Sampler Quilt Finished

I was able to finish this quilt on Thursday afternoon, right on time to bring it to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild for show and tell.  From what I can find on my blog, I started teaching this class at my church for learning quilt blocks in 2010.  This lovely quilt sat unfinished in one of my bins for a few years, isn't that just sad??

It was a dark, rainy day today, so I couldn't get the colors quite right in the photos!  It's a very bright and happy quilt :)

I had most of the quilt top pieced and it took me about 15 minutes to finish it.... so silly of me to hide it away like that.

I did a meandering loop-de-loop pattern on it using white thread.

I had two blocks leftover, so I pieced them into a back, using up some of my stash!

I love a finished quilt!

P.S. it's for sale in my Etsy shop!

Now go and bust out one of your old projects and finish it up!

WIP Wednesday

I've finally found my mojo again, and have been sewing more.  We went on a few vacations in January and it set me back for awhile.  One of my goals this year is to finish up some quilts that have been languishing in my box under my sewing table.  One of them is this sampler quilt.  I taught a basic quilting class a few years ago at my church, and these blocks were just waiting.  I had some of them sewn together in rows, so I finished that up in about 10 minutes, and pieced a back out of my stash.

I managed to get it quilted this week!  I have the binding ready to be sewn down now.

Next up, I started a new cross stitch.  This one is again from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery, called Woodland Sampler.  Every month this year you get to add to the sampler, some sort of woodland creature.  I'm ready for March now!

My friend contacted me about quilting a baby quilt for her.  I really enjoyed this one!  I did stippling in the colored parts, and straight line quilting in the dark blue.  Isn't that a cute quilt?

My daughter's friend held up this quilt for me to take a picture.  Do you notice her socks?  The kids love wearing mis-matched socks, this cracks me up!

For the sewing group I am in, we are all making each other blocks to make a quilt.  This month is my turn!  Everybody is making a swoon block for me (I am soooo excited about this quilt!)  I made one block, using my favorite fabrics, Tula Pink!!  Every block will be aqua and dark blue, with this adorable dotty background.  

And finally one more, I went to Fabric Depot last week and had to come home with a stack of the new fabric line called Posy, by Aneela Hoey.  It's just the cutest thing I've ever seen!  I started a quilt already with it, here is the first block, I can't wait to keep working on this one.

Linking up with Freshly Pieced

Half Square Triangles

I was able to finish another quilt this week.  This one is made up of all half square triangles.  I used the method by the Missouri Star Quilt Company to cut them up.  You can see the video below.

My friend Christina at The Sometimes Crafter came up with a bunch of measurements for everybody to use if they want to try this method, on Whipup!  I refer to her post all of the time, it's so nice when somebody else does the math for you right??

My original idea for these half square triangles was to use a herringbone layout.  However, my fabrics were all of the same values and the pattern got lost because of the fabrics.

While I was at sewing night with my friends, Jenn helped me come up with a better layout for the blocks.  We went with a barn raising layout, and I love it!

The colors I used were inspired by the Pacific Northwest winters.  Gray, muted colors.  I am really happy with how this turned out.  It's a baby size quilt, and I put it up for sale in my Etsy Shop.

I used a herringbone print for the backing, since I couldn't get that pattern to work on the front LOL!  Next time I try the herringbone layout, my fabrics will have a lot more contrast.  Have a great weekend everybody!

The Avengers Quilt!

My friend Becky took our family photos for us this past fall.  In payment for her wonderful photographs of all of us smiling and happy, she asked me to make her a quilt for her sons' bed.

She wanted a full size quilt, using Avengers fabric.  I took me awhile to find some that was awesome enough to use.  I found this fabric in a quilt shop in Anacortes, Washington.

It took me awhile to get my head wrapped around using superhero fabric, it's a change from my usual style, and it was good for me to break out of the norm for a bit.  The pattern I used was derived from a Fat Quarterly post I found online.  It's a great pattern for this fabric!

Now that I'm done, I no longer have the Hulk glaring at me... what a relief LOL!

Winter Wonderland Sampler

Can you believe it, I've been cross stitching regularly for the past few months!  I picked up the Kawaii Winter Wonderland Sampler over at the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.  I really enjoyed this one, it's silly and adorable.  Also, it is a very easy cross stitch.

I think the little owl is my favorite one, or maybe the yeti?  I can't decide they all are too cute!  There was some krienek gold thread used in this, and that adds a nice sparkle to it.

I took this everywhere!  My son is in Taekwondo 2-4 times a week, so I stitched most of it watching him do that.   I took it on vacation with us to Hawaii and stitched on a beach chair.  I took it to Colorado to hang out with my sister.  I have a lot of great memories when I look at it.  I think I'm going to frame it to hang at Christmas.

My next cross stitch project is the Woodland Sampler from the same company, the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.  It has cute deer and a raccoon so far, it's a monthly sampler!  It will be fun to work on this year.  My heart is mostly devoted to quilting, but I just have to stitch something.

Polar Bear Skin Rug

There is so much to write about.  I'll start with Christmas 2012.  My husband is in the middle of building an old car, a 1967 Camaro and there is a car parts store over by Fabric Depot.  He asked if I wanted to go with him to the parts store, then we could stop at Fabric Depot, I jumped right in the car!

Well, we walked in and separated, about 30 minutes later he told me he had bought a bunch of white fur and wanted us to make Jessie (our 10 year old) a polar bear rug for Christmas.  Oh man.  If you guys know my husband, he loves to make crazy things!!

So, here we are, letting the fuzzy fur fly all over the house.  I had to make this while she was at school, and hide it when she got home.  Mark eyeballed the shape of the bear and drew on the backside of the fabric with a pencil and then mirrored the image on the other side. We had to cut out the head and hand sew it on.  This fur was so thick, there was no way it'd go through the sewing machine.

We bought blue and white felt at JoAnn's it was really wide, so I was able to use one big piece.  I hand stitched the bear to the blue felt along the edge.  I also used fabric glue to help hold it all together.  It took several hours to hand stitch it down, I wanted to be sure it wouldn't come apart.  After I hand stitched it, I ran a line of fabric glue along the edge all of the way around so the fur would really stay down!  Also I used my pinking shears to cut around the blue felt, and then I machine sewed the white felt to the blue felt, so all of the stitches would be hidden.... again I used more fabric glue too.

Here we are Christmas Eve sewing it all together! (see the pinked edges?)

Jessie loves it!  She keeps it on her bedroom floor and plays on it.  I am so glad :)  All of that hard work was worth it.

I brought the bear rug to my Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting in January!  It was a hit. 

I borrowed these two pictures from the PMQG blog.  The bear kept some of us warm during the meeting.

So the lesson I learned from all of this??  Don't take your husband to Fabric Depot!!!