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!

A tale of 2 quilts

These are my his and hers I-Spy quilts for my kiddos.  Last year I participated in 2 I-Spy charm swaps. One was a regular swap where you got a yard, cut it into charms and got back a bunch of different charms. The second was a boy/girl swap where you sent in one set of boy charms and one set of girl charms. Once I had all these charms, I knew I had to make a quilt for each of the kids.

I made Samantha's first since she can actually play I-Spy. I used Kona natural for the sashing. I didn't want white since they are going to be used by the kids and there is so many different colors in the blocks.

I quilted hers with a diagonal stitching which was simple and yet fairly dense. Plus I wanted something all in one direction since I was using minky on the back. I didn't want any bubbles or folds to happen.

Evan's quilt wound up one row bigger than Samantha's (thankfully she hasn't noticed it yet).  Somehow I miss counted and had 4 stray blocks at the end. So I routed through my stash and found a few more blocks to make an extra row.

I did his quilting with wavy and straight lines going across. And you can see at the very bottom of that photo, I tried to use what I call the "baseball" stitch. It wound up being to heavy for me. It kind of obscures the pictures. Plus it took a looong time! So I just did a matching baseball stitch on the other end so they bookmark the quilt.

Here is the awesome minky I used on both of them and my labels. I think it was Robert Kaufman. It is so soft and wonderful. Needless to say, they have become the favorite snuggle quilts in the evenings!

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Got some finishes that I just need to get photos for you.  Hope you had a good week. Things were a bit rough around here as everyone got adjusted. But thankfully, my job is great and my coworkers are fantastic. It's the best I could hope for as my kids get used to me not being around 24/7.

Big Changes for me

It's been a bit quiet around here. As I mentioned before I was job hunting and I've been lucky enough to find a new position! It's a fantastic job and nice and close by. But it's going to be hard to leave my kids. So I imagine things might be a little quiet for a while around here as I adjust to my new schedule. Though I will say, I have quite a few projects in the works and some are close to being finished.

Right now, I just have my bee blocks from March to show you.  For Do.Good Stitches, we were asked to make these star blocks in summery colors.

For Make It Modern, it is my month so I am receiving the purple and gray diamond blocks! Once I have them up on the wall, I'll get a photo.

It is also Karen's month and she asked for scrappy blue, yellow and gray X and + blocks.

April will be very interesting no doubt!