WIP Wednesday

It's been a great week!

I was so happy to get Lexi's quilt finished . . . 

mostly so that I could put her Christmas quilt away!

I entered this quilt into the Bloggers Quilt Festival

at amyscreativeside.com -- read more about it here.

Over the weekend I decided to get back to work on my Bottled Rainbows.

And once I got going, I couldn't stop.  These blocks are so much fun to piece!

This pink one is my favorite (and my little artists' favorite too --

we all love pink, and really love cats).

Favorite block

New additions this week

These blocks are each 10.5inches square.

 I had originally intended on doing 16 blocks -- 4x4 to make it square,

because I liked the symmetry of it.

But the last 4 blocks that I had all ready to go had almost no fabric
scraps to go with them.  I just couldn't make it work.

So I decided that I was happy with 12 squares instead.

I'm trying to get this quilt finished up in time for my college reunion (in 3 wks) -- one of my college roommates told me I just had to enter a quilt in the alumni art fair.  I spent an entire day agonizing about which quilt to enter, and when my husband came home, he said "this is it -- this is the coolest quilt I've ever seen."

How interesting.  So this is it!

I just need to decide on a binding fabric.  Nothing in my stash would do, so I ordered 3 fabrics from Etsy and am going to try them out as soon as they arrive.

Almost finished!

I'm still working on these blocks based on Arajane's tutorial here.

I made up some blocks with Kona snow, too (last week I had only done the brown), and am wondering where to go from here.  I have lots more scraps, (Sugar Pop fabric leftover from my Supernova Quilt), so I can make more of either (or both!) colorways.  So far I've thought of 1) keeping things totally separate (make one quilt in brown, one in snow), or 2) throw them all together -- one brown stripe, one snow, another brown.  Other ideas, anyone?

Linking up to:

Blogger's Quilt Festival

I finished up my "Trees Quilt," just in time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival.
Thanks for visiting!

I made this quilt for my daughter Lexi's bed.
Now she has a spring/summer quilt for her bed,
and we can tuck her Christmas Quilt away until next winter.
It will be fun to change these out and celebrate the changing of the seasons.

Quilt Back
Balloons on top, City Print on the Bottom

This quilt was my own design -- I just made it up as I went.
Lexi's bed is an odd size -- it's an antique bed,
smaller than a full size, but larger than a twin.
Her favorite color is red, so this quilt needed to have lots of red!
At one point she asked me if I could add some rocket ships to it,
but I just couldn't figure out how to make that work,
and she must have forgotten all about that request (whew)!

I could have named this quilt "adventures in machine quilting."
Mostly this is free motion quilted -- an all over stipple/meander in the red,
a tiny stipple in the blue sky, and pebble quilting for the green trees and borders
of the tree blocks.  I straight line quilted the grass, in narrow lines for the small tree blocks and wider spaced lines for the larger tree block.
I'm so happy that it's finally done and off of my dining room table.

Close up of the quilting

After washing, crinkly and soft!

I taught myself several new things in the making of this quilt.

I had never done bias binding, or sewn the binding on completely by machine.

I used this tutorial for the bias binding, and this tutorial from Red Pepper Quilts.

I have never liked the way machine sewn binding looks, but the way Rita explains it, you don't even see the stitches on the front side--it's great!

Because this quilt is for a child's bed

(and will be well loved, jumped on, used to build forts, etc.),

I figured that a machine sewn binding would be the way to go.

Binding

It's new home!

Thanks, Amy, for hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

It has been so much fun to hop around and see so many beautiful entries!

Also linking up to:

Works in Progress

Finished this week:

Supernova Quilt

Love, love, love this quilt.
I wrote more about it earlier in the week, here.

May blocks for do. Good Stitches
Done and in the mail!

Nearly finished:

Just need to finish quilting the blue sky!

This was the first time I've done bias cut binding, and
also sewing the binding on by machine.

Still in progress:

-hand quilting my double hourglass quilt - not enough progress made to take new photos!

-Bottled Rainbows

-numerous other projects (sigh)

New projects started this week:

(completely crazy, but I often feel the need to start piecing new blocks after I've been stuck quilting & binding a quilt for several days.  The actual quilting and binding is kind of boring, but starting a new quilt is thrilling!)

Sherbet Pips Charm Squares, bordered in Kona coal and medium gray
I couldn't resist starting this project after seeing
this quilt at Poppyprint

Made with Sugar Pop scraps, left over from my Supernova Quilt
Pattern/tutorial by Arajane

Found project:

I actually found all of this at the bottom of a pile of fabric I dug through this week.  I don't remember what I had planned with all of these pinwheels, especially since they're not even all the same size!  

This has probably been in a box for years -- when we moved into our house nearly 4 years ago, I took a very leisurely approach to unpacking.  At the time, I had 2 year old twins and a husband commuting 70 miles to work every day, too.  I figured that we were going to live here forever, so why rush the unpacking?

I wonder what else might be hiding?!

Check out Freshly Pieced for lots of other Works in Progress!

Supernova Quilt

I finished up my Supernova quilt last week, and we had a beautiful Saturday for taking some outdoor pictures!  I had extra fabric left in the fat quarter bundle that I used for this quilt, so I made 3 extra blocks, and made the quilt rectangular rather than square.  It's just about the right size if I wanted to use it on the daybed in my sewing/guest room.  I love this quilt, and loved the process -- Lee did such a nice job on this quilt along!

Quilt Stats
Name: Supernova (or My Favorite Quilt in a Long Time!)
Size: 60" x 75"
Pattern: Supernova Quilt Along by Lee at Freshly Pieced
Fabrics: Sugar Pop by Moda, Kona Cotton in Snow & Robin's Egg
Quilting: Straight lines (easiest to see on the back)

Back

Linking up to:

Pretty Little Pouch Swap - sent and received!

I was so excited to receive this AMAZING package from AngelaD!

Isn't she amazing?  

My little artists and I have had tons of fun with all the extras she sent.

And the little bundle of the new DS fabrics was such a great surprise!

Here is what I sent to my partner:

She had several "gathered clutches" on her inspiration mosaic, and also said she liked color and linen.  So I used Noodlehead's gathered clutch tutorial, and pieced a center strip from different fabrics to coordinate with the lining.  I hope she likes it!

I added some organic chocolate treats, a ball of #8 perle cotton (recent thrift store find!), and some fat quarters of Katie Jump Rope that I discovered in the basement of a quilt shop a few weeks ago!  I hope you like it, partner!

Works in Progress Wednesday

I feel like I spent all my free time this week looking at this:

 and this:

sneak peak at the quilting on Lexi's tree quilt, so far
the grass and sky need something - wavy lines/straight lines?

I finished quilting my Supernova, and am ready to hand sew the binding.  My husband and I are a few episodes behind on our Glee watching, so this should work out well.  I need to finish the quilting on the tree quilt (above) for Lexi, and then decide on binding.  I'm thinking stripes -- but not for sure.  The rest of the quilt is solids, so I'm not sure how that would look -- we'll see!

one of my favorite blocks

binding is on, ready to go!

My only problem was this:

Has anyone had this problem with their sliding mat for FMQ?  It doesn't seem to be sticky on the underneath side anymore, and I quilted right into it (and wasn't able to easily rip the stitches out)!  Huge bummer!  This was part of the reason I decided to quilt my Supernova with straight lines.

Also finished up this:

for the Pretty Little Pouch Swap -- finally!  My partner is probably wondering where her pouch is, with all the finished pouches posted to flickr lately.  It's coming, I promise!  I used Noodlehead's gathered clutch tutorial, but pieced the middle section to coordinate with the lining.  I used linen for the outside, and love the way it wrinkled/gathered!

Linking up to:

May 1st

Lily's blog is having a linky party today to share something that we really enjoyed working on during the past month.  For me, these "Twin Gifts" were an easy choice!  Twins Ella and Zoe turned 5 this month, and had a Rainbow Birthday Party!  We met in an Early Childhood/Family Education class when they were 2 and my girls were 3.  Their mom is just about the sweetest person in the world, and it has been such fun to compare notes on being moms of twin girls.

So I knew I wanted to make something really special for their birthday.
And that I wanted to be able to work on it with my twins.
Here is what I came up with!

"Ruby Lou" doll pattern can be found at Sew Much Ado

Twin Rainbow Quilts
My own creation, but was inspired by this quilt I found on flickr.

Close up of the pebble quilting.
Fun to do, and I LOVE how it turned out!

Soft minky dots for the backing.

One skirt just wouldn't be enough, would it?
A girl needs a change of clothing!

These little dolls were a really fun project, and I had lots of help along the way from my twins, complete with planning how they wanted their dolls to look -- I promised to make them each one after these gifts were finished!  It turns out that 5 year old fingers are perfect for stuffing those narrow arms and legs.  And it was really fun to see the amazed look on their faces after I sewed the heads together and then turned them inside out - it was like the dolls came alive!  The only thing that I would change about the pattern is to embroider the faces first -- this seemed much easier, rather than waiting until the end and having to bury the embroidery knots up in the hairline somewhere.  I also lined the face and the body with interfacing prior to doing the embroidery.  And the faces/arms/legs are just a neutral Kona cotton, not muslin as the pattern suggests.  I would definitely recommend this fun and easy pattern!