Festival of Half Square Triangles!

Do you all know Megan from Canoe Ridge Creations?  She's fab!  She asked us to participate in a super fun festival...a festival for Half Square Triangles!! Um...we're in!

So there is going to be a blog hop and some awesome little tutorials using HST's.  They will be a wide range of sewing projects, home decor, bags, quilts, etc..  At the end of the festival you can link up your own projects using HST's and there will be prizes!! Woot woot!

Sold.

I am still narrowing down my project...I have a cool quilt block in mind but I'm trying to decide if another project may be more fun.  Sigh :)

Here's the schedule:

Monday, April 2 -- Sara from Sew Sweetness

Tuesday, April 3 -- Amy from Amy's Creative Side

Wednesday, April 4 -- Faith from Fresh Lemons Quilts

Thursday, April 5 -- Holly from Bijou Lovely 

Friday, April 6 -- Katie from Swim, Bike, Quilt

Monday, April 9 -- Erin from Two More Seconds 

Tuesday, April 10 -- Megan from Canoe Ridge Creations

Wednesday, April 11 -- Jeni from In Color Order

Thursday, April 12 -- Heather and Megan from Quilt Story

Friday, April 13 -- Katy from I'm a Ginger Monkey

Monday, April 16 to Sunday, April 22 -- Linky Party featuring all of YOU over at Canoe Ridge Creations!

Monday, April 23 to Wednesday, April 25 -- Viewers Choice Voting
Friday, April 27 -- Winners Announced!

<a href="http://www.canoeridgecreations.com/p/festival-of-half-square-triangles.html"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsUf4T_gTbHYiZDc322lydD8iGwKWU_NSg3qTXlN5XjkJT5zlildgF_jHgAqxwM-EXpk5KdGtiEga2ncXBe6U58Exl3IThO7JR-a8PAUcrD3QDOwEYucKvJobXYB395xvytYylpqfPgw/s1600/festivalofHSTs150.png"></a>  

So grab the button, check out the Flick group, and join Canoe Ridge Creations for the 

Festival of Half Square Triangles -- starting Monday, April 2!

Argyle Robot Quilt from Don't Tell Quilts

Amanda from Don't Tell Quilts submitted her darling quilt a couple weeks ago.  Amanda is just like Heather and I....she doesn't like to make the same quilt twice!  That is exactly our problem.  Often we get asked why we don't sell more of our quilts or other sewing projects, and there are a few reasons but one major one is I don't enjoy making the same thing over and over.  Back to Amanda, she started her blog when she was making a quilt for her brother and named it "Don't Tell Nathan Lindsey!" as in specifically telling them not to tell her brother.  And things have just taken off from there!   She just opened her shop, so check it out!

Here's my very appropiately named Argyle Robot.

 What is there to say about this?  It's argyle, it's got a robot.  That about covers it really.

 My husband commented that this combination was very me.  Apparently argyle and robots aren't an obvious combination to most people.  But really, they so work!  What is more geeky sophisticated than argyle?  Nothing, that's what!  And robots are equally geeky sophisticated.  Especially this one, he has a bow tie.

 I backed it in fleece, which caused a whole right side wrong side internal debate while I was laying it out.  And, Holy Lint Roller, Batman, my floor is now devoid of stray threads.

 (also, I used the June Taylor fusible batting; it was on a major clearance.  My opinion: weird.  It worked well enough on the solid piece sides, but beneath my piecing, not so hot.  I still used pins.  Who am I to tell June, but I don't expect I'll be fusing it again.  I did get a queen sized batting for six bucks though, so not a total bust.)

 This was also my first time quilting with embroidery floss.  And I loved it!  It is the perfect look for this.  It had to be something as visible as floss or a whole element would have been missing.  Argyle isn't argyle with out the crosshatch.

This little bit of me is headed to my etsy shop.  We'll see if there are any other geeky sophisticates out there.

I also finished my Princess and the Pea quilt pattern.  That request took some brain power; I made a quilt pattern but I've never used one myself!  Got a few of those in my shop as well.

Fabric Tuesday and BOM

Here is a quick update for April's Block of the Month, theme: HST.  If you are using the book, "501 Rotary-Cut Blocks", Heather is making Yankee Puzzle pg 278 and I am making Swamp Angel pg 247.  Again you can make whichever blocks you would like but I know some of you are making the same as us!  I send out our choices to those on our email list earlier in the month. If you want to be added to the email reminders email me at myquiltstory@gmail.com, subject BOM.  Here are my squares cut-up for my block:

AND, we've started a FLICKR group for Quilt Story's BOM!  Please go here to add your fabric selections, block progress and finished blocks!    Reminder: We will be posting our finished blocks on Monday April 2nd.  There will be a place for you to link your own blocks up (but you will have an unlimited amount of time to link-up even if you haven't finished yet.)  Start your blocks today if you haven't!

Fabric Tuesday #79!!

Here are some great link-ups from last week:

 

Pinball Swirl Pincushion Tutorial from A Girl in Paradise

 

Pillow Swap from Kelsey Creates

 

Fading Charms Quilt Top from Wedding Dress Blue

 

Hand pieced Star Quilt Top from Handmade Retro

What fabric projects have you been up to?

Click here for more info about Fabric Tuesday.

Garden Trellis Quilt from Fresh Lemons

Faith from Fresh Lemons is an amazingly talented quilter.  If you've never been by Fresh Lemons grab a snack and head on over :)  You'll be there for a while.  Today we're featuring her Garden Trellis quilt, which is also a pattern. I love the style of this quilt and the colors, it's fabulous!   Also see her amazing finished quilts gallery, clothing finishes and patterns & tutorials.  Enjoy! :)

Really quick…if you didn’t catch my post over the weekend, this afternoon I am going to be on Pat Sloan’s American Patchwork and Quilting radio show! Read Saturday’s post to see the details – I hope you all will tune in!

So, yeaaaa! I finally finished my Echo quilt! I loved Lotta Jansdotter’s Echo fabric from the moment I saw it. It matches my family room perfectly and I knew I wanted to make something with most of the line. I decided on log cabin blocks, set on point.

I took the quilt to my favorite local barn for pictures, isn’t it pretty?

I quilted this in a meandering free motion style and it measures 58″ x 68″. For the back, I used some blocks of white, Kona Ash, and one of the larger scale Echo prints.

And now for the reason this quilt took me longer to post…I developed anew pattern for it!

The pattern includes lots of detail – cutting diagrams, assembly diagrams, quilt top assembly diagrams. If you’ve never put quilt blocks on point, there are directions that you can use with any blocks. I hope you will check it out! It is available for instant download in my quilt pattern shop. It’s also available in my Etsy store and Craftsy pattern shop.

Dashasel sews walk in the woods quilt....

Good morning, our pea pod pin cushion tutorial is posting at Moda Bake Shop today, go check it out!

Elaine from Dashasel sews made this awesome quilt! Look at the  paper piecing little girl and fox! Love it!  And the creative piecing, I think the modern looking shape is great. Plus I am really into red and blue again, so love the colorway. And the quilting...wow, this is all just great! Elaine is involved in a lot of swaps and fun projects over at her blog, be sure to check her out!

Project Quilting, Challenge 5- A Walk in My Woods

 

For this week's Project Quilting, the challenge was "It's Where I Live". We were asked to interpret something about where we live. Further the colors of our quilt were based off of our street and city names and state.

In our area many of the buildings were built in the 1930s. With this in mind, I was inspired by the art deco architecture of the time, such as this photo of the Milwaukee Gas Light Building. Coincidentally, the New York Beauty Quilt-along just started and this week Kim of My Go-Go Life headed up the first tutorial (it's a pretty awesome tutorial with lots of tips for those who even have paper piecing backgrounds). So with this in mind, I started making some of these blocks:

Block 0 

15 block 0s later....

My colors were based off my street and city names and state. These ended up being:

A: Aqua

M: Medium Candy Apple Red

W: Wild watermelon

I realize some of these names sound a little wacky, but I got the list from here. As I culled my fabric, I realized that I didn't really have much pink! Thankfully I had a charm pack of A Walk in the Woods, which gave me a little bit of pink. I also had some Kona Cotton Pearl Pink for the background, so I figured I'd work with these.

The Walk in the Woods fabric line influenced my design as I decided that the "where I live" also should represent all the fun twists and turns in life. I wanted to literally have someone walking through the twists and turns. This turned out to be little Red Riding Hood (since there is a red-caped girl in the fabric line). And though she confronts a wolf in her fairy tale, I decided she would meet a Fox (because foxes are reddish [one of my colors!] and there really are foxes in my area). Anyway, here are a few shots of potential layouts:

And of course, this is the one that I ultimately chose: I like that the "walking path" (curves of the NY beauty block) don't always perfectly match and I quilted to make the path feel a bit maze-like at times.

And here is Little Red finding her way...

It's funny because this quilt is not made in my normal, bright-loving color palette, but I really like how it came together. My sewing buddy, J's, love of these colors might have something to do with it :) I also usually make my PQ projects as wall hangings, but this one is going to be quilt meant for baby use. Of course, it will probably last baby girl the first month or so because it is a little on the small side...but since it is backed with Riley Blake's Sugar and Spice, it means she has to have it!

Made in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and measures 30" square. I'm also now completely paper-pieced out!

Blueberry Patch swoon quilt finish...

Beautiful swoon quilt by Cathy from the Blue Berry Patch blog. Pretty great huh? Cathy is a quilter and knitter, and I think she lives on a real blueberry farm! She is also working on some fun granny squares here, and some Farmers wife blocks here. Be sure to visit her blog for some fun creative inspiration!

Swoon in flight!

Here it is!  This is now a finished quilt!  If anyone ever asks how long it takes to hand sew a binding on a Swoon quilt, it takes the length of the Oscars. Of course, I did look up from time to time to see Cirque du Soliel and the strange Angelina Jolie leg pose, but other than that, I hand sewed the binding.  Then after work and before a dinner meeting, I pinned it up on the clothesline for a photo op.  Husband was helping.  Actually he spent a lot of time pinning clothespins to my pant legs and stuff but at least he was there to cheer me on.  Swoon took a flight though when the pins gave way and the quilt fell to the ground.  I had to super pin it.  This is one really big quilt! 

I love it!  I used an assortment of stash fabrics, Martha Negley, Amy Butler and Kaffe Fasset florals that I picked up last summer at my fabulous local quilt shop's "by the pound" sample sale.  The Swoon pattern by Camillie Roskelley calls for 18 fat quarters.  Because I used samples that were all less that fat quarter size, I needed to figure out how to make the best use of the multiple bits of fabric.  I used fussy cut florals for the centres of each Swoon block and coordinating florals in each of the Swoon "corners."  Each Swoon block then, had four different prints.   It works!  I borrowed the cornerstone idea from Katy of I'm a Ginger Monkey and venerable leader of the Swoon-Along.  

I love it!  I used an assortment of stash fabrics, Martha Negley, Amy Butler and Kaffe Fasset florals that I picked up last summer at my fabulous local quilt shop's "by the pound" sample sale.  The Swoon pattern by Camillie Roskelley calls for 18 fat quarters.  Because I used samples that were all less that fat quarter size, I needed to figure out how to make the best use of the multiple bits of fabric.  I used fussy cut florals for the centres of each Swoon block and coordinating florals in each of the Swoon "corners."  Each Swoon block then, had four different prints.   It works!  I borrowed the cornerstone idea from Katy of I'm a Ginger Monkey and venerable leader of the Swoon-Along.

After sandwiching, I let Swoon sit and rest until I decided how to quilt it.  After lurking around the internet, checking out different forms of Swoon quilting, I went for simple but fairly dense straight line quilting. I quilted it in a marathon on a Sunday with wonderful Aurifil, 50 wt in white.  Bound in a purple print.  Done like dinner!

Fabulous Fabric Tuesday!

First, a winner to Intrepid Thread giveaway, and thank you to Intrepid Thread for such a fabulous giveaway!  Also, thanks to you again for supporting our sponsors, we really appreciate it  :) And now for the winner:

Mimi said...

I am already following Intrepid

Thread (aren't they awesome?!!)

and I receive their newsletters!

March 15, 2012 6:45 AM

Congrats MIMI!!

On to fabric Tuesday, you guys have been up to some fabulousness again! I LOVE fabric tuesday to see what you all have been up to.

Thanks to everyone who followed Megan in the SLICED competition. You softened the blow of getting the boot when she read all your comments of support. Thanks for that!





S.O.T.A.K handmade, FABULOUS pillow...


Dreaming in patchwork, eye catching quilt finish!



Awesome "Oh my Stars" quilt from Lilabelle Lane




Megan from Canoe Ridge creations...LOVE this pillow!

Can't wait to see your projects this week!

Kar's down home bliss disappearing 9 patch quilt...

Kar's down home bliss submitted this pretty pretty quilt. She made a quilt from our disappearing 9 patch tutorial :) That always makes us happy! Funny thing is, I still haven't finished my disappearing 9 patch quilt, come to think of it, I am not even sure where the quilt top is? Anyhow, am in love with the colors of this pretty quilt. The hand stitching is amazing! Be sure to check out Kar's down home bliss for some great inspiration!

Pictures were finally taken of the quilts that I made the girls for Christmas.  I know.  Nearly two months after!  I do have my moments were I'm just not on the ball with things.  Yesterday things just kind of all fell into place for the photo shoot.  

Kind of like this;  I was walking through the house in the afternoon and noticed all the sunshine pouring in through the windows.  A thought ran through my mind about how awesome that was and Glenn being home and being the quilt holder.  But it was very breezy, chilly out.  And I was not about to go and stand outside myself.  So within a 2 minute span I had people running up and down stairs, ripping quilts of beds, placing a chair in just the right spot for Glenn and started snapping pics.  Poor Connor was over and didn't even have a clue about what the heck was going on.  I'm surprised he didn't get run over.

This is how it all turned out.  Forgive the bright bit of sunshine glaring on the quilts.  You get what you get when I start ordering people around here.

Each quilt was made using the Disappearing 9 Patchtutorial over at Quilt Story.  Love this pattern!  Very scrappy with minimal piecing.  Love that.

This one is Little B's made with the "It's a Hoot" from Moda.

Gotta love Glenn's little helper there in the corner.  :)

This one is Little B's made with the "It's a Hoot" from Moda. Gotta love Glenn's little helper there in the corner.  :)

The second is Em's made with the "Just Wing It" from Moda.

Both quilts were made bigger than needed for now with the intention that they can be used for a full or queen size bed later.

 Hand stitching was done in all of the big blocks in a petal sort of pattern that I quickly drew up and cut a 'stencil' out of poster board.

I still keep going back and forth about doing more hand stitching on both quilts.  In between the blocks and around the edges.  After taking another look this weekend, I'm leaning towards the more idea.

And solid colored sheets were used for the backing.  And scrappy strip pieced binding was put all around the edges.

(I linked the quilts to Quilt Story)

I finally got to the 1/3 mark with Glenn's blanket.  It seems that it's taking forever to get it done.  It's to the point now that it has to lay on the floor as I work on it to make sure that I don't make identical squares for it.  So with it not being such a great thing to work on at the desk while the girls are doing school work I have to find something else that can be worked on while school is being accomplished.

That is were this pile of fleece and flannel come in.  It has sat around for a month at least just waiting for me to make them into pj/lounging pants.  Hopefully I can get them done quickly.

Megan was sliced!

I know you are not going to believe it, Megan was sliced from the Moda bake shop Sliced competition today!

In my very unbiased opinion, Megan was ripped off!  I thought she owned those aprons!  :)

I thought she was going to take that competition to the top, and I really wanted her to have that sewing machine, really really badly! (She needs a nice machine.)

Anyhow, she did great and I am happy for her! Actually, I am sad for her  :(

 

Apron for the contest!!

So I submitted my apron for round three of the Moda Bake Shop Sliced Contest!  I'm so nervous, I'll have to wait until Sunday to see if I make it to the final round!! :)  Contest was an apron that needed to include measuring tape, DMC floss and use at least one fat quarter.  Here are some pictures, I don't have a lot of time but if you go HERE and see the flickr pool you can see a little more about the apron!