Category — Pattern

I have been waiting to share this quilt with you for months…8 months to be exact! When editing my photos for this post last night, I noted the datestamp on my quilt photo was August 6, 2012. I can’t believe it’s been that long! I remember bringing my fabric and sewing machine on summer vacation last year, working to finish this quilt up.

Last Spring, Fons & Porter asked if I was interested in designing a quilt for a future issue, similar to the “style” of my Cutting Edge quilt which had been displayed at Spring Quilt Market. Well, that was a no brainer for me – of course I would! I was lucky enough to work again with the wonderful designer solids by Free Spirit.

Well, all these months later, I am excited to share with you that my quilt is in the now-available May/June 2013 issue of Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting. You can even buy a kit of my quilt, how cool is that!

This quilt measures 60″ x 72″ and the stars are all paper pieced for perfect accuracy. I quilted mine with a nice meandering design all over. I just love the solids and stars, the colors…I can’t wait to get it back in the mail!

Fabrics used in this quilt: Free Spirit Designer Solids in Lemon, Peach Blush, Chartreuse, Caribbean Sea, Light Jade, Jade, Sand Dune, Dogwood, Dark Coral, Flamingo, Winter White.

I thought it would be fun to share with you my original mock up for the quilt when I was in the design phase. (I do most of my design work in Photoshop).

I think the finished quilt is pretty close to the mockup.

And in weekend news, I’ll be speaking this Sunday (4/21) at 2:00 at the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild. They meet at St. Peter’s Church at 500 Hannah, Forest Park, IL. Just a little talk about my journey through quilting, my style, what inspires me, my design process. Hopefully people will find it interesting. I always enjoy enthusiastic nodders, so if you go, you know, nod along. lol I’ll also be bringing my newly finished Arkansas Traveler Quilt to share, which I haven’t posted here yet. Is that any motivation?

Visitors just have to pay $5, so I hope you will stop by!

Welcome to my stop on Green Bee Design’s His and Hers microMod Sew Along! MicroMod is the premier fabric line from Cloud9 Fabrics designer Rob Bancroft. Also husband of designer and author Alexia Abegg – that’s one talented couple!

Today I’m going to share some cloth, appliqué napkins. These are a fun project that would be great not only for your home, but also as a housewarming or host/hostess gift for a friend.

In the spirit of setting a pretty table at meal time, I asked Rob and Alexia what sort of food they would cook the other for a special occasion.

Alexia: I love to cook and try new things, and thankfully so does Rob. But for a sweet surprise meal I think I would go with his favorites; I would make caesar salad, homemade gnocchi with a brown butter sauce, and then his favorite dessert, cheesecake.

Rob: Though this meal doesn’t necessarily promote amorous affection (high levels of garlic), I love to make and surprise Alexia with chicken piccata, sauteed spinach and garlic mashed potatoes, neatly plated and served on a restaurant inspired table setting, white table cloth and cloth napkins included.

I really love chicken piccata, so that made me hungry!

To make these napkins, all you need is a set of store bought cloth napkins (I bought a 4 pack of linen/cotton blend ones at Target for about $8.00), Heat n Bond Lite, and your favorite fabrics.

I decided to appliqué different designs onto the corner of each napkin. I simply applied the Heat n Bond Lite to the back of the fabric scraps (per the manufactures instructions), cut out my shapes, and then ironed them onto the napkins.

I wanted to keep my edges pretty raw, as I think a little fraying as they wash will give these a great look. So I sewed with a straight stitch a couple of times around each fabric shape. If you don’t like the frayed look, you could use a tighter zigzag stitch to finish your appliqué.

Don’t forget when sewing along with microMod, be sure to tag your photos with #microMod on Instagram. You can also post your pictures on the Green Bee Patterns Facebook page or add them to the microMod Flickr group.

And now for the giveaway! How would you like to win a full Fat Quarter bundle of microMod? Simply leave a comment and I will pick a winner on Friday, April 19th.

There are also prizes at the other Sew Along stops. And, for a grand finale, a huge prize package back at Alexia’s blog at the end of the hop: A fat quarter stack of microMod by Rob Bancroft from Cloud9 fabrics, the entire Green Bee Patterns collection, a microMod sewing bag, and a Singer Heavy Duty Sewing Machine! (Open to contiguous US residents only.) So be sure to follow and sew along.

April 2 – Alexia & Rob at Green Bee
April 3 – Kelly at Kelbysews
April 5 – Amanda at the Craft Junky
April 6 – Rachael at Imagine Gnats
April 8 – Heather at alamode
April 10 – Holly at Bijou lovely
April 13 – Alexia, Michelle & Rob Green Bee
April 17 – Me!
April 18 – Katie at Swim Bike Quilt
April 19 – Deborah at Whipstitch
April 20 – Jacey at Jaceycraft
April 24 – Jenny at the Southern Institute
April 25 – Amy from sukie don’t ya know
April 26 – Jen from Betty Crocker Ass
April 27 – Sara from Sew Sweetness
April 28 – Krista at Krista Withers Quilting
April 29 – Katy from I’m a Ginger Monkey
April 30 – Amber from One Shabby Chick
May 1 – Alexia & Rob Green Bee GRAND PRIZE

Happy sewing everyone!

++ Closing Comments to Pick a Winner! ++

The lucky winner is #113, Brynn! Congratulations and I will be contacting you for your address. Thank you everyone for entering and remember to continue keeping up with the microMod Sew Along.

Last week I received a very fun package in the mail compliments of Andover Fabrics ~ Full Moon Lagoon by designer Mo Beddell. I have been so excited about this line ever since the little promotion logo thingy popped up on Pinterest (which I guess was 29 weeks ago!). If I could pick my favorite colors for one fabric line, these would be them.

Great bold designs…

Must-have blenders as well…

When the fabric arrived, I knew I wanted to use it to make a baby quilt. I spent a bit of time flipping through one of my favorite quilt block references, Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia Of Pieced Quilt Patterns. I’m so bummed this book is out of print now. You can still get used copies, but they are pricey. That said, I use the book all the time. You can see my original post about it here.

I selected a classic block that has historically had many names: Octagons, The Windmill, Will of the Wisp, and Kaleidoscope.

I’m using a variety of low volume prints for the background.

As you can see, I stained our deck between the first block photo and the second one. Although I like the color for my deck, I’m not sure about it for quilt block pictures. These are the things a quilt blogger obsesses about I guess?

I am paper piecing these blocks and thanks to chain piecing, I’m making swift progress. I can’t wait to share the top next week!

You can find Full Moon Lagoon arriving in stores now, currently in stock at:

Happy sewing everyone!

This post is going to be all over the place. But that’s not always a bad thing, right? I’ve been busy sewing over the last couple of weeks. Not really finishing anything but making good progress.

First up, my Arkansas Traveler quilt. After lots of cutting, sewing diamonds, paper piecing those diamonds, trimming, trimming and trimming, I have 96+ blocks! It really feels like a huge milestone.

You can find a tutorial to make this block on Lee of Freshly Pieced’s site. Those of you with an eagle eye might notice my template is a little different than the one from the Summer Sampler Series. I’m trying out something new Lee came up with, less seams, but maybe a little trickier to assemble the final block, depending on how you feel about sewing together shapes other than squares.

I know I said I wasn’t going to share my final design until I was done. I guess I lied. Here’s the plan! This weekend/next week I’m hoping to finish the quilt top assembly.

As a bit of a personal reward for finishing all those components, I cut into the little pack of Liberty of London Lifestyle fabric I picked up at Quilt Con.

I knew I wanted to pair it with some Essex Linen in Natural. I thought it would look super cute as one of Anna’s Open Wide Pouches. Great pattern, as usual! I made the smallest size because I only had a 10″ zipper on hand. (I bought my metal zipper from Zip It on Etsy.)

The inside is Stamped by Ellen Luckett Baker for Kokka.

This week I also performed a little surgery on my local Modern Quilt Guild challenge quilt top. You can read up on the sadness of unmatching white fabric here.

I finished the top yesterday (happy dance!) and will share the finished quilt next week. That is a promise – it’s due Thursday!

I also have been lucky enough to receive some new fabric in the mail this week.

Windham was kind enough to send some of Lotta Jansdotter’s Glimma Canvas for me to check out. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with canvas so I’m pretty excited to try something out. They also sent a charm pack of Ride, Julia Rothman’s second collection. I seriously love the little bicycle wheels. My son has already claimed this for his own, so I’m thinking of using it in some way to make him a tote bag for the library.

I also had a very happy surprise from Moda Fabrics – three layer cakes of upcoming collections.

These are S’More Love by Eric and Julie Comstock, Simply Style by Vanessa of V and Co, and Honeysweet by Fig Tree & Co. (Seriously, I don’t know how I got so lucky!)

I decided to immediately cut into Vanessa’s fabric because, well, I think she’s pretty fun. I found a block in 163 Favorite Patchwork Patterns : Japanese Craft Book, an awesome book I purchased a few months ago from The Workroom in Canada.

I had some questions on Instagram about this book. It is all in Japanese. There are diagrams that help give ideas about block assembly, but there are no directions or sizes in English. If you like a challenge and are good at figuring things out, this is the book for you. I do, and really, what do you have to lose except a little bit of fabric? Keeps my old mind sharp.

So anyway, I picked this cool design…

And started to layout a couple blocks…

And then something funny happened. I made these up at pretty much the exact same time Lee was writing up her post to announce her planned Bloom Bloom Pow Quilt Along with a very similar block! Yesterday morning we had a good laugh about how we must be totally on the save wave length after writing the book together. So! If you like the block, are interested in making the block, you are in luck because Lee’s about to start her quilt along and will have tutorials for you. Her block just has some great additional shading.

Phew! I hope some of you made it through all that! Next week is Spring Break here. (As I ignore the -4 degree wind chill and snow outside…) I’m not really sure if that means I’ll get more sewing done (not driving the kids all over the place) or less (more play time with the kids!). We’ll see. My newly 4 year old wants to put on a kid art show in the house, so we have big crafting plans. Very exciting! Have a great weekend everyone!