Blogger Quilt Festival - Wall Hanging

Sticks and Stones is a wall hanging that I made for the Boston MQG's mini quilt challenge. For the past two years we've participated in the Lowell Quilt Festival with our own exhibit. Part of this exhibit has contained a mini quilt challenge. This was my quilt for it. You can see the rest of the quilts here. 

This quilt was inspired by Jackie Gering's Craftsy class. I've enjoyed making more improvisational quilts these days, although I'll never shy away from designing my own paper pieced patterns.

The gray background fabric made this quilt difficult to photograph though. 

This block was made as four different blocks. I started with a bunch of strips of fabrics based on the inspirational color palette.

I quilted this, offsetting a handful of straight lines, horizontal and vertical. Once I had a handful of straight lines, I quilted out from the intersection.

Here you can really see what I did for the quilting. I think it gave the quilt a really cool effect.

WIP Wednesday: Modern Hexagon Quilt

Earlier this month, the owner of Quilter's Way asked me if I would teach a modern hexagon quilt class.  She said I could do whatever I wanted in terms of technique.  I toyed with a few ideas, but decided to go with a large hexagon quilt made using Jaybird's Hex N More ruler.

This is what I came up with.  I was inspired by several quilts out there on Flickr and combined several ideas to come up with this quilt.  It measures about 40" square. 

Clearly I needed to iron this before I took these pictures, but you get the idea. I used a variety of prints from various lines including Simply Color, Cuzco, Good Fortune, Quilt Blocks and more. 

I'm trying to decide how I want to quilt this now.  Do I do concentric circles or a spiraling circle? Do I echo the hexagon pattern? Decisions, decisions, decision... My goal is to have this quilted soon. 

Finish Friday - Rainbow House

I finished my Rainbow House quilt last night and am in love with how it came out.

It's hard to see in this picture, but it's bound in a black Kona cotton.

I did some simple quilting in the house block and in the border.  The tiny-tiny (and did I say PIECED) rainbow stripe is busy enough that the simple lines work best for this quilt.

Those rainbow pieces measure 1/4 square (give or take since it's so small, I'm not claiming extreme accuracy there). Yikes!

Here's the back.  I used a Sweetwater Sunkissed fat quarter that I had lying around for the backing. I used two scrap 5" squares for the hanging triangles.

Now to find a special place to hang this.

**Edit - I scheduled this post to go out on Friday, but it some how published on Thursday, but the date shows as 6/1 in my blog header.  Strange.  I schedule all of my posts ahead of time since life can get crazy.  I usually schedule several posts at a time so that I regularly update my blog.  I had written this one a few days ago and was surprised when it showed up in my reader a day early. Oh well.  Enjoy!

Bid on My Quilt & Support the Fight Against Cancer

I am auctioning off this quilt as part of my company's charitable campaign this quarter to fight cancer.  The bidding starts at just $25, although I'm hoping that it sells for much more than that.  To bid on this quilt visit the website here.

Quilt Details:
Size: 18" square
Fabric: Kona White and Grey (I'm not sure which one since I don't have a color chart) and Free Spirit's Jay McCarroll's Habitat line.
Machine appliqued and quilted by me.  The binding has been attached my machine in the front and hand sewn in the back.

I made this quilt with the intention of auctioning it off for this purpose.  The template I used from Sue Pelland Designs supports Leukemia awareness, something near and dear to my heart as my DH lost his step-father to the disease 8 years ago. 

My Free Spirit Challenge Quilt

As you may have seen lately, Free Spirit issued a challenge to Modern Quilt Guilds across the country with using a stack of Jay McCarroll Habitat fabrics.  I wasn't crazy about some of the fabrics when I saw them in the photo, but I decided to go for it and try something out of my comfort zone. 

Here's what I was able to come up with.

I used a template by Sue Pelland Designs to make the petals.  Each petal is 2.75" long.  I created a grid of squares using a disappearing marker on the Kona white and placed the petals on top of the grid. I tried several different patterns before settling on this one.  After I pieced this, I saw several other layout possibilities.  I'm definitely going to make more quilts using this template.

Once I heat set the petals onto the quilt I stitched down along the edge of each one to quilt it.  I really loved the way the machine quilting looks on the back.

For not really loving the fabrics, I actually love how this turned out, of course I only ended up using about half of the fabrics provided, but still, it was a challenge. 

What I look at Every Day

About four years ago I made a quilt for my desk and it sits above my computer where I look at it every day.

The lighting is bad (well, isn't it always in an office building) and the photo was taken with my new iPhone, so it's not the best.  It gives me something bright and cheery to look at every day instead of the drab taupe walls and the cream colored walls.  I love color too much to go without some bright colors in my desk.

This was actually the second quilt I made with this pattern.  The first one I made in a class to learn about stained glass quilting. 

I did not do a very good job with alternating the value of colors in the first quilt and it looks very flat.  I used the same fabrics, except for the boarder, in the second quilt and it works much better in terms of value, but it still could use some variety, especially in the flower and leaves section of the quilt.  If I could re-make this quilt after more years of experience I would change things up even more.