes party. See all my Q3 WIPs in my goal post.