OMG August: Binding!

A few months ago, I designed this wall hanging using Shelley Cavanna's Gloaming collection. I love the colors in this collection: Teal and green? Yes please! This design works best with a medium and dark print in the same color, and I knew Gloaming would work beautifully. 

My One Monthly Goal for August: to bind this quilt. Thanks to Patty at Elm Street Quilts for keeping me on target with a task to finish each month! 

As soon as I finish August's goal and write up the the directions, I will be releasing this as a pattern. Stay tuned! 

(And in the meantime, please admire Diane Oakes' fantastic quilting! 

When the place mat you design has 82 pieces...

The thrill of having a project featured in a quilting magazine doesn't go away! Not too long ago, I received this issue with one of my projects inside. 

 These Accordion Place Mats, made using Painter's Palette Solids, are featured in the July/August 2018 issue of Modern Patchwork. 

I chose these ten colors from Paintbrush Studio's Painter's Palette Solids collection. If you haven't tried these solids yet, I highly recommend you do! They're smooth and silky and fantastic to work with, and they come in 168 different colors. 

In addition to the white and gray, I chose a light and a dark each of green, purple, orange, and teal. This color scheme was inspired by my Diamond Drama quilt.
I love how they work together!

The beauty of designing digitally is that you can see what projects look like before making them, and tweak the design before you ever cut a single piece of fabric. The danger of designing digitally is that you come up with a design you really like, and only when you start cutting and piecing do you realize that each place mat has 82 pieces. Yep, 82 pieces. That's A LOT of piecing. Especially when you multiply by four place mats!

I finished each place mat with a flange binding. I really liked the pop of color it added, and it's a fun way to add binding to a project. 

Which color combo is your favorite? I personally like the teal and orange best. Which, if you've been following my blog for a while, shouldn't be a shocker. I really like teal! 

I straight line quilted each place mat. I love the texture it creates! 

Read more about these place mats over at Paintbrush Studio's blog, Inspired by Fabric.
Find Modern Patchwork magazine here. 
See all 168 Painter's Palette Solids colors here.

Star Flight quilt

I've enjoyed sharing all of my "secret sewing" from last fall recently, as the quilts I've made for magazines have gone on sale. The most recent is "Star Flight," featured in the August/September 2018 issue of McCall's Quick Quilts. 

This is the quilt that inspired the Star Struck design. I'd played around with adding the star to it, but didn't at the time; I'm glad I returned to this design and used the star this time! The quilt looks totally different in the crisp blue and white prints, doesn't it?!

I fell in love with these blue and white prints when I first saw them last summer--the collection is called Fleur de Bleu from Paintbrush Studio. I received the quilt back two weeks ago; just in time to take a photo with the blooming orange tiger lilies in our yard. 

My friend Diane Oakes quilted this quilt for me, and as usual, did a fantastic job! 

I also really love the backing fabric. I wanted to use it on the quilt front, but it was too busy. Instead, I can enjoy its gorgeousness in a larger size on the back! 

Read an interview I did about this quilt for the Paintbrush Studio blog here.
I also created this bargello quilt tutorial here.
Find McCall's Quick Quilts magazine featuring this quilt here.

June OMG Monthly Goal

My June OMG goal is both small and lofty at the same time. Small because I am working with just seven 6-1/2" square blocks, and lofty because my June is a little full as I pack for a yearlong move to Florida, deal with the end of school, and plan Vacation Bible School! July will be quieter, right?! 

Anyway, back in November, our family spent 4 days at my sister-in-law's house in Massachusetts. I decided to be fun crafty aunt, so I brought supplies for an art project and for decorating turkey cookies. 

I brought a bag of solid scraps with fusible web on them and 6-1/2" white squares. I gave each kid (ranging from age 11 to 3) a square and let them create their own fused quilt block. We shared 3 scissors. It was fun to see what they created! 

Here are the kids (my three, plus three nieces and a nephew) with their finished blocks. They had a great time, and I was impressed with how much imagination and thought went into each block. 

We'll be seeing those same cousins at the beach in July, so my goal is to transform those 7 blocks into a wall hanging for the cousins to take home. Wish me luck! 

And just for fun...this is what the crafting table (aka the kitchen island) looked like:

May Goal Complete!

I finished my One Monthly Goal (thanks, Elm Street Quilts!) for May!

I wanted to make two blocks of my new pattern, Twister, using the Wave Texture prints. 

Love these colors! 

Here are my blocks. Only five more of each color combination to go! 

Here's what the whole Twister quilt looks like: 

Quilt Size: 57-1/2" x 76-1/2"

(It's available on Craftsy as a digital download.)

Tropical Blues free quilt pattern

Last fall I was invited to design a free quilt pattern for the Mod Tropics fabric collection from Paintbrush Studio. The collections comes in blue, orange, and cream, and I fell in love with the blues! There are two tropical leaf/flower prints and then three really fun geometric tonals in each of the colorways. 

This is the design I came up with, which I called "Tropical Blues." It's a quarter log cabin block with thin strips of Painter's Palette Solids Gray in between the prints.

Did I mention that the pattern for this quilt is available as a FREE download? Find it here.

 I cut all of the pieces and sewed assembly-line style, working about 30 minutes at a time between other projects/work/feeding the kids, etc. 

The Tropical Blues pattern is featured in a magazine ad for Paintbrush Studio. It's always fun to see your name in print! :) 

See all the Mod Tropics fabrics and download the free quilt pattern here. 

Want to make this quilt too? There's a kit available for this quilt from The Quilting Company. Find it here. 

I also stitched one block in the orange, just for fun. 

Above you saw my artsy photo of the quilt in my neighbor's beautiful backyard; here's the entire quilt top spread out. I still need to machine quilt it! 

Speaking of free quilt patterns, I have two more using Paintbrush Studio's collections appearing in a magazine ad near you:

"Small Plates" features the Market Medley collection. This is an easy design using fusible applique. The name came from the idea of tapas, where everyone shares small plates of prepared food. It seemed appropriate for all these gorgeously realistic looking veggie prints! 

See the Market Medley fabrics and download the free quilt pattern here. 

"Linked Up" features Hoodie Crescent's new collection, Ring Ring. I love these fabrics, and I'll post more about this down the road. They're retro-looking dial telephones, ink pens, pencils, and more, and the color palette is so cool! 

See the Ring Ring fabrics and download the free quilt pattern here.

All Boxed Up in Modern by the Yard

I'm excited to have these fun little fabric boxes that I made featured in the e-zine Modern by the Yard! They're made with the Blue Brilliance collection from Kanvas--I loved these blue prints. I used Flex Foam from Pellon; it creates great body for 3-D shapes. 

And let me just say that I wish my sewing supplies were organized as cute as the threads and fabrics in this photo! 

Here's the cover of the e-zine. You can read the whole issue here.