FINISHED!!

My cat quilt for the Riley Blake Challenge with the Modern Quilt Guild is finished!  For whatever reason, when I saw these fabrics, I totally thought "cats", especially the orange swirly one -- looked and acted exactly like my Gracie:  lots of energy and orange-on-white!  I've titled it "Cats I Have Known", and the names of all the cats in my life are included in the quilting.  I love how it came out, and I can't wait to enter it...give me a couple minutes to figure out the unclear entry area...

Gracie approved!

The WHOLE quilt!

Up close...

Up close...

Each cat has a name of a cat I've known quilted on it...

Each cat block is quilted differently,
cuz, you know, all cats have different personalities...

This pattern designing stuff is addicting...

I've had two more pattern ideas, so I'm working on writing the patterns.  Then, I'll make a sample to test my instructions, plus have something to photograph for the cover.  I wish I had them done today -- it's a gorgeous, GORGEOUS sunny day outside today!!

I'm also working on the baby quilt I talked about the other day.  I'm loving how it's coming out.  SO SO cute!!  This is not my final arrangement -- I'm just putting them up on the design wall as I finish them so I can admire my work.  Right now I pretty much only have low-volume blocks done.  At the bottom of the cut-fabric-stack are some brighter, louder-volume fabrics.  So, those blocks are coming...this quilt will definitely be a mix of things.

Back to work!

Another baby quilt!

I've been playing around with Instagram, and trying to post things there.  What I like is that my camera still backs up the picture to Dropbox, but it doesn't keep the Instagram-iness, i.e. the changes in tone and color.  Oh, well...it's still fun.  

I've been working on a quilt for a friend who's having a baby and it's going well, I think!  I found the tutorial for the blocks on Pinterest on the blog Little Bluebell for a Stargazer quilt, and it led me to this great blog, Happy Zombie, home of the original block.  I'm not going to do borders around each block -- just the blocks up next to each other.  I'm loving how they're turning out.  They're so fast!  I have some directional prints, but I've decided that I don't care for them to stay going the same direction, and the randomness is super cute, too.  Below is a blue and yellow stripe with gray star points...I'll show the quilt once I've given it to the baby's Mommy and that way it will stay a surprise.

The shower is in a couple weeks -- hopefully I'll get it done before then!  HA!  That's always the challenge, isn't it?

Blue Quilt Tutorial

I had fun this summer making this really fast and super cute baby quilt!  Here is how I did it!

First, I went through my scraps, and cut 5 inch squares of lots of different blues and then lights (or fabrics that read light).  Well, actually, I had my mom cut them.  She was down visiting, and needed a project.  I was afraid if I didn't giver her a project, like cutting  these squares, then she'd find HER OWN project, and rearrange my kitchen or something...this was a good project, because then we got to chat while we played with fabric -- perfect!  

Anyways, then I paired up a light with a dark, and on the back of the light, I marked a line from corner to corner.  I sewed 1/4" to each side of that line.

 I had some leftover triangles from another project, and I used those, too -- I overlapped them just a smidgen along the line that I'd drawn on the back of the light square, and then stitched them, too!

 Then, I cut them down the drawn line, making a whole stack of a bunch of half-square triangles, which I then pressed really good.
 Then I began the somewhat long process of squaring them up.  This is the beauty of making HST this way, I think -- I can square them up and make the perfect.  I squared them up to 4.5 inches...

 Then, I put them up on my design wall.  I LOVED the stars that were created in this arrangement, but it was still kind of small, I felt, and I wanted to it be a good baby quilt size.

  

So, I just happened to have some blue fabric in my stash that went pretty well with all the scrappy HST, so I put that in between as sashing to see if I'd like it.  I did -- but I decided to do only in one direction, so I still had these long strips of triangles.  

But of course I only had enough of the sashing blue for the sashing, and not for the top and bottom borders, so I found ANOTHER piece from my stash for the top and bottom borders. Murphy's law, right?  This is what comes of not having a real pattern and just making stuff up on the fly...

 I like it so well, I made a pink version, too -- just to keep with those traditional baby colors, you know...apparently I'm all about perpetuating stereotypes...but it's a fun, FAST quilt, and a great way to use up scraps.  I plan to do more in other colors -- when I'll do, I'll post pictures here.

It's getting there...

I'm making progress on this little low-volume baby quilt!!

I've decided it needs white borders, even though I'm not a huge fan of borders.  BUT, that will make it a little bit larger.  I'm so pleased with the color combo and all the white.  And it needs rick rack, so stay tuned...

Low-volume quilt

So for 20 years or so, I've been a pretty excellent quilt TOP maker, but I've kinda been behind in the actual QUILTING part of things.  So about 2 years ago, I bought myself a machine JUST for quilting, and I've been having a really good time!  Except for the fact that things keep popping of the machine and hitting me in the forehead, which is problematic.  But, don't worry -- I always wear glasses, so they'll act as protective eye gear if I need it.  Who knew quilting could be so hazardous?

Anyway, I have my poor, friendly sewing machine repairman stumped, because apparently he's never seen this issue in any machine but mine.  So pretty much its the lottery you DON'T want to win.  The fact that it's happened twice now definitely indicates operator error in my opinion, but F.S.M. Repairman has been too kind to say this kind of thing out loud, or even agree with me when I suggested it as an option.  I should probably thank him for that...

But this means that the stack of pinned quilts are still not quilted, because my quilting machine is in the shop again.  So, I've dug out my back-up piecing machine (the one with the REALLY GOOD 1/4" foot), and I'm cutting and sewing up fabric and projects for quilt tops that have been on hold.  For example:

Years ago, while working in a quilt shop, I ended up with a sample pack from a fabric rep of these woven baby plaids.  There wasn't a huge amount of any of them, and they were all weird sizes, so I squared them up, added a white square, sewed corner to corner, and turned them into half square triangles....

I found some polka dots on a white background, and a seersucker plaid with all the same colors, so I made some of those blocks as unifying triangles.   Then, I mapped them out with my trusty graph paper, so they would be evenly distributed over the whole quilt top.

I have them all pinned and ready to sew up into rows.  I'm thinking I'll add a white border, I have a flannel from my stash for the back, and I have enough of the dots for binding...Then to quilt it up, and I can send it to my friend who has a new baby!

I really didn't have a pattern for this one.  So, I was afraid at first that this would be a somewhat boring layout, but I'm really liking it so far.  It's such a nice low-volume quilt.  


Hopefully, my quilting machine will be well soon, and home from Sewing Machine Hospital, and I can get back to all those pinned quilt tops...especially since I'm making more! :)