Grey fabric & Hand Quilting

I have seen so many quilts with gray fabric as the neutral, and I love it!  I found several lovely grey fabrics while shopping at Hollyhill Quilt Shoppe.

Mmmm... now to pair them with my stash and make a gorgeous quilt.

Another wonderful thing to do is hand quilting, using Perl 8 thread.  I picked up several colors of blue and green.  I plan on hand quilting my Single Girl quilt using these threads.  It's going to be delicious.

Wish me luck ;)

Stella Blue Friday

Only one more border to go...

Last week, I had to miss my Portland Quilt Guild meeting, which made me so sad.  I had a nasty head cold I was just getting over, and thought it’d be rude to share it with my friends.  So, instead of attending the meeting, I sewed.  I worked on Stella Blue again! 

Since I added a 1” border around the top, I had to change the flying geese border a bit.  After some fudging, and making the corner block a bit different, I made it all work.  I think it looks okay, but I am not taking it out!

So, now all that is left is the big blue 5” border.  I will hopefully get that on this week.

In other fun news, I was reading Ladies Home Journal, February 2012, and came across an article about the Modern Quilt Guild, and how quilting is fun and hip, haha!  I loved seeing the article, how cute is Latifah??

A Quilt for Stacy

My friend Stacy is due to have a baby at the end of February, and her friend and I hosted a baby shower for her on Saturday.  She is having a girl *yay!!* and we are all really excited for her.

I decided to make her a bright and happy baby quilt.  I had fun going through my stash to find the perfect fabric.  I used a pattern from the magazine Quilt Sampler, Summer 2011.  To make a baby quilt, I just used less blocks.  I really liked this pattern, it went together easily and looks nice too.

I used an aqua dot flannel for the backing, and bound it with more dots, one can never have too many polk-a-dots!

The sea is calling me...

I started a new quilt!  I know, bug surprise huh??  When I went to the Sisters Quilt Show in July of last year with all of my girlfriends, we stopped at The Stitchin' Post in Sisters and went shopping.  I walked out with this lovely stack of shot cottons and cross weaves for a quilt from the book City Quilts.  This quilt reminds me of the sea, the colors are so soothing.

I finally started cutting into them, and I am in love.

I have never made a quilt out of all solids before, so this is a lot of fun!

Stella Blue Friday

I am glad to hear some of you are interested in how the glue works for sewing curved seams!  I’ll be putting a post together for that soon, so be on the lookout okay?

Stella Blue has been on my table all week, and she is becoming quite pretty.  First of all, I had a successful shopping trip to Hollyhill Quilt Shoppe last Saturday.  They still had some Rural Jardin fabric, but I kind of wanted something different for the borders.  I knew that Etchings by Moda would match quite well, and knew they had that line in too.  I totally scored!  One of the ladies who works there helped me choose my border fabrics.  She convinced me to go with a skinny RED border first.  Remember, I was thinking blue?  Well, she was right (along with some of you who left comments)… red just looked great.  I then chose a nice aqua blue for the large 5” border I’ll put on the outside.  And the red with the beautiful script on it will be the binding. 

I sewed on my first 1” red border, and so far so good right?  I am working on sewing the flying geese border now. 

I would say it was a successful sewing week!  Hopefully I can get another border or two sewn on this week.

The pattern for this quilt is called Stella Blue, by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company, fabrics used are Rural Jardin by Moda and Etchings by Moda.  Dianne over at Suburban Stitcher is also making this quilt, so be sure and stop by her blog to say hello!

Tackling scary sewing projects

In my quest to be a better quilter, I started the Single Girl quilt last spring.  There were a bunch of people doing a sew along, and I figured I'd jump in because I loved the pattern, and I'd have lots of help and ideas with curved seams.

I started off full steam ahead, got lots of piecing done, and then slammed into a wall when it came time to actually sew the curved pieces together.  I didn't like all of the pinning, holy cow!  I got poked like crazy... and I didn't like how it would never lay flat for me.

I put the project away, and pulled out a whole lot of other ones to distract me from the scary curved seams.  A few months went by and I attended a Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting where one of the 10 minute tutorials was about glue basting a curved seam, so that way you don't have to use pins.  I left the meeting excited about the idea, and bought the glue... and still the project sat.

Finally 2012 rolls around, I am bound and determined to finish my pile of WIP quilts, and come across the Single Girl quilt.  I pick up where I left off, curved seams.  I start using the glue, just like I was taught, and guess what... it worked.  Like, it worked so well, I made a whole bunch of them!!

And so, I will continue the Single Girl quilt because I busted down that wall!  Woohoo!!  Let's keep up the motivation shall we?? Please??? :)  What quilting projects have you stalled out on, and what did you do to leap over the hurdle and continue on?

Stella Blue Friday

I have been really sporadic in working on Stella Blue.  This quilt is pretty tedious as far as piecing goes, so I have taken my time on it, and made sure I have done it right.  Usually I just breeze through instructions and throw a quilt top  together, but not on this one!

I have pieced most of the top together this week.  The top still needs a border that consists of flying geese.  Thankfully they are all sewn, but I have some plans.

First of all, I’d love to have the quilt on my bed, and it will need to be a bit bigger to look right.  I am thinking I’ll do a really skinny border between the quilt top and flying geese border.

At first I had a really strong red there, but decided I didn’t like it.  I am trying to keep this quilt “quiet”.  Red really can take over a color scheme. So, I am leaning towards one of the darker blues now. 

So, a skinny 1” blue border, the flying geese border, and then a 5” border.  I don’t know what fabric to pick for the big 5” border.  I am going to use the dark red for the binding, that will be a good pop of color. I am making a trip out to Hollyhill Quilt Shoppe on Saturday to decide.  They have a lot to choose from.

The fabrics I’ve used to make this quilt are called Rural Jardin by The French General for Moda.  I love them, they are so soft and calming.  And there is aqua!  I can’t stop buying aqua things lately…

Please be sure to visit Dianne’s blog: Suburban Stitcher.  She is making an amazing Stella Blue as well!  Our fabrics are so different, it’s giving them each a great look!  I love the comparison don’t you?

Heather the Elf is retired until next October

Remember that tote bag I made over the summer?  The tutorial is by Noodlehead, and it is such a great bag, I use it all of the time.  I liked it so much, I made 8 more!  I thought they’d be perfect gifts.

I have had some home dec weight fabrics in my stash for quite awhile (5 years??) and it was begging to be used.  It takes a ½  yard for the outside body and a ½ yard for the inside, so it is a great stash buster.  I think it’d look great in those big floral prints!

And another fun thing I made are keychain clips.  My BFF Becky made one for me and I love it!  I decided everybody I know needed one too.  I found the clips at Joann.  They sell them by the handbag hardware.  They even had them in several colors.  I used this amazing tutorial.  You guys should all go make them, they are great!

I've cleaned my sewing table off, organized my fabric, and have a game plan for this month.  It feels good to start some new projects!  What are you working on right now?