Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2012

I am so excited that it is time for the Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2012 - I love looking at how creative everyone is.  Thank you Amy for hosting this wonderful event.

I recently made a baby quilt for a friend of mine.  She was having a hard time determining what she wanted to do for her baby's nursery.  She was very excited about having a girl however, she is not a fan of pastels or pink.  She had spent quite a bit of time on line trying to find baby bedding that she liked.  She was not able to find any that she liked that looked even remotely girly.

I found some fabric on line -Michal Miller Lagoon that she loved.  I then told her I could come up with the bedding for her.  She was thrilled and I was left wondering what I was going to come up with.

I decided to try a variation of the Stepping-Stones Quilt from Jacquie Gering in her Quilting Modern book.

I can't tell you how long the quilt sat on my design wall while I tried to wrap my mind around how I was going to get everything pieced together.  I had never done any type of improve piecing and I was afraid of really messing things up.  Once I had the mindset that it was abstract - and it was up to me I realized no one would really know if I made an error or not. After starting I realized it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

For the back of the quilt I based my design on something similar to Bijou Lovely's color block quilt.  I wanted the quilt to be able to be reversible. 

I have a friend who has a long arm machine and she was willing to let me use her machine.  I was terrified and fascinated all at the same time.  I spent the afternoon at her house working on the quilt.  I selected a pattern with varying sizes of circles to mimic the black polka doted fabric in the quilt.  I am looking forward to using her machine again soon.  I don't have the space for a long arm but I really want one.  Scary as I have been quilting less than a year and I have a fabric stash that several family members have hinted indicates I have a problem and should be attending meetings of some sort.

Front

Back

 

Quilt Statistics~

Finished Quilt Measures: 42X55

Quilted by:  Me - Cindy

Best Category ~ Baby Quilt, Favorite Throw

 

Now I am off to look at all of the other quilts and discover new blogs.  Enjoy and thanks for stopping by.

 

Time Flies

It's hard to believe that summer has come and gone.  It went by so very fast - Of course when one works 55+ hours a week and tries to keep up with an active preteen and teen it is to be expected.

Taking my niece, son, and daughter sea kayaking in the early morning in Resurrection Bay.

Bald Eagle looking for breakfast as the fog began rolling in.

R actually having fun without an electronic devise!

The sun is out and the sea is calm ~ beautiful weather for kayaking.

I wish I had taken a picture of the garden when everything was in full bloom - goal for next year.

Now on to some of my sewing projects - while getting ready to do this post I realized I have been really bad about taking pictures of my projects and what is worse is I have given most of them away before taking a single picture.

Front of sampler quilt for my niece M.

Back of quilt

 

Pillow for bedding I made for friend - she is having a girl and she does not like pale pink.  This was my way of sneaking a little hot pink in for her.  She loved it.

Coordinating pillow for baby's room.  I used the tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew - I used double sided fleece instead of felt.  I also made a crib skirt, valance and quilt.  It is my hope to post the quilt pictures later this week.

 

I have approximately 20 various projects in the works for the holidays - my goal will be to post an update at least every other week on my progress, or lack of.

 

 

 

 

 

Where is summer....

I am waiting for sunshine and warm temperatures..... something tells me I am going to be waiting longer.  The pond is up an running but it has been too cool to leave the door open.  Each pump moves over 12,000 gallons of water an hour - I wanted it to look and sound like a real stream.

As you can see the tulips are just starting to bloom.  We are having a late start due to the record snowfall this year - over 11 feet down the hill. - Not a record I ever hope to see again or even get close to.   Looking out the window this winter you could not tell I had a fence.  The fence is 6 feet tall.  I am hoping that my vines will bounce back.  We had some pretty bad storms and 2 of my 4 trellises fell over damaging several plants and trees.  I hope to have better pictures once the flowers start to come in.  I have Clematis, Hops, Kiwi, and Rhodochiton growing on various structures in the yard.

Forget-Me-Nots and Poppy's in bloom - Hosta and Iris are beginning to emerge.

Viticella Venosa (purple)& Markhams (pink) Clematis

I cant remember the name but it is the only one the moose did not eat.  Grrrr (shade garden) The front yard is not fenced so I am frequently at odds with the moose.

One of my favorite shade plants - the leaves stay spotted all season.

More flowers in the shade garden

With all of this cooler weather that I love so much....(I love the sun and heat) I have been able to get a few more indoor projects out of the way.  I find it hard to weed when it is cold, windy and cloudy.  I will need to force myself to weed otherwise the horrid horse tails are going to win.

Top of quilt for twin size bed.

I am hoping for warmer temperatures and sunshine this week.





Mr.I's Quilt

Here is a quilt for my nephew. The first quilt I made was for my sister - of course it was an experiment.  To make a long story short one of the fabrics was not right.  I was not sure how to fix the quilt.  My nephew came over for me to help him make a pillow.  The frog fabric he had was the perfect fix for his moms quilt.  I quickly went to the store to get more frog fabric.

It took  me forever to quilt her lap blanket - it took me two weekends to cut and piece together.  It took me over 5 months to quilt it!  It became sort of a joke of course I had never quilted anything before so it was a learning process.  When I presented it to her she was very happy ~ until her son saw it.  It has HIS frog fabric in it and it had to be for him. Mr. I even hid her quilt for her just so he could wrap himself up in the blanket.   His birthday was less than a month away so back to the store I went. I did not really have a plan.  I just needed to find fabrics that would match his frog fabric (that they no longer had)  Thankfully I still had some left over.  The pattern I used is called the boyfriend quilt and it can be found in the book Modern Mix by Jessica Levitt.

The quilt took me two weekends to cut out, piece and quilt!  So I did much better on my timing then with my sisters.  Of course who wants to disappoint a 9 year old on their birthday.  I like the quilt much better without the quilting.  I should have used a light thread.  However, I know that he does not care he is just happy to have his own quilt that matches his frog pillow.

Before Quilting

After Quilting

Back of Quilt

Frog Fabric

I am currently working on two quilts for friends.  I don't anticipate getting much done on them this weekend as I am hoping for nice weather so I can work in the garden. 

View inside my greenhouse looking out at the garden.  I don't have any flowers outside as it is still getting down to 37 degrees most nights.  It looks like I am going to see tulips bloom before the weekend is over.  My goal for the weekend is to get my water feature turned on and plants out on the deck.

Bloggers Quilt Festival ~ Spring 2012

I was inspired to show off Bella's quilt so I thought why not enter The Bloggers Quilt Festival - of course this required that I begin blogging... so here is my first blog.  I hope I am able to set it up and post prior to the deadline closing.

I just recently got into quilting- this is my second quilt.  I never planned on quilting. I began sewing with a group of ladies to ward off depression in the dark months of winter.  After finishing an outfit that I had worked on for some time I discovered that I had gained a few more pounds and it was not as flattering as it could be ~ perhaps I should have not eaten so much chocolate while sewing.

I love fabric so I was trying to come up with a way to keep sewing and playing with color - that was when it hit me.  I would not outgrow a quilt and one gets to stand behind the quilt when photographing!

I had just received an order from Pink Chalk Fabrics and in their order was a picture of a quilt.  It was amazing!  My stepdaughter saw the picture and fell in love.  I knew that I had to make it for her.  They were out of the quilt kit and the dimensions were much smaller than I was interested in so I decided I would make my own variation.

I ordered a Kona Solids Card.  I went on line and then proceeded to buy a ton of fabric.
I only needed one strip of each color. I then began arranging them in some sort of order.  I have enough left over to make 4 more of these quilts!  ~its good for ones stash....

 Here is Burton helping change the order of the strips.....

Things I learned when doing this quilt.  It is important to measure all of your fabric.  I thought since all of my fabric was from the same line and same designer it would all be the same width - it is not.  I based my main measurement on the first strip of fabric I cut.  For the placement of the white strips I came up with a formula on Excel to get a random centered look.  This would have worked IF all of my strips had been the same length. I was able to correct this by making little additions here and there.

I forgot to take a picture of it before it was quilted.  I had it quilted by Loretta Tibor; she did a wonderful job. 

The quilt measures  88 X 100

Back of Quilt

Close up of quilting

I hope you have enjoyed my first post and Bella's quilt.  Hopefully I will get this blogging thing down. 

I find so much inspiration each time I look at what everyone is creating.  It gets me wondering if I am able to tackle that or perhaps I can add just one more project to my list.... enjoy looking at everyones quilts.  bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2012~ hosted by Amy