Prism quilt and a free motion experiment

 

My most recent quilt finish is one that has been waiting in my sewing room for a few years. I very rarely remake a quilt that someone else has made, but this one caught my eye and for some reason I really wanted to make it just like the sample. This is the Prism quilt by Zen Chic which uses her fabric line Prism as well. 

The piecing was all done by paper-piecing which was actually quite fun. And satisfying since all the points lined up so nicely.  But when I was done, I was totally stumped on how to quilt all that white space. My generous friend Denise agreed to let me use her long arm for this one. So I started marking out the lines I wanted to quilt on this.

 Here it is in progress on the longarm.

I did a combination of ruler work and free motion within the lines. It's in no way perfect, but as it's my first attempt at this kind of work, I'm pretty proud of the results.

I deliberately chose a variegated thread that blended with the background fabric just in case my quilting was atrocious! But that made it really hard to photograph the actual quilting.

It was really fun to work this way and of course not be shoving this through my 5" throat space on my Bernina!

I used the fun dotty print from the line for the binding.

And the back is a solid piece of fabric that I got from my LQS that matched well. I don't remember the name of it, but it has a subtle pattern on it (again, to mask the quilting if it turned out terrible!). I have since added my label.

Overall, I'm so happy with how this turned out and I hope to get to do more of this work in the future!

 

 

 

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Prism

Pattern:Prism

Fabrics: Zen Chic, Kona Cotton
Finished size: 73" by 73"

Finished: April 2016

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

 

 

Diamond Quilt finish

I got in another finish in 2014 that I never got a chance to blog about. This one will be hard to talk about because honestly, it took me so long, I don't remember much about it! I started this quilt in 2013 after I started back to work. This quilt was planned to match the colors at work so I could hang it in my office.

When I pulled this out of my WIP pile this year, I had labeled the backing with Fall 2013.  Whoops! It sat in my sewing room for a year finished, back constructed, but un quilted!

I also don't remember the pattern I used. I know this was a really old pattern and it was paper piecing. I remember struggling with this because when I made copies of the one block, it must not have been laying flat on the machine. I think there were some slight bends because it got a little fiddly as I was putting it together. As a result, it is not the most flat wall hanging. But only you and I know that! ;)

I did have a lot of fun with the quilting on this one. I practiced my fmq on this in the green parts and then did a pattern I got from Angela Walters latest book Shape by Shape. Side note - fantastic book, highly recommend it!

As always you can see the quilting much better on the back. My straight lines need a little more work, but I was pretty happy with my stippling!

So there you have it!  Sorry for the lack of information. It's now been taken to work and hangs in my office.

Quilt stats:

Size: 50"x50"

Pattern: Unknown

Fabrics: Mix of scraps and stash

Quilted by: Myself

Finished: 12/2014

WIP Wednesday {19}

I joined my first "real" flickr quilt bee. I am already a part of the 3x6 bee, but that's a smaller sampler bee. I wanted to do a more standard bee and found Sew Modern Quilt Bee starting up in May. I think they are still looking for a few people so if you are interested in joining a Modern style quilt bee, click that link to sign up, or post a comment and I'll send you info!


Also, you may remember a while back when I received this Colts fabric by mistake from fabric.com. They have fixed their mistake but don't want their fabric back. I can't think of any way to use this full yard. If anyone wants it, please post and I'll contact you and send it to you. I just want it to be used!

As for what I've been working on. Mostly the baby quilt for my sister. I decided to do custom quilting instead of an all over pattern. You can see how I did it here.

I'm currently at the binding stage. I put together some continuous bias binding with my favorite tutorial by Julie. This tutorial is a little bit of magic!  I'll be curious to see how this looks, it's the first time I've done a binding that is the same fabric as the border.

I had a few days where I was waiting to get the backing for that baby quilt and got some progress made on my daughter's quilt. Note the paper pinned to the bottom. I label my rows so I don't get lost.

I also pulled some fabrics for the Supernova Quiltalong. I've pulled more to go with this (especially in the reds and oranges) but I'm not sure yet how I'm going to use it. Since there are nine stars in the quilt, it doesn't work perfectly with ROYGBV. I have to decide what color will be used more than once.

And finally, PMQG is doing a pillow swap next month. I have a paper piecing block in mind and I started putting together the paper templates. This is one of four.

Waiting for attention:
The curtains that will never go away
MMM final project
baby onesies
Postage Stamp quilt
boy burp cloths
amy butler bag

Some of those projects feel like they've been on the list a long time! I need to revisit them. Go see what everyone else is up to at Freshly Pieced.

New skills

I took a paper foundation piecing class this weekend at my LQS. It was so fun to learn a new skill to use with quilting. We made little Christmas ornaments.  I did the Christmas tree (which still needs a star on top):

 And the stocking:

I was really nervous about trying paper piecing on my own, but it was really very simple. I definitely could have learned this without the class. If you have been thinking about teaching yourself, I recommend trying it. It's super simple, almost like color by numbers! 

Now I'm having dreams of making quilts like this one....

Ah ha ha ha!! Baby steps first.