Finished Guitar Quilt!

I finished quilting and putting the binding on the guitar quilt for my dad last night.  Overall, I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I used a light blue for the binding and I really think it goes well with the different shades in the background fabric.  All of the fabrics used in this quilt are my own hand dyed fabrics that I've been hoarding over the past couple of years.

I did a simple outline around each of the fused applique pieces and did a wood grain quilting motif in the background.  I figured the wood grain quilting would be appropriate given that guitars are made of wood. I really like how densely quilting the background made the guitars pop more in person.

As you can see, we got a dusting of snow this week.  I took these pictures as I was waiting for my car to warm up and was distracted by the cold, so I forgot to take a picture of the back. I used a similar hand dyed light blue for the backing fabric.

This is a Christmas gift for my Dad, who has been playing guitar since he was a little boy.  His guitars are to him as my sewing machine is to me.  Of course, he as a lot more guitars (and other musical instruments - base guitar, mandolin, banjo, keyboard, etc.) than I do sewing machines. 

A Quilter's Gathering

Last weekend I spent some time at A Quilter's Gathering in Manchester, NH.

I took a class with Robbi Joy Eklow and made this wall hanging which will be a Christmas present for my dad. He's been playing guitar for 50+ years, so I'm sure he'll love it.  I made it with all of my own hand dyed fabrics.

I'll share more pictures of the quilt in a future post once I dig my camera out and take some pictures of it since this one was taken on my phone.  My goal is to finish it by Christmas, so hopefully soon.

I also began making this quilt top (the petals aren't attached to the center yet) that night as KK and I were hanging out in our hotel room after the class and before our dinner reservation. This one is lower on my finish list, but I'm really liking how it's coming out, so hopefully I'll finish it soon.

On another note, my Dazzling Diamonds quilt is a finalist in the Blogger's Quilt Festival in the Doll/Mini quilt category.  I'd love it if you voted for my quilt. 

Almost back in the swing of things

Things have been crazy lately.  I'm completely redoing my guest bedroom right now, which is taking a lot of time. I'm almost at the final stages.  I'm just repairing one of the walls before I can finish painting and adding the final details.

It's a really bad picture (from my phone), but the room will be a blue color and will have some green and raspberry pink accents to it. I ordered a super girly, but modest in size, crystal chandelier for the room too!  I can't wait to see this room all together.

As a result, not a lot of sewing has taken place since everything from this room is being stored in my quilting room while I complete this.

I did manage to sew on the appliqued leaf to my pillow cover while at the BMQG meeting this weekend.  Now I just need to quilt it and assemble everything. 

And while I was watching the Patriots game yesterday (don't get me started on how they played - awful despite a win), I was busy sewing on the hanging sleeve to my Storm at Sea quilt so that my parents can finally hang it up in their beach house.

I have a crazy busy week at work this week, but hopefully after this week I will finally be able to move everything out of my quilting room by this weekend and will get my mojo back.

Friday FInish - Hawaiian Mini

I finished sewing the binding to the back of my Hawaiian Mini quilt this week.

I think it will make a nice addition to my quilting room wall.

The applique is laser cut.  I bought it at MQX last year and finally finished it a few days before heading back to MQX this year.

I love the way the quilting shows up on the back.  I also finished this mini with a couple of triangle flaps to hold a dowel.  I seriously need to get to Michael's to get some dowels to hang these. 

This makes five finishes for me for the year and it's only mid-April.  That's just one less than I had for all of last year.  I guess I was just preparing to finish everything last year.  This year is apparently the year of finishing those projects off.

Another Mini Quilt Quilted

2012 seems to be the year of the mini quilt for me so far.  I have several in various stages, most recently this Hawaiian inspired applique mini quilt.

I bought the laser-cut applique piece at MQX East last year and prepped this top when I was sewing machine-less.  This weekend I finally got it quilted.  I wanted to quilt it with an echo quilting, but knew that would be difficult given all of the curves.  I decided to quilt it with an uneven, wonky echo quilting instead to have the same look but with a twist.

Now to decide what to bind this in.  I'm still in the middle of binding my giant Frolic quilt.  I have about 300 more inches to go, so the binding on this one might have to wait a few weeks. 

Tile Quilt Block 3 Finished

While traveling last week I managed to finish the third tile quilt that I started during my work trip to Vegas a few weeks ago.

These blocks take a LONG time to finish.  They will be cut down to finish at 10" when all said and done, but with 20+ pieces that need to be needle turned, they sure can take a while.  Basically, it took me four 4-hour flights to almost finish it and another hour or so at home.  I find needle turn applique on a plane to be more difficult than at home because of the vibration of the plane, so it certainly took longer than if I were at home.

Here are the first three blocks. 1/3 of the way done!  At this pace, maybe I'll finish in a few years! ::wink wink::

What to do When Traveling

As I noted a few days ago, I was traveling last week for work.  While on the plane to and from, I spent some time reading a book, watching a movie on my iPad, and working on another tile block. This is block three of the tile quilt blocks that I'm working on occasionally.

I'm almost half done with this block.  To me, this is a great block to take and work on while traveling because all you need is some thread, a needle and something to cut the thread with (dental floss cutter, nail clippers, etc.) and you can work on a block!  I prepared the block in advance and basted it at home before leaving, so I didn't even have to deal with pins.

I have another trip coming up, so I'll hopefully finish this at that point.

Prepping Another Fused Mini Quilt

Last year at MQX I picked up a couple of laser cut 12" Hawaiian style designs but haven't used either of them yet.  With my machine still at the machine doctor's, I decided to turn one of them into a mini quilt. 

I picked a great charcoal for the background and I think it really compliments the pink well. It's all sandwiched up and ready to be quilted, once I get my machine back.  I'll probably stitch around the outline of the pink and then do something in the charcoal to make it pop.  I'm not sure what just yet though.

What to do with no machine?

Last weekend I was sewing away, trying to finish the stars for the border of my Christmas BOM when my machine started to make a squeaking noise.  I gave it a little oil and it sounded much better, for all of about 30 seconds.  After that 30 seconds my needle shattered.  I stopped sewing immediately because I wasn't using any pins, so I knew I couldn't have hit any pins to cause my needle to shatter.  I'm thinking my machine is out of alignment, so it's now at the sewing machine doctor's office for the next few weeks.  Hopefully it will be an easy fix.

So, what does one do with no machine?  I decided to make a little fused mini quilt top.

I made this using some hand dyed fabrics that I dyed over the past few years.  It's slightly larger than this mini quilt that I made last year.

Once I get my machine back I'll machine quilt it and hang it up next to it's cousin quilt.

At least I'll have a machine in good working order and lots of stuff cut out for the upcoming retreat next month.

Next Tile Block Prepped

I finished prepping my next tile quilt block last night.  I tried to incorporate a few of the same fabrics from the previous block to tie it together while introducing some new fabrics as well.  If I complete the entire quilt there will be nine blocks total.  We'll see how many I do.  It might take me a little while to do all nine blocks if I do decide to go that route.

It's all basted, which you can see on some of the pieces, and ready to go in my carry on for my trip.  I don't know if I'll have time to prep another one since I need to focus on finishing up my DQS quilt. 

Tile Quilt - Block 1 Finished

This weekend I finished the first tile quilt block that I started at my class the weekend before. 

I really like how it turned out.  I think this is going to be a cute quilt.  I think I'm going to try and prep a few blocks to take with me on my upcoming trip to Paris.  I think this would be a good activity to do on a plane. 

Tile Quilt Class

On Saturday KK and I took a class at Emma's Quilt Cupboard in Franklin, MA to make a tile quilt using needle turn applique.  I've been learning more needle turn applique this year and I thought this would be a fun class to take. 

This is the class sample.  I thought the quilt was cute, although not quite my style.  After looking at it, I decided to make mine in Asian fabrics. 

Here is the beginning of my block, pre any applique.  It looks busy and not that wonderful, but once I started to needle turn, things really started to come to life and I really liked the block more and more.

Here's the block as of this morning, almost finished.  I just have to turn the three end pieces on the right and the one on the bottom left.  I really like it now that the grout has been formed. 

Here are blocks from other students.  (sorry for the blurryness, all of the photos were taken with my phone.)  I love the idea of using different background fabrics.  I think it would be cool to have multiple blocks with a rainbow of fabrics for the background, red for one, orange for another, etc. 

I might prep a few blocks to take with me on my upcoming trip to Paris.  I think this would make a good project to do on a plane. 

Reverse Applique

Last Saturday we had our monthly BMQG meeting where Pippa taught us her reverse applique technique. Below is what I was able to make during the lesson.

I liked this hand sewing technique and could see myself taking this along with me on trips to have some handwork to do.

I used some of my hand dyed fabrics for this and I think I'll probably make a small wall hanging out of this.  I'll do a bunch of different types of circles in many sizes and colors.  

My First Mug Rug

Last month at our NEMQG meeting we learned a new binding technique.  To help us practice we were all asked to bring a mug rug to bind.  I've been admiring all of the mug rugs I've been seeing out in the blogosphere and Flickr but never really decided to make one, until now.

For this, I finally cut into my stash of hand dyed fabrics.  I've been saving them for a special project, but I had won some fat 16th hand dyed fabrics a while ago and I decided that this was the perfect use for them. 

I cut the purple and orange fabrics in some wavy lines and cut them in half.  I had ironed on some Wonder Under on before cutting and had removed the paper backing.  I was trying this method after seeing Frieda Anderson show this method since she claims she never gets the stray pieces of fabric when cutting this way.  I then ironed the orange and purple fabrics together on the paper backing I had removed before trimming and ironing it onto the green fabric. 

This whole mug rug was an improv project that I experimented with as I went along.  After attaching the purple and orange piece to the green I then cut that down into a wavy piece.

I used my 18mm rotary cutter for this because I had more control and could make the wavy edges better than I could with your standard 45mm rotary cutter.  I would highly recommend that you invest in a small rotary cutter for projects like this.

Once I added the Green I felt like there was still something missing, so I found a nice, bright yellow fabric and placed the piece on top of that.  It really popped and I decided to go with it.

Voila!  At this point I did some quick quilting to get the mug rug ready for the meeting.  I don't have any pictures of that right now, but I'll show some soon.  I just need to get my camera out.  I'm in the middle of hand sewing the binding down to the back, which shouldn't take too long. 

I'm probably going to hang this in my sewing room on the side of my new bookshelf instead of using it as an actual mug rug.  It took a lot for me to cut into my hand dyed stash, and I just can't bring myself to put food or drinks on it.  Maybe some day, but not now.

NEMQG November Meeting

Yesterday was the November meeting of the NEMQG and the first one I was able to attend in person.  It was great to be able to meet everyone that I've been talking to online and those that have been participating in the bee.

In this meeting we learned needle turn applique.  I was excited to learn this because I've always wanted to make an Aunt Millie's Garden quilt.  Joanna, the applique queen, taught this lesson using her tree tutorial.  Here's my tree in progress.

I also received my blocks back from my month in the bee.  Here are the blocks (one is missing).

I had asked for a star block and these are everyone's interpretation.  Now to think of how I'm going to put it together.  Hmm...

Feb Tisket a Tasket BOM

So I've been seeing all of these Tisket a Tasket block of the months over the past month+ and kept saying that I thought all of the different versions were so adorable.  I finally broke down  and had to make one.  Here it is.

Now I just have to make the January one to be all caught up.  I think I'm going to like doing this BOM because I really don't do applique at all.  I enjoy the look of applique but I've never really do it.  It's all self taught, so I look at this as a way to practice my applique skills.  I've already cut out all of the background blocks, so I'm good to go for the next ones.