Nautical Quilt - take 2

Many of you will remember this nautical quilt that I made for my sister. She has it posted on Project Nursery right here. Through that site a lovely woman contacted me and asked me to make one for her coming baby girl. Unfortunately, that quilt is made with Neptune, which is of course hard to find. I have some, but not enough to duplicate it. Fortunately, Tula Pink designed Salt Water recently. It has the same feel so I started with that as my main focus. I'm really happy with the results!

I did a bunch of customization for her. The boat flags are a Polish and American flag for the parents and I hand embroidered the baby's name on it.

I used an off white for the background for more durability for a baby quilt and since Salt Water has a a bit of off white throughout it.

The quilting I did the same way as my sisters.

She wanted to hang the quilt initially so I added corner pockets so a dowel rod could be inserted. I'm hoping it works well, I've never used this method on such a big quilt.

The binding I pulled from Prince Charming. It went so well I couldn't resist.

She also asked me to make her two coordinating pillow covers. I made one sailboat like the ones on the quilt.

The other I made an anchor with some patchwork.

I hope she's as happy with everything as I am! I can't wait to see what she does with the rest of her nursery.

 

Quilt stats:

Quilt name: Nautical Baby

Pattern: Ships Ahoy, Rhoda Nelson

Fabrics: Tula Pink's Salt Water and Prince Charming

Finished size: 46"x57

Finished: 5/20/13

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!

Ornate Mini Wall hanging

A while ago I posted asking for help picking colors for my Ornate Mini wall hanging. I'm sorry, it's been done for a while but I took it to work to hang and forgot to take photos. I finally remembered to bring it back and photograph it for you all.

Actually, I made two of them. The first one I used the colors overwhelmingly chosen by you guys.

I really love how it turned out, but at 18" square it was a bit small for the wall I wanted to hang it on. So I enlarged it by 15% and picked some brighter colors.

I really love how this turned out too and I'm so happy to have it to look at all day in my office!

I took this shot so you can see the size difference.

Thank you all for helping me choose the colors. If you are interested, I'm listing the small one in my etsy shop.

Catch up on Bee Blocks

For the month of June I'm only in the Make it Modern Bee. The ladies picked two quick blocks so I got them quickly put together this weekend.




First is the Churn Dash for Jamie. She asked for yellow and black/dark gray.

Then Licet asked for this block from Don't Call me Betsy in yellow, black, grey, aqua and pops of coral. I hope my coral "pops" enough. It's pretty muted.

And I never blogged about last months blocks either.

Sarah asked for this version of the lonestar block. The block seems to come out at 12" finished rather than 12.5". A couple of us had that problem so Sarah let us add a border if needed.

And finally Audrey asked for the X and + block in black, gray and red.

 I think this may be my last month for bee blocks. But I do have a lot of other things to show you, I just need to get some photos taken....stay tuned!

update on April bee blocks

I never posted about all the goodness that I got in the mail in April!  I mentioned before that I was in the Hexy group of the 4x5 bee. The blocks that I sent in are posted here. And these are the beauties that I received.  If you go to the flickr link I've linked to everyone that made these lovelies.

And I already forget which month was mine in the Sew Modern Bee, I realized that I never posted all the blocks that I received from those great members (and one PMQG member who jumped in too!).

I'm one lucky swap member!

A bag for my cutting mat!

I've been wanting to make a travel bag for my smaller sewing mat and tools to take on sewing events. Then when I saw the Bekko Line, I knew it was perfect and I had to finally get to it! It's a large scale, home deco weight print. And the geometric print are right up my alley!  I've had this tutorial from Because I Said Sew bookmarked for a while so I set to it and I'm thrilled with the results.

 The tutorial is made for a 24" by 18" cutting mat and that's what I used. The tutorial is pretty good but I would recommend reading the whole thing first. I didn't and wound up ripping a few times at the part where you sew the bag together. I did it wrong several times before I finally wound up asking Jeanna for help! She was so kind and gave me more directions via email. But if I had read through the rest of the directions, I would have figured it out! Sorry Jeanna!

Here's the small pocket on one side. Perfect for all your cutters and tools (note the dora shoes of my assistant!).

And then the other side is one LARGE pocket where you can put all your big rulers and maybe even patterns. Very well thought out! (the white is the lining and the blue is the pocket).

Thanks Jeanna for a great tutorial, I love my bag!

April Bee Blocks

I am sort of finished with my April Bee blocks. For do.GoodStitches Linda Beth requested scrappy half square triangles in light and dark values.

Then for Make it Modern, Jenniffier requested modified Bento Box blocks that she is going to cut up in aqua and orange.

and here's the 'sort of finished' part.  Jen requested these leaf blocks. She gave us two methods to make them and I chose paper pieced. I've done many paper pieced blocks so I don't know what my stumbling block has been with this one. But I've had the pull and resew so many pieces of these. And then I get to this point and they aren't long enough!? So I've left it up to Jen at this point if I should add white to the top (where it looks like they might be short) or if she wants me to send them with the inner and outer sashing. Either way I'm embarrassed that these kicked my butt! I think my brain is fried from going back to work. Yeah, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!