Winter mini quilt

I'm working on a series of mini quilts, to hang in our entryway, that I will change with the seasons.  The first one I made was for Christmas.

In early January I made a mini quilt that represented Winter.

I was working, again, with Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking II.  I settled on what she calls "the exquisite block".  Basically a square or rectangle base, with triangles pieced onto the diagonal points.  When the blocks are joined together, you end up with a series of little bowties or butterflies, or however you want to see it.

My goal for this piece was to portray the starkness of winter by using lots of white and pale, cool blues and greys.  I also wanted to express the warmth that we cling to during these long months, the warmth we find within ourselves, in the company of family and friends, or quite literally the warmth of our physical homes.  I added the golden yellow blocks and some yellow triangles emanating out from it to represent the warmth and light that keeps us hanging on until spring.

I quilted it with a series of zigzag lines, emanating out from the bottom right corner, to emphasize the placement of the yellow blocks.

 I think it all works.  I'm happy with it!  My only complaint is that it doesn't quite lay flat against the wall, no doubt because of some technical error on my part.  Oh well.

A couple of weeks ago I got to present this during Show and Tell at my guild meeting, and Gwen Marston was in attendance, as she presented a lecture and trunk show for us that day.  It was really an honor to show her my work, and I was able to chat with her after the meeting.  The afternoon as a whole was probably the greatest highlight of my quilting life so far.

it all started with a tiny wall hanging...

I've been feeling like our apartment entrance is a little bare.  I hang a wreath on the door that I change for each season (all my super cute wreaths come from this etsy shop), but that's it.  A little boring, especially when our neighbor across the hall always has a festive seasonal display of wreath, flowers above the door, and flowers on a pedestal!  I decided to make a mini quilt to hang on the wall by the door, and I plan to make one for each season, so I can change them along with the wreaths.

First up, Christmas.  I had just received my copy of Liberated Quiltmaking II by Gwen Marston.  I love this book.  I love Gwen Marston and everything about her aesthetic and philosophy.  This book has been so inspiring.  I decided to try my hand at her method for making wonky stars.

My first star and the book that inspired me so much.

I made a lot of stars.  I didn't have a pattern or plan or a certain number in mind, so I just kept making stars.  They were a lot of fun.  Because I was making a Christmas wall hanging, I used a variety of greens and reds for my stars, with various grey fabrics as background.

Once I was done making stars, I started making log cabin blocks in low volume fabrics.  I put together a composition that I liked and pieced together my little wall hanging.  I quilted it in straight(ish) lines.  I was really happy with how it turned out.

Christmas wall hanging, before it was quilted.

here is the wall hanging that started it all, hanging in its place of honor in the hallway.

When it was done, I had a lot of stars left over.  Those stars turned into a small quilt for my mom, and a large quilt that our family is keeping.  I didn't have a particular size in mind for these.  I just kept adding until I felt the compositions were complete.  The quilt for my mom ended up at 84x66.  I would call it a nap size.  The quilt for us is 93x97.  It fits nicely on our queen size bed.

My design strategy for the bigger quilts was basically the same as for the mini quilt.  Festive red and green stars interspersed with low-volume log-cabin squares, plus a few big swatches of solids or prints.  I added random strips here and there to fill in spaces.  It was a very unplanned and organic process.  I hung a piece of batting as a temporary design wall so that I could step back and look at how things were coming together.

laying out the design for my mom's quilt, step one.

adding more stars and solids, step two of layout.

another progress shot... more spaces filled, more seams joined.

I sent the two larger pieces to my trusty long-arm quilter, Sarah Russett in New York state.  She did a fabulous job as usual.  I got them back from her just in time to bind them and wrap my mom's up for Christmas!

christmas stars quilt for my mom

back of mom's quilt

giant christmas stars quilt for us to keep!

back of our quilt.

These projects were my first attempts at improvisation.  For my first time not using a pattern, I was really pleased with and proud of how they turned out.  I think I could have done a better job of choosing fabric for some of the stars.  The values were too close on some, and the stars didn't pop out like they should have.  Aside from that, I really love all these quilts, from the mini to the queen size.  They are festive, funky, fun, and fabulous.  I really love improvising.  I may never use another pattern again. 

story quilts for Christmas

This year I gave story quilts to my nieces and nephews for Christmas.  I gifted one per family, not one for each individual child (I currently have 8 nieces and nephews, and one on the way!).  I love giving these story quilts as gifts for kids, because of the way they can engage a child's imagination.  But I have to say I have made so many of these in the past few years, that I don't want to make another for a very long time!  I saved enough of the fussy-cut novelty print squares that I can make a few more down the road, perhaps for grandchildren.

The pattern for this quilt is found in Modern Quilt Workshop by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.  It's called Once Upon a Time. 

Nate helped me take these pictures in the park on a beautiful snowy day.  It was fun.  :)

I tried to think of each family's home and style when I was choosing background fabrics.  The solids I used on the front are all shot cottons which were gorgeous and soft to work with.

It was fun to watch them get unwrapped at Christmas.  I'm happy to have these done and to be moving on to other projects.

This gold and purple version was for my sister's family.

 And here is the back. 

Grey and lime green for my sister and brother in law.

Here is their back.

Blue and cream for my brother's family.

And the back.

organizing my days, and a mini quilt

So this year (school year, as any mother of school-age kids measures her years), I have a lot I want to get done.  I want to wrap up the onesie business completely, and I still have a couple of hundred onesies to print and list in my shop.  It's a big job, and I've been chipping away at it.  But I also have other things I want to do and need to do.  Quilting projects, seasonal projects, etc.  I first thought I would alternate days, onesies then other things.  But I've decided it makes more sense to alternate each week. It cuts down on time I have to spend cleaning up and switching between each type of work.

Last week I worked diligently on finishing a mini quilt, putting together a napping size quilt and back, and making my halloween costume.  It was a lot.  I worked hard all week.

This week I need to get back to the business of onesies.  It's also Halloween so I will be at the boys' school helping with festivities.  This school year is going so dang fast, I can't believe it.

I had 3 quilts that I wanted to finish before Christmas, which was a huge goal, and I'm nearly done.  The tops and backs are all done.  I will send them to Sarah Russett, my long-arm quilter, and when she is done doing her excellent work, I will add the bindings and be done.  Yay.  Christmas gifts I'm excited to give, and a giant item checked off my to-do list.  I'll post pictures of them after they have been given away.

The mini quilt I finished this week is a project inspired by this print by Hannes Beers.  Last year the librarian at the boys' school mentioned that she was looking for things to hang on the library walls.  I immediately remembered that print and thought it would be perfect for the library.  I added to it a bit, and changed some elements.  I made a stencil on my Silhouette and then painted it on white fabric.  I did the quilting by hand.  It was my first foray into hand quilting, and while I have no idea whether I did it "right," I enjoyed the process and I like the final look of the piece.  I want to block it so it's a little more square, then add the hanging sleeve and it will be ready to give away.  It was super satisfying to do a small quilt project intended to hang on the wall.  I definitely will be doing more mini quilts in the future.

Sylvia's Quilt

I finished another baby quilt.  This one went to our new niece Sylvia.  I used the fat quarter pattern from Two Little Banshees again.  It is such a quick and easy pattern, and it's nice to be able to shop for fabric in bundles instead of individually (especially since I don't have a car at my disposal to go fabric-store hopping these days).  Plus I like that Sylvia's quilt used the same pattern as her brother Owen's.  So they have a little set of matching quilts, albeit with very different fabrics.

I bought the fat quarter bundle from Hawthorne Threads.  They have a lot of really pretty bundles to choose from.  I loved picking such a girly bunch of fabrics for this little lady.  My sister in law Jessica does not shy away from the girly colors.  She loves pink and Sylvia has a gorgeous pink nursery.  I think these bright feminine prints will fit in nicely.

I was frustrated yet again when it came to the quilting of this quilt.  I was pleased with the top (for which I used the pattern), and I was pleased with the back (which I pieced together randomly from scraps),  and I felt like I ruined them once began quilting.  I had a lot of puckers again.  I think it might have been due to my deficient basting process.  Or the fact that I took off my walking foot and used the regular foot to do my quilting.  Whatever the cause, it didn't work out well, and my quilting was less than stellar.  Again.  I'll keep trying, though.  The good thing was that after I washed and dried it, the puckers and mistakes were much less evident.

I added a few hand-stitched details on this quilt, which I like to do when I have time.  I hope Miss Sylvia will get some good snuggles and naps out of this quilt!  I enjoyed making it for her and holding her for a few hours when I met her last weekend.  Not many things in this world sweeter than a brand new baby.

a finished quilt, plus M O V I N G

I finished the first story quilt a few weeks ago.  I quilted it with straight lines at random intervals.  They actually weren't all that straight, and some of them even cross over each other, but I kind of like their imperfect look.

On the back I used this awesome chevron print I found on etsy.  I get most of my fabric on etsy, actually.  I wanted to include an explanation of how to use the quilt on the back... I made a stencil on my Cameo Silhouette, painted it onto some fabric, and then incorporated that block into the back of the quilt.  This was a pretty time consuming process, but I am happy with how it turned out.  For all subsequent story quilts I make, though, I have a more efficient solution.  I had some fabric printed by Spoonflower that says the same thing.  I love how it looks and can't wait to show you on the next quilt!  I added some colorful binding and called it done!  Love it.  Can't wait to send it to its new home.

It's hard to imagine when I might have time to make another quilt.  Life is going to be dominated by one giant project for the foreseeable future, because.....  we are moving!  Nate took a new job in the suburbs of Chicago.  We have wanted to move back to Chicago since the day we left, almost 6 years ago.  So we are excited.  But also sad to leave family and good friends here.  And also overwhelmed by the gigantic task of selling a house and moving.  It's going to be a lot of work.  It already has been a ton of work to get the house ready for showings.  We have had loads of help from family already, and I'm sure we'll need more help before this process is over.  A challenging time ahead of us... lots of work to accomplish, many emotions to sift through, and a new life to create once we reach the other side.  It's really happening!

The hardest thing I've ever tried to do.

I am making another quilt.  But I am trying a new-to-me technique, free motion quilting.  I recently took a class on fmq, and this is the first time I'm trying to use what I learned.  It is so hard.  So much harder than I expected.  It's basically like using your sewing machine to draw on the quilt.  You can create any shape or pattern with the stitches.  You completely control the movement with your hands.  When I looked at my quilt I could envision where I wanted the stitches to go.  But when I actually got the quilt under the needle, I had a lot less control than I would have hoped.  Lines that are meant to be curved are pointy.  Lines that are meant to be smooth are jagged.  By the looks of these stitches, you would think a small child was sitting at my sewing machine.  No kidding.  Part of me can't believe I am giving this quilt away.  It's a baby gift for a friend.  I should have practiced on something that wouldn't be seen by anyone else.  I did practice, actually, quite a lot, on scraps.  But it certainly wasn't enough.  Oh well.  At the very least this quilt will have a uniform look, messiness across the board.  Plus, it will still keep a baby warm, and the fabrics are super cute.  So I will try not to be too embarrassed when I give it away.  I am getting better, I think, very slowly.  And it's exciting to think about a point in the future when I might actually be good at this.  For now it remains extremely challenging.

Two ladies are helping me, via their blogs, to get through my first experiment in free motion quilting.  The first happens to be a lady who has seen me give birth.  Christina was a young, compassionate doula when we had S in Chicago.  She was our advocate and encourager during that horrible hospital birth.  Now she is a midwife and mother in Portland, and a very accomplished quilter.  She hosted a quilt-a-long on her blog last year, exploring all the different options of free motion techniques.  Those posts didn't mean much to me at the time, but now I am pouring over them and soaking up her knowledge, pointers, and humor.  She was even so kind as to share some pictures of her first free-motion work, and guess what!  It looks A LOT like mine does now!  So I have hope that I will get better at this, just like she did.

The second lady is Leah Day, who is posting hundreds of free motion designs, along with videos of how to stitch them, on her blog.  It's super helpful to watch the videos instead of just trying to figure out how to stitch something just by looking at it.  Also she organizes her designs by difficulty level, so I am spending a lot of time studying the Beginner page.

Struggling with my tension on the back.  The thread is basically laying on the fabric.  I've tightened it up a bit and it seems better.  Still not great.

This is supposed to look like a design from Leah Day called River Path.  Hers is beautiful and smooth and mine is, well, I guess it looks okay if you don't look too closely.

Here I am trying to do pebbling.  Um...... yeah.  Looks so simple and easy.  Is not.

Here you can see Leah's design River Path.  It's one of the most attractive fmq designs I've seen, so I sure hope I can improve upon my initial attempt.
And here is Christina's pebbling.  Look how neat and tidy those circles are!  How does she do that?!

I'll be back later to share this quilt when it is finished, and hopefully with some more quilts over the summer.  That's all for now.  I'll leave you with some cute pictures of me and my boys on Mother's Day.

Owen's quilt.

I finished my second quilt.  It was a gift for my nephew Owen, the boys' first cousin on their dad's side.  I'll tell you a little bit about it.

I found a fabric bundle on fabricworm.com that I really liked, a group of 12 fat quarters.  Owen has a little jungle theme going on in his nursery, so I thought these fabrics would work well.  I used a free tutorial on Two Little Banshees that called for 6 fat quarters, so I set aside half the fabric for another project.

The pattern was a super simple one, using only squares and rectangles.  It didn't take long to put the top together.  I decided to add some hand-embroidery for a little extra interest.  I stitched Owen's name, and outlined a few of the characters on the fabric.  I stitched my name on the back, too.

When I was ready to put it together, I kept the quilting really simple too.  All straight lines, some horizontal and some vertical.    I finished the binding by hand, and that was it.  I hope Owen will use it a lot.

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A few weeks after this quilt was finished, I took a free motion quilting class at a local quilt shop.  Free motion quilting means you can quilt in all kind of fancy lines, swirls, circles, leaves, whatever.  Instead of straight lines.  Lots of exciting possibilities.  The class was fun, but my machine didn't seem to love free motion.  I spent too much of my class time wrestling with my machine.  I need to keep practicing.  And I have a ton of questions that didn't get answered by the class.  I have a friend who is rather an expert in free motion quilting, but she is a busy mom, midwife, and blogger, so I can't bug her, unfortunately.  Just tell me this, Christina... have you ever heard of someone binding their quilts BEFORE they quilt them?  Our teacher said this is how she has always done it.  My mind was blown. 

Lots of embroidery projects queued up currently, but soon there will be more quilts, I hope, and some free motion experimentation. 

a first quilt is momentous for a crafter, so bear with this very long post.

Our friends Megan and Marty are expecting their first baby very soon. I think the due date is still a couple weeks away, but of course it could be any time now. I decided to make a quilt for their baby gift. I guess I wanted to try something new. I have this book, Bend the Rules Sewing, which features a project called Easy Lap Quilt. This is the pattern I used for my first foray into the world of quilting.

They don't know if the baby is a boy or a girl, but Megan did tell me that the nursery features an apple theme, which I think is adorable. I found the apple fabric on Superbuzzy. I loved the pattern and thought the green would be good for a uni-sex gift. I made all of my other fabric choices based on the apple fabric.

I have done very little sewing in my life so far. I made a terrible sweatshirt and pair of drawstring pants in Mrs. Burnhardy's sewing class in high school 10 years ago. Since then, only hemming up of curtains. When I read the directions for this quilt, I thought, "Well, I can sew a straight line. This will be easy." There are some straight lines on this quilt, but there are also crooked lines, thick lines and thin lines, all kind of lines. Suffice it to say, this project was a lot more difficult than I expected. I'm so used to working with paper. Paper is easy. It wants to be cut in a straight line. Fabric wants to move and fold and shift. I made great efforts to cut my strips very straight, and to lay them out very straight, and to cut my backing fabric very straight. But somehow I ended up with a lot of crookedness on this quilt. It was frustrating while it happened, but looking at the finished project, the crooked lines don't bother me much.

I chose to do a red binding because red is across from green on the color wheel. I thought the complimentary color would add a little pop around the edge. That it does, but I wonder if the blanket looks a little too 'Christmas-y' as a result. I also decided to sew the entire quilt with red thread, for the same reason as the binding. I now realize that the red thread acts as a flashing red spotlight pointed directly at each mistake I made. Oh, man. I have to laugh. This seems like such an obviously bad decision now. But I didn't know! Plus, I thought there wouldn't be mistakes, because it was just straight lines! I was so wrong, but it's okay.

I had a lot of trouble with my machine locking up. I figured out the problem, took it in to the local Brother shop and was told that to get it fixed would cost more than the machine originally cost. Bummer. So I guess this is my last sewing project for a while. Anyway, every time my machine locked up, I had to stop sewing, obviously. That resulted in a lots of broken lines in unfortunate places. When I started sewing again, I was careful to line up the stitches to the end of the interrupted line, but these little spots started to slowly unravel. I still don't understand how to properly start and end a line, maybe. All this to say, I had to repair some spots where my stitched lines were broken / unraveling. These spots now look awful. Really, they are so messy. It made me sad to add such sloppiness to my end product. I decided it was better to reinforce those trouble spots than to give a gift that might unravel with use and care. I sacrificed a little beauty for function. I'm okay with that, too.

These were the things I loved about making this quilt:
-carefully selecting all the fabric.
-sewing when my machine was working.
-adding cute hand-embroidered details. Wish I would have done more of them, but was too impatient to finish.
-hand-finishing the binding with the quilt on my lap, keeping me warm as I talked with my family and watched Home Alone.



These things I could have done without:
-uncooperative sewing machines.
-crooked lines everywhere.
-going 0 for 4 on proper corner-binding technique. Oh well, I get four more chances on the next one, I guess.


Overall, despite its many flaws and beginner's mistakes, I feel that this first quilting endeavor was a huge success for two reasons.
This quilt will keep a little baby Smith warm for a long time to come.
Every stitch, whether frustrating and curse-inducing or completely successful, was sewn with great love for the recipients.


Megan and Marty are going to be amazing parents. I can't wait to meet their little person!

Also, I'm looking forward to more sewing in the future. I might have to wait until next Christmas for a new machine. That will give me plenty of time to plan my next project.