Category Archives: Finished Quilts

I finally finished one of my old projects!  These blocks were made for me by the lovely ladies of the Vintage Sheet Quilting Bee before my daughter was born (she is 19 months old now!).  The block pattern is a tutorial by Aneela Hoey from the first issue of Fat Quarterly.  Aneela generously allowed me to share the tutorial with my fellow Bee members.

The blocks are all made from vintage bed sheets and I asked everyone to stick to a 2-color scheme. The sashing is Kaufman Essex Linen in Natural.

I didn’t have a sheet big enough for the back, so I decided to use up my vintage sheet stash and sew up a patchwork back.  I’ve really been loving simple, patchwork quilts lately, so this fulfilled my desire to make my own!

I love how cheery and bright this quilt is.  It reminds me of my own bed sheets from when I was a little girl. It’s twin-sized, so I’m hoping my daughter will want it on her bed someday.  She’s still in a crib, so she is having fun snuggling under it while we read books on the couch for now.

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Linking up with TGIFF at From Blank Pages…

Awhile back, I won a set of 5″ i-spy squares from Alyce at Blossom Heart Quilts .  Since then, I have gotten to know Alyce better, participated in her Sew Seasonal Blog Hop, and she is a pretty darn cool gal. Her son and daughter are about the same ages as mine, so she knows the crazy that is my life. She recently  relocated to Japan for 3 years (and I thought relocating to Sonoma was far!) . That means she gets to scout out super-cool Japanese fabrics.

Here were the charm squares I won:

Liam went crazy when he saw them and asked for a quilt.  I finally had some free time (if that is possible around Christmas) and I made a throw for him.  I decided to make a patchwork quilt, since I had never done one before and I love the simplicity. I added in  a grey print from my friend, Ramona, and Kona solids.

I really thought it would be fast and easy to whip up a simple, random, patchwork quilt, but then I realized that there is no such thing as random.  I probably spent an hour or so laying out the squares just to get them to look “random” and not have any duplicate squares touching, or create odd patterns.  It ended up being best to create a diagonal sequence with the solids and the grey prints.

The quilting is diagonal straight lines done with my Juki’s walking foot.  I finished it off with an extra-wide 1.25″ binding.

I’m really happy with how it turned out and I love how the added grey keeps the bright colors from becoming over-powering.  Hopefully Liam will enjoy sleeping under it!

I finally finished my “Unwind” quilt!

This is a gift for a member of my husband’s family and I’ve been working on it off and on for months.  The pattern is “Unwind” by Jaybird Quilts and I used Jeni Baker’s Blogger Bundle from Fat Quarter Shop.  I don’t normally buy preselected bundles, since choosing the fabric is part of the fun, but this one was so pretty.

The pattern and Lazy Angle Ruler that you use to cut the fabric was a gift from my friend, Alison.  I don’t think she even knew that the pattern was on my to-buy list!

This is the first quilt I free-motion quilted on my new machine and it was SO easy and fun.  I did a combination of flowers, leaves and spirals.

I decided to make the back out of one fabric (Momo Oh Deer “Sparrow”), so I pieced it together and matched the print (fun times).

Here’s a close-up of the quilting.

I’ve hit a bit of a learning curve with my photography right now.  I hadn’t taken photos in this yard since moving back and every spot seems to be a mix of bright sun and dark shadows and I don’t do well when trying to take photos with lots of light contrast.  I realized after downloading the photos that there is a powerline shadow across the quilt in most of the photos.  Not an issue when we were in Sonoma County!

I would take the quilt back out in the afternoon light, but to be honest; A. I wanted to get this post done before Friday was over and B. everytime I go outback, the kids get end up covered in mud and I’ve already met my mud quota for the day.

Of course, sometimes the best lighting is in the unexpected spot.

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Linking up with TGIFF at Quokka Quilts.

Last Tuesday was definitely a “Thank Goodness I Finished It!” day.  I was asked to work on two quilts for the Robert Kaufman booth at International Quilt Market. That means I had to cut, piece, baste, quilt, bind & sleeve one quilt, and baste, quilt, bind and sleeve a second quilt all in three days! (I used spray baste for the first time and it is A-MAZ-ING!)

The first quilt is called Straight and Narrow and was cut from a Kona Jelly Roll (yum!).

(On an irritating note, my good DSLR camera AND my point ‘n’ shoot decided to be dead when it was time to take photos and rush to the post office. Thank goodness for the iPhone!)

As you all know, I adore rainbow quilts, but I’ve never made one entirely from solids, so this was a treat.  This was only my second time using a jelly roll and it went together pretty fast (lucky for me!)

 I decided to do dense pebble quilting on the white and no quilting on the color strips, so that the Kona colors would pop.

I picked out a fabric from Darlene Zimmerman’s “Mother’s Melodies” for the back and I really love this fabric.  Lucky for me, I get to keep the extra!

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The second quilt is called Taylored Stars and it was beautifully pieced by my “Bee Happy” partner, Ramona.

The fabric is beautiful, hand-dyed, batiks called “Color Source” by Lunn Studios.

I have never worked with batiks before because, well, they aren’t really my favorite fabric in the world, but these were stunning and perfect for the pattern.  I decided to do an all over scalloped FMQ design (inspired by Angela Walters) to play up the texture that the batiks created.

At 72″ x 96″, I was a little worried it wouldn’t fit under my tiny Janome, but I wrestled it into submission!  I am totally asking for long-arm quilting lessons for Christmas!

I’ll admit that I am jealous of everyone who got to go to Quilt Market, but I had a blast working on these quilts and getting to participate in a small way.

Linking up with TGIFF over at Charm About You today!