2 Quilts in 4 Days

As in I started and finished two quilts last week, within four days. Sometimes I'm really good at convincing myself that some crazy sewing task will be much easier than it actually will be. And then, once it's started, there comes a point when I realize I was way wrong. But then at that point, not finishing would be a giant failure.  Totally rational right?

Friday was Hendrix's last day of preschool, which was really a big class picnic at a park. I started thinking about gifts for his two teachers on Monday. Again, I'm not really sure that there was a lot of logic that led to the decision that I would "just" make them each a simple quilt by Friday morning. But that night I picked fabrics for this first one and got it cut and mostly pieced. 

These were nearly all fabrics I've used in recent projects, so I really enjoyed the challenge of picking a cohesive scheme from just scraps. I knew this teacher liked purple and fun, bright graphic things. So I started with the light purples and the pink Melody Miller typewriter that was leftover from this bag I made last fall. From there, it was pretty natural to go with some more pinks, the navy ships, and some aquas and limey greens. I also really liked the idea of that dark green moon print from Tula Pink's Nightshade, but was nervous about keeping it in there. It was leftover from Hendrix's Halloween bat wings. But once it was all together, I loved it. Every quilt needs that "out of left field" kind of fabric. 

So for each quilt, I only had to buy some backing and binding, which I of course went to Sewn Studio for. I don't know how anyone lives without a good local shop nearby for this kind of thing!

The white print on the back is from Julia Rothman's new Ride line. It's little bike gears, but it just looks like a really fun dot. I might need a bolt of it. The binding is from Jay McCarroll's Center City line. The quilting is just a quarter inch on either side of all the seams, plus a diagonal grid in the same way. 

So by Tuesday evening this top was pieced as well. For the other teacher, I knew she might like a little more conservative color scheme. I started with the Joel Dewberry Deer Valley print in red and then added some dusty blues and golden yellows. And even browns! I almost never use reds or browns, but I loved this color scheme once it was all together. This was also a lot of scraps, but I had to cut into a few fresh fat quarters in my stash too. 

With both of these quilts, the initial fabric pull got changed up a little once all the cut squares were lined up. On a quilt like this, it would be impossible to get it just right the first time. Well, for me anyway. Usually, you lay everything out, notice a couple of the prints don't quite work, then go dig around for the replacements. That's all part of the fun. 

Here on the back you can see my quilting a little better. This was definitely the biggest quilt I've ever done an all over free-motion design on, and I'm so happy with how it came out! I recently sat in on my friend Millissa's free-motion class at Sewn. Just hearing her tips and watching her do it helped me improve so much. Just buying quilting gloves made a huge difference for me. The best thing about quilting this way was how fast it got done. The worst thing was how bad my neck hurt afterward. Gotta figure out how to avoid that!

I went with solid red binding and this great backing fabric from Timber & Leaf by Sarah Watts. I had Hendrix write his name in the bottom corner of each quilt back and I wrote the year and who it was for.

So they both got finished pretty late Thursday night. I was so relieved, and SO TIRED. Nick helped keep the kids out of my way a lot during those couple days, which was very sweet. He must have seen I had my sewing crazy eyes on. But it was all worth it because Hendrix was so excited to give them to his teachers and they absolutely loved them. They both mentioned how perfect the colors were for them. Sometimes you just wanna make everyone a quilt. You can't, but I think the ladies who made Hendrix love his very first year of preschool really deserved it. Plus it was fun.

They are both made with 36 squares, 10" unfinished, which makes about a 57" square throw quilt. So if you wanted to make this kind of thing even faster, a precut layer cake would work great. I don't think I normally would have made something so simple if I hadn't been time crunched, but now I want to make more just like them. Sometimes simply letting the fabric choices and quilting be the stars of the show is really satisfying.

Dresden Baby Quilt

I guess I didn't get all the dresden plates out of my system with my last finished quilt. I really wanted to make some traditional dresdens with the pointy blades, instead of rounded off like my modern dresdens quilt. This one is for a very good friend who just had her first baby. We grew up together, and even though we don't talk all that often now, she is just one of those people I will always think of as a close important friend. And when we do get to see each other, it's a very happy thing.  

I started by pulling soft girly colors out of my bag o' scraps. The picks edited themselves into a pastel primaries selection. Then I added the black sketch print and a couple other black or gray prints. That was all it needed to tie everything together with an edge. But a baby-appropriate edge. So it's pretty fun that I was able to get such a great color story just from my scraps. I only had to cut into a couple of my new pink Lizzy House Pearl Bracelets.

The quilting was pretty experimental. I had borrowed my mom's copy of Angela Walter's FMQ book and one night I was drinking wine and looking thru pictures in it. Then I decided, "hey I should just do some of that to my dresdens." So that's the extent of the planning that went into it. I tried swirly things in the center circles. I wish I had taken a close up of that light blue one, because it was the first and it really sucks. But the other three are pretty good.

This is an example of pretty good. Really, I should show more of the sucky stuff right? Then I just did meandering loops in the rest of the dresdens. Straight lines finished out the background, mostly because I knew I would screw things up if I tried another fmq pattern there. Still, it always feels good just to get slightly more comfortable with it. And the combination of quilting styles gave it a great crinkle.

I bound it in Bella Feather, same as the background, to keep the impact of the plates. My first choice would have been that black sketch, but I didn't have enough. I like the look of white binding a lot though.

The back is a Liberty Lifestyle print from Bloomsbury Gardens. The quilt finished at about 43" square.

Now I'm working my way through the WIP list and I hope to have more finishes to show for it soon!

Christmas Planning and Cindy's Pillow

Something really fun is coming next week! Meredith has invited Jacey, Debbie, and myself to participate in the Holiday Craft Bash with her and I'm getting so excited about all the projects we are going to share.

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Each Monday thru Friday for the next few weeks, a different one of us will be sharing a Christmas project and how-to. I love the idea of this set-up because we all four have such different strengths and styles. Jacey is just brilliant at putting together colors and fabrics, Meredith does amazing embroidery and handwork, and Debbie does such modern appliqué and piecing. 
And me? Big surprise, I've decided to go with a movie theme for all my projects. I can hear your gasps. But who doesn't love Christmas movies? Here's my list of holiday flicks I'll be using in my creations- 

• Home Alone
• Christmas Vacation
• A Christmas Story
• Elf
• Rudolph

Should be fun. And we are starting early so that Christmas doesn't sneak up on us before we have a chance to make some new decs. Happens to me EVERY YEAR. 

So you will get blasted with holiday inspiration thru the week, and then on Fridays we will have prizes for those of you who sew along with any of the projects. Really good fabrics and stuff from Sewn Studio, Stash Fabrics and more. All you have to do is add your work to the Holiday Craft Bash flickr group to be entered to win. 

Next Monday I'll be kicking off with my stocking project. Get. Excited. 

And before I spend the rest of the week sharing clothes for KCWC, I wanted to blog about this pillow I've been meaning to share forever. 

You may remember a while back I had some fun with a spammer and a comment contest. Pretty sure the spammer didn't actually see the comments, but I said that whoever wrote my favorite would get a custom pillow cover made by me. 

The very talented Cindy of Siestas and Sewing wrote my favorite comment and she asked for chilled out blues to match her home's beachy vibes. She also said her yellow kitchen was visible from the living room, so I threw the yellows in too. Totally sunny and beachy.

My couch pillows are a little smaller than Cindy's, so the pillow looks slouchy, but I think it filled out well for her. I used all scraps and fusible quilter's grid to get all those seams matching up exactly right. I love that stuff, because my seams would never look that good without it. Maybe I'll try to work it into one of my holiday tutorials for you?

Ok, I really have to get sewing on those clothes. I have no kids for the week, no husband for the night, no excuses! 

Japanese x and + Scrappy Quilt- Done!

This is my favorite ever. I'm just gonna get that out of the way.

And what's with my downstairs neighbors putting up spiderwebs in the middle of September? Also gonna get that out of the way...

So this new-favorite-ever quilt is made up of 48 Japanese x and + blocks from Amy's great tutorial. I was also inspired a lot by Leila's gorgeous quilt. I started making them last December, just a few at a time, completely out of scraps leftover from other projects. Some of the scraps go back to when I first started sewing almost 5 years ago, long before I was quilting. I blogged about some of the blocks here and here. 

There are also scraps from every other quilt I've made, from every PR&P project, from stuff I used to sell on Etsy, and every other gift and toy I've made. It's pretty cool to watch my 3 year old Hendrix sit and point out all the fabrics he recognizes from things that are still used and played with around the house. I feel like it's a sewn journal of what I've done so far. 

It's also funny how you start to sentimentalize all the places your fabric comes from, even the online ones. Of course, a lot of this fabric came from Sewn Studio, which is pretty much the reason I started quilting and became any good at any kind of sewing. But the fabrics also come from great brick and mortar shops like Crimson Tate and Whipstitch, and my favorite online sources Fresh Modern Fabric, Hawthorne Threads, and Pink Castle. 

I'm very happy with the way my quilting turned out on this one. I've gone back to pin basting, after being a sprayer for a long time. I really do think it helped my straight line quilting turn out much better. Plus the quilt feels softer without the spray baste, and I'm glad to not buy any more cans of it. Yes, the process is a little longer, but I didn't really mind. Crawling around on the ground isn't the most fun either way.

I quilted 1/8" on either side of every seam that made up the +'s and x's. It took a long time, and lots of marking, but totally worth it. I also used Aurifil thread for the first time and I loved it. This was a whole lot of quilting and I only used 3/4 of the spool. I feel like I would have spent close to the same amount for several spools of Mettler. I may be and Auriful convert now as well.

The back is all pieces from my stash, and the border is Essex linen in leather, (thanks so much Rachael!) which is a kind of weird color on it's own, but looks great against these bold blocks. The binding is a Joel Dewberry Herringbone that was also in my stash. The only thing I bought for this quilt was the thread and batting.

I love how the design of the quilting forms those star shapes on the back. Also love how you can see the shapes of the blocks through the back when the light hits it. Perfect.

I usually start and finish quilts within a month or two, but I'm so glad I took the time to work on this throughout this year. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever made and it's all from leftovers. When I think about that, it really helps me not to splurge on the 187 great fabric lines that have come out recently. I just want to start on my next scrap quilt already!

It finished at 68" by 52" and it's getting lots of use on the couch already. What a great way to start fall. Thanks so much for indulging me by looking at 4 dozen pictures of it :)

What's Scrappenin.

Getting back to my scraps this week. It's really fun to be a part of the quilt-along and see everyone else's scrap progress. But I've realized that I don't want to finish my Japanese + & x  blocks by March. For one thing, I don't think I could even if I tried. I'd have to forego all other sewing, which you know I have too much ADD for.

But I also just want to enjoy it. I have a crap ton of scraps and I love making these blocks up out of fabric combos I've used in other projects. I envision having about 80 of them when I'm ready for it to be done. That probably won't be until fall or the end of the year... I think I have a total of 15 right now.

Anyway, here's the new batch. Like little scrap firecrackers.

Oh how they make me happy! I think I will have to try a separate pillow or mini for the scrap attack. These are for more of a slow-sipping kind of quilt. 

You might recognize the fabrics in that last picture from my bro quilt. That block on the right I cut up as I was making last month's do Good Stitches blocks, mod mosaics. Such a striking look, but yeesh do these things take forever:

And here's just a little peek at another quilt I'm working on this week. It's a little retro, a little traditional, a little out of my comfort zone, and VERY red. It's totally growing on me though- I can't wait to finish this one up:

Official Scrap Sorter/ Adorabilty Infuser:

Lastly, I forgot to mention before that I guest-posted on my lovely friend Rachael's blog last week. I mostly talked about whatever I wanted and the crafty things I'm into lately, including 4 sewing tools I can't live without. Check it out here!

Wedding Gift Coasters

We went to a wedding on Saturday and Nick played a couple of songs in the ceremony. I wanted to make the couple a small gift, but didn't really know what. Luckily, I saw these Friday night and decided a little set of quilted coasters would be perfect. We didn't even own coasters for the first 3 years or so of our marriage. In fact, we didn't even own glasses, we just lapped water from our hands... ok, that's a lie. Those were actually the good old days before kids when we could have bought any set of fancy-pants coasters our hearts desired. Heck, we were super-rich back then when I think about it. I don't know if you guys have ever heard this before, but kids change everything. Just a brand new piece of wisdom for you :)


Anyway, I'm no quilter, but these were pretty fun and quick to make. I tried to quilt each one differently.

I didn't take a picture of this, but I also made their card by sewing some of the matching scraps on the front of folded card stock. I played a little with the letter embroidery feature on my new machine and stitched "love" into the corner. I was impressed by how easy it was to program whole words in.