Procrastination Over - Quilt on its Way to Denmark

I made it - barely. My brother and his family stayed at our home for a few days before moving to Denmark. We had a lovely visit but I did spend a lot of my time in my quilt studio (bedroom!) quilting.

I should have completed the quilt when they were packing up their belongings to be shipped by container. I can blame procrastination (since that could be my middle name!) but this quilt had a lot of "teachable moments".

Back of the quilt

I wanted to make a nice backing for the quilt so I watched the free Craftsy course, Creative Quilt Backs with Elizabeth Hartman. I really like the back that I created, but that did take a few extra days.

In the meantime, I got my new sewing machine, so of course I had to try it out (and continued to procrastinate).

After having coffee with a quilting friend, I realized that I needed to re-base the quilt. It turns out that yes, it does take quite a few tries before getting the quilt flat!

Since I also bought the Craftsy course, Quilting Big Projects on a Small Machine with Ann Petersen, I watched the sections that were relevant to this project. It was very informative and I used several of her suggestions.

Then, when I did a small sample on my new sewing machine (my Jag), I discovered that it insists on very good thread for quilting! Since I have a very small selection of Superior Thread, I had to go to my local quilt shop for the correct colours.

So, I started quilting on Saturday afternoon and finished Monday evening. The quilting pattern in each block, my son's wonderful suggestion, is one square inside another. I attached the binding Monday evening and finished hand sewing it Tuesday afternoon. Not much extra time since they left on Wednesday!

Stitch it: Quilts

The pattern, Scrap Happy, is from Stitch it: Quilts, 16 quilted projects to make for your home by Inspirations books.

Placemat Extravaganza!

I’ve been working on a lot of various projects these days, but finishing very little. I don’t really care since there aren’t deadlines looming, but if I don’t finish something, there’s very little to blog!
Last night I finished two sets of placemats for my brother, sister-in-law and family. There’s not really a deadline, but since they’re moving away for a couple of years, I guess there is a deadline unless I want to mail them to Denmark.

Both sets are variations of the same pattern - "Take Four" by Cary Flanagan. The top one has 3 side strips while the one below only has 2. It’s a great pattern that only requires 4 fat quarters, plus of course, the batting and the backing.




These placemats had smaller, move even strips, so I quilted them by using a decorative stitch between each fabric.



These placemats are quite a bit larger.  They also have 2 wider strips on the bottom that I had to quilt.

I made some loops for a couple of the fabrics; quilted in grids for the darker fabric; and even quilted a couple of oak leaves with acorns on one of the placemats. It’s a great way to practice my machine quilting.

I'll miss my brother and his family. These will be a great reminder of home.

Eggo Inspired Quilt

Breaking it up in a percentage of colours

Eggo box-top

The Common Thread Quilt Guild's challenge this year was to use a box-top as inspiration to create a quilt. We had to use every colour found on the box-top.  My randomly picked box-top was from a package of Eggo Waffles. Aren’t those amazing colours? There’s even a couple of blueberries and a raspberry to go with the yellow, red, oranges, white and brown.


Quilted details



I calculated roughly the percentages  of each colour and came up with this lap quilt.

Since I also want to learn to machine quilt, it was the perfect project to practice on.  I don’t have a machine that does free-motion but I got to practice my “sewing in the ditch” several dozen times. By the end, it was getting pretty good.  I also tried to get fancy and machine-quilted a couple of flowers.  It wasn’t too difficult to do on a practice piece, but then there’s a whole quilt that needs to be rotated under the sewing machine...well, that’s another matter. So the rest of the strips got wavy lines!

 

Eggo Inspired Quilt



I've linked up to Sarah Goer's Show Me Something Orange linking party.