A special music quilt

Back in 2013, I made a nautical quilt, stocking and two pillows for a woman having her first baby. I couldn't help her with her 2nd baby due to machine troubles. She's now having her 3rd baby and asked me to make a music quilt set for this baby in blues and greens! I finished this quilt earlier in the month, but held off on the post since the baby is due around New Years!

This quilt is my own design inspired by some photos the mom sent me.

I used my Silhouette to cut these applique pieces. However, my Silhouette is super old (maybe 10 years) and was never meant to cut fabric. It kind of stopped working mid-way through this keyboard and I wound up doing a lot of it by hand.

The rest of the shapes worked well, but I do think it might be time to retire the Silhouette until I can replace it with a new model.

I considered putting a cassette tap on here as well, but I figured the record would be enough explaining for mom and dad! Haha!

My favorite part of this quilt I think is the music striped binding!

This is the first quilt that I forgot to put my label on the back! I realized it after I had sewed the binding on, however, I had packed up my sewing room for Christmas and couldn't even sew a label together to hand sew on there!

Along with the quilt, I made a matching stocking. I used Amanda Murphy's Modern Holiday  book for the pattern. The name is hand stitched by transferring the name on the cream fabric and stitching on top of that.

She also asked for 2 pillows. I made one that links to the quilt with this little guitar.

The other links to the stocking which of course they both use quilt fabrics!

I hope the whole family loves these and that baby boy Ryan arrives safe and sound! What a wonderful new years gift.

Bloggers Quilt Festival - The Tree Edition

Hi everyone and welcome to my little stop of the Bloggers Quilt Festival. I'm entering these two quilts as one entry into the Applique category because they are the same quilt in different colorways. So if you like what you see, please go and vote for me! :)

Of course there is a story behind these quilts!  My sister's girlfriend had asked me if I could make her a baby quilt for her girlfriend. I immediately agreed. I love doing baby quilts! She told me the mother loved trees and so I started searching for a great tree pattern.

Shortly after I had started the planning process, she sent me an email. The mother had her ultrasound and she was having twin girls!! So, could I make two tree quilts.  Well, that made the price of this Lilly Pilly pattern much more affordable!

The other story behind this quilt is the binding. This is the bridesmaid dress worn by the woman who commissioned the quilt at the mothers wedding. I thought that was such a sweet touch! I had wanted to do a very wide binding, but once it changed to two quilts I was nervous about having enough!

 

For the backs of the quilts I decided to use only one print so they could be flipped over. I love these backing prints!

Both prints are part of the Joann's designer collection (but I can't remember the specific names). 

 

The tree trunk, branches and birds are raw edge applique. The leaves were done by drawing the shape on interfacing, sewing to the fabric and then flipping inside out. That way I was able to just free motion stitch those down.

I do have to say, I'm most especially proud of the quilting on this.  I was able to go over to my friend Denise's house and use her long-arm. For the first time I used the front side and did free motion quilting based from Angela Walters new book Shape by Shape Quilting. I can't say enough good things about that book - go check it out!

And just a close up of the cute little birds on the tree and my quilting within the leaves: 

I'm very proud of these quilts and I hope you've enjoyed seeing them! If so, please go vote for me on the applique page right here.

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Trees for Twins

Pattern: Lilly Pilly

Fabrics: scraps, kona white and snow, bridesmaid dress

Finished size: 38"x51"

Finished: 10/5/14

PMQG March challenge

I realized in all the chaos of the last two weeks I never posted about these finishes.  Our Philly Modern Quilt Guild Challenge for March was to make a cover for these Ikea seat cushions. They had been popping up in our Guild Sewing days and everyone wanted one so we decided to make a challenge of it. The bottoms have this great grippy stuff on them so they don't slide off. So one of our members, Bobbi, gave us a quick tutorial for creating a drawstring closure.

So all we had to do was figure out our tops. As soon as this challenge was announced I knew what I wanted to do. I've had the Joseph's Coat block on my to-do list forever (here's the tutorial I used) and I knew it was perfect for this. But I wanted to attempt something a little special with it. I got out my ombre fabrics from Vanessa Christensen's first line and started cutting. Sadly the ombre effect wasn't enough to work in this small of a block.

And I have pin marks because I used interfacing on the petals. Anyone know how to get rid of those!? I didn't really plan on washing this, but I guess I can.

So I wasn't thrilled with that one so I tried again and I really like the second one.

It's very sewing appropriate isn't it!? 

I wasn't able to make it to the meeting since it was my second day of work, but the rest of the guild covers should be posted on our site soon!

Something Machine Appliqued [Blog Hop]

Welcome the last stop of the Something New Sampler Hop! That's right, I'm the caboose! Woot woot!

Amy from the Cute Life asked me if I'd like to try something new this year and share it with you all. After some thought, I decided on machine applique. I have to admit, this wasn't totally new to me. I had tried and failed in the past. So I wanted to tackle it again. My friend Denise gave me the courage to try again and helped me iron out the kinks. Big thanks to her for the help. Sometimes you just need someone to hold your hand. Hopefully this will be that for you! This was my first project to use my new skill and it was fun to put this little tutorial together for you.

There are a million ways to do applique, this is just what I do (correct or incorrect). My block is a take on scallop quilts. Here is the link for how to make the clamshell shape. You will need to make 9 clamshells for this block. I made my clamshells with a 4" square. Thanks to Amy, here is a template you can download.

I'm not going to go into detail on prepping the piece for sewing since there are also a million ways to do this. I used a plastic, iron resistant template and starch to turn my edges. Another favorite method is freezer paper - google it and you'll get lots of great tutorials. When you make the scallop, you only need to turn the top rounded edge for all pieces except for the bottom since the other pieces will be sewn over. This will make more sense when you see the pictures.

One quick tip for when you are prepping your pieces. If you have a circle cut ruler it can really help cutting the piece.  Here you can see the marker line on my plastic template and then I cut on the 4" line above that.  You can just freehand it since you'll be folding that under, but the circle template makes it much easier if you have one.

So, on to your supplies. I used a mono-filiment thread in clear that I got at my LQS.

This comes in a smoke color too if you are using dark colors.

Or you can just use a thread color that matches your fabric choice.

Next is your settings on your machine. You should get some practice fabrics to test out the right settings. I found that I need to use the mono-filiment in the bobbin as well as the top or I could NOT get a good tension going. (Be aware when winding your bobbin - the mono-filiment can get hot if spun too fast around pegs on the top of the machine).

I used stitch #27 below. Find the similar stitch on your machine. You want the machine to stitch 3 or 4 times in a straight line, then take a notch to the left. On some machines you might have a stitch like this that goes to the right and be able to reverse it. My machine is not that fancy.

Then you should bump up your width and stitch length a bit. You can see below that I did 2 notches  on both of them and that I have my machine on 1/2 speed. I have a lead food and this isn't the time for that!

Once you find your settings, I recommend putting a note on your machine so if you have to come back to it later you'll know where you were.

Okay - that was the time consuming part. The rest is easy peasy, I promise!

First we need to lay everything out as we want it to be finished. This is what our finished block  will look like.

Pin the top scallop down and remove the rest. I'm not a big pinner so I didn't use a lot. Please use what you are comfortable with. And only pin the top scallop (unlike my photo above).

At the machine, make sure all your settings are correct. We are going to sew around the top edge only. The straight line stitches will be outside the scallop like this:

Then the little hop to the left will catch your scallop like this:

Can you see your stitches? They should look something like this (if you can see them!)

Stitch across the entire top only. Don't worry about the bottom portions. We'll lay out the next scallops and they will cover that up! Pin them and sew.

Sew across those two and repeat each row until finished. Then it's time to trim to  7.5" by 14.5".

And you have your finished block!

I had a hard time photographing the stitches so you could see them. They are so hard to see and so hard to photograph. In my opinion, that's what you want! Look, you can see the dirt on my fabric, but not the stitches! HAHA!

Hope you found this tutorial helpful. Some of the steps were hard to describe so please ask if you have any questions! And don't forget that Amy's going to have prizes on her site at the end so link up your finished tops there!