Picchu Boo

Almost a year ago I took a trip of a lifetime to Peru to celebrate graduating from graduate school. One of the most memorable parts of the trip was when I visited Machu Picchu. I took thousands of photos during the ten day trip, but this photo was one of my favorites.

I knew it had to be turned into a quilt, so when we announced the solids challenge in the Boston Modern Quilt Guild, I decided this was my opportunity to make this into a quilt.

Not wanting to do an exact interpretation or make an art quilt, I started cutting a ton of 1" strips out of five different brown fabrics and sewed them together. I ended up making three different groups of these brown strips, one with the strips horizontal, one vertical and one on the diagonal. I varied the width and length of all three as part of my interpretation of the photo.

I decided on a teal background instead of a more natural green that's found in nature. Again, this was my way of modernizing the quilt and avoid looking too much like an art quilt. When it came time to quilt it, I knew I wanted to quilt straight lines opposite the direction of the brown strips. It took me a little while to settle on echoing the brown sections, which ended up giving the quilt a 3-D look.

I used an Art Gallery print from my stash on the backing that I thought went well with the top. I quilted it using gold and teal Aurifil threads. The batting is Quilters Dream Cotton Select. The solids are Michael Miller Cotton Couture.

Overall, I'm pleased with this quilt and it will definitely remind me of my trip to Peru every time I look at it.

Milky Way Quilt

Several months ago the folks over at Michael Miller reached out to me and asked me to help participate in a 100 Quilt Block project in conjunction with Janome. The block needed to be six inches square and use the provided Cotton Couture solids from Michael Miller. I'm a huge fan of Cotton Couture, as I find the hand feel of those solids the best in the industry (along with Art Gallery's solids). So of course, I set to work designing a fun paper pieced block.

I had fun making this block and decided to make a larger quilt out of it. I took the remaining solids that were in the bundle Michael Miller provided and enlarged the block to 12" square and made the following quilt with it. (Excuse the less than stellar photos, with it getting dark so early these days, it's hard to get a good photo right now.)

This was the first time I used a cream-colored binding to blend in with the vanilla background I used to offset the four quilt blocks. I'm slightly worried that it will get dirty easier, but I'm willing to take that chance.

Here's a closeup of the quilting. I used an Auriful 50 weight thread in Chalk (#2026) to quilt this on my domestic machine. I did most of the quilting on an diagonal parallel to one of the star points, but changing direction about three quarters of the way through to add some dimension and twist to the quilting.

To download the pattern for free and see the rest of the blocks, visit the Janome site.

This quilt measures 30" square, so I'm entering it into the small quilt category in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. 

Confetti

Over the Christmas break I managed to finish my Simply Solids Bee quilt. The quilting took a while, as I'm sure you can guess by looking at it.

Every 1/4" of this quilt has been quilted. This was only my second time doing ruler work on a quilt and am quite proud of how I did even though it's not perfect.

I sketched out how I envisioned the quilting to go and improvised as I went. I wanted a shattered, broken piece of glass look to the sections of straight line quilting. Each section was framed out first and filled in with straight lines roughly 1/4" apart.

I have to say, I'm really in love with this quilt. I think because it's so different for me. While I have done a number of improv quilts before, this one might be my favorite.

I tried to sneak outside this week and grab a few pictures of it with some natural light and barely got a few pictures before I began to freeze my butt off, so this is what I got for now.

I even made a scrappy binding with some of the random white/cream scraps and a few of the lime, pomegranate and navy fabrics. I never piece my binding with straight seams, I always piece them on the bias. It makes it easier to hand sew it to the back. But for this quilt, it just called for more straight lines instead of all of the angles. Let's just say that I won't be doing that again any time soon.


Quilt Stats:
51" x 50"
Fabrics: assorted solids
Thread: assorting for piecing (since it was a bee) and So Fine #50 - Pearl for machine quilting
Batting: Two layers of Quilter's Dream Orient

Simply Solids Bee Block

Earlier this week I showed the quilt top I made from the blocks I received in the Simply Solid's Bee (on Flickr). I was a bit late on this November block, but last weekend I made this fun and easy block.

The pattern called for sewing the blocks together in tubes and ripping out a seam in different ways. I wasn't crazy about the planned-looking pattern that occurred after I did that, so I ripped a couple of blocks out and rearranged them. There's still a little bit of a planned look to the block, but I think it looks much better and a little less random. 

Simply Solid Quilt

What seems like ages ago, it was my month in the Simply Solids Bee (on Flickr) earlier this spring. I asked my fellow bee members to make improv blocks using mostly whites and creams with a few hints of a specific fusha, lime and navy fabric.

I made this test block to show everyone what I was thinking.

Blocks started to pour in and I was faced with turning all of these blocks into a cohesive quilt. For a while I wasn't sure where to start. Some of the blocks had teeny tiny pieces while others had larger pieces of negative space. After a while, the blocks sat in a pile... out of sight, out of mind.

But last weekend I finally had some time to sew for the first time in months. One of my first orders of business was to finally tackle this quilt. After hearing Victoria Findlay Wolfe talk about taking some bee blocks she received and cutting them up to use in quilts, I thought about dissecting some of these blocks with tiny pieces and inserting those pieces into some of the blocks with more negative space.

The result, I have to say, is pretty awesome! I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I quickly went online to order a backing print that I had in mind and have been thinking of how I want to quilt this one up. I have a few ideas, but until my longarm is fixed, I'm stuck contemplating the best way of quilting it.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

September Simply Solid Bee Block

Last month was crazy, so I was a little late making my September bee block for the Simply Solids Bee.

We were to make feather blocks, but I was only able to make the feathers and attach background fabric to once side, as there wasn't enough fabric provided to add the rest of the background fabric. Oh well, the hard part is done!  This should be a fun quilt once it's all assembled. I can't wait to see it. 

SewDown ThrowDown

While at SewDown, a bunch of us were looking for something to do during the free sew time. I had come directly from a work trip in Milan, Italy, so I didn't have much room to pack extra fabric/projects. Fortunately, we all received charm packs of Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids in our swag bags. A bunch of people decided to do a challenge to make a quilt using the charm pack - and thus the SewDown ThrowDown was born.

While I think everyone else added additional fabric, I set out to just use the fabrics provided in the charm pack - my own personal challenge within the challenge. I knew my suitcase was nearing the max weight, so adding more fabric might have put me over the limit (I ended up three pounds over and had to do some serious moving of stuff anyway).

I decided to make half square triangles, separating the colors by warm and cool colors. Overall, I think trying to separate the colors that way was okay, but because the charm pack was full of colors that could have gone one way or another - yellow or green, or purple or pink - that the separation of colors wasn't quite what I was hoping for.  That being said, I'm still really pleased with how this quilt turned out.

I backed it using an Art Gallery print that I've had in my stash for a couple of years now. As you can see above, I quilted this quilt, echoing either side of the diagonal lines of the HSTs.

I bound the quilt using Kona Iron.

Quilt Stats:
32" x 28"
Fabric: Michael Miller Cotton Couture Solids, Kona Iron, Art Gallery (I forget the line)
Batting: Warm and Natural
Thread: Aurifil #50 2600

Simply Solids - August Block

August completely got away from me. I don't know where the summer has gone or where 2013 is going. Wasn't Christmas and New Years just a few months ago?

Anyway, last week I squeezed in some time after a late night of work and finished the Simply Solids bee block for August. I finished it with just a few days to spare in the month.

The august block was a HST block using a bunch of solids and a few shot cottons. I've been hoarding a few shot cottons for a while now, and after making this block, I have the urge to cut into them. Not to decide what to make... 

Criss Cross Quilt

Last weekend I was rushing to finish this quilt so I could enter it in Quilter's Way's color challenge for the month of June.  

The pattern layout was a bit different than how I finished this quilt. I decide to pair the fabrics from the challenge bundle and create six blocks. The original pattern was much more random, but I wanted to make it a bit more structured. 

The pattern was pretty easy to construct. Just a bunch of squares and triangles. 

I machine quilted this on the longarm using an all over square and straight line meander. 

You can really see the texture in this shot, which I love. 

I decided to bind this quilt in Kona Lipstick. I wanted a different color for the binding and thought a nice, bright red would be the perfect compliment to the rest of the colors. 

I used Robert Kaufman Quilter's Linen in Steel for the backing, which blends nicely with the So Fine! gray thread that I used for the quilting. 

This quilt finishes at 48" x 72"and was made using a solid fat quarter bundle pulled by Quilter's Way and an RJR solid for the background.

Simply Solids Bee Block

Last week I finished my Simply Solids Bee Block for them month of June. This was a fun block to make that went together pretty easily.

After what seemed like forever, I finally sat down in front of my sewing machine and did some sewing. This was the first think that I tackled. I'll share more of what I'm working on throughout the week!

Needless to say, it feels good to be doing some sewing. 

Simply Solid Bee Block - March

Tonight I finished the Simply Solid Bee block for the month of March.

This month belongs to Roonquilt, aka sportsew.  She asked for a skyline block.  This is what I came up with. Her quilt will consist of all sorts of blocks using the same dark blue as the sky.  I think this is going to be a really awesome quilt.  I can't wait to see it finished.

My month is next month, so I need to get my act together and mail out the fabrics and post instructions for my block. 

Blogger Quilt Festival - Fall 2012

It's that time of year again - the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  This time around I'm "entering" my Dazzling Diamonds quilt.  This was a hard choice for me because I've actually finished quite a few quilts this year.

I made this quilt as part of a challenge the Boston Modern Quilt Guild was hosting. Participants had to make a mini quilt in the colors of QuiltCon.  The mini had to use at least three of the colors and could be no bigger than 24" on any side.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love to paper piece.  So of course I needed to create my own paper pieced pattern for my entry into the challenge. I designed this block because I wanted a block with diamonds, but with a slight twist.

The quilt went together pretty easy.  The great thing about the block is that there's only one point to match, the tip of the diamonds, which is pretty rare for a lot of paper pieced patterns.  I think this also went together easy for me because I had just finished piecing the 140th paper pieced block in a different (but secret) quilt that I've been working on.  16 blocks in this quilt seemed like a piece of cake!

I love how in using two different grey fabrics for the stars, a secondary pattern emerged, a dark grey pinwheel.  I also love two different stars that emerge when piecing multiple blocks together - the grey and the orange in this quilt.

I lamented for a while on how I should quilt this beauty.  I knew I needed to do some custom quilting, but what kind of quilting should I do?  I started by echo quilting in the grey stars.  I stitched in the ditch around the blue diamonds and did a 1/4" echo three times within the grey stars. I then did some pebble quilting in the lime background.  I knew I wanted to do a figure eight type design in the blue, but I wasn't sure if I could do it well enough in such a narrow space.  The blue diamonds do measure only about 1/2" wide.

After practicing on some scrap fabric sandwiches, I realized that I could do a figure eight pretty well in the space provided, so I went for it.  I have to say, I'm really pleased with how it turned out.  I really like to practice new quilting designs on scrap quilt sandwiches first before digging into a quilt.  Boy am I glad I did.  The first few tries left me thinking that the blue would either be left unquilted or with a more simple design.  Practice is key because, like I said, I really like how it turned out and that might be my favorite part of the quilting.  I finished up by quilting some radiating straight lines in the orange star points to highlight the motion of the star.

I did change my thread color for each section for four different color threads.  Because of that, the back looks like an awesome whole cloth quilt.  Am I the only one who loves to just run my hands across a finish quilted quilt?  I couldn't stop running my hands over this one. I bound the quilt in a charcoal Kona to really frame the quilt.

Overall, I'm really pleased with how this quilt turned out and it has become one of my new favorite quilts.  Of course, that will probably change when I finish another quilt.

I'll be teaching a class on this quilt on November 18th at Quilter's Way in Concord, MA if you're interested in making your own mini quilt wall hanging or table topper for the holidays.

You can check out the rest of the quilts in the BMQG challenge here. Amazing, aren't they?

Quilt Details:
Finished Size: 24" x 24"
Fabrics Used: Kona Cotton - QuiltCon bundle from Pink Chalk Fabrics
Pattern: Dazzling Diamonds by me!
Machine paper pieced and machine quilted by me using Superior Threads So Fine!
Best Categories: Best Mini Quilt, Wall Quilt, Machine Quilted
Entry #: 78

Meagan's Bee Block

I finally managed to get a picture of Meagan's bee block before I sent it out to her. 

She sent a bunch of solids and a few prints.  I decided to use just one print and the rest solids. 

I hope she likes it!

This is the end of the bee that I'm participating in right now.  I've got so much going on that I'm going to hold off in participating in another bee for a little while.