England quilt for our Daddy...

We have mentioned that our Dad came from England. You can read his sweet story here. 

Anyhow, we are all a bit nostalgic for England and all things British.  This year for Father's day, us three daughters (me-Heather, Megan and our sister Amy) and our Mom contributed to making this quilt. We each had to make 3 24" blocks. There is paper piecing, applique, and lots of piecing. We were able to find some really fun fabrics for it too.

Our Dad was really touched, he really likes it. 

 This Lizzy House castle peeps line was great for it, King, Queen and castles. Super cute!

We love our Daddy, love England, love quilting! Hope you liked it too!

Awesome Fire & Ice Quilt from the cute life

I am in awe of the cool quilt!!  It is entirely paper pieced using all solids.  Me=impressed.  This feature is from Amy of the cute life...if you'd like to make this great quilt you can find it in her patterns.  Amy also has some fun tutorials to share as well.  Thanks for sharing your great quilt with us today!



It's that time of year again! I'm so excited to reveal to you the (finally) finished Fire & Ice quilt. I paper pieced this quilt completely out of solids. I am so lucky that my mom lives near a quilting store with anentire wall of solids to choose from! My extremely wonderful husband helped me pick the colors out, which took quite awhile. Color choice was key in making this pattern really pop. They had to gradate well from one color to the next, and color intensity also played a huge role. Some colors didn't make the cut because they looked overly saturated or just too pale when placed next to the neighboring colors.

This has been a labor of love, and the first paper pieced pattern I ever designed myself. The shape is based on a keystone - as in, the middle brick that you place into an arch very last.

Keystones have a lovely wedge shape, and for some reason, I thought of depicting fire with the colors.Originally, there were supposed to be a lot more warm colors, with fuchsias, and just a touch of blue (picture the really hot blue flames) but you have to work with the fabrics available! The fuchsias in the store didn't play well with the rest of the colors. And this ended up working really well, with 8 warms and 8 cools, so I changed the name from the "Fire" quilt to the "Fire & Ice" quilt. I was hesitant to use black binding, as I feared it would be too pitch black, but I'm glad I went for it.

For the backing, I chose a graphic black and white print, which helped dictate the black binding. I pieced it with some black stripes in a simple, clean design:

I quilted it with straight lines, running from one corner of each piece to the opposite corner. Deciding how to quilt it was a real battle for me, and I got a lot of amazing suggestions, but in the end, I thought this went best with the feel of the quilt.

Since there were so many colors in the quilt top, I used monofilament thread on the top (you can see it shining in the light a little bit), and Sulky variegated gray thread on the back. The quilting hides in the busy pattern, but it's showcased in the black strips:

All in all, I'm so proud of this quilt - it's been my second baby for awhile now! - and I'm really happy to show it off to you. 

I hope to have a pattern soon, but that'll take some time, since it's a bit complex. So for now, thanks for stopping by and be sure to check out all the other awesome quilts at the Blogger's Quilt Festival!!! And many thanks to Amy for putting on such a wonderful link up.

Block of the Month September

Septembers's Block of the Month

Theme:  Paper Pieced

Heather and I are sharing blocks from our  Block of the Month series.  What do you think??

This month is not taken from the book we've been using for most blocks.  Heather posted a Paper Piecing Tutorial on Friday, so check it out!!  She has done a bit of paper-piecing in the past, this was a first for me!

Heather's Block

12" x 12"

The Lone Starburst (template here)

Fabric: Ooh La La from Michael Miller

I love that Heather incorporated so many prints in the block , and the small white looks great.  I think she really was feeling it with this one! :)

I love this star, I think I'm going to have to try this for a future project.  All of her blocks so far, such yummy goodness!

Megan's Block

12" x 12"

Starry Night from Fresh Lemons Quilts

Fabric: Backyard Baby from Michael Miller

Since I have never paper-pieced and Heather hadn't done her tutorial yet I had to find another one! I used the pattern and instructions from Faith of Fresh Lemons Quilts and I have to say I'm addicted!! The next morning I lit up Pinterest with paper piecing patterns, lol :)  Really fun, I only messed up once and had to unpick, so it isn't as scary as I thought!

I'm glad I popped the green in there.  I channeled Faith's use of solids/blues on the outside.  I was a little off on my finished size so I had to add some solid blue around the outside, I'm not sure how I messed up.

My blocks so far.  From top to bottom, left to right is March through September.  I can't wait to start playing with the layout and sashing ideas!

The block theme for October is paper pieced.

As well as linking up your blocks today you can also add them to our flickr group. 

Time to link up your blocks!  Go HERE to link and to see others blocks!

Foundation Paper piecing tutorial...

               Today I am going to do my best at giving you a tutorial on paper piecing. There are a ton out there, but I remember when I was first looking, I couldn't find a tutorial that made it crystal clear to me. Hopefully at least I can answer those questions that I had, for you here today.

We have had a our block of the month series, and for September we are doing paper piecing. So here goes...

First, you will need a template. There are a million online. I chose The Lone Starburst from Six White Horses. You will need to download the template and print it. For this block, I had to print 4 copies. 

Start with segment A, each segment will be numbered through 7. (or different for what you choose to make)

The basic idea here, is that you are sewing the finished block to the back of the template.  One numbered space at a time.You need a scrap of fabric that is at least 1/4" bigger than space 1, on each side of all the black lines. (including the left bottom that isn't covered in the photo.) Place wrong side of fabric to the back of the template covering space 1.  Now you need a scrap of fabric for space 2. (that will cover space 3 and 4 by at least 1/4" too) . You place fabric for space 2 right sides together with space 1 fabric, stitch, then fold space 2 fabric over space 2. See below.

(if that seemed wordy and confusing, hopefully the photos will clear it up)

By putting your scraps up to a window, you will be able to see that both the scraps of fabric go into space 2 by at least 1/4". After you stitch the line, you will fold and space 2 fabric (white) over space 2. See below.

 Here is the back of the template now (finished side of quilt block). Now trim 1/4" from stitch line, fold over and iron into the next space.  You will do this for all numbered template spaces.

If you are doing this at night, or don't like holding it up to the window, you can fold along the line you will be stitching. This lets you see where you need to place your next fabric scrap. (be sure place scrap at least 1/4" over the fold)

Continue for all numbered spaces. You are ready for the last step.

When you are done, it will look like this. Trim 1/4" from template edge. This pattern  has the 1/4" seam allowance grayed out. Not all patterns to this, so make sure you leave that allowance for when you sew the whole block together.

Looking nice and sharp. Do this for all segments of your block. This one has 8 segments.

Getting pretty? Now arrange them, and sew together with 1/4" seam. 

This is what your back looks like. Now you get to tear off all your papers. Be careful, you don't want to stretch your block, or tear out stitches. I never have too hard of a time doing this, the lines are already torn a bit by your stitches.

 You are finished! Let me know if you have any questions. 

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!

Amazing Mini

Angela from Cut to pieces makes the most darling mini quilts in the whole entire world! seriously! I just about died about a year ago when we found her first mini quilt "where bluebirds fly." Then as I was browsing her blog the other day, I discovered this one we are featuring today.  She makes these for quilt swap partners! I am quite sure I would be too selfish to give something this amazing that probably took hours and hours away to a person I don't really know! But not Angela, she is amazing and wonderful to share her talent. Anyhow, here you go....

PS Valentine's day blog hop winner is announced at the bottom of this post!

Here's the finished product...put together one piece at a time, just like every other quilt.  But there are some pretty special pieces to this one. You'll understand why soon.

First off, I'd just like to thank my fabulous swap mama, Lynne. She was the one who was so thoughtful when she gave me my partner for the doll quilt swap. She knew both of our stories and thought we would be a good fit. And I think she was right. ;) Many of you know from my last doll quilt (which was also my first one!) that my little family took quite a long time to grow. There was struggle, pain, sickness, triumph, and joy all along the way...not to mention that the surgeries and medication. But we have our beautiful little girl Caitlyn who just turned 16 months.

So when Lynne paired me with Kendra, it was a match made in heaven. Kendra and her husband have also been struggling to increase their own family. They have three biological sons already, but they knew God had more in store for them. And thus began their own journey which Kendra is documenting on her blog, Praying for some Pink in our House of Blue. You see, they are bringing home a little girl from China, the lovely Charlotte Rose.

This story was the inspiration for my quilt for Kendra. You may have noticed that there are some sailors on this quilt. Did you count them? You did! Well then you know that there are three, which just happens to be the number of sons that Kendra has. ;)

These sailors are off on the journey of a lifetime. They are out to rescue a certain little girl and bring her home with them. They are surrounded by the great sea and all the mysterious creatures you might see in a far far away land, like phantom swimming girls or giant seas turtles and many other boats!

But here is the one they are after. Drifting in the sea on her lily pad, a little girl waits for these sailors to rescue her.

The mountains in the background with the little hillside village help to set the scene of this mysterious land. The sky is changing from night to day, reflecting the time spent on their journey...but also how beautiful the change of time can be.

About halfway through the swap, Lynne emailed me to inform me that Kendra had to drop out of the Doll Quilt Swap due to the sheer amount of paperwork required for an international adoption. But I knew immediately that I would still make this quilt for her. She wouldn't have left if not for the very reason I was making this quit for her. So the swap mamas let me keep her as my partner so I could continue to work on this. You see, despite the fact that we did not adopt ourselves, because of our own fertility issues we are very close with a number of couples who have. Most of them have done international adoptions, so I am particularly familiar with the intense highs and lows that come from the process. I wanted Kendra to know that there are people out there who understand and are praying for her and her family. 

Soon, she, her husband, and of course those sailors..err..sons, will be holding this precious girl in their arms.

Also, a winner from our Valentine's blog hop.

 Wendy said...

My favorite Valentine Day memories were from grade school when we all brought those little, tiny, postcard like valentines into school and exchanged them with our classmates :)

caribousmom (at) gmail (dot) com

http://www.caribousmom.com

February 2, 2012 7:59 AM

Thanks Burgundy Buttons!