Category — Blocks

I finished my Quilt Camp Poinsettia Pillow last week! This pillow (or mini quilt if you’d like) is the project I’m teaching at Quilt Camp in December. The individual block is a design by Nancy Cabot (1937) called Miller’s Daughter. I shrunk the block down in size, pieced 4 and added a border to make an 18″ pillow.

I quilted this pillow with straight lines, 1/4″ on each side of the diagonal seams (and beyond into the sashing). The fabric is mostly Denyse Schmidt’s latest line Chicopee which I’m officially in love with.

I also worked in a bit of her lines for JoAnns Fabric and a print from Anna Maria Horner’s discontinued line Good Folks. (I needed some green.) The neutrals are Art Gallery Fabrics Linen White and Free Spirit Design Solid Sand Dune.

The back of the pillow is a simple envelope enclosure. I bound my pillow just like I would a quilt, so I can either use it on my couch, or hang it on my wall as a mini quilt.

At my class in Quilt Camp, we will work on paper piecing the corners of each of these blocks and then piecing together the rest of the block. It is a great project for those that are new to paper piecing and/or want tips on precision piecing and getting everything to line up just right. There are still some spaces left for Quilt Camp. Check out my post from a few days ago for all the details and the link to sign up!

We are running a bit behind on the Traveling Quilts Bee, but I am happy to have Round Four to share with you today! For this month, I worked on Monica of The Happy Zombie‘s block. I love everything Monica does, so you know, no pressure!

Monica started her quilt with this section – the house, surrounding star and perfect embroidery. Dan added the Flying Geese, Penny added the undies (can’t forget those on your travels! Also a little birdie told me these might be coming out as a pattern in her Sew-Ichigo shop later!) and Jacquie added the HZTV (Happy Zombie TV) section.

I decided to carry on with the “Travels” theme and add an airplane! I used Rashida‘s latest tutorial for the Art Gallery Fat Quarter Gang, Fly With Me. My only issue was I didn’t check my scale when I printed it, so everything printed a bit smaller than it was supposed to. It just involved a little extra trimming to make seams match, but wasn’t a serious issue.

I picked a rainbow of colors to coordinate with Monica’s original block. (I switched out the purple at the last minute). I included some prints from Violet Craft’s Madrona Road because I knew Monica and Violet were friends and thought she would like seeing some of that fabric in her quilt. The plane is a black and white text print from my local quilt shop.

I hope you enjoy your new block Monica! This quilt is now with Ashley where I’m sure she will add something amazing.

A few weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and cut into the Liberty of London fabrics I bought 2 years ago. (Well, start planning the cutting anyway.) Sometimes I don’t know why I buy “fancy” fabric because I just get some sort of fabric-paralysis and become too scared to use it. Two years of waiting was long enough.

Voiles from top to bottom: Fuchsia, Rose Pink, Coral, Gold, Yellow, Cilantro, Green, Water, Seafoam, Heather, Purple, Sky

I thought if I was going to use these lovelies, I needed something soft and silky to go with them. I bought a variety of Free Spirit voile fabrics. I love voile…but it does pose some challenges. It is a bit slippery to work with, so I just pin more and try to pay extra attention when piecing. I purchased these from Hawthorne Threads. Pink Castle Fabrics also has some voile solids available.

They looks so pretty together.

I have started some paper piecing…future pattern maybe?

Can’t wait to show you more soon!

Updated to add some works in progress from today.

Piece, Piece.

Trim, Trim.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to spend the weekend in Michigan’s upper peninsula, sewing and hanging out with Holly, Jeni and Lee (Holly lives up there). I was joking that I was happy they invited me to their Janome Horizon club meeting because they all had matching sewing machines except me!

The drive up from Chicago was about 5-1/2 hours, but having the car to myself, perfect weather, and beautiful scenery made it not so bad.

Jeni and Holly did some fabric dying and everything turned out great. Lee and I did mostly sewing and I was VERY excited to finish the twin quilt top for my daughter’s bed, which focuses on Sarah Jane’s Children at Play fabrics.

Holly’s parents own an awesome BBQ restaurant in town called The White House.

I seriously cannot resist pulled pork and baked beans.

Here I am hanging out in the front with some of the presidents that were carved out of a giant log.

I am so thankful to have such great sewing and blogging friends in the midwest. These get togethers are always so fun and really refresh me.

Now that I’m back home, tonight is the first Naperville Modern Quilt Guild meeting. For those in the Chicago western suburbs, I hope you will come! I don’t really know anything about it yet, but I will be there.

Onto the housekeeping. I know many of you have signed up to be notified by email when there is a new post on my blog. I’m running into a technical issue where I have more subscribers than I’m allowed to send out emails. I’m working on tweaking various settings to try to fix the problem, but really I can’t test it except for when I make a blog post. Sooooo, hopefully I will get it resolved soon but I just can’t say when. In the meantime, if you aren’t getting emails, you can still keep up with my latest posts on Facebook and Google Reader by adding the RSS feed.