Starting a New Project

I've begun working on a new project, a quilt for my parents.  They wanted a quilt for the stairway leading to the second floor of their beach house.  We picked out some colors together and I decided on a Storm at Sea pattern since it fits nicely with a beach house.

I found a blank template online and colored it in with the colors we were thinking of.  We had already decided on the Origins line by Basic Grey for the quilt, I just needed to figure out the pattern.

I also found some free paper piecing templates online, so I printed those out to use for this as well.  If you've read this blog at all you probably know that I really love paper piecing.  I love the perfect points that you get with paper piecing.

I've started to do some cutting but haven't finished.  I needed to order more fabric online since I couldn't find it near me anymore, so that delayed be a bit.

I haven't started a new larger quilt in a while, so it's been fun to get into another project, although I'm still working on trying to finish a bunch of other projects.  Oh well, the life of a quilter I guess - start three projects, finish one.  Right?

I likely won't have a ton of time to do much quilting over the next three weeks.  I've got a bunch of stuff going on for work including my company's customer user conference in Las Vegas in a few weeks, so I'll be leaving the DH behind to head out there.  I'll have to see if I can bring a hand sewing project with me.  We've got family in town from GA as well starting this weekend.  I hope to really pick up on my quilting again come mid-May.  

Adding Crystals

While at MQX last weekend I got some supplies to add crystals to quilts.  I decided to add some to my Moonlit Sky quilt.  (Yes, that's the name I have decided on.)

Sure, my crystals aren't in a perfectly straight line, but I really like how this is coming together.  Because there's just some straight line quilting on the stars, I feel like the lines of crystals really enhance the simple quilting and the stars themselves. 

In this light green section I decided that less is more here.  I want to showcase the amazing quilting first and foremost.  The crystals are really here to enhance the quilt.  

I still have a lot of crystals to add, and I have to order more since I completely underestimated the number of crystals I would need.  You would think a package of 144 crystals would go a long way but it really doesn't. 

I like that from far away you really can't tell that there are crystals.  You can tell they're there from the sparkle and the faint appearance of a line. In this picture there are crystals in the purple, the blue stars and the green.

Um, I think I have a problem...

Yeah, so I think I have a problem...

This has become my stash of Kate Spain's Central Park.  This doesn't include my fat quarter bundle of the entire line.  The minimum cut of fabric is 2 yards above which would mean that this photo has over 20 yards of fabric.  EEK!!!

Here's my real confession - I don't even know what I'm going to do with this fabric.  I just love it so much that I must hoard it.

I think this comes from my love of Full Moon Forest and the fact that I discovered it after it was out of print.  Now, I'm constantly searching for some FMF at a reasonable price, kicking myself that I didn't stock up when it first came out.  On another note - I saw a half yard of FMF for $25 on Etsy last week.  That's $50 a yard!!!  I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I'd pay $50 a yard for some simple cotton quilting fabric.  That's just crazy people.

Mug Rug is Finished

and it's hanging up in my quilting room on the side of my storage unit.  I just couldn't bring myself to actually use it as a mug rug. 

I love it.  The only thing I would change would be the quilting in the purple.  I was going for a different look but when I got going I just didn't have the space to do it in such a tiny area and the looping sippling just kinda came out.  I thought about redoing it, but I decided against that since there were two layers of fusible web in that layer and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to hide the holes.

MQX East 2011 Cont.

Here are some more photos of some of the amazing quilts at MQX East 2011.  Warning, this is a photo heavy post...

There were so many other quilts that were also just amazing.  If you ever get a chance to go I would highly recommend it.