Apron Strings Finished

I decided to spend the end of 2015 trying to tackle a few of the WIPs that have been sitting around my sewing room for a while. I've been avoiding the actual quilting of my quilts as it's the least favorite part of the process for me (unless I can use a longarm - then I love it!). I've decided to embrace the quilting in 2016 and try and advance my skills in that area. 

 
 

The first finish as a result of this is my Apron Strings quilt. I blogged about the top finish and my issues with it in 2013 and it's been sitting around since then. After a break from it, I decided to keep the quilting simple.



You can't see it well in the above photos, but the quilting is straight line to mimic the lines in the quilting. 


 

The backing is the leftover strings, yardage and my label all pieced together.

 

Binding was a fun print I had on hand that matched the blue perfectly.

 

I did have a couple of seams pop when I was doing the quilting. I remembered that when I made this quilt, some of the squares did not come out perfectly square and I must have tried to stretch the piecing.  I wound up stitching over those seams on the top of the quilt. As a result, this quilt was donated to the local women's shelter. Hopefully, despite my frustrations with it, it will provide someone with comfort and warmth!

Quilt stats

Quilt name and pattern: Apron Strings

Fabrics: Chloe's closet - Moda
Finished size: 48"x 48"

Finished: December 2015

  

Lizzy House event with PhillyMQG

Philly MQG brought in Lizzy House this past weekend for a lecture and Meadow Quilt workshop. It was such a wonderful event. I met some new people, and of course was inspired. Her lecture was all about her journey to where she is now. A lot of what she said resonated with me in terms of my daughter and how I'd like to encourage her. It was fascinating to hear what's she done in order to accomplish all she has!

Here's a close up of the Meadow Quilt. Lizzy only teaches this class in person and there's a good reason for that. It's an experience!  And the quilt is complicated. It's so much easier to learn the techniques when you see it all in person. And if you have troubles, Lizzy is right there to sit down and sew with you.

She went around and spent one on one time with each person discussing their fabric selections. As you can see, I've gone with a very different color palate than I usually use. Because of that, I was lacking some oomph.  With some tips and ideas from Lizzy, I revisited my stash when I got home and expanded my color palate some. My 'centers' will be a dark charcoal which should break this up nicely.

 

But while we were at the workshop, we did a "test" block to get the techniques down.  Here was my test block:

And everyone hung theirs on the design wall. It's neat to see what effect different color combinations have! (sadly I was early taking my picture and a handful of people are not represented on here).

It was a great time. If you can get to one of Lizzy's classes while she's still teaching this quilt, I would highly recommend it! I'll keep posting here (and on Instagram) on the progress of my Meadow.

Charity Quilt Auction

This quilt will be going up for silent auction to support Doylestown Hospital Hospice and Cancer Institute. Every year the employees donate baskets of items for the Circle of Life Auction. Our department pulled together a "Warm and Cozy" basket featuring my quilt. It also includes a bottle of wine, chocolates and fuzzy slippers. This year, they've added electronic bidding so you don't even need to attend the auction to bid!  This means, if you are interested in bidding on my quilt, you can do so right here!! It's item #1004 from Doylestown Hospital Administration. (please ignore the terrible photo, they posted a picture of the back of the quilt! It will be displayed in person). The bidding site gives you the capability to put in a minimum and maximum bid and it will increase your bids for you.

 

The fabrics are all high quality quilt shop cottons. Mainly Joel Dewberry's Birch Farm line. I mixed in some Art Gallery and the background is Kona Raffia. 

Quilted by me on my friend Denise's long arm. I love the added softness the swirls give!

The backing is all the hydrangea print because it was my favorite in the line.

And a close up of my label...

Scrappy binding of the same prints.

I made this quilt in queen size before in different fabrics and loved how it turned out. That version lives on my guest bed and is still one of my favorites. I was excited to try it again in different colors and I'm really happy with how it turned out. If you like it too, please consider placing a bid! What i understand is that the bidding will work like other online bid sites where you can place a starting and maximum bid and it will increase your bid as others bid so you have nothing to lose!

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Charity Windows

Pattern: Summer Porch - Eleanor Burns

Fabrics: Joel Dewberry -Birch Farm, Kona Raffia, Art Gallery Oval Elements
Finished size:

Finished: October 2015

Sarcastic/Nerdy Guild swap

The Philly MQG decided to have a Sarcastic/Nerdy swap based off of the online swaps that use profanity or are focused on fandom.  We use Elfster to get matched up for these swaps and you can find out if your partner has an obsession with certain shows, movies or characters through the site. Or based on their sense of humor you could do something a little more risque!

I wasn't 100% sure of my partners use of profanity so I stuck with some quilting fun.  This bag challenged me several times. It's a Noodle Head pattern called the Caravan Tote which I highly recommend. What challenged me was getting the heat transfer on their correctly.  My original design was based off of one on CafePress that I can't get to load up here. (just google Serial Quilter and you'll find it.)  I made myself a t-shirt as a tester.

Then when I started to do the bag, I just resized it, cut it out on my silhouette and put it on the piece before sewing it to the bag. However, I had not read the whole bag pattern yet and didn't realize the bottom of the bag required 3" of the side panel in order to make the boxed bottom! All of a sudden my quilter girl was too big and I had no more heat transfer material!!

What you see is the result of re-thinking. I decided to enlarge the rotary cutter and scissors and cut from a sparkly iron-on that I was able to get locally.

The bag itself is so cool! Inside the side panel (and my awesome rainbow zipper) is a subdivided pocket for tools.

Another pocket inside the bag itself, and then snap closures.  I did the handles with fabric covered webbing.

And because swaps always require a little more love, I found a few things to include. This funny little pin:

And I made this little zip pouch out of sewing themed fabrics.

She loved everything! Now to get working on our retreat swap project!!

Another Charity Quilt finish

This quilt has actually been finished for a few months. It's been sitting waiting for me to put the binding on it!! So I decided that it's going to go to charity just like my last quilt.

If you haven't joined and donated somethin for the Quilts for Kids 2015 effort you should consider it. You have till the end of the month and she's doing a bunch of great giveaways as well. Not to mention, it's all for a good cause.

This quilt was packed with the last one and sent to Quilts for Kids. I'm hoping it will appeal to an older child who may not like all the novelty fabrics typically found in kids quilts. 

The "solid" fabrics in this one are actually shot cottons which are notoriously hard to photograph. Let me just say, they are fabulous in person. And the "background" is a chambray.

This quilt was made during the Mod Olives quilt along at Sew Kind of Wonderful. If you haven't seen her Quick Curve Ruler, I definitely recommend it. I've made several of her quilts and they are always stunning and easy to do! She's got lots of great you tube videos if you are a visual learner like me.

I long-armed this quilt at my friend's house the same time I did this quilt back in July.  I will say, it had a couple of bulky seams that needed me to be careful. But going slow takes care of that.

Here's a close up of my machine binding. I used the edge stitch foot and it helped me keep the line steady and perfect!

The back is a piecing of stash fabrics and my label as usual!

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Mod Olives

Pattern: Mod Olives

Fabrics: Various
Finished size: 38"x48"

Finished: August 2015

A triangle quilt for kids

As usual if you follow me on Instagram (@myfabricobsession) you've seen this quilt in progress. I finally finished the other day. And since it doesn't have a destination, I've decided to donate it to the 100 Quilts for Kids effort! Haven't heard of it? You can get details here. I hope you'll go and donate a quilt to your favorite charity as well.

My quilt specifically will go to Quilts for Kids. They are headquartered locally and I love the work they do.There are branches all over the country so go check them out!!

Back to this quilt. I used a FQ stack of Kate Spain's beautiful Horizon fabric line. For that reason, this quilt will be very hard to part with. I LOVE this line...

These colors are totally my go to colors and they just remind me of seaglass!! How can you not love it? It's so soothing.

I used my new to me AccuQuilt Go! and the isosceles triangle die to cut these. It made it super easy to cut. But then I was a dodo bird and didn't offset my triangles when I pieced it. If you look carefully at my points they aren't so perfect. I say this not to point out my errors, but to say that this was a learning piece. And to share knowledge! If you are piecing isosceles triangles, you need to offset by 1/4" to get a good point.

I'm still thrilled with how this turned out and think someone will be super lucky to have it. I may have snuggled a few nights on the couch with it just so I could stroke the pretty fabrics. Yeah, I admitted that...

Once I knew this was going to be donated, I machine sewed the binding to make sure it was extra strong. The binding is all scraps from the same fat quarter stack.

The backing is more of the extra fabrics and my label pieced in there.  Oh and I had no measurements when I started making this so I had some extra triangles. They went on the back as well!

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Horizon Triangles

Pattern: none

Fabrics: Horizon by Kate Spain, Kona Cottons

Finished size: 38"x44"

Finished: August 2015