I have a couple commissioned projects I’m supposed to be working on. So how did I spend my time? Making these two mini quilts instead!
The star was inspired by this mini quilt. I used this tutorial. Love love love how this turned out! Definitely need to make more of these.
The half square triangle mini was totally inspired by this mini quilt. Love love love this one too!
They are both on their way to being delivered as gifts. Now, where was I?
I squeezed in some time this week to sew together the remaining blocks I was missing for my Garden Party quilt project.
I’m so excited to have it all sewn together! I love how bright, bold and colorful this turned out.
I was able to scrounge enough of the red fabric from my dwindling garden party stash to add a border. I think it looks so much better with the border.
It turned out to measure about 43 inches wide by 56 inches tall, which will be a great size for a lap quilt.
I have the backing and binding all ready to go; just need to pick up some batting to quilt it.
It would be so awesome to finish this by the end of the year. In the meantime, I’m so happy I got this far with it.
It’s time for the Bloggers Quilt Festival: Fall 2011 – an online festival where quilters from all over the world share a picture of one of their recent favorite quilts. It takes place over the same time period as the International Quilt Market, a wholesale trade show where fabric manufacturers and fabric designers get together to share their treasures with fabric shops.
I am happy to share my favorite quilt again with you today.
I used Randi’s pattern and my favorite fabric collection, Chocolate Lollipop. I did free motion stippling all over, which was quite fun to do once you get into a zone.
I think the print for the backing and binding is so charming.
I have big plans to make a quilt from each of Anna Maria’s fabric collections. In addition to this one, I have a zig-zag quilt made from the Good Folks collection, and a quilt-in-progress from the Garden Party fabric collection. I’m hoping to make a quilt with the Innocent Crush fabric collection using a 25-patch pattern, and the Loulouthi collection using a star pattern. I also have a stack of Loulouthi flannels cut up to make into a warm, cozy quilt to curl up in winter. And I’m hoping to make a string quilt with my stash of the Little Folks voile collection. I know, it’s quite ambitious to think I can make that many quilts, but it’s still fun to dream about it.
Thanks for stopping by!
I love to make baskets, buckets and bins to store stuff in.
Recently, I came across this tutorial for an organizer basket which ends up measuring 2 inches high by 9-1/2 inches long. What a fun shape! I’m using one of them to hold my headphones and charger cord, and the other one to hold drawing pencils and pens. If you’re looking for a quick, functional sewing project, this one is quite satisfying to whip up in an hour.
I fell in love with the idea of this project, where you sew scraps together into strips, then sew solid fabrics to either side of those strips, and arrange the new blocks to look like a forest of birch trees. I went through my scrap bin and cut up snippets measuring 2.5 inches wide by varying lengths.
I decided I needed to make some new storage cubes to hold my new pile of snippets, separate from my scrap bin.
These storage cubes are so fun and quick to make, and quite handy to have around.
Now I can just reach into one of these cubes to easily pick out random snippets to piece my birch tree forest together. Should be a fun project to work on here and there, when I have small chunks of time to sit at my sewing machine.
I have received 10 of 12 blocks from my quilting bee partners to make my Garden Party quilt.
A couple blocks came back smaller than the directions, so I will likely end up taking those apart and resewing them together to make sure they are the same size as the rest of the blocks. Since I don’t have much fabric from this collection in my stash, I don’t have a lot of wiggle room to make additional blocks. I’m hoping to get the other two missing blocks back soon, and I’ll be ready to piece this burst of color together.
My husband asked me to make new mini quilts to put on our nightstands. He was bored with the previous ones. So I laid out a stack of fabrics I thought he might like, and let him choose two prints for his nightstand and two for my nightstand.
Here’s what his looks like:
Here’s what mine looks like:
He went with a combination of an African safari map and batik fabrics. He also wanted a simple patchwork design, so I used my pattern for my checkerboards (which are sold out). I love how rich they look on the wood stain of our nightstands. I also love how easy and quick these minis were to make over the course of a week.
I was arranging some fabric on my shelves recently when I discovered how cool an aqua print from each of Anna Maria Horner’s fabric collections look together.
These are all medium value prints, with not enough contrast, even with the addition of a solid aqua fabric. I’m thinking either black or extra dark brown would add some great drama.
In order to maintain a good life-work balance, I tend to be moving more toward making small projects, so I’m thinking about making a set of mini quilts to put on the nightstands in our guest room. Just need to decide what design to use. I definitely want to move this idea to the top of my to-do list.
I can’t believe I finished my Floating Stars wall hanging already!
I started this project at my annual summer quilting retreat.
Only a month later, it’s quilted and bound, and ready to hang. I did some echo quilting inside each star and inside each border, and then some free-motion quilting in all the white space.
This was one of those projects that I just made up on the fly, and I’m loving the results!
PS – forgot to mention that this wallhanging measures 32 inches around.
