Eureka!

This is a pattern called Eureka put out by Maple Island.  It has you cut your curves without measuring or a ruler- just your rotary cutter. It is kind of liberating. I have made this pattern twice ( following the pattern exactly in Black and white and red)

But my daughter thought it would be a nifty addition to her room in black and white and GREEN and oh could I maybe make it a little bigger? Kids are so great at helping us keep busy aren't they?

 She was right of course it looks fabulous in her room.

I thought since this was a quilt for our house I would take advantage of the opportunity to practice some of my quilting skills that are needing some fine tuning. I have a list of things I am anxious to master (feathers, pebbles, sharp points, echoing tears etc...). Feathers of course are very important in quilting and I am far from mastering them but, I realize I will never improve without practice.

 I also did some different fillers and textures so experiment and see what I could do now that I have had quite a few hours on the machine.

 I found I need to work on the backtracking portion of the feathers. This caused a lot of frustration but I did see some improvement. It will be worth it when I have more options to put on quilts.

 The back:

It was encouraging to compare this practice quilt with an earlier one I had done and see some progress. Much smoother in my large motions and more able to stay within a shape.  The first few times on the longarm reminded me of my first time behind the wheel learning to drive.  I thought it was hard to stay within my lane (until my mom said to look ahead down the road instead of down at the hood).   On the longarm, trying to stay within the part of the block I was trying to quilt was tough at first, no guardrails to keep me on the road!  Experience, practice and getting a feel for things has helped.  
It is really fun seeing my skills starting to catch up with my ideas. Endless possibilities!

Mosaic Madness

Last fall I took one of the two workshops our guild offered with guest speaker Cara Gulati.  We had a great time in class and I finished the top quickly but hadn't quilted it yet!

I finally finished it last night! It was great to snuggle under it while we re-watched Harry Potter movies in anticipation of the last movie coming out this week.

I found a fun variegated King Tut thread to quilt it AND,  having finally figured out that a little turn of the bobbin screw on my longarm when using King Tut equals perfect tension...it quilted up fun and quick- nothing fancy needed on this fun throw quilt. 

 I love brown so it was fun to use that as my background and find hot colors that glowed enough on it. I went for the 5 hot/4 cold nine patch configuration, very symetrical but it looked the best and I thought the varying brown backgrounds made it look less planned and more fun.

I found a Kaffe Fassat wavy stripe for the binding which was perfect. I love striped binding as a finishing touch.

Also I was super excited today that my mom's shop finally has Alexander Henry fabrics!! I have wanted some since we opened but  we have had so much going on it was hard to pursue.

 Finally we have some. 

I can't wait to make quilt out of this print:

Pictures as promised

This is Nancy's quilt! It uses a Stonehenge Christmas 2.5" strip pack to make the tessellating trees and just a bit more fabric from the same line for the border.

Details shots: I had some fun playing on the border.

 backside:

The pattern is by"Quilt Woman".  The funny thing is "Quilt Woman" owns the quilt shop in Spencerport, New York where my mom lived! It is a small world.

Nancy assures me that the pattern was quick and easy to follow. The quilt is gorgeous and the Northcott fabric really does feel like silk as they promise it will. 
This quilt was so much fun to quilt!! It was bliss! 
Also had a fun sewing these today:

 Stockings and ornaments:

My daughter was busy cutting fabric for a Birdie Sling to give a friend while I sewed these.  She was following the pattern and doing it all on her own! My baby is growing up....

Bliss

I was tired after working in the store most of the day I really wanted to start a customer's quilt that I have been thinking about lately. So despite being tired I thought, "Well I will just start it and see how it goes.... "
Ahhh.... bliss. It was great. 
I think all the planets were aligned or something.... 
My thread broke ONLY one time- a first in my longarming career, (usually I have several breaks being a newbie I just assume this is normal). My tension required only minimal tweaking and I was so focussed and enjoying the quilt and the process that I finished the whole thing! I wish every quilter this feeling.

It is midnight so it is too dark to take pictures but I will try to get some up soon. Meantime I think Tonks (my cat) wants me to stay in bed and I am not arguing with her. 
Night everyone!

Tie Dyed fabrics

We have very few whites in our house.  I sort of banned all whites when the kids were little--back when they would get stains on anything white within 60 seconds of putting it on (or at least it seemed).  I realized in those early years some of those stained shirts could be saved with a little dye.  Bingo a new colorful shirt! Anything white that somehow makes its way into our house despite the ban usually ends up in the tie dye pile waiting for a day like yesterday.

gradations of Jade Green and Royal Blue

Dharma Trading (where we buy dye) also sells a variety of fabrics that can be tie dyed. I purchased a bolt of Kona Cotton to dye and my daughter was in the mood to do some items too so off we went.

 Here are our results. Now that is what I call a happy clothesline!

I have been slowly making and accumulating these squares in hopes of one day soon putting them together into a quilt for myself. I think it would be neat to have a quilt that I did everything for (except weave the fabric of course)

I had a bunch of white hand towels that I purchased cheaply at Target that we dyed yesterday:

 and my favorite baby shower gift is to buy cloth diapers and tie dye them into colorful burp clothes. I try to keep some on hand since I don't dye more than a couple of times per year. Here is the batch we made yesterday.

Another successful and fun tie dye day!

I will have some fat quarters for sale at Quilters Crossing later this week if anyone is interested in purchasing some hand dyed fabric.

borders and bags

All done!

I auditioned several options for borders on this quilt.  Nothing was quite right.  Dark overpowered the soft fabrics in the pattern, see here?

and lights just washed away and didn't effectively break the pattern.

 I finally came up with this one, I was thinking little girl with this sample so rick rack jumped into my head

 I was going to do a wider yellow border with the rick rack showing completely but everyone I showed it to layed out that way preferred this arrangement with the rick rack just peeking out half way.

I used a curved ruler to quilt the arcs in the kaleidoscope blocks and then a 90 degree ruler to do the  slanted lines on the outer border. 

I held my breath as I free handed the yellow in the kaleidoscope blocks.  I did them last- working up my courage I guess. They came out pretty good so I think I am improving.

Shot of the back- three blocks that didn't make the cut on the front
( too strong or too weak)

My favorite block
but it was too strong for the front so I jazzed it up and added it to the back.

Over the weekend I made myself a Birdie Sling bag in the colors of my daughters Irish dance school so I can carry a purse to competitions with team spirit!  Alright....That wasn't my original intention but I wanted to use up some of my stash and that sort of fell into place and it is McTeggart colors so I went for it.

I also whipped my mother up a Frenchy shoulder bag

-- another Amy Butler pattern.  

I like this pattern even more than Birdie sling because it doesn't use fusible interfacing or fusible fleece. (I really dislike ironing a lot so the sew in interfacing for Frenchy bag suited me perfectly) 

My mother, as always, was impossible to surprise and walked into my sewing room as I was working on it though I was trying to keep a lookout for her arrival! Darn it!

I added three inches to her straps since she is a little taller than average and prefers longer straps on her purses. 

 Happy Birthday Mom!

Weekend projects

I have a retreat coming up so I am kind of tossing ideas around as to what I am going to work on during that getaway!  I have many many unfinished projects so there is no shortage of possibilities.
And though I have lots of  unfinished projects that didn't stop me from starting a new project when these fabrics came in the shop this week from Riley Blake Fabrics. I scooped them up and quickly whipped this up:

I cut it all out at Free Sew on Friday night and then worked on it over the weekend so I am ready to audition borders for it tomorrow. I had never done a kaleidoscope block before and since I had heard such wonderful things about Marti Michele rulers and templates I thought I would give one a whirl for this projects so I used this guy:

The 45 degree end has the tip cut off ( at the top in the picture) and it made the centers of my blocks go together beautifully without bulkiness. I highly reccommend this ruler. It has two other edges useful for other blocks like spiderweb block, crossed canoes and more. Handy!
I also watched the new True Grit movie last night with my family. Beau Bridges did a great job and they stuck to the original story pretty well I thought ( which was great and well worth sticking to in my opinion!). While we watched the movie I laid out my next Ticker Tape block in Reds:

Tetris with fabrics! Totally addicting. This may win out as my retreat project. I can't wait to have them all done and see the finished project.