First Home Quilt

A couple weeks ago two of our best friends came to visit from Pittsburgh and it was lovely. We don't get to see them nearly as often as we'd like, but we had a fantastic day with them nevertheless. They recently moved into a place of their own (yay!) and to celebrate I made them a quilt. It was my first project in months (aside from a T-shirt dress I made Charlotte, which really only involved sewing a gathered strip of fabric to a store bought tank top). It felt good to make something again, though it was a little bit of a task to take on with only 9 days to make it before they arrived! I like a challenge though, so it was good.

This quilt went together really quickly and is made up of 8" blocks, 5x8, plus a border. All the fabrics are from JoAnn's.

Welcome to my "studio" where I have two supervisors. One sleeps a lot and the other enjoys playing with plastic Easter eggs in August. 

I admit, I had a hard time parting with this one. I love the yellow/gray combo and it looked so fresh and bright on my porch and the living room! But I managed to let it go and I hope its new owners love it as well :)

Happy Sewing.

~Stacy

Scrumptious Quilt

I started this quilt over two months ago and finally finished it last night. It took forever, mainly because I kept putting off actually quilting it since I knew it would be a pain due to the large size of the quilt and the small size of my sewing machine.

It's big, about 68"X77" and is for Charlotte's bed. She has a quilt on her bed that I made her from a similar looking fabric line (this one is Scrumptious and the other is Marmalade, both by Bonnie & Camille). The one on her bed now is all flannel and very warm--great for cold months but I wanted something not quite as heavy for the warmer months. 

It takes stamina to quilt a big quilt like this on a regular sewing machine!

I love this fabric and happy with how this quilt came out. Now I can cross this project off my list and move onto something else!

Happy Sewing.

~Stacy

Beach Quilt

Despite the subzero temperatures and heaps (and more heaps) of snow around here right now, I made a beach blanket. It was my way of coping with this miserable winter weather, though now I have to wait another couple months to actually use this quilt for its intended purpose.

The pattern is from the book Sew What You Love by Tanya Whelan. This is a great book for sewists of all levels, but it's especially great for beginners. It's one of the few sewing books where I like just about all of the projects. This quilt pattern includes instructions for making five sizes: crib, throw, twin, queen and king. The blanket I made is the throw size (about 60" x 60" finished).

The fabrics are a mix, but mostly consist of cuts from two lines by October Afternoon: Seaside (which is getting hard to find, I hunted mine down on Etsy) and their current line Sidewalks. The colors in each line go well together so it was easy to mix and match. For the backing, I pieced four one yard cuts of different fabrics together since I didn't want to buy four yards of fabric!

The binding is from the line Out to Sea by Sarah Jane for Michael Miller. It's Anchors Away in Banana, and the yellow coordinated perfectly with the other fabrics. I machine stitched the binding--I typically hand sew it, so this was new for me. I think I'm a convert--the convenience of machine stitching was great and I think the binding will hold up better to hard use and lots of machine washes than my hand sewn binding would have.

Now I just have to patiently wait for this to use it:

Happy Quilting.

The 5 Year Quilt

Do you often start sewing projects and maybe forget to finish them? I do that all the time. They usually end up getting finished (usually...) but I get distracted during every project and eager to start new ones--which is why I usually have at least three projects going at once and another half dozen in my head.

This quilt is one that I didn't think would ever get finished. I started it five years ago, not long after I learned to sew, and it was going to be my first quilting project without any help. I got as far as picking the fabrics and cutting the blocks, then I stacked them up neatly and put them in the bottom of my fabric bin and ignored them for the next 60 months.

When I pulled them out a few weeks ago I debated giving them away, but that just felt wrong. So I decided I would finally finish it, even though the fabrics aren't necessarily designs I would pick today. I figured it would make a good picnic blanket (which it does).

My first job was to recut every. single. block. My cutting skills have drastically improved since I first cut these blocks and the original ones were something of a mess. After that it was ready to piece, which I did in a repeating brick pattern. I added some cream colored borders and a sage green backing with tiny cream polka dots, and a coordinating green binding.

Funny story about the binding. I sewed it on backwards, so when I flipped it over to hand stitch it to the back I had a raw edge looking at me instead of clean folded edge. I decided to just let it be and sew on as it was, raw edge and all, since this was just meant to be a casual picnic blanket and not a bedspread or wedding gift or something where it might matter. I knew if I had to rip all the binding off and start over it would be another five years until this was finally finished. :)

And now I present the "making of" photos:

It feels good to call this one finished!

Simple Quilted Wall Hanging

Wall hangings are the perfect way to use small pieces of fabric when you don't have enough for a quilt or something requiring multiples (like placemats). I had a charm pack of California Girls by Fig Tree sitting around that I've had for a long time, since the line was brand new. I was stuck in one of those crazy fabric conundrums of "I love it, but I don't want to waste it so I'll hoard it like a weirdo until I find the perfect project." If you like fabric you know what I mean :)

So after repainting our bedroom and taking everything off the walls, I decided to make a wall hanging to fill a large blank space. I based the wall hanging off a pattern by Ruby Blue Quilting Studio called Charmed Living Topper. I used about 2/3 of the charm pack, about half a yard for the backing, and a fat quarter for the binding.

My favorite part of any quilt is piecing the top. Mixing and arranging all the colors and patterns never gets old. I even love cutting--though I could totally live without pinning. Hate pinning...

See why I had a hard time cutting into this fabric? It's gorgeous!

 I didn't measure the finished product, but it's approximately 24" square. Projects like this are a great introduction to quilting since they're far less intimidating than a huge quilt. And if you're not a patient person (I am not patient person), this is a project that could easily be completed in an afternoon.

What are you working on?