Quilt Guild Saturday Sew Day

Every so often, the quilt guild I'm a part of holds a Saturday sew day where a bunch of us get together on a Saturday, learn a fun and quick quilt pattern, and sew quilts for our charity quilt project.  Last year, the guild made and donated 130+ quilts.  It's been really fun being a part of this.

This past Saturday was another Saturday sew day and one that I was actually able to attend.  I knew ahead of time what the pattern was going to be and since my tastes in fabric can be quite different from most of the guild members (I'm 20+ years younger than most of the members), I decided to pull out some fabric from my stash to use.  I had a pile of navy and white strips that I had won as part of Hawthorne Threads weekly #htwipit contest on Instagram a while ago that seemed just perfect for this quilt.

It ended up being a very successful are day for me.  What started as a pile of strips at 9 in the morning ended as a completed quilted (top done, quilted and bound!) by 2:30 that afternoon!  I really do love my new Juki TL2000Qi sewing machine - it churns out a quilt faster than anything!

Hopefully this little quilt will bring comfort to someone going through a difficult life experience.  

Rope Bowls on the Mind

Way back in August, I started to see rope bowls popping up in my Instagram feed.  They looked so fun to make and I really wanted to give them a try.

Well, sewing for craft shows and then sewing for Christmas kind of took priority for a while.

Finally, last weekend, I decided to give this whole rope bowl thing a try.  Oh my - are they ever addicting!  So much fun, they use up the itty bitty string scraps of fabric, the possibilities are endless as to size and how they look.

 I'm definitely not done making them and as I want a few more for myself, they make fantastically fun gifts and I'll be stocking some in my Etsy shop and for an upcoming craft show in April.

Oh and before you ask, I used this great tutorial by Tia Curtis to get me started.

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.  

Some New Bunnies in the Works

Just checking in for WIP Wednesday (linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced).
I don't always have good work in progress stuff to share, but today I actually do!  Yesterday morning, I was finishing up a few things to send to my sister for her baby shower this weekend and I just had to make a cute little lovie to add to the box.  I decided to try my hand at drafting a bunny pattern pulling together several sources of inspiration.  This is the first one I made:

With a jingle noise maker inside, softly stuffed, soft velvety minky on the backside, and the sweetest faux fur pom pom trail, this bunny turned out really really cute!  Squeal worthy really. ;)
Since it turned out so cute, I decided to tweak my pattern a bit (always striving for cuteness perfection) and make up some of these for my Etsy shop.  I managed to make another prototype yesterday evening which turned out even better:

My husband was right - the face makes it even cuter!  My youngest saw him sitting on my ironing board this morning and has thoroughly claimed him as his own.

I think I need to make one more pattern tweak and then it'll be mass production time.  Stay tuned for more of these to show up around here.

The Little Bird Quilt

My sister is due with a baby girl in March and everyone is my family is pretty excited about it especially since 6 little boys have been born to my family in the past 5 years.  I'm pretty excited about having another excuse to delve into the world of little girl sewing since I have 2 little boys of my own.

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into my local quilt shop not intending to buy very much.  But then I spotted the cutest fabric line that has just come in - "Little Bird" by Camelot Fabrics.  Instantly I could envision the cutest baby quilt.  So much for not buying much. ;)

I pulled in a Kona solid ("Ice Frappe") and a light grey crosshatch I had in stash to help fill out the fabric I bought and before I knew it, I had a simple equilateral triangle quilt cut out, sewn together and ready for quilting.

Since this is a quilt that I hope will grow with my niece for several years, I backed it with a soft minky cuddle fabric in mint.  I love backing quilts in minky cuddle fabric - yes, it takes more effort to worth with, but the end result is so worth it!  The quilting was done in a light pink thread in a simple meander which helped to soften the sharp geometric pattern of the triangles.  Fresh out of the dryer - this quilt is to die for soft and oh so snuggly!

Oh and how cute is this striped print for the binding?!

Now, I can't wait to get to meet my new niece in March. :)

I posted about this baby quilt over on Instagram last weekend and the lovely people over at Camelot Fabrics saw it and so graciously asked if they could feature it on their blog! Ummm, yes please! You can find their feature here. Thank you Camelot Fabrics!! :)

The Scrappy Flutterby Quilt

 Sometimes, you have a to do list a mile long of things you should be working on. And sometimes, that to do list seems stifling and uninspiring.  So sometimes, when a quilt block catches your eye, you stop everything and delve into your scrap bin and make a quilt just because you can.  This is what gets those creative juices flowing again.  And that was me this week. 

I had seen this lovely Flutterby block pop up on my Instagram feed and it was love at first sight!  I couldn't get it out of my head, so I ordered the book "Quilt Lovely" by Jen Kingwell which came in the mail this past Saturday, and by Sunday evening I had made my first test block for the Flutterby quilt.  I was even more in love with this quilt!  So even though there was a to do list of things I should be doing, this quilt jumped straight to the top of the list even though it has no end purpose other than I wanted to make it.

Tuesday was a snow day for us, which meant I was able to dump my scrap bin out on the kitchen table and get another 8 blocks plus the boarder cut out.  Gotta love when a quilt comes together all from stash like this one - especially when it makes a dent (albeit a rather small one) in my scrap bin.  The cute owl print that I used on the backing was even from my stash!

Wednesday saw the blocks being sewn into a quilt top and the boarders being sewn on.  And on Thursday, I managed to get the quilt basted, quilted up with my new favorite quilting ever - a simple stripple, and even bound.  I had a lot of fun binding this quilt as I pulled out my basket of binding scraps I've been saving and pieced together a bunch of them to making a scrappy binding that matched the scrappy vibe this quilt has. 

By Friday morning, all I had left was to sew on my label and run it through the wash.  Gotta love fresh out of the dryer crinkly goodness.  :)  Somehow the kids and the sun were both behaving at the same time this afternoon, so I dashed outside to snap a few pictures of this super bright quilt. 

I love the contrast of this cheery quilt against the snow and the long ice-cycles. 

And now, I even managed to get a blog post put together and up on my blog while it's still Friday afternoon!  And and and - I think I decided to put this quilt up for sale in my Etsy shop because while I LOVE this quilt, I don't really need it either. ;)  You can find the listing for it here.  This has got to be a new record! :) 

Linking up with Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday! Happy Weekend, ya'll!

The Oldest Work in Progress Quilt

By this point, I've made quite a few quilts (I really need to catch up on my list so I can tell just how many). But somehow, my poor husband was still suffering along with a sadly too short tied fleece blanket.  He loves it though because the fleece is a dragon print, but still - way too short! And it was starting to look a bit out of place on the coach with all the pretty throw quilts and quilted pillows I've been making and adding onto the coach. It was time to get this guy a quilt!

Now, let me take you back - way way way back to April 2013 to that time when I made these throw pillows for my husband.  Yeah....that was a while ago.  Well, anyways, I never liked those pillows - they turned out smaller than what I had wanted and so they weren't really of much use as actual throw pillows on the coach.  And so I stuffed them into a box and forgot about them for a while (my poor husband...).  Finally, before Christmas 2014, I decided that I would cut apart those pillows and turn them into a quilt for my husband which would be a little bit more useful. Well, that certainly didn't happen in time for that Christmas or for his birthday that following spring.  Finally, I was determined to finish his quilt in time for Christmas 2015.  And I did - sort of.  I got the quilt top all pieced together in time for this past Christmas, so on Christmas morning my husband opened a box with just a quilt top in it.  haha....yeah, he's such a good sport and loved it even though it wasn't finished (and was like oh, that's where those pillows went!). 

But it all worked out because my husband wanted to have a say in picking out the backing and naturally he went with an ultra cuddle minky backing.  I even tried my hand at doing woodgrain free motion quilting on his quilt - thanks to some inspiration from Christina Lane over at Sometimes Crafter. I LOVE how the quilting turned out and it really helped to take a quilt I was feeling meehhh about and turned it into a pretty fab quilt!

 I finished this quilt up last weekend and it has all ready seen quite a bit of loving from my husband and the kids and myself while on the coach.  It feels really good to finally gift my husband his very own quilt and to also finally clear out one of my very oldest work in progress projects.  Although, I did learn a few things while finishing up this quilt - most importantly to never ever leave a quilt half finished for so long because I'll fall out of love with it as my tastes change!  However, even if I have fallen out of love with it, my husband does love it and that is what matters. :)

My Bee Hive Quilt

 At the start of last year, I joined an online quilting bee called The Bee Hive Quilts (you can find out more about it here).  I was paired with 11 other women, we were each assigned a month over the next year to be the "queen bee", and off we went.  It was so fun each month to make a quilt block picked by the queen bee that reflected their different personalities and tastes.  All told I ended up making 24 quilt blocks for the ladies in the bee hive.  I can really see an evolution of my skills throughout the year - my piecing got more precise and my fabric choices got more refined as the year went long.  Below is a compilation of the 24 blocks that I made:

Finally in September, it was my month!! It took me forever to pick a quilt block and the colors I wanted, but I finally settled on the spinwheel block with white, gray, black, and 3 shades of blue placed specially in the block.  Here were some example blocks that I made up to show fabric color placement.

 By this point 8 of the 11 ladies I had started the year with were left and each one of those 8 ladies made me 1 or 2 blocks and sent them my way along with some sweet goodies and extras.  I loved opening reach and every package as I knew that each one had been made with care and thoughtfulness.  Finally, I had all my blocks, but by then craft show sewing and Christmas gift sewing had kicked into high gear.  Well, now it's the new year and I was determined to turn that pile of blocks into a finished quilt. So up on design wall they went where I figured out the layout, how many blocks I still needed to make, and what kind of boarder to add.

 Finally on Thursday on this past week, I got the top all sewn together, the back pieced (extra soft minky fabric!), and it basted.  I was going to wait to quilt it because I had been promising my husband to get his quilt finished up, but that sweety knew how much this quilt meant to me and let me jump my quilt to the top of the pile.  Thursday night I stayed up way too late getting it quilted with a simple all over stripple. And then Friday morning, I got the quilt trimmed, bound, labeled and in the washer.  I had to wait until today (Saturday) for my husband to be around to hold it up for me to get pictures of it (again - such a sweety!!).

And now, this gorgeous and beautiful quilt lives on my coach where it'll be loved and snuggled with nearly ever day.

I know this post is getting a bit long, but if you want to hear a bit more about why this quilt means so much to me, then keep reading.  Don't say you weren't warned though.

Ok, I'm gonna let you in on something I don't normally talk about, but it'll help to give some context as to why this quilt means so very much to me.  See, I struggle with depression and anxiety. I went through a particularly rough stretch of anti-partum depression while I was pregnant with our 2nd boy just after we had made a cross-country move. Not fun.  I still struggle with some form of depression and anxiety on a daily basis.  And before y'all get "helpful" let me just say that yes, I see a therapist regularly, I'm not suicidal, and I'm not "just sad". In fact, most days, I'm good. Life is good. I'm surrounded by good and I'm so very blessed and I can see all of that. But some days, it's a struggle just to breathe.  And most days, even on the good days, the nagging darkness is lurking in the background just waiting to swallow me up.  I don't usually talk about it because it's a very personal struggle that can and has caused so much pain.  But anyways, back to the context. I say all this to say, when I'm having a hard day, it's hard for me to remember the good, to remember that I'm loved, to remember that I'm cared for. So to have this gorgeous quilt finished and on the coach where I can see it every day means so much to me.  This quilt so beautifully speaks to me in so many ways - the colors, the fabrics, the interlocking pinwheels, the meandering quilting, the deliciously soft and cuddly backing - all combined into something so perfect.  But the most important thing this quilt says is that I'm cared for - I matter.  Eight lovely ladies who started out as complete strangers, over the course of a year, have become dear friends who so lovingly took the time to make 12 beautiful quilt blocks just for me.  Those blocks are each special and unique, yet they all joined so beautiful and cohesively together to make the center 12 blocks in this quilt.  I'm so humbled and honored by their generosity and thoughtfulness, and this quilt will always make me feel like I'm getting a hug wherever I use it. 

 Thank you dear friends!!