WIP Wednesday

Hi, friends! I can't believe how much time has passed since my last post! I have been working on a king-sized gift project for the past couple of months and took a mini internet hiatus to avoid distraction (except for Instagram, I can't give up Instagram). It took way longer than I anticipated! The quilt went to the longarmer last week and is already on its way back to Houston. Naturally, I will be spending the next five days repeatedly reloading the USPS tracking page. I hope to be able to share it with you all before the end of the year.

This was my sanity project while working on the gift project. I needed something quick, easy and with a little bit of color. For this quilt top, I used Prairie Paisley II (Minick & Simpson), Blueberry Crumb Cake (Blackbird Designs) and half of Papillon (3 Sisters). I received all these fabrics as part of the Moda Fat Quarter Club at FQS. I never quite knew what to do with these fabrics, but they were all so pretty and soft that I couldn't make myself get rid of them. When they were stacked together, I realized that most of the fat quarters would combine nicely into one quilt!

I looked for a pattern that was a total fat quarter hog and wouldn't require any background fabric purchases. The St. Louis 16 Patch (tutorial by skburton designs) fit the bill! I love how all the fabrics work together and the red just makes this quilt for me. I am going to try to work as many of the scraps as possible into the quilt backing and I will by tying this quilt

Since it is almost 2014 and I figured I ought to get a move on it, I finished the last two blocks for the 2012 Designer Mystery Block of the Month. The block on the left is April Showers designed by Sweetwater and the block on the right is Sunday Drive designed by Polly Minick & Laurie Simpson. How cool is that pinwheel block? I used to dread making pinwheels, but they are now my favorite! Even though the blocks are finished, I have lot of piecing left to do for the sashing and borders.

Besides all that, my cat blocks are quickly multiplying, I started appliquéing leaves down for the Looking Back quilt and within an hour of rejoining the internet I joined the Quilty Fun Sew-Along! How was I supposed to resist that apple block?

Linking up for WIP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced!

WIP Wednesday

These projects are all completely different than the ones I shared in my last WIP Wednesday post, because that's how I roll! Too much temptation out there! :D



1) Baby Jane Quilt - I have been working non-stop on my first commission for the past couple of weeks. I actually finished this one right before Labor Day weekend, but I can't share it because it hasn't been gifted yet. Chances are incredibly slim that it would be seen, but you know how that goes! I am itching to post about it, so this mention is just to tide me over until I can hit "Publish." How cute is that Baby Jane Stripe as binding?

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Looking through my past projects, I've realized that my favorite quilts are the ones that use multiple lines of fabric and the ones that have very little white in them. Because of this I am trying to thin out my precut collection (some have been sitting around for almost two years!), while trying to break out of my background fabric comfort zone! The next two quilt tops are part of this mission.

2) Patchwork Heart // I chose a heart-related pattern because there were a couple charms with heart prints, plus many other prints that reminded me of the circulatory system. There were many paths of inspiration leading to the heart design I chose, but a majority of those led back to the Pixelated Heart design by Blue Elephant Stitches. My heart quilt is made with two 6" Kaffe Fassett Fire charm packs and Michael Miller Ta Dot Teal.

3) Strawberry Jam Quilt // This quilt is made with a Strawberry Fields Jelly Roll and Robert Kaufman Quilter's Linen in Cocoa. The brown adds a bit of a early Autumn feel to this very Spring fabric line. I went back and forth on whether or not I made the right choice in background fabric. My #2 Option was Quilter's Linen in Parchment, but I felt that it may have been too close in value to many of the Strawberry Fields prints.

The Cocoa is really hard to photograph. The picture below represents it better, though the look changes so much depending on the lighting situation. I will be channel quilting this one. I think I will be skipping the last border and bind it using the Green and White Stripe from Marmalade.

I am a little tired of piecing for the moment, so I will be quilting a few older quilt tops over the next few weeks. I hope everyone is having a wonderful and productive week!

Linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced this week.

Pathways Baby Quilt Finish

I love when my husband requests quilts. I feel like it is his way of telling me to buy more fabric. :) This quilt is for his coworker's new baby boy, Landon.

I made this quilt using the SewCraftyJess's Jungle Path Tutorial at Moda Bake Shop. I was looking for a quick quilt pattern using precuts and I loved how this particular pattern used every bit of the precuts for the blocks, binding *and* the backing. My sister made the observation that the blocks look like "L" for Landon. I wish I could say that I thought of that beforehand, but it is just a happy accident!

The fabric is Boy Crazy from Riley Blake Designs. Since I don't know the recipient of this quilt, I wanted to stick with stereotypical boy fabric. I love the tiny robot and monster in the main fabric! There is also a print with tiny little cars. It is completely adorable!

I purchased two charm packs and two jelly rolls, since Riley Blake charm packs and jelly rolls include half the amount of squares/strips as Moda precuts. The second jelly roll was only used for the backing, so I could have just purchased one and used other fabric for the back. There is less print variation in the smaller packs, which is something to think about when choosing fabric for this quilt. There was a perfect number of color prints in this line, so I didn't have to use any cream prints on the front.

The only change I made was skipping Step 3 on the Quilt Back Assembly. During that step, you add white strips to the 44" side to make it 48.5". The strips shouldn't show in the finished quilt. They just give the backing the extra few inches you need for quilting. My backing actually came out a bit shorter than the quilt top, so the white strips would have shown. I used this as an opportunity to add a name strip to lengthen the quilt.

I used a solid backing for the name, since the back was already full of prints. Since there was no background print to preserve, I paper-pieced the name. I used from blank pages... My First Alphabet Pattern. I love the pattern and not having to applique anything made me happy!

I made sure the bottom of the strip lined up with the bottom of the third row of blocks. When I was basting, I lined up the bottom of the name strip on the backing with the "gridlines" in my tile. When I laid down the top I made sure it lined up with the backing seam line and the tile. A little bit overkill, but it helps me feel confident that everything will end up straight!

The quilting is just a basic grid. The lines are approximately 3.625" apart. I quilted a big grid first, making sure the lines went through the charm squares. Then I drew X's in some of the squares to find the center and quilted the rest of the lines.

The only changes I would make in the future (to account for my own carelessness!):

1. I would make the outside border strips a little wider to give more leeway while trimming and cut the binding strips down from 2.5" to 2.25". I wasn't very careful and the long skinny border strips got a little wonky. I ended up chopping off some of the border while squaring. I also used a 3/8" seam with the 2.5" binding, so I lost more of the border. As a result, the border is smaller than the sashing. 
2. On step 5 of Quilt Top Assembly, I made all my blocks except for one (row 3, block 4) look exactly like the picture. I would have had more path variation if I had done a portion of them the opposite way (left side with white strip on top/right side with white strip on bottom).

It will be gifted this morning! 

Next up: I have been spending all my spare time working on my first commissioned quilt. It is a Twister quilt and I forgot how long that takes, especially with those 3.5" blocks! My 2-3 week time frame seems a little crazy at this point! As soon as I finish that quilt, I want to finish up my Best Friends quilt.

Linking up with TGIFF which is at Sewing by Moonlight this week and Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.