A little art

I've been playing a little bit with watercolor painting off and on recently.  I've posted at least one watercolor project before.  Today I decided to try the new watercolor pencils that I bought the other day.  As a general rule, I tend to be a perfectionist, so watercolor is not an obvious medium for me.  But the goal is to get outside of my comfort zone and do something a little freer.  As you can probably tell, I haven't reached that goal yet.  I still tend to be very rigid with my work.  I think it looks nice, but it's not exactly what I'd call free.  The watercolor pencils are good for detail, so that's good for my more exacting side.

This is a sketch that I drew from a photo of my oldest granddaughter.  I think it turned out pretty good and recognizable from the original photograph. Here is the original photograph that I was working from.

Butterfly Garden

I finished the binding on this one two weeks ago, but I just got the label attached and a picture made.  I've been so behind on things lately!  I decided to name it Butterfly Garden for a couple of reasons.  One, it has both butterfly fabric and flower fabric.  Two, the fabric line is called Tea House and my tea house has plants around it that are supposed to attract butterflies, and at times they actually do.

It is nice to actually be able to call something a finished product.  It seems like it's been a while since I got to do that!

Vintage Christmas blocks for April

 

I got them finished in time! I don't know if anyone will notice or not, but decided to make the gingerbread house a little simpler than the directions called for. I really felt like the original design was more intricate than it needed to be. I'm fine with my door not having a window in it and my window not having a frame around it. Oh, and I also omitted the sidewalk. It still looks plenty enough like a gingerbread house to me.

Baby Doll quilt top

I've been so busy lately that it took me almost a month to get around to adding the borders to the baby doll block, and some of the pieces were already cut!  Oh well, at least it's done now.  Unfortunately I have three blocks to make for this month's Moda class and very little time to do it in.  Obviously sewing hasn't been much of a priority lately.  I'm sure I can get them done if I make it a priority to do so.

Baby Doll big block

One of the other blocks we were assigned this month was the baby doll block.  I'm not planning to use it in my Christmas quilt, but I decided to make it anyway.  Instead of making it in the 6-inch, or 12-inch size, that was given in the book, I decided to scale it up to a 36-inch block.  No tiny pieces in this one!  Now all I have to do is add some borders and I have a cute baby doll quilt.  Big block baby quilts are fun.

Holly and Ivy block

I only needed one block out the ones that were assigned to us this month.  I'm not super happy about how it turned out, but I'm not a fan of making 6 inch blocks, so I'm not planning to do it over.  It'll do.

Cotton Rose Block

My quilt guild, The Cotton Rose Quilters, decided to have a contest among the members to design a "cotton rose" block.  It could really be anything we wanted it to be, but the idea was to somehow make it representative of the guild.  I chose to combine a carpenters wheel block with a friendship star block, using the colors of an actual cotton rose bloom. 

I've always felt like the outer part of the carpenters wheel block mimics a flower.  I thought changing the inner star from the original to a friendship star would represent the friendships that we develop through the guild, and mimic the yellow center of the cotton rose bloom. 

I'm pleased with how it turned out, but there are soooo many half square triangles that making just one block is time consuming.  If I made it again, I might change my method and make some units as flying geese instead of HSTs.

Here are some pictures of actual cotton rose blooms.  They can be single (top) or double (bottom) blooms, and they change from white to pink as the blooms age.

The pattern for the block is available here for free.  Enjoy!

More Star Blocks

Today I used some more of my red, white, and blue scrap fabric to make a couple more star blocks for the National Quilters Day Out/Quilts of Valor project.  The one on the left is a Simple Spinning Star block and the one on the right is an equilateral (or 60 degree) triangle star.  Both of them went together really quickly and easily. 

They both turned out really true to size.  The units that make the points in the Spinning Star block were made oversized, so that they could be trimmed down to 4-1/2 inches squares, which made the final piecing easier to keep true to size.  The triangles in the equilateral star block were cut with a 60 degree triangle ruler, so they were very precise too.  The height of the block was actually accurate from just sewing the rows together, and the sides were trimmed down to make it a 12-1/2 inch square.

Simplish in Circle Play

Last month at our Moda class, our extra project was a quilt called Simplish.  The pattern is available as a free download from Shabby Fabrics.  The original pattern uses precuts from Wilmington Prints fabrics (a 5 karat mini-crystals, a 10 karat mini-crystals, and 1 essential gems), which are all 24 count packages. I used a Benartex layer cake (42 count) in Circle Play fabric, which I already had on hand, and cut 2-1/2 inch strips from solid black yardage for my quilt. 

I still need to find fabric for the backing.  I didn't buy any yardage from the fabric line when I bought the layer cake, so hopefully I can find something that will go well with it.  I plan to bind it in the solid black.  The finished quilt will be 56-1/2 x 70 inches, so it makes a nice sized sofa throw.

Sunglasses Required!

I just realized that I had forgotten to post a picture of this quilt that I finished right before we left to go visit family in the Seattle area at the end of last month.  It was a nice day and I took the picture outside, but then I forgot to post it!  Oh well, better late than never. 

I've been calling this quilt Sunglasses Required, because it is so bright and colorful.  It is a two fabric bargello quilt, made from an ombre fabric and bold print fabric.  It was really pretty easy to make, yet produces a very striking result.  It was machine pieced and professionally longarm quilted.

Ohio Star block

This year my quilt guild is doing a simple sampler quilt for our monthly project.  In January we were given instructions for making an Ohio Star block - a very traditional block.  I wasn't even planning to make the block, because I wasn't sure that I wanted to make the quilt, which will ultimately consist of nine 12-inch blocks. 

However, a nearby quilt guild is planning a National Quilters Day Out project for making Quilts of Valor, and quilters are asked to come by and make, or make ahead and donate, red, white and blue star blocks.  So I decided to go ahead and make the Ohio Star block, but do it in red, white and blue fabrics so that I could donate it to the Quilt of Valor project.

Vintage Christmas - January Blocks

This year our group that meets at the Front Porch Quilt Shoppe is doing Lori Holt's Vintage Christmas blocks.  Some people are doing the Vintage Christmas quilt that is pictured on the cover of the book, which involves making 6-inch squares for all 42 blocks in the book.  Some are doing the Christmas Eve quilt, which uses 25 of the blocks done in the 12-inch size.  Probably some people will do some of the other quilts featured in the book.  I probably won't be alone in doing something completely different with the blocks.  At least one other person mentioned that they were going to do something different.

What I really need, when it comes to Christmas quilts, is a Christmas wall hanging.  Everything featured in the book was either too big, or too small, for what I was wanting.  I decided to use blocks from the book and make up my own wall hanging size quilt.  It will feature a 12-inch block in the center, surrounded by sashing, 6-inch blocks, more sashing, 3-inch blocks (made from an element of one of the 6-inch blocks in the book), and an outer border.

For the class, we were assigned 5 blocks for this month, if we were doing the cover quilt.  Of those blocks, I only wanted to use 2 of them in my quilt, so that's all I made.  On the left is the Christmas Candles blocks and on the right is the Glisten block, both in the 6-inch size.  Lots of tiny pieces here.  That's not my favorite thing to do, but I'm willing to do it for a quilt that I want to have.  Maybe I won't go crazy before the year is over and the project is finished!

2018 Goals In Review

At the beginning of 2018 I set some goals for myself:

1. Finish the year with fewer unquilted quilt tops than I started the year with
2. If I start new projects, use fabrics that I already have on hand.
3. If I buy new fabric, it should be to finish an existing project or complete a project I've previously designed.

So, how did that work out?  Well . . . not so good actually. 

I did accomplish the first one.  I did, in fact, end the year with fewer unquilted quilt tops than I started with.  Of the 19 unquilted tops I started with, I got 7 quilted.  I then created 4 new quilt tops that haven't been quilted, although one is at the quilt shop to be quilted, so I'm not sure that one should count against me.  But that is still a net improvement, so I win that one.

On goal number 2, I was doing pretty good there until I got to July.  The two fabric bargello quilt wasn't really something I designed, but it was something I had been wanting to make for quite a while and the quilt shop finally got in some ombre fabric that I could use.  I couldn't pass that up.  Then I found out that my step-daughter was expecting her first baby, and of course I had to buy fabric to make a quilt for her that would match what she wanted for the nursery.  These seemed justifiable, because one was unforeseen circumstances (new baby) and the other almost meshed with goal #3.  However, in November I just gave up.  There were quilts that I wanted to make that I needed to buy new fabric for, so I just did it.

On goal number 3, I was doing pretty good until the quilt shop had a low bolt sale in August.  Her supplier brought in boxes and boxes of "low" yardage bolts, (I put that in quotation marks because I don't really consider 8 yards that low and most of them had that much) and anything that didn't sell was going to be returned.  It was $6.99 per yard, which is GREAT for quilt shop fabric, so I couldn't pass that up just because of New Year's Resolution (aka quilting goal), right?

So for 2019 my quilting goals are to have fun and enjoy quilting.  My only resolution or limitation that I'm adding is that I want to avoiding making quilts that I don't really want to make.  I made two quilts in 2018 that I didn't really like.  I hope to avoid that this year.  Wish me luck!

Sisters Ten Star Quilt

I finished my re-imagined Sisters Ten Sampler quilt top.  Once I saw the finished quilt tops of my fellow guild mates, I realized that I liked the 9-inch square version better than the 12-inch square version.  I also liked the quilts that had a dark background fabric better than the ones with a light background fabric.  And finally, I liked the background to have a slight pattern in it instead of being a total solid.

I saw this black constellation fabric at the quilt shop and thought it would make a great background for this type of quilt.  It gave me the idea of making all the squares be star blocks instead of using the blocks in the original pattern.  The only block that I reused from the original pattern was the Ohio Star block.  I'm really much happier with how this one turned out, at least at this stage in the process.  Hopefully I'll like my original quilt better once it is quilted.

Merry Christmas 2018 quilt

Merry Christmas 2018 is all that I put on this quilt's label.  Since it is being donated to the Salvation Army I didn't want to put my name on the label.  That's probably silly, but I don't know if the kids think these gifts come from Santa Claus or what, so I just went with Merry Christmas and the year.  I used a simple zig-zag stitch to turn the binding.  I wouldn't want to do all of my quilt binding this way, but I think it turned out nice, and it was soooo much faster than doing it by hand.  I would have felt rushed trying to get it finished before Sunday.

I really hope that the child who gets this quilt will like it.  It is such a simple quilt, but when I was in middle school I loved hot pink!  I really like the way that the quilt feels too.  The diagonal quilting makes for crossed quilting lines every 4-1/4 inches.  That seems like a really good distance to give the quilt body, but also be supple and soft.  I'm really irrationally happy with how it turned out. 

Charitable Giving

This year at Christmas my church is collecting gifts for the Salvation Army.  One of the requested items was blankets, so I decided that I would make a quick and easy quilt.  Here is a picture of the finished top.  It is made completely from my stash.  I liked the idea of using 6 inch (finished) orphan blocks mixed in with print fabric squares.  I didn't have any orphan blocks that matched the color scheme I was going with, so I made a few simple blocks to jazz it up a little bit.  The top is 42-1/2 x 54-1/2 inches.

I plan to machine quilt it myself on my home sewing machine using diagonal line edge to edge quilting.  That way there won't be any threads to bury, unless I run out of bobbin mid-seam!  I'm also planning to machine stitch the binding, which I don't usually do, but there is limited time to get it finished, so I figure that's the safest option at this point.

Foxy Baby Quilt

I finished the burying of threads and binding on this quilt a few days ago, and I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of it or posted about it yet.  It's for my soon-to-be granddaughter.  It doesn't actually have a name yet, because she doesn't have a name yet.  She's due in 4 weeks and her parents haven't settled on a name yet.  Once they do, I'll come up with a name for the quilt that includes her name.  The label will have to wait, too, because I will put her birth date on it.  Other than those things, it's done now.  Yay!

Broken Shells

Today I finished this quilt top.  I'm calling it Broken Shells because it is made with Broken Dishes blocks, but I wanted it to have a beachy feel to it.  It is intentionally low contrast with a sand colored background and light pastel batiks for the blocks.  The lighting isn't great in this picture, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It's just want I had imagined when I was designing it. 

Here is different picture with slightly better lighting, but not as good an angle and a lot more junk.

The quilt finishes 58 inches square, so it should make a nice quilt to decorate the back of my sofa in the summertime.

Mermaid Whirlpool

Yesterday I finished this quilt top that I designed for my granddaughter, Lilah.  When I saw the fabric with the mermaids on it in the quilt shop it made me think of Lilah, because she loves water so much. 

I've been wanting to do a simple quilt like this for some time now.  The idea was to use a large piece of fabric on top, a smaller cut of fabric on the bottom, and then have a single row of pieced blocks in between the two.  I decided to go with the snail's trail block because it reminds me of an ocean wave (and the symbol for a hurricane, actually).  I like the way that the spiraling effect of the snail's trail block makes it look like the fabric from the top, bottom, and sides are being pulled in like a whirlpool. 

I just wish that I had made the border just a couple of inches wider.  I felt like 48 inches by 58 inches was a good size for a sofa throw, but I think I would have liked the look of a 6 inch border better than the look of the 4 inch border.  And 52 x 62 would have worked just as well.  I'll keep that in mind if I do one again in the future.

Guild Mystery Quilt - Sisters Ten Sampler quilt

Here is my mystery quilt top all put together by the instructions we were given.  It is the Sisters Ten Sampler quilt.  I actually knew what it was going to look like from the beginning, and I thought I would be okay with it, but it turns out that I really don't like it now that it's done.  It looks fine in pictures, but in person there is too much blank space for a quilt of this size.  When you lay it on a bed, almost all the piecing hangs off the edges or would be under the pillows.

As you can see in this picture, the blocks on the top row would be under the pillows, and the cat almost covers the ones that would be visible on top of the bed in that section.  The angle of the camera doesn't show much of the blocks at the bottom, but again it would just be three with the others hanging off.  It leaves A LOT of blank space on the top of the bed.  Not really my idea of a successful quilt design.

My plan is to show it to the group "as is" and then reuse the blocks in a different configuration for my final quilt.  I really hate the idea of spending almost a whole year on a quilt that I'm then not happy with and have no use for.