Basic Ease- FINISHED

 For the Quilting Book Club, the first month's pattern was BASIC EASE from the "Modern Basics" Book.  This quilt took no time at all.  The pieces were big and went together very quickly.

 I had a bunch of orange hanging around and went with that route for the quilt.  I also used Moda Snow (which is very different in color to Kona Snow by the way... don't ask me how I know that!).

 I quilted this baby myself!  I used a floral pantograph that is very similar to the flowers in the quilt so I think it was a good fit.

 My quilting is improving!  This is quilt #2 on the longarm for me.  It is lots of fun to use that machine!  The quilting still isn't perfect which is why I've opted for a color of thread that blends in very well, but unless you inspect it closely, you can't tell.  So, I am still proud of it!

 For the back I used Amy Butler's orange dots.  I love I nice dot fabric and this certainly is one of them.  I also bound the quilt using the backing fabric and the print fabrics from the top for a scrappy look.

Here is Basic Ease along with my Posie Patch quilt hanging in my sewing room.  My walls finally aren't bare anymore!!!

"Shirt Off My Bag"!

 For the Quilting Book Club, we are starting a new book called, "Fresh Fabric Treats".  It's a great book with simple patterns made by Moda Bake Shop designers.  (By the way, I LOVE Moda Bake Shop, sometimes I just go there and stare at all the pictures and it helps to inspire me.  Honestly, I have gotten lots of ideas from looking at others' work). 

The first task we are tackling is a pattern called, "Shirt Off My Bag".  It's a really cute, small bag.  Because I am forever in fear of falling behind in this group, I try to work ahead where I can. 

 The original pattern calls for four different fabrics, but I wanted to stick with these too because I think they are really pretty and wanted to focus on just them.

 There aren't many pieces to it at all-- just four inside/outside pieces, two triangular cuff pieces and then the handle pieces.

 Here, I'm sewing it all up!

The finished bag.  I decided to curve the bottom edges.. I didn't need to nor did it call for it, but I though it added an extra "cuteness" to it.  (I am using "CUTE" way too much in this post!)

Rainbow Tutorial

For Stashtacular, we are supposed to do up some of the given tutorials and post our pictures to flickr in order to win prizes--- FABRIC!

Here we have Mason sporting the first tutorial found at bluebirdsews.blogspot.com.  It was for this rainbow onesie.  Hope I win! (doubt I will, I am usually good luck for EVERYONE else!).

July's Quilting Book Club project

From May through August, the Quilting Book Club has been working through four projects out of this book:

It is a great book filled with simple, fairly quilt designs and patterns.  I am enjoying improving my skills with these more basic quilts.  Plus, they're gorgeous and it is fun!!

For July, we are doing the "Knotted Squares" pattern.  It requires a Jelly Roll and a solid.  I chose to work with the Moda Hideaway line and some yellow Kona I had on hand. 

I've since been happily cutting and sewing.  I am really nervous about getting behind on the monthly projects so I have made a real effort to keep to the deadlines.  So far, so good. 

Here are the next two books that our book club will be working with:

First Quilting EVER!

 I've made many quilts, but have been spoiled by a quilting mother.  She has a longarm machine, so it was all to easy to just send my quilts to her.  However, since I am now not pregnant anymore and whipping out these quilts "too fast", according to her, she said I had to learn for myself!  So, I entered longarm training: an intense day long event to better familiarize myself with the machine and technique of longarm.  So, I quilted a quilt for the first time last week!

 This quilt is part of the The Quilting Book Club.  It is called Posie Patch and is from Amy Ellis' "Modern Basics book".  I used mostly Modern Meadow fabrics by Joel Dewberry.  The pattern is simple but has helped me improve my skills with triangles and matching up my seams.  It looks beautiful and I am really happy with the finished product.  It hangs in my sewing/craft room!!

 If you look close enough, you can see that the quilting isn't perfect... it is my first one though, but I really couldn't be more happy about it.  Using thread that doesn't show the quilting certainly helps.  I am excited to get another quilt on the racks and get going on my second quilting job!

In other news... I am getting excited to start putting these together:

Jelly Roll Skirts

As the end of the month nears, I always find myself looking for something else to do.  My bee blocks are done by this time and I have usually completed some sort of quilt project and am looking to branch out a bit.

So, I decided to make my girls each a skirt.  I found the skirt tutorial for the skirt on the left (with a couple modifications), which I made for Elise, on Moda Bake Shop.  After finishing it, I was left with quite a bit of the jelly roll left over so I decided to make Maggie a skirt too.  I whipped that second skirt up in about an hour, probably less.

I added ric rac (how do you even spell that!?) to the bottom of each of the skirts.  The girls wore them to church this past Sunday and they looked so darling!  I used Moda's Basic Grey's Origins, which happens to be what they used in the Moda Bake Shop tutorial... I just happened to have it in the stash!!

Lattice Quilt-FINISHED

 Awhile back, I finished this Lattice Quilt.  I got the inspiration from Oh Fransson, but made a few modifications.  I wanted it to be bigger than her instructions called for so I made the blocks a bit bigger, added an extra row of blocks and added a border around.

 The fabric is Moda Sandy Gervais Lovely.... I used a fat quarter set and then bought the yellow and blue you see for the sashing and border... both are Moda but a different line... sorry not sure what.

 I've seen on a lot of blogs that husbands hold of the quilts for their wives and they look pretty happy to do so.  My hub was not so excited about it so this will likely be the last time he helps model my pretties.

 I pieced the back with what I had left!  I used the extra 5 blocks I had and strips of extra fabric along with Kona Snow.  I did a scrappy binding done with the leftovers I had of the fabric from my fat quarter stack... I am telling you, I had JUST enough!

 The quilting is gorgeous.  Done with a varigated thread... thanks mom!

 The quilting is especially striking on the solid colors.

I really love this quilt and it is currently being used in our family room.  The kids cuddle up in blankets every day and it always makes me smile when they've got one of mine on them!

Blockwork Orange Quick Swap

 Last month I joined the Blockwork Orange Swap.  It was one of those swaps that you just had to punch out a bunch of blocks and mail them in and get others' blocks back in return.  This particular one was so fast and a total breeze.  I LOVED it!

 These crazy 9-patch blogs were courtesy of Oh Franssons online tutorial.

 They are really easy to do, almost impossible to mess up and you bang out 9 of these bad boys at the same time!  WOO HOO!

 Above are the group of blocks that I sent in for the swap.  I used fabric mostly purchased from Fabricworm.  They have bundles in almost every colorway so it was an easy pick for fabric for this one.  I also had some other oranges in my stash that I added in.

 Here are the blocks when I got them back.  I tried to play around with how I wanted them and thought I would probably lay them in rows like this, but opted for something else.

This is the finished top.  I put the blocks in groups of four and groups of six and laid them just like you see above.  Then, I framed them in Kona Snow and sashed and bordered in Kona Charcoal.  I am really happy with it and will post the finished product when it is finished being quilted and when I have the back put together.  Still not sure what to do with the back!

I've been doing a lot of strippin!

 In a moment of EXTREME insanity, I joined the Tokyo Subway Map Swap.  It is a swap based on Oh Fransson's Toky Subway Map Quilt which is intricate and amazing and REALLY intimidating.  If I were to do it on my own, It would mean me sewing together 1600+ tiny squares one by one.  Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.  However, with this swap I was assigned one block and had to make 25 of these same blocks.  This meant I could do a lot of strip piecing and then cut them into pieced strips and sew those together.

 This task required a lot of cutting and sewing to start off with.

 A WHOLE lot of pinning.  Even with the pinning, I had some issues getting my seams to line up which required me to do a lot of ripping out of seams and in the end, had to accept that perfection was not in the books for me!

 This process also required to iron all those tiny seams OPEN.  I sometimes iron open... like when a lot of things come together in one spot or when I am trying to impress someone, but not when it takes as long to iron them open as this project did!  Plus it burns my fingers.  For serious.

 This particular block came out pretty straight-- I think this is the picture I posted on the group page- ha!

1 down, 24 to go.  I finally finished them all last week with the help of my mom.  I was so worried about going into labor before I finished these.  So, I plan on mailing them out today or early next week.  I am ready to be rid of them!  Hopefully putting the completed blocks together into the quilt top won't be as much of a drain.  Good thing I LOVE this quilt!

WIP Nightmare

This quilt top was the second quilt top I completed.  I worked on it at the same time as I worked on the first quilt, but it has YET to be completed.  It has really turned into a bit of a nightmare quilt.

First, I should say that I do love the pattern from Quilt Dad, it is really easy and hard to mess up.  I also used the Moda Bliss line which I absolutely LOVE.  It is so cute and girly.  Plus, I really love the way that pinks and reds go together. 

(pardon the toes in the picture...I'm sure it won't be the last set of kiddie toes I catch in a picture!)

This quilt has just given me grief.  The blocks turned out a bit wonky, I had to cut a few down so they would all size the same, I ran out of sashing fabric and had to get more, the border I put on didn't turn out the way I wanted and NOW the backing I bought isn't working out right.  I bought 5 yards of backing and it will fit if I cut out a chunk in the middle and sew it together in a few places, but it's sort of a pain, you know?  Once I finally do that, it will be ready for some custom quilting.  However, I know since I don't have ANY fabric left over that I am going to have to figure out SOMETHING for the binding.  I just want this quilt DONE already!

My first COMPLETED Quilt!

 Back in February I decided to become a quilter.  This is HUGE news for my mom who has been an avid quilter for many years and has longed for one of her daughters to spark an interest.  Needless to say, I wasn't really the daughter she thought would do it, but much to her delight I had a sudden interest! 

I found this particular pattern at Film in the Fridge (FITF) and knew that's what I wanted to do.  The pattern is called "rectangle squared".  It looked simple enough but also challenging enough for a first time quilter.  Armed with my $90 Walmart sewing machine (I didn't want to spend big bucks on a new hobby right away--since then, I've upgraded:)), I pieced together this quilt!

 Most of the fabrics are from the Moda Spirit line and a few other fabrics that I found on sale at my LQS.  The backing was a sale fabric that fit pretty perfectly and the binding is from scraps.

 My mom has a long arm quilting machine that she said she would allow me to 'train' on.  I really did try but being pregnant with a huge belly made it hard to stand for a long period of time and it was hard to get close enough with a belly in the way.  When I am done being pregnant and recover a bit, I plan on giving it a go again.  For now, I am enjoying my own personal quilter :).

This is Lucy.  My puppy.  I am sure you will see her modeling in many of the pictures of quilts I post.  For some reason she just can't help herself when there is a quilt laying around!

I gifted this quilt to my dear friend Tiffany.  She has been a stellar friend who has really been there when I needed her and has put up with my during my pregnancy even though I have been sort of horrible to be around.  Anyway, it's hard to let go of a quilt, but I don't know that I could have given it to anyone better!