Happy New Year!

Wow, I'm sort of late to the New Year party but since I haven't written since December it still holds true. By now you're all accustomed to writing 2016 and have Christmas décor put away, right? I'm still finishing the latter, but to be fair, I'm ahead of previous years! I have to have the tree on the street for pick up tomorrow and new to this year - it has to be cut in half! If I was handy with a saw I'd cut it from tip to stump to make two perfect halves, but I don't think that's what they have in mind. Call me 'Amelia Bedelia'!

But we're here for project updates and that's what I've got in store for you. Four very fun things I whipped up in the past weeks that actually got finished and used! Whoa.

The story for the first one is that I at the cutting counter at The Cove to get a selection of fat quarters for my sisters Christmas present. Sarah had gifted me a set of FQ lollipops and I was all gun hoe to duplicate them.

These are the ones I made for Julie. Sarah gave me a set
from a wonderful line called Mon Ami.

Then in one quick instant I heard myself say 'go ahead and give me a half yard, I'm keeping the other FQ.' What???? this right after I had famously vowed to not buy fabric for myself? Well, I rationalized it by stating it's purpose and critical need to the skeptical daughter, 'this is needed for the foyer table'. Now the project was established and I got to spend the next few hours designing a new runner. Hehe.

Modern Barjella? or simply Staggered Strips.

That wave design is supposed to represent the snow we
weren't getting. But then we got snow, so hurray!

 I love doing after Christmas sewing. All the hubbub and rush of the holiday is over and usually I have some free days at home to myself. I offered to sew something for Laina's mentor and after several suggestions, we decided on a bible tote. I'd been dying to cut into my Alison Glass hand dyed batiks and it was really fun to see the colors meld together. I topstitched a few words here and there (love, joy, peace) and also used my specialty stitches - the Greek Key and a cute chain flower.

Love Alison Glass Fabrics!

Piecing the design. It's much harder to make random look
random than you think.

This inside is lined with linen and some utility twill gives it an edgy feel.

Another tote that was gifted was to my adorable niece, Alex. She's a crafty gal and book lover and this tote seemed like just the right thing. I bought some stiff interfacing for totes and learned some key lessons in adding zippers to such a stiff product.

Most of the fabrics are from a line called Let's Play -a cute
line comprised of game motifs.

The pink handles are a Wordfind print.

Inside there are two pockets and another zipper pocket.
It was surprising how much this tote could hold!

I was never more happy than when my friend Diane announced that her daughter was having a baby BOY! I'd been eyeing up the cute boy quilts on Pinterest so I lost no time ordering a green and blue FQ bundle from Bloomerie Fabrics. One of the fabrics was from the line Which Way and that inspired the overall design. Luckily we had Quilt Club that weekend so I got to sew steady on it and reap the benefits of having a room full of experienced quilters. I finished this in one week flat, doing a few hours every night. Now when I look at all my unfinished projects I know that finishing them is possible (as long as there's a deadline!).

Planning with the help of a few photographs. What did
quilters do without iPhones?

The evolution.



I quilted it with a tight meander. I wanted a crumply look.

Staged in my guest room. Scrappy binding, green Minky
Dot on the back. I call it Every Which Way.
Congratulations, Angi and Nathaniel!

A Finished Quilt

Ok, it's just a baby quilt, but it's finished and it feels good! This is one of the cutest things I've copied blatantly from Pinterest. Thank you random person TheSewingChick.blogspot.com for coming up with this layout.  I highly suggest taking a trip to her very professional website. Such cute things! This layout uses one charm pack and whatever solids you have to coordinate.

My cousin Sharon is doing the 'honors' of holding it while
I direct her a 'little bit left', 'little bit right' trying to avoid shadows.

I ordered one of the fabrics from the Fresh Cut Collection for the backing. It was so hard to choose - everything in this collection is so cute! End the end we went with the grey floral and did an all over meander on it.

We had a gorgeous mid-Novemeber day with temps in the
50's and bright sun.

That weekend was our church's craft fair and a friend offered to display some of my quilts for the sale. Nothing sold, but I was just a tiny bit proud to see my quilts hanging there.

At Community of Hope's Craft Fair in Rosemount, MN

A Couple of Gift Items

First up is this Fall runner I made for my sister, Julie. I bought these fat quarters at my new fave quilt shop - Twin Cities Quilting - in St. Paul. It's only 10 minutes from work so very dangerous indeed. They have a nice selection of modern fabric and good examples up everywhere. This is from the Silver Lining Collection. I love the leaves. Here it is on Julie's countertop in Virginia! Looks good in her kitchen, I'd say.

 

 

 

A design from Fabulously Fast Quilts by Amy Smart
Chair by Uncle Otto

And then this is the baby quilt I made for Jeri. I think I already shared about the construction of this adorable butterfly pattern in another post so I'll keep this short. It was so easy and fun to watch the blocks come together. The fabrics are a mix of stash and solids.

She wasn't so sure of the person peering down at her!

Valentine's Day Quilt

It's T-2 days to Valentine's Day. Are you ready?

When I first started buying quilt fabric I snagged this pre-cut from Faye's, the only shop for 50 miles of my folk's farm in Mayville, ND. It was a 'slice', not a charm pack. I was very unfamiliar with what this could be used for but it was on sale, so in the name of thriftiness I purchased it. The collection is L'amore from Sandy Gervais. Obviously, it's only use is for Valentine's Day. After scanning Pinterest for the easiest HST design, I found a design with the white heart and added my own fly away pieces. I think it turned out pretty cute. The quilting in the heart is meandering and the rest is straight diagonal lines. The backing is red minky, but not ordinary red minky. In this version the dots are shaped like hearts! How perfect is that? I'm hoping this goes to someone needing a special gift for their sweetie or an adorable little girl. It won't be on Etsy until next year, so email me directly if interested.

Summer for Christmas Finale

Here's the lovely family with their new quilt!

These are quite possibly the cutest kids around. Praying blessings

to this amazing family.

Summer for Christmas

Merry Christmas!!!

This past month I've had the honor of sewing a quilt for a coworker for a Christmas gift. He wanted something special for his lovely wife and family to use while cuddling on the couch. They had seen quilts at church and so he had an idea of color and design. Poor Josh got quite a lesson in quilt construction, but he took it like a trooper. He even downloaded my design software at home so he could play with the color choices and layout. Surprisingly, it was very fun to see something take shape that was different from my inclinations.

An Etsy quilt that helped spur ideas plus computer designs.
(final version not shown)

Fabric was ordered online and cutting commenced.

Kona solids were purchased from FreshModernFabric on
Etsy.



Sashing strips made easy.

One of the first decisions Josh made was whether to keep it at 90 degrees or turn the blocks 'on point'. You can see 'on point' won out.

Making good use of my design wall.

It was at this point that I realized the fabric I ordered was running out. Well, no problem. I quickly looked up the same store and ordered what I thought was the orange being used. My mistake was thinking that this orange was tangerine. I waited almost 10 days for the package to arrive and you can imagine my shock when tangerine turned out to be dark orange! The shade I needed was school bus. Well, Robert Kaufmann offers 303 different solids so you can't blame them for getting creative with the naming process! The mix-up didn't take long to fix because Alice Essinger, owner of FreshModernFabric made sure my extra yard of school bus was shipped same day. So nice!

Sewing blocks into strips.

Once the blocks are done you sew them into diagonal strips and then sew the strips together to make the top. I guess some people sew triangles into the edges, but I used a whole block to make sure the right corner color was in place. Josh also requested a satiny border for his little boy to rub between his fingers. It's a soothing action and only a certain satin will do. Luckily we found the right feel and color. I love the 'blanket' look it adds. 

We also talked about backing and batting. There's a lesson to be learned when choosing batting. The lesson is - what comes out of the plastic bag is not what you work with, especially after you've tumbled it in the dryer to remove creases!
Now for backing. If you're going to cuddle under a quilt with the kiddos, do you want anything other than minky dot? The answer is no. The biggest question is - what color?

Color options at JoAnn's, but not every JoAnn's. Josh chose the green
hiding to the right of the yellow. You can clearly see there isn't 4 yards
on that bolt. On a prayer, I made a detour to Edina and found the green
and guess how much was on that bolt? Exactly 4 yards!

I'm glad Josh went with straight line quilting. Meandering or loops would have distracted from his clean simple design. These bisecting lines add a design over the design. Love it!

Here's the final shot of the quilt before handing it off to Josh at work. It snowed that morning and stayed just long enough to get this shot. My brother Gary is credited with tweaking this photo.

Summer for Christmas
Dec 2014

Every quilt get labeled, but this one went on the dust cover.

 Here's hoping Kaleena and kiddos are feeling summery and uplifted during this brown Christmas of 2014!