May ALYOF: A quilted quilt!

I'm happy to say that I finished my May A Lovely Year of Finishes goal...and even a few days early! I enjoy machine quilting smaller quilts better--they are easier to manhandle and they go more quickly! 

This quilt is a baby gift for my newest niece, born last August. I just need to bind it and then send it to her! You can read more about the design/fabric choices here, and see my beginning of the month May goal here.

I did a little wavy freeform quilting in the background of each pennant section (including under the pennants that flap!) and then tried an orange peel design in the fourpatches. I really like the concept of the orange peel quilting, but I definitely need a little practice on it. 

The side texture shot:

Now to decide what my June goal will be...

My Small Study: Blogger's Quilt Festival Miniature Quilt Entry

Here's my second entry for the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side, this one for the miniature category. (You can read about my first entry, in the scrap quilt category, here.)

I made this mini (measuring approximately 45" in perimeter) at a "Small Studies" workshop with Gwen Marston back in April--what a great day!

I chose to use several of sea-colored solids for my small study, along with olive green, two creams, and a tiny check. Since I don't actually live by the sea, photographing this piece outside with some plant life seemed like a good second choice!

The workshop was fantastic, as was Gwen herself. She demonstrated how to make different types of "parts" and then figure out which ones would go together to create a small study.

A close-up of some of my favorite parts:

Me with Gwen at the end of the workshop:

I used a single fold binding to finish it off--I love how quickly binding goes on such a small piece!

Thanks for stopping by!

Improv Herringbone: my Blogger's Quilt Festival Scrap Quilt Entry

After in-person show-and-tells in the last five days at my two guilds, I'm thrilled to be doing a virtual show-and-tell today of my (finally finished) improv herringbone quilt, as well as entering it in the Scrappy Quilt category of the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side.

These blocks were made by members of the Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild as part of our online challenge last fall. I had fallen in love with this block from this tutorial by Amy from 13 Spools. I suggested it to our guild and we had the 16 blocks you see here in our September raffle (I made two, hoping to increase my chances of winning!). You can probably guess what happened next--I won the raffle for the blocks! Woo hoo! I finally assembled the quilt in April and then quilted it over the last few weeks. It measures approximately 56" square. 

At first glance, the quilting looks like it's just plain diagonal lines, and it almost is--I stitched a big "X" from corner to corner and then quilted "V"s out in all four directions. A subtle difference, but I like it, and it simply provides texture--I don't think it takes away from all that piecing on the front!

 What a great way to use up scraps! Thanks, fellow guild members, for sewing such fantastic blocks!

Thanks for stopping by! Check out the post about my second entry (in the miniature category) here.

May ALYOF Goal

My May A Lovely Year of Finishes goal is to machine quilt this top I made for my niece. I have zigzag stitched all the pennants down to the background (they had been fused already), and I have backing fabric. Now it's time to get quilting! 

I'm going to quilt wavy lines in the pennant row backgrounds and either do orange peels or diagonal lines in the checkerboard. 

Here's to finishing the quilting!

Ahhh...a finish

So satisfying!!!

Back in February I started a quilt for a friend of mine recovering from a stroke. Finishing piecing the top was my March ALYOF goal, and I did that, and even got it basted and started quilting before the month ended. I'm happy to say it's done and with its new owner!

Here's a photo before washing: I did 3 lines of straight quilting per yellow zigzag row, and then I did a zigzag-wide up and down squiggle in the batik rows. I used the leftover backing fabric as the binding. It was that or a pieced yellow solid binding, and I let my 5-year-old choose. :) 

Here's a close-up after washing. Definitely some crinkles, which help to hide the quilting imperfections. I'm enjoying imagining my friend snuggled up under this quilt with her husband or kids--my way of sending a long distance hug to her.

April goal: Windy, but complete!

Some days/weeks, it feels like Mother Nature conspires against me when it comes to taking outdoor quilt pictures. This was one of those weeks! 

I finished my April goal for A Lovely Year of Finishes (finishing the quilt top for the improv herringbone blocks I won through the Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild) during the windiest week we've had in quite a while. Today, with the month coming to an end, I decided to take my chances, as I really wanted to photograph this outside on my little quilt photo clothesline. 

I started with this:

and then caught a calm 2.5 seconds to grab this shot:

before things got really wild:

The sun peeked out for a minute, and I do love the see-through stained glass look of this shot!

Two things I learned while assembling this quilt:

1) Particularly when your blocks come from different sources, since not everyone's 1/4" seam is the same, make sure to measure/square up blocks before assembly! The blocks were all close, but when the sashing is only 1" wide, there's not a lot of wiggle room!

2) With a block that has this many seams/non-straight-of-grain edges, I should have stitched around each block prior to handling and sewing them together, just for stability. 

It all came together just fine, but it's always good to learn something from each project!

Next up: figuring out how to quilt this one. I purchased my first Craftsy class--Jacquie Gering's "Creative Quilting with Your Walking Foot"--in hopes of coming up with some ideas (but I'm open to suggestions too!) I'm really looking forward to getting this finished and taking it back to share with my guild friends.

p.s. Also sharing on Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday!

Small Studies with Gwen Marston

The second workshop I took with Gwen Marston was on Small Studies. 

This was our "textbook": 

 (I plan to do lots of studying of its beautiful pages...!)

And these were our study guides--more than a dozen of Gwen's own Small Studies, laid out on a table for us to admire, touch and find inspiration. Ahhh....

I was very excited for this class and had no idea how hard it would be. Good hard, but still. The previous day, during the Liberated Medallions workshop, I had a plan and a vision from the start. On this day, I sewed steadily, but didn't feel that I really had a plan in mind, or a vision, until probably the last two hours from the day. It's not how I'm used to working, but it was a good way to stretch myself and my creative process. 

Gwen shared a few tutorials for different "parts" to make and then set us loose. I had chosen an ocean-inspired color palette of solids and one tiny checkerboard print. I made probably 10 different parts and then started fitting them together. 

I started here:

And I'll also say that it's a good thing that straight lines were not a requirement for this project. Nothing like teeny tiny piecing to make you realize that your 1/4" seam is not as perfect as it could be! But this project was all about embracing wonky!

I didn't take nearly enough process shots, but here you can see some of my "parts." (Some of these didn't make it into the final piece--they're ready for my next small study!)

Here's my final piece, finished as the class ended. Whew!

And a few close-ups off my favorite parts:

And of course, the teacher-pupil-project photo!

As I mentioned in my previous post, Gwen is just wonderful. I enjoyed every second of both of these workshops!

Not a great photo, but here's a sampling of the Small Studies created by the quilters in our class. They're all so different, but equally neat! Can't wait to make more!