Summer Quilt Bucket List

Spring has finally come to us here in Northern Michigan and it's come in with a bang - 80 degree temps today!  I'm so excited for winter to finally be melting away from us.  While it has been a long winter, it doesn't feel like it's been a hard winter - just a typical winter here in the Mitten State.  However, I am so ready for summer and I am especially looking forward to this summer because for the first time ever, we will be living in a home that we own!  haha Yup, my husband and I are finally joining the ranks of home owners.  I'm really looking forward to being in a home that we can truly make our own.  Plus the house has a big deck and a fantastic yard for the boys!  I'm looking forward to many beautiful summer days outside with my two little boys.  

The month of May is going to be a busy month around here for us as I attempt to pack up the house and get us ready for the move with the "help" of these two little cuties. Also, we are taking a 5 day trip to New York with a stop in Western New York to drop of the boys with my mom while my husband and I drive out to the Utica area for a cousin's wedding.  We are hoping to get to spend a few days with my folks after the wedding and get a chance to celebrate our baby's 1st birthday while there.  .....  All that on top of moving!  haha oh well - it's either all or nothing for us and this trip was planned and committed to back in January.  Anyways.... all that to say, I don't think I'll get to do much sewing over the next 4-6 weeks let alone any quilting.  While I have been busy with a lot of sewing for the months of March and April, I haven't gotten to do much quilting which is my true love when it comes to fabric and sewing.   While I pine away for my sewing machine as I'm buried under moving boxes, I thought I would take a chance to make up a wish list of quilts that I would LOVE to make this summer.  This list contains mainly larger quilts that I want to make for myself just because the fabric is beautiful, the pattern simply cannot be ignored, the desire to try a new piecing or quilting technique, and because obviously, one cannot have too many quilts.  So here in no particular order in which they might be made is my bucket list of quilts I want to make this summer (wish me luck!):

Indelible Rocky Mountain Puzzle Quilt (Queen size):
First up, I've had this lovely bundle of Indelible fabric by Katarina Roccella sitting on my shelf for about 6 months now. 

I bought it the intention of making a queen sized quilt for our bed.  I was inspired by this Rocky Mountain Puzzle Quilt, and I've even worked out the quilt math.  Sadly, this quilt was put on hold until I got through Christmas sewing and then on hold again until after I got through craft fair prep sewing and now on hold again until after the move.  I definitely want to get to this quilt this summer!

Wild & Free Ducks In A Row Quilt (Long Throw size):
The second quilt I want to make this summer is based off of this quilt.  Becca of Bryan House Quilts just released a new quilt book called Modern Rainbow and this quilt is from a pattern in that book.  I have been hording a fat quarter bundle of Wild & Free fabric by Maureen Cracknell that I got back in November waiting for just the right quilt for it.  This quilt is it!

However, I'm stumped on what color I want to use for the background on this quilt.  I want a solid color and I don't think I want white.  I decided to finally break down and purchase my very own Kona color card the other day. 

Certainly out of these 303 beautiful colors, I can pick one that will be the perfect background fabric for this quilt. 

Utopia Molehills Quilt (Long Throw size):
The third quilt I want to tackle this summer is called Molehills.  It is a brand new quilt pattern just released by Latifah Saafir.  It is the first quilt pieced from curves that I've loved so much as to be willing to actually learn how to sew with curves! And bonus Latifah is hosting a quilt along for this marvelous pattern!  Added incentive to work on this quilt for sure!

I figured since I was jumping out of my comfort zone by tackling a curves quilt, I might as well get really out of comfort zone and pick a palate that I wouldn't typically go with.  For a while now, I've been seeing different projects pop up on Instagram using Utopia fabric by Frances Newcombe.  It's one of those fabric lines that initially intrigued me and has slowly grown on me to the point that I actually really like this fabric line.  A lot of the prints in this fabric line are not prints I would typically pick, but as a complete collection, I have developed a serious fabric crush.  So when I saw the Fat Quarter Shop run a sale on a half yard bundle of Utopia, I just had to get it and turn it into a Molehill Quilt!

Botanics "Yet To Be Determined" Quilt: 
This fat quarter bundle of Carolyn Friedlander's Botanics line has been sitting on my shelf for a while now since I snagged it off an Instagram destash sale.  While this bundle isn't quite the entire Botanics fabric line, there are still so many beautiful prints and colors just begging to shine in a beautiful quilt.  As of right now, I have three or four different ideas of what I could do with this bundle, but nothing seems quite like the right fit.  I'm determined though to keep looking and hopefully this summer settle on one.

Modern Maples Twin Size Quilt: 
Ok, so honestly this quilt has been on my some day, maybe might make list for a while now.  It's one of those quilts that I really like but it just has never been on the top of my list to make. 

 

Well that changed this past weekend when I was pulling together fabric to make a mini quilt for a swap I'm in and the fabric pull just screamed fall quilt and whats a more perfect fall quilt (that is NOT a Halloween quilt) than a maple leaf quilt.

 

 I added in a few more colors from my stash and cut out a twin sized quilt while I was cutting out the fabric for the swap quilt.  It ended up being exactly what I needed to work on this week - simple cathartic piecing.  I got 6 of the 30 blocks all pieced before I ran out of the background fabric with which to make the stems.  Naturally the fabric had to be special ordered from JoAnns but I'm sure this quilt will stay high on my list to get done soon.  

Quilty Projects for my Mom: 
One of my biggest cheerleaders and fans of my sewing and quilting has been my mom.  I've made here a few quilty things as Christmas and birthday gifts which you can see here, here, and here (at the bottom of the page).  Anyways, she recently asked if she could hire me to make here a wall hanging and several sets of place mats.  Talk about being a major supporter!  We haven't settled on what exactly I'll be making for her over the coarse of the summer, but I do hope I can convince her to consider some of the adorable quilt blocks out of these two books by Lori Holt.  I think my mom would really like them, and I always enjoy sewing up any pattern written Lori. 

Whelp...sounds like I've got plenty of sewing to keep me busy this summer in between settling into our new home, enjoying the beauty of Northern Michigan with my family, and all the other ADD sewing and DIY projects that I'm sure will pop up.  I girl can dream, right?

Sewing For A Girl

Today we are celebrating my one and only niece's 3rd birthday.  Yup, I have 2 sons, 5 nephews, and only 1 niece.  So whenever I get the opportunity to sew for her, I love to go all girly and pink and princess.  This little girl is as girly girl as they come.  And she loves her dollies and just like any little girl she has tons of them and naturally they all have tons of little accessories to go along with them.  A while ago I had seen this quilted suitcase tutorial, and at the time, while I thought it was adorable, I didn't have anyone specifically to make it for.  When it came time to brainstorm ideas of what to sew for my niece's 3rd birthday, I remember having seen this suitcase and thought it would be a perfect idea to make for her to hold all of her dollies' things in.  Pulling from my stash, I found I had a yard of this really cute princess and castle fabric. Combining that with a few other fabrics from my stash, I got right to work on the suitcase. 

 The tutorial was pretty straight forward, and combined with my previous bag making skills and tricks I had learned, the suitcase went together pretty quickly.  That is until I got to the park where I attached the top of the suitcase to the zipper and center gusset.  I might have gone a little pin crazy to make sure everything lined up and needless to say, I ended up stabbing myself and bleading a little bit on the zipper.  ouch! yukk....

Thankfully it cleaned out pretty well.  However, I got stalled on adding the binding to the raw edges on the outside of the suitcase.  You see, in order for it to look nice, the binding needed to be sewn down by hand which is most definitely Not my favorite method of sewing on binding. 

Finally it was done, but I felt like it was missing something so I whipped together two opened wide zippered pouches from my favorite tutorial found here.  These will be great for storing all sorts of dolly accessories.

Still feeling like this gift wasn't quite done especially since I had a few largish scraps of the castle fabric left, I decided to purchase this pattern to make a set of doll sleeping bags. 

They turned out so cute even if my husband insists they look like oven mitts.  Finally, I was done and this adorable set was ready to go.  Even my niece's dolly that she had accidentally left at our house the other day seems to be pretty happy with how things turned out.

I'll be giving this to my niece at her birthday party later today.  I'm pretty sure she'll like it. :)

Spring Fling Mini Quilt Swap

As the Schnitzel & Boo Mini Quilt Swap that I was a part of was wrapping up in January, I decided to sign up for another mini quilt swap since I had had so much fun making and being a part of the Schnitzel & Boo swap.  I signed up for a Spring Fling Mini Quilt swap that had a due date of mid-April.  After receiving my partner's information and thoroughly stalking her on Instagram, I noticed that she had included Megan Bohr of Canoe Ridge Creations Starshine quilt in several different mosaics she had posted for several different mini quilt swaps she was a part of - including the Spring Fling swap.  I love Megan's quilts and I jumped at the chance to re-create one of her gorgeous quilt designs into a mini-quilt for my partner. 

I decided to make 16 stars like in the original Starshine quilt, but shrunk them down to a finished size of just 6" each.  This made for some itty-bitty half square triangles in each block which I'm not a fan of.  Since I had recently learned how to foundation paper piece, I pulled out my ruler and pencil and drew up a paper piecing template for the stars. 

For the fabric selection, I wanted to keep the rainbow affect of the original Starshine quilt.  However, not wanting to buy 16 different pieces of solid fabrics (my solids stash is kind of small and lacking in color), I decided to utilize a fat quarter bundle of Kona Cotton's newest 32 colors which I had won last fall.  After playing around with the colors for a while, I finally manged to come up with a palate that I liked and I thought my partner would like also.

Assembly began, but it was slow going!  Each star had 8 smaller paper pieced units and when you multiply that by 16 stars - that's 128 units to sew together and trim!  yikes!  Thankfully, I landed on my idea fairly quickly at the beginning of the swap so I had a little more than 2 months to work on the quilt.

I did start with a test block to make sure everything worked, and happily my math and engineering skills didn't fail me.  I later incorporated that test block into the back of the quilt. 

Even though this quilt only finished at around 30 inches square, it was probably one of the most labor intensive and time consuming quilts I've ever worked on. 

But I love how it turned out, and it was well work the effort. Just as the quilt I made for my first swap was really hard to part with, this quilt was equally as hard to part with. 

To finish up this quilt, I decided to go with some spiral quilting starting at the center of the quilt.  It's one of those quilting techniques which looks hard, but once you get the spiral started, its really pretty easy since I just let one side of my walking foot simply follow along the previous quilting.  Also, I love how spiral quilting gives a quilt a beautiful modern look without being overly complicated. 

I ended up going with a solid black binding for the quilt to give it a framed look since it is meant to be a wall hanging quilt.  Surprisingly, I finished this mini quilt with 2 weeks to spare!  Thankfully, the sun did come out and the weather was beautiful the Sunday before I had to ship it which meant I was able to take this quilt to a local park for some proper photographs while my husband watched the boys during naptime.  Finally, it was time to send this beautiful little quilt off to it's new home.  I added in a few extra goodies when I packed it all up.  

 

My partner received it and was thrilled!!  Can't ask for more than that :)