Vegetable Patch Quilt

Last winter when I was in NYC for my cousin's wedding, I made sure to make time for a little shopping at Purl Soho.  Such a beautiful place, and so much fun to shop there!

One pattern that I came home with was this Vegetable Patch Quilt:

I did the appliqué on my old Elna 3007, using a short zig zag stitch.  I matched colors for the veggies but used a variegated thread on the green tops, which I love.  

In retrospect, I think it would have been better with a shorter "dirt" section and a taller "sky" section, but I made the quilt entirely out of fabrics from my stash -- and I didn't have very much of this loopy blue fabric!  So the proportions of dirt and sky are different than the pattern suggests.  I think next time I'll try the sky and dirt fabrics with Kona solids and the leaves and veggies with patterned prints.  This is one of those fun patterns that I'll definitely make again!

I'm entering this quilt into the Appliqué Category of the Bloggers Quilt Festival -- 

and also linking up with Fabric Tuesday!

Barn Quilt with Sheep, an original design

For the past 3 summers, my girls and I have made a "scrap" quilt to enter into the Minnesota State Fair.  I have a jar of 2 inch scraps that I fill up all year, and then in the summer we get it out and start designing a quilt.  This year we had a really hard time deciding what to make -- but eventually I came up with a design that we were all happy with.  I started thinking about how to make it work on a car trip home from my parents' house, then got out the graph paper and started coloring.  And here's what we came up with:

Quilt Stats:

Made entirely from 2 inch scraps, with the exception of the Barn's Pinwheel Quilt, the Sheep's Background, and top of Silo -- over 3000 two inch scraps, yikes!

Double Bed Sized -- perfect for my sheep loving daughter's bedroom

Quilted with Aurofil thread (size 28, light gray) in a diagonal cross-hatch pattern, with extra diagonal lines added for the sheep's wool.

Binding is scrappy and matches the green grass/blue sky, using Debbie's Matched Binding Tutorial.

Winner of a 5th place ribbon in the Scrap Quilt Category at the Minnesota State Fair!
(I haven't written up a pattern for this quilt, but I certainly could if there is enough interest.)

I'm entering this quilt into the "Original Design Quilts" category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Works in Progress {Oct 21, 2015}

This week I've been working on a Halloween costume -- the first one I've ever made!
The body is a little large, but the headpiece is really cute!

It was a great weekend to take some photos of my latest finished quilt -- here's a sneak peek.  I plan to enter this one into the Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival next week.  More pictures to come!

I recently decided to dig into my stash of beloved fabrics (mostly Anna Maria Horner) and USE THEM!  So I started with these cute little houses -- pattern at stitcherydickerydoc.com.  I'm not sure yet if these two blocks are headed into a pillow or a larger quilt . . . I think a bed quilt made from rows of houses would be so pretty!

Linking up to WIP Wed at Freshly Pieced.

No Coast Holiday 2015 Application

Today I'm posting photos of the types of items that I plan to have for sale at the No Coast 2015 Holiday Craft-o-rama, if I'm selected.  I had so much fun at last winter's No Coast Holiday Craft-o-rama that I'd really love to be there again!

(Holiday 2014)

I'll likely do lots of similar items, especially the things that sold well -- quilted items of all sizes, pillows, doll sleeping bags, Art Totes, Read Library totes, etc.

Millions of Cats Quilt

It's time for the Spring Bloggers Quilt Festival!

Here is my entry into the Large Quilts Category:

These Cotton and Steel Tiger Stripes might be my favorite fabrics EVER -- I couldn't wait to make a quilt using all the different colors of cats.  And now it's available in black and white . . . 

 I recently discovered that our ping pong table is perfect for basting quilts.  For the quilt below, I actually moved my sewing machine there, too.  What a perfect setup for quilting -- I'd quilt a few rows, then mark a few more rows with my Hera Marker, quilt some more, etc.  Really nice!

Quilt Stats
Fabrics: Cotton and Steel Tiger Stripes (all 4 colors) and Dottie Basics (1/2 yard bundle)
Pattern:  Arkansas Crossroads (free pattern here)
Quilted: on my Juki in straight diagonal lines, echoing the Xs
Backing: Heather Ross Lightning Bug Dots in orange and brown
Size: 72 x 55 inches

Two New Quilts

I had the most lovely day today!

I finished up two quilts featuring artist Cindy Lindgren's fabric, and delivered them to The Linden Tree shop for Cindy's fabric launch party tomorrow night.  If you're anywhere near Minneapolis, you should really check it out -- Thursday April 30, 6-8pm at The Linden Tree.  So much fun!

The pink crib sized quilt features an Uptown panel, and is an easy log cabin style quilt.  Definitely a quilt top that you could make in a day.  I quilted this one with random diagonal lines.  The blue/lime green "star inside a star" quilt features Cindy's Minneapolis City of Lakes fabrics, and is also fairly easy to sew, since it's just 4 large blocks with lots of negative space.  This one measures about 64 inches square.  I quilted this one fairly densely with straight lines -- I just love the texture this creates!

I fell in love with Cindy's fabrics a couple of weeks ago, and immediately had a couple of quilt designs come to mind.  I'm in the process of writing up patterns for both of these quilts -- so if you're interested in pattern testing, please send me an email to let me know!  

Cindy's fabric is available at The Linden Tree and also online at Modern Yardage.  In addition to her Minneapolis themed fabrics, she also has a variety of different fabric lines and printed artwork.   

(Her website is www.cindylindgren.com and Etsy store is here.) 

Tomorrow's Project

Ok, so the cats have started taking over my "Millions of Cats" quilt.

Every time I think about working on it, there is a cat sleeping on top of it.

Enough!!!

It's time to get it basted.  And quilted.  

And tomorrow's the day.

(wish me luck)

I actually added one row on each side of the quilt after I took this photo -- it just looked like it wasn't quite finished.  And since I had enough fabric, I figured I should make it a little larger. 

A good decision -- I like it even better now.

Here are a couple more cat photos --

 my girls thought these were particularly funny (9 year old humor, I guess)!

  Big cat, small box.

Small cat, big box.

Have a lovely weekend!

A quick tutorial . . .

This is what I've come up with for my next do. Good Stitches block -- a block made up of 25 bright solids squares, bordered in gray:

Start with a pile of solid scraps.

Cut them up into squares that are somewhere between 2 and 3 inches in size.  You'll need 25.

They don't need to be perfect squares -- rectangles or rhomboids are ok too -- it's improv!

 Start sewing the squares together into strips of 5 squares each.
Press seams of top row to the right, 2nd row to the left, 3rd row to the right, etc.

Sew strips together.

It's ok if some of the seams are kind of curvy. 

None of the seams should line up.  Nice!

 Trim the block so that it measures between 10 and 10.5 inches square.
A little larger or smaller is just fine, though!

 Finally, add the border.
Gray solid strips somewhere between 3 and 4 inches should work well.
Trim block to 13 inches square.
(Look at your block and think "darn it, how did I not notice those 3 red squares all in a row!")

 Done!

In progress

This week I've made progress on a quilt!  I'm calling this one "Millions of Cats" after this cute book we own.   I just love these Cotton + Steel cat fabrics!  The free tutorial for this quilt is here.

I also whipped up a couple of rabbit pillows for Easter.   My girls requested similar pillows for their rooms (but had very definite thoughts on what color the rabbits should be -- "pink, not white!"), so these are now for sale at a lovely local shop called The Highway North.

(linking up with WIP Wed at Freshly Pieced)

New

Starting a new project is so much fun . . . 

. . . but it's always hard for me to just work on one thing.  So I started a second project.  And I have a third in mind.

It's been a fun week!

 (Linking up with WIP Wednesday)