Pollyanna Swap with Philly MQG

At this month's meeting, we had our Pollyanna swap with the members. We use a site called Elfster to organize it and I highly recommend it if you'd like to set up something like this. The individuals sign up, create wish lists and the site matches up the partners. It allows you to ask anonymous questions of your parter too! 

Anyway, I got my good friend Cathy who asked for a table runner 32" in length. She requested neutrals with a pop of red. I've been in her house before so it helped me know what to make for her! I had a mini charm pack  of Circa 1934 which had the perfect colors.  The size of mini-charms are perfect for english paper piece hexagons and I have the plastic templates for them so they technically aren't paper pieced!   These hexies are all sewn together by hand and then machine appliqued down to the cream fabric.

 

I did all the free motion quilting on my domestic machine and am pretty happy with how it turned out.

 

The back is a solid piece of the typewriter print from this line.

 

It looked pretty good on my coffee table I must say. I almost kept it! I know Cathy loved it though and I'll be sure to visit it sometime!

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Table Runner

Pattern: none, self designed

Fabrics: Circa 1934, Cosmo Cricket
Finished size: Approx 32" by 20"

Finished: December 2015

 

 

Snack Time Finish - Bloggers Quilt Festival

This is my quilt for the Bloggers Quilt Festival  Spring 2014! If you've never been, back up and follow that link, it's an internet quilt show and is always so inspiring! And if you are new to my blog and want to see more of my work, I keep a link to all my finished projects at the top - so easy to see everything!

I am entering my Nautical Snack Time quilt. I did the Baby size which measures out a 37" by 48" which puts me in the Small Category in the festival.

 

Those of you who follow my blog got a peek at this quilt already because I wrote a pattern review for it. That review is at Sew Sweetness' blog. Spoiler Alert - I love the pattern. I love all of Julie's patterns. She makes everything so clear and easy to follow. And my favorite part is she does all the math for you if you want to make a different size (which I usually do)!

My cousin had requested a baby quilt for her little boy in green and blue. She said she used whales in his room so when I found Michael Miller's The Littles line. I knew it would be perfect for her. I didn't know it would be perfect for this quilt at first. Here was my first block where I realized what is so important to this pattern:

Do you see it? It's a great block, beautiful fabrics, but there is no contrast and you lose that winding effect the other blocks had. And THAT is when I realized I had my quilt for my cousin.

I did simple straight line quilting on it so it would remain snuggly for the little one.

And a chevron border fabric for some fun.

The back was a nice stash buster of some fabric that I love, but the patterns are too large to cut small!

 Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Nautical Snack Time

Pattern: Snack Time by Jaybird Quilts

Fabrics: The Littles, Kona White

Finished size: 37" x 48"

Finished: 4/20/14

My bee blocks with basic directions

I really love my bee blocks this round for the 4x5 bee. I am in the hexy group and was totally in love with these blocks by Hambone and Jennicakes. So I set out to recreate them in my colors.  Here's my test block in my own colors:

Then I made blocks for all the ladies in my hive:

I thought about doing a tutorial for this, but I really don't have time right now for all the photo taking and editing. So here are some basic instructions if you would like to make this yourself.

The center is 3 diamonds. Start with a 3.5 inch strip and cut your diamonds like this tutorial.  Then piece them together. For how to make Y Seams, Jinny Beyer has the best video tutorial here. Seriously makes them so easy!

For the outside, I used a 1.5" strip. Just start at one end and stop at the other and trim it to the angle created by the original hexagon.

Once you have added 2 rows of strips around the outside you need to do your background. I used two 2" strips for the top and bottom and sewed those on first. Then I used 4" strips for the sides. Then take your 12.5" ruler and cut the final block out!