Come What May Quilt

I finished this quilt last fall.  The pattern is Come What May by Jaybird Quilts.

When Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 collection came out, I bought the entire purple colorway without a plan in mind.  After I purchased mine, my best friend saw the collection, loved it, and her mom made her a quilt out of the black/yellow colorway (I posted about that Pendant Quilt here).  That was October 2011 - so I've been sitting on this for a while!

It took me a while to find a pattern I wanted to use with it.... and one that required the amount of fabric I bought (I had 1/2 yard cuts of all of it).

And that is the problem with how I shop for fabric.  When I have a plan in mind, stuff goes fast!  I don't get nervous cutting into it, I don't want to change my mind in the middle of the plan... I just move right along!  When I don't plan, I end up buying gobs of fabric that I love and it just sits there looking pretty.  Although I don't mind gobs of pretty fabric, by the time I get around to using it I wonder if I will still love it as much as I originally did?  That is what was pushing me to get this quilt done once I decided on a pattern.

I quilted straight lines 1/4" on either side of each column and row.  I love the woven look of the finished product.  It's a really simple quilt pattern - it would be great for beginners.

This purple should look eggplant colored, but the morning light did some funky stuff.  The back is all birds - with my best attempt at matching the birds in the seam with the amount of fabric I had available for it.

Although I love this quilt, I ended up gifting this to my mom.  I was on video chat with her one day and she saw it in the background and asked about it.  She is a very picky person when it comes to fabric/quilts.  I went through about all of my collection with her before to see what she likes and she nixed all of it.  And I mean all of it.  I showed her other examples online, other fabric styles, I tried everything... and she nixed all of those too.  So when she showed interest in this, she got it.  She obviously gets first choice!

I flew out to visit and gave it to her while she was in the hospital.  Apparently it made conversation with every nurse that came in the room - which she loved!

Vintage Modern Quilt

My work in progress is complete!

With much inspiration from Film in the Fridge's FMF version of the Swirling Medallion quilt, I made my own Vintage Modern wall hanging.  The swirling medallion quilt pattern can be found in the Quilting Modern book.

As I mentioned before, this quilt was made for the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild's Bonnie and Camille Quilt Challenge. The rules were simply that we can use any B&C fabric and make any quilt we want.

 
This quilt finished at 34"w x 46"h.  It will make a perfect wall hanging as I slowly replace all the boring brown and beige colors in our home.

The white binding was a suggestion from my husband.  He usually runs out of the room if I ever ask him anything design related... so I'm not sure what prompted his input this time.  It brightens up the quilt - he made a good choice!  I also successfully hand stitched the binding on.  I'm getting much better at it and I love having something to do while watching TV.

I added two stripes to the back along with my standard embroidered name/date stamp.  I love how the quilting is highlighted on the back.

The awesome news is that my quilt won in the 'Best Use of Fabric' category!!  I received a Jelly Roll of Bonnie and Camille's Marmalade! :D

The Elephant Quilt

The elephant quilt has been completed!  The recipient has received it so I can finally share it.  The fabric is Alphabet Soup by Zoe Pearn for Riley Blake and I used the pattern Sparkling Gemstones from the book Jelly Roll Quilts.  The sashing is Kona Sky.

This was such a fun pattern to piece and went together fairly quickly.  The baby that I intended to have this ready for before he was born is now 6 months old.  I started piecing it back in October but I didn't finish it until March because it took me a while to realize it needed an elephant!  (I hope he forgives me)  :) 

I took the design from one of the elephants in the fabric pattern, enlarged it, traced it, attached it to the quilt with Steam-A-Seam 2, and zig zagged the edges around it.

Here's a closer shot of the quilting and my embroidered logo.  I free-motioned a boxy meandering stitch. (inspiration from Oh, Fransson!)

The back is a big piece of  Blue Alphabet Boy Main with a strip of Kona Sky.  The binding is Kona Everglade.

Happy Quilting!

Silent Cinema New Wave Quilt

I made another new wave quilt! :) I love this pattern and wanted a bit smaller one for the couch.  (My other new wave quilt is here.)  I love the yellow and grays in this fabric line.

I used 10 Silent Cinema fat quarters, Kona Snow for the sashing, and Kona Coal for the top and bottom gray.

The back is Front Row in gray with a strip of Zoetrope in blue outlined by Kona Coal.  I love pieced backs and this is my favorite yet.

Here's a shot at my quilt label made on my embroidery machine.  I completed it in September 2011.  It was my I'm-in-the-middle-of-5-other-projects-so-let-me-pause-everything-and-make-this-for-myself quilt.

I quilted it with an all over meandering pattern... which was quite fun this time since it wasn't as large of a quilt to shove through my machine.

I machine stitch all of my binding on because I suck at hand sewing and it saves me like 52,342 hours.  I use Red Pepper Quilts method which I'm also getting better at with each try.  I'm slowly perfecting my corners, and my sides are already looking great since I bought the stitch-in-the-ditch foot plate for my walking foot. :D

You can find the New Wave quilt pattern on Oh! Fransson's website, designed by the super awesome Elizabeth Hartman.

City Lights Quilt

I really love fall.  This park almost makes me feel like I'm in the middle of it.  Although I'm far from it and you have to really search here to find trees that are changing. :)

This is the City Lights Quilt from the Book City Quilts by Cheri House.  As I was making this and it was spread all over the floor even my husband passed by and commented how much he really liked this one.  (I still need an idea for what to make for him someday!)

The front resembles a sky scraper.  I was inspired to make it for a friend that works downtown Chicago.  When I found the backing fabric I was beyond excited.  It's Timeless Treasure's Airport and it's filled with airplanes, terminals, and casinos!  The recipient designs airports so I couldn't have found a better print!

I finished it up with quilting 1/4" around each 'window' and added black binding.  The entire thing is Kona in more colors than I can remember.

I've been using my embroidery machine for each quilt label. I really love adding this detail:

so very cute!

It really was a wonderful day out when we took these pictures.

Although we had to pick off 100 threads and pieces of grass before we could get some of these:

And here it is in it's new home.... which it appears it has already been claimed:  :)

United States Map Quilt

I was able to get this done just before my Kona Quilt as a surprise birthday gift for my 2 year old cousin. For the quilting I decided on a 2" wide crosshatch and tried to not have the quilting overlap with my label on the back (and was successful!).

I just love this United States map panel - I hope someday it can help him learn all of the states and capitals!

The color order of the outside Kona border was also put to a vote just like my Kona Rainbow Flower Quilt.  (As you can tell I Photoshop EVERYTHING first - right down to the measurements)  Photo 3 was the winner.

From the inside out its: Kona Ocean, Corn Yellow, Papaya, Orange, and a border of Ocean.

Robert Kaufman No Prints Allowed Challenge

The Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild participated in the Robert Kaufman Kona "No Prints Allowed" Challenge.  We each received a charm pack of the Kona Classic Palette and we were allowed to add 1-2 solid prints.  I don't have an official name for my quilt, but I've been calling it my Rainbow Flower Quilt.  I really had so much fun making this.  It's bright and cheerful and a big rainbow.  Who doesn't love rainbows?

This is the Classic Kona Charm Square pack I started with. I was a bit terrified to cut into it.  I was hoping I didn't get half way through it and realized I made a mistake or hated it or wanted to change my idea.

After making the petals, I rearranged them about a 1,000 times on my floor and had my friends vote for the favorite.  (fyi - image A below won)

Then I played with the sashing width for another day and another 1,000 arrangements on the floor.  Even though I ended up adding sashing to make the flowers, the below no-sashing layout had me paused for a few hours because I fell in love with it:

The rest of the colors ended up on the back with my label... and the fly-away petal on the top left.  I spent a good hour getting the flower on the bottom right to line up with the one on the top so my quilt lines would match up.

The dark gray is Kona Coal and the binding is Kona Medium Grey.  I intended on binding it in more Kona Coal, but as I was throwing fabric around (I'm messy) the Medium Grey happened to land on my quilt top.  I saw the combo from across the room in passing and knew it was even better!

All of the Las Vegas Modern Quilt Guild Kona Challenge Quilts have been posted on Flickr.   (I wish I could have been there to see them all in person!) They are all so amazing and I'm so lucky to be part of this guild!

New Wave Quilt

I looked at my list of favorite quilts and my future to-do lists and I realized that most of them are from Elizabeth Hartman.  I even own her book which I flip through all the time.  I totally fell in love with the New Wave Quilt the first second I saw it.  And as soon as I got the Andrea Victoria fabric back in July... I knew that was the projected I wanted to use it for.

My plan was to finish this before the weather got warm... sadly it just went into the 70s when I took this picture.. I might have been to late... but I don't care - I love it so much!

The back is not as tilted as it looks in this photo.  All of the solids used are Kona.  White, Azure, and the back is Caribbean (my favorite!).  The fabric is Riley Blake - My Minds Eye - Andrea Victoria and I used Warm and White for the batting.

I used the Darlene Zimmerman's "Fat Cats" ruler as suggested on Oh, Fransson!'s blog and added a few columns and rows to make this bigger.  Final size is about 76" x 68".

I pressed all of my seams open.  I love how flat they lay.

(I. love. turquoise.)

I did a meandering free motion quilting all over this.  I feel like the quilting part took forever - I had to take so many breaks because this thing was super heavy to push through my machine!

Voilà!