blocks and fabric

Last weekend I was lucky enough to get together with a couple of quilting friends for a sewing day. It was great to chat and catch up with them!

Our main objective was to work on our charity blocks for PMQG. As a group, we put together a quilt that we donate to the school that hosts our meeting. They then raffle or auction it off to raise funds.  This year we decided to do HST Blocks. Here are mine:

The parameters were that we needed to use 4 hst's per block with the print fabric and then the celery green. We could add whatever prints/solids we wanted. Cathy's blocks:

And Denise's blocks:

And I to confess, I've done a little bit of fabric buying. This is why I fail at diets and just eliminating things from my life. Once I open that door a tiny crack, the waves of weakness come crashing in and I just gorge myself!  You know what I mean? You say no sweets, then you have cake at a party, then why not some ice cream. Next thing you know, you've bought some sweets for the house and you're late night snacking. No? Just me? 

Well, I was trying to behave with the fabric buying and had to buy some solids for a background.  Guess what jumped in my cart?

That's a FQ Bundle of Sphere by Zen Chic...  I was just going to order a couple prints. REALLY!  But I couldn't decide. I don't think there is a print in this line that I don't like.  Sigh...  I've never bought an FQ bundle before so I have to say it was very exciting to get this. I won't be unwrapping it for a while.

And then a couple days later I got notice that this was coming.

I forgot that I signed up for the Kawaii Fabric Club at Pink Chalk Fabrics. OMG! How cute are those penguins and hedgehogs!? Every piece in this stack is adorable. I've provided the link in case you want to sign up too.  Yup, I'm enabling in order to drag you in to my spiral! LOL

Guess who I met this weekend?

That's me with Angela Walters, Modern Quilter Extraordinaire! And yes, our shirts are matching. Didn't you get the memo that Coral is the new black?? haha!


Philly MQG held a workshop and lecture by Angela. she was a great speaker and I'm thrilled I got to go to both.  You all know I'm a huge Tula Pink fan, so of course by extension I'm a huge Angela Walters fan!

Her workshop was great. It was a lot of demonstrations of the different quilt patterns that are her favorites.

She showed us some straight line shapes. I'm slightly obsessed with that bottom yellow square!

Then we moved on to swirls and curves.

This was an example of how different levels of contrast in quilting can create depth and show off or hide elements of your quilt.

And this one she showed us how to create textures by varying the size of your shapes.

Besides being a talented quilter, Angela is funny and a great speaker. One of things she said that totally resonated with me is, "if it takes too long, that's a valid reason not to do it".  I totally agree, quilting is supposed to be fun!

The quilting part is usually what I found tedious and skipped over. but seeing just what beautiful effects can be created with the quilting, I'm inspired to do more with mine in the future.

Not that I have any illusions of making masterpieces like this!! But her lecture was all about how she became a quilter and the message I took away is that, "if it can be done, it can be learned".

Thank you Angela for getting my creative juices flowing! And thank you Philly MQG for hosting such a great event!

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!

My Madrona Road Challenge Entry

I joined Philly Modern Quilt Guild in the National MQG Madrona Road Challenge. Our only guide was that we should paper piece our project and we couldn't use other prints. I love these fabrics. I already had the gray print below with the black hashes on it so I added it in to this challenge.

I had seen this block in all the Farmer's Wife quilts, I believe it's called the Century of Progress. It looked like an easy one to convert to paper piecing (maybe it already is?). Here is my version of the block.

Since I stink at quilty math, my block came out a little bigger than a 12" block. I decided to turn it into what I'm calling the mega-pouch! My sewing area is in the dining room so I have to clean up for company a lot. I love having lots of pouches to put current projects in and keep them together. Really, you can never have enough pouches.

I've also always wanted to do a circle of geese block so I finally tackled one for the back (front?).

I added white around the blocks since they were different sizes (haha!) and added lining and zipper.

So yeah, I cheated a bit. That stripe isn't madrona road. ::blushing:::  It just went so perfectly and I love a great print inside a bag. But hey, my zipper work is getting pretty good!


Thank you to the Modern Quilt Guild and Michael Miller Fabrics for hosting this challenge!

Quilting Angels Swap received

The sun came out yesterday so I was able to get some photos of the beautiful gifts I received from Kari for our PMQG swap.  I had asked for a tote bag and she made me such an awesome tote with heavy weight fabrics!

The inside has a bunch of pockets in it. I think I'm going to use it as my purse I love it so much!

And then all these goodies! A christmas quilt kit, HST ruler and a stack of yummie fabrics.

What a great bundle of fabrics right? And check out the adorable little owl ribbon. I have to find something special to make with that.

Thank you so much Kari for spoiling me so!

Quilting Angels Swap

Last night we had our 2nd Annual Quilting Angels Holiday Swap at the PMQG meeting. This is the one swap we do in our guild where you pick your partner and get ideas from them. Thanks to Elfster.com it's a totally secret swap (totally recommend the site, it's really smart!).

I pulled the hilarious and sweet Pat Deck. She had an iPad case on her wish list so I found a pattern on Etsy and went to work! Here's the front with the case closed. The dark band is actually a navy blue elastic. I had a hard time with the colors on these photos.

 I will admit, I struggled with this pattern a bit. Some of the grammar and descriptions were a bit difficult but I think the functionality will be worth it. (and sorry, i don't have an iPad to show you how fabulous it looks in the case). It can stand upright like this:

Clever huh?

It also sits semi upright like this:

Here's the inside lying flat with my label in it. And if you can believe it, Pat told me after receiving it that she actually had picked out the same fabrics in a different colorway to make her own iPad case! So glad I got her taste right!

Then she also wished for a smock for her grand-daughter. I already had this Smock Monster pattern that I got at a quilt show. I was all excited about it and my daughter poo poo'd the monsters so I decided to make it plain for Pat.  First I did a smaller size mock up for my son Evan to test the pattern with an adorable fabric I already had.

He was gracious enough to model it for me (I was too lazy to take off his bulky sweatshirt).

I love the way it covers the shoulders.

Pat asked for a "not too itsy sweet" version for her granddaughter. Having a girl who's not so girly myself, I tried to find a fabric that I would have used for her.

And I found these cute little buttons that matched so perfectly.

Then finally, I had some extra fabric from the iPad case so I made a little pouch for the goodies I included.

I hope you like everything Pat! Once I get a chance to take some photos, I'll show you all the goodies that I received!

Other things going on

I realized that I've only been posting about my finished projects. There have been lots of other things going on in the sewing room.

I won an awesome giveaway with lots of goodies from Jan DiCintio aka Daisy Janie.

I love her fabrics so I was particularly excited about this generous scrap pack.

 I also received some fantastic blocks from my 4x5 Modern Bee members. We were the paper piecing group and these girls outdid themselves. (the first one is my block)

I also must be a glutton for punishment because I can't stop signing up for things! I just signed up for the Make it Modern Bee. And I did my inspiration mosaic for the Doll Quilt Swap 13.

I finished my package to send out for Scrappy Bits Swap and I'm excitedly checking my mail to see what I get!

And this past weekend I got to spend time with friends from PMQG sewing. You can see my Christmas Stockings that I'm work on here. Whew! I didn't realize I had so much sewing going on! Anyone else as addicted to getting fun fabric mail as I apparently am?!a1a`