Framed Up - McCall's Quilting January/February 2014

Last night I arrived home and found a quilt on my doorstep. Not just any quilt, it was my Framed Up quilt that I had finished in January and sent off to McCall's Quilting this summer to be featured in their January/February 2014 issue. That's right, I have a quilt in McCall's Quilting Magazine!

 

I originally designed and made this quilt last year, sending it off to the talented Angela Walters to machine quilt it for me. I knew I wanted to try and get this pattern published, so I held off sharing it on my blog. Problem is, I wasn't really sure about how to go about submitting it. Luckily, QuiltCon was right around the corner and there was a session on submitting to magazines!

I sent of my submission to McCall's shortly after returning from QuiltCon. Why McCall's, well it was the first magazine I subscribed to 11 or 12 years ago when I first started quilting. But I also submitted quilts to other magazines over the next few months. Some were accepted and others weren't. Why am I telling you this? To encourage everyone that's thinking about submitting a quilt to a show or magazine to do it if you really want. Not every quilt is meant for every show or magazine. But when it's the right fit, it's an awesome feeling.

Regular readers of my blog know that I love paper piecing, so of course this quilt is paper pieced. I would consider this an intermediate paper pieced pattern for those that know how to paper piece. There are a number of points that you need to line up when piecing blocks together, but that's pretty much the most difficult part.

I gave Angela pretty much free reign when quilting this quilt. I don't know about you, but I think she did a really great job.

The folks at McCall's agreed and included another page, in addition to the pattern, talking all about the quilting.

In addition, Quilters Newsletter posted a recent video on Modern Quilting, which featured Framed Up as one of the examples. Check out the video below. They begin talking about Framed Up at the 4:30 mark.

This issue of McCall's Quilting hits newsstands next week, but if you have a subscription, it should be in your mailbox any day if you haven't already received it. 

Enchanted Evergreens Quilt

I'm excited to introduce you to Enchanted Evergreens, a quilt I designed for the Christmas issue of Fat Quarterly.

I was inspired by the Christmas movies of the 60's with the random Christmas trees randomly placed around the set to create a Christmas forest.

I had some major help making this quilt. Karen, my aunt, lovingly pieced the top for me while I finished up a few other projects at the same time.

The blocks go together pretty easily, making this quilt the perfect project for the beginner/intermediate quilter to throw together before Christmas. All you need is a ruler with a 60* line, or a 60* ruler such as the Hex N More ruler to make those triangles.

I quilted this quilt on my longarm in rows of random loops, which look like Christmas ornaments to me.

If you're interested, head on over to Fat Quarterly and get yourself the latest issue. Having personally looked through the issue, I can say that there are a number of other great patterns.

Enchanted Evergreens
75.5" x 91"
Fabric: Aspen Frost by BasicGrey
Thread: So Fine #50! Barely Mint
Batting: Quilters Dream Cotton

Fat Quarterly Sneak Peek

Tomorrow the Christmas issue of Fat Quarterly comes out featuring my Enchanted Evergreens quilt.

Here's a sneak peak of the quilt (top right). Come back tomorrow to see the quilt and learn more about the inspiration behind it. 

Blogger Quilt Festival - Baby Quilt

While at SewDown Philadelphia, 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

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.