Madrona Road Challenge - Yee Haw

So, you may have already see this over at The Modern Quilt Guild's blog, but my Wonky Road quilt was selected by Michael Miller fabrics to appear in its booth at QuiltCon!  How cool is that? Or should I saw, "Yee Haw" and channel my inner cowgirl since this quilt is about to head to Texas.

This quilt will join my Dazzling Diamonds quilt which will be in the juried show.

If you see me at the QuiltCon, stop me and say hi.  I'd love to meet you. 

Finish Friday: Madrona Road Challenge Quilt

This week I finished my Madrona Road challenge quilt.  I mentioned earlier that this quilt doesn't really match the style of quilts that I usually make - very much planned and in jewel tones.  I knew early on that the colors of the fabrics would be perfect for my basement, which I redid last year in a grey and yellow color scheme.

I had originally planned to make a paper pieced pattern featuring flying geese around the big yellow flowers, like I have as the center of these blocks.  But, I recently got a new computer and the old program I use to design my patterns wasn't compatible with my new one.  Onto plan B.

I used almost every last inch of five of the fabrics provided.  I decided not to use one print because it just didn't quite fit with the vision I had in my head.

Each quilt block finishes at 9" square.  I added five additional solids - four grays, a white and a baby blue to the Madrona Road fabrics.

I quilted this quilt with a bunch of straight lines 1/4" apart.  While most people would use their walking foot for this, I tend to just use my normal 1/4" foot when I'm quilting straight lines.  I find I have more control with my smaller 1/4" foot than a big walking foot.

For the back, I used an old Patrick Loose print that I've had in my stash for what seems like forever.  I bound the quilt in what is becoming my go-to for binding - Kona Charcoal.

You can check out more challenge quilts and projects in the MQG Madrona Road Challenge Flickr group.

Quilt Stats:
Size: 27" x 27"
Fabrics: Madrona Road and Kona Cotton
Thread: Pieced with Aurifil 50wt, Quilted with So Fine! #50 #508
Batting: Warm and Natural

WIP Wednesday: Madrona Road Challenge

This week I began to dig into my Madrona Road fabrics for the Modern Quilt Guild challenge.  I need to create an object with the fabrics provided and can only add solid fabrics.

I don't want to reveal too much, but I decided to make a wall hanging for my basement, which just happens to be decorated in a grey and yellow color pallet!

The only thing I'll reveal right now is that this quilt isn't going be obviously "me" in the paper piecing style.  I decided to go a completely different route.  So far I'm really liking how it's coming out.

P.I.N. Pillow

The Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild is hosting a pin cushion swap with a bunch of other modern quilt guilds, including the Boston guild.  Me being me, i had to come up with a paper pieced pattern for my pincushion.  After some thinking, I created this very literal pin cushion design that I have dubbed P.I.N. Pillow.

I first made the pin cushion in some scraps for the swap, but then decided to make one for myself out of the new Denyse Schmidt Chicopee line.

This pincushion will be the one I'm including in the swap.  I usually stuff my pincushions with crushed walnut shells, but because this was for a swap, I just stuffed it with some bamboo stuffing.  My Chicopee cushion is stuffed with the walnut shells.

Here's the block before I sewed it together with the backing and stuffed it.  You could easily use this block in a quilt or other project, other than a pincushion.  You could also easily scale it up (or down) if you feel the pattern is too small for you.

You can purchase this pattern in my Craftsy shop here for instant download. 

Dreaming in Color Quilt

Well, here it is in all its glory, my Dreaming in Color quilt!  I finished putting the binding and hanging sleeve on the quilt the night before it needed to be hanging for our special exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival.  If that's not cutting it close, I don't know what is?

I only had time to quilt the dark grey and not the octagons.  I did some dense quilting of straight lines and pebbles throughout the dark grey.  I might go back later and do some quilting in the octagons, but I'm not sure yet.  I had originally done a little quilting in one of the octagons, but hated how it looked, so I spent three hours taking it out.

Here's the back.  It's a print that I got at Marden's for $3.50 a yard.  I really love the print, and wanted to use something from my stash, so this is what I ended up using. 


It's hard to tell from these pictures, but the binding is a bunch of different colors.  I think it shows up best on the picture of the back of the quilt.  I really like how that compliments the scrappy nature of this quilt.

All in all, I'm really pleased with how this quilt came out and I can't wait to find a place to hang it at home.  I'll have to get some better pictures once I get the quilt back from the show. 

BMQG Mini Quilt Challenge - Dazzling Diamonds

The Boston Modern Quilt Guild is having a mini quilt challenge for its members to create mini quilts, no more than 24" on any side, in the colors of QuiltCon, the inaugural conference and show for The Modern Quilt Guild.  The quilts will be displayed at our special exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival this year.  I designed a 6" quilt block for my quilt and made a mini quilt that measures 24" square for the challenge that I call Dazzling Diamonds.

Of course it's paper pieced, my favorite quilting technique.  I wanted to do something with diamonds on the diagonal, but I also wanted something more than just diamonds.  I love stars as well, so I thought about incorporating some sort of star into the block as well.  I determined that if I made the diamond fat, a nice star was formed when you put multiple blocks together.  I thought a giant diamond with a star in between would be boring, so I framed the diamond and added yet another star point to the block.  Voila, you have the block that you see above and below.

Here is the finished quilt top.  I really love how this turned out.  The colors in the above photo are the closest to what they really are. I'm not a huge fan of orange, but used in the right way, I don't mind it.  In this quilt, I actually really like it. 

I love the idea of a pattern creating a secondary pattern.  In this instance, you have the diamonds that form the diagonal lines, the Orange stars, and the grey stars are formed when you put multiple blocks together.  In my quilt you also have the darker grey that forms a pinwheel.

In this mockup, I used one color for the background, which really makes the background stars pop.  I also turned the four center points around to create a medallion effect.

And in this mockup, I rotated the blocks so that the points of the stars inside the diamonds all pointed towards the corner instead of creating stars.  You lose the background star with this layout, but you get this really cool visual effect where you eye is automatically drawn to the center of the quilt.  As you can see, just playing with color and the layout of the block can really give it a different feel.

I'm off to go make another one of these blocks so that I can send it in for the QuiltCon block challenge.

I created a pattern for this quilt block and mini quilt which you can purchase on Craftsy.

WIP Wednesday: Octagonal Orb

I finally started on a new project - an Octagonal Orb quilt based on the pattern posted on The Modern Quilt Guild Blog a while back.  I saw the grey and red block and thought it would be great to make a whole quilt with a different color in each orb.

Here's the first block that I made with grey and aqua.  I really love this block and I think I'm really going to love this quilt.  I'm going to wait to trim all of the blocks until I have all of them made.  I prefer to wait to trim my blocks until all are made to ensure all will be the same size.

The next one I will be piecing is the yellow block.  I really like the yellow with the grey here as well.

The lime green block is also ready to be sewn together.  Once again, loving this one.

I also have a dark purple, red, orange, pink, teal and dark blue that are prepped and ready to be pieced together, but those are all still in the small 2 1/2" square stage.

I'm hoping to have this done by the beginning of August in time for the special exhibit at the Lowell Quilt Festival where the BMQG will have a special exhibit. We'll see if I make that goal with everything that I have going on this summer before the festival, with the 4th of July, weddings, etc. I'll give myself a 50/50 chance.

Octagonal Orb

On The Modern Quilt Guild's blog, a tutorial was recently posted for an Octagonal Orb quilt block.

*Image source: The Modern Quilt Guild Blog

I decided that I wanted to make a quilt using this pattern.  I like the color scheme of this block, but I thought it would be cool to alternate the color where the red is in the block above for each block I make.  One block could be red, another green, another purple, etc.

Last weekend I started going through my stash and began cutting my grey and white fabric into squares per the tutorial.  I realized I don't have very many grey/white fabrics, so I ordered some and plan to seek out some more as I visit fabric stores over the near future.  The biggest challenge is finding grey and white fabrics without black or other colors.  I want the look of just grey and white with the accent color.  This will probably be a longer-term project.

These half yard cuts just arrived last night.  The color is off a bit since this photo was taken late at night and the lighting wasn't great.  They're all grey grey and white fabrics.

What did I do with them? I began cutting them all up!

I still have a bunch left to cut, but hey, what else will I be doing without my sewing machine?  CUTTING!