I didn’t finish it in time for the national Modern Guild Challenge deadline, but I did participate in my local Modern Guild chapter’s “Madrona Road Challenge”. The challenge was to use the fabrics we were given, fat eighths from the Madrona Road line of fabrics, and only add solids to make a completed modern quilt. I put together the top rather quickly, but decided to let this one take more than a week and quilted it like crazy. It’s a largish wall-hanging. (more…)
So sad that this is the last challenge of Project Quilting Season 4. I had a busy week in store, including a trip to Minnesota, so I went for a smallish project, something I knew I could get finished in time for the deadline. I based my inspiration on this piece, which just sold from my etsy shop. (I was sad to see it go!) The challenge was simple, “Spring”! (more…)
Happy Worldwide Quilting Day! I’ve been celebrating it with my friends in the Quiltsy Team of Etsy. They decided to make and sell items made with the “Sawtooth Star” quilt block. So I made this little mug rug this morning. I now have a nice little stash of bright/pastels with white in geometric patterns and they all go so well together, I want to just keep making scrappy projects with the same little stash! It’s a great way to simplify things and just get right to sewing, actually! (more…)
I finished my Project Quilting Challenge Quilt early this week!! It’s not due ’til tomorrow! But there’s not a single thing I want to change on it, so here it is…The challenge: take a printed magazine publication, turn to page 28 and make a quilt inspired by it. Cool! I chose National Geographic, my favorite magazine for pulling out fabulous photography. (My dad started me on my inability to throw away Nationals G’s just in case I could cut out a good picture from one and make a collage or other art project!) Well, that impulse served me well in this case.
I finally finished a big one!!! I started this last summer, so it was not a quick project, and I’m very proud to have finally finished Brennan’s “big boy” quilt. Not that he hasn’t been in a regular bed for a while, but this is the first bed-size quilt I’ve made for him since he has. It matches new curtains I made for his room last summer. (I know, don’t you usually make the curtains after the quilt?!) (more…)
My entry to Project Quilting Season Four, Challenge 1: Square in a Square…
My inspiration was the two striped fabrics with pink and brown that I had in my stash. I love how making an hourglass block with a stripe forms squares in squares in squares, so that was my only plan! (more…)
Hi! I have another baby quilt project to tell you about. This one my mom and I worked on together for our family friend, Assi, and her new baby. Assi, from Finland, lived with us as a foreign exchange student in high school, so we consider her part of the family. She calls me aunt Emma!! I really hope to meet her daughter someday. We made this in the spring, but I didn’t want to write about it until the quilt was received in Finland. Now I can gaze at the photos she sent me of her sweet baby on her quilt! (more…)
My small group (minus one) made a group project together (for the one) again…something we seem to do quite often for a group only a few years old. And this was one of the most fun!! It was for Jonah, Dawn’s baby boy. We started it before he was born, but he is here now and wonderful! I got to hold him at the guild meeting last week and it was such a joy! Anyway, we also knew that Dawn already had plans for the nursery. It is a colorful room based on the monsters quilt I made this winter (and she bought). So we looked for a colorful design for our quilt and found this by Red Pepper Quilts. (more…)
I had a piano book called “The Most Beautiful Songs Ever” open on my lap and thought that was a good place to choose a title from. There were lots of very cheesy, mucky titles about love and beauty and willow and stars…but then I asked Dave for a “visual” song title and this was his first idea. Brilliant!! I’m so glad I asked him. I wanted to make a totally recognizable “Strawberry Fields” quilt and I think I love it! I listened to the song at least six times through while working on this.
It’s mostly improvisational. I just cut some rolling hills and arranged them right onto the batting and quilted them together. I didn’t even have the size nailed down when I started. Then I cut out a bunch of little strawberry parts while on the phone with my mom! I arranged them and stitched them on in a deliberatively sketchy way. I practiced that first on a separate piece, because I really loved my hills and didn’t want to wreck them. It almost could have been complete without the strawberries. But when I placed a strawberry on the fields, it made me smile and giggle out loud, so I knew it was right!
Then I had just a small chunk of that perfectly psychedelic binding fabric. So I chose to do a single layer, fused binding cut with a wavy rotary cutter, because I had to make it fit! The finished quilt is 10.5″ x 18″ I made a challenge to myself that no side could be more than 20″ this time, because last time I started too big! Then I had to trim the sides a little because the binding fabric was too short! But I only used scraps and I’m proud of it!
Ok, so if you aren’t playing along with Project Quilting, I just have to tell you…on a Tuesday night, when usually I would be sitting around watching tv or cleaning the house I decided to start thinking about PQ and launched into this truly wonderful evening of quilting and being creative with time I otherwise wouldn’t have used for myself. It was a real treat, got my creative juices flowing and really energized my whole week! The one week deadline may sound crazy, but it sure eliminates the UFO problem and I end up really enjoying the process from start to FINISH!
The first challenge of the season ended this Sunday, so here’s how it turned out…
There were more entries than ever before! Click the collage image at the bottom of the post to be brought to the Flickr Gallery and see them all. The only real direction given was to be inspired by Architecture. So my inspiration came from architecture close to home…the tiles on the Iowa State Capitol floor. I thought they were beautiful when I visited the capitol a few years ago and took lots of photos, because I knew I wanted to make a quilt from them someday. This challenge was the perfect opportunity! I almost copied the design, using a photo as a reference and enlarging the pattern at a copy shop. But I changed the colors a bit, to include a shiny gold lamé, to symbolize our favorite part of the state capitol, the gold dome. My boys love “the Shiny Place” as they call the capitol and Brennan helped me pick out the shiniest fabric we could find at Joann. (We didn’t consider what a pain in the butt it would be to use!) The rest of the fabric had to come from my stash, but I seemed to have the perfect mix of marbley batiks and prints that had stonelike textures. The yellow even has metallic gold spots.
The Finished Size is 29″ square…don’t ask me why I made it so big! I was asking myself that all week!
I didn’t bother cropping out Conal’s head and hands, because I wanted to give you an idea of how big I made it! I guess I just got too excited that I could get an enlargement at the copy shop and went crazy with it! But thankfully it was smaller than the width of fabric!
Here are some photos of my inspiration!
Hello and welcome to my blog. I am a freelance graphic designer, artist & craftsperson and stay-at-home mom. I have many creative passions and will write about them here in the hopes of sharing them and hearing from others who share my interests.
Enjoy your visit.
