I am so excited about this quilt! A good friend of mine is having a baby boy in a few months. Today is the baby shower, but I had pretty much resigned myself to not having a chance to get anything made in time. Yesterday though, I decided to challenge myself and try to make a quilt in a day. Or a day and a half to be exact.

Months ago I was inspired by this quilt by Jolene, and I knew this was the perfect design. For those that have never made a wonky star – here’s a tutorial.

So I spent the last 30 hours (ok, really probably 12 in total) cutting and piecing, trimming and basting, quilting and binding. Those of you that follow me on Twitter got to watch the whole process unfold.

I will be honest, by the end of last night, I was pretty sick of making stars. But I really love the end result. This quilt is for a boy, but really I think these are pretty gender neutral colors. The star blocks are 7.5″ finished, the final quilt measuring 37.5″ square.

Initially I was going to do straight line quilting, but I changed my mind at the last moment and did little free motion loop-de-loops. I’ve never quilted like this before, but I enjoyed the process and the result.

The binding is an adorable stripe from the Sarah Jane’s Children at Play line. Such classics. I can’t wait to wrap this present up…which I should probably do right now!

Really quick…if you didn’t catch my post over the weekend, this afternoon I am going to be on Pat Sloan’s American Patchwork and Quilting radio show! Read Saturday’s post to see the details – I hope you all will tune in!

So, yeaaaa! I finally finished my Echo quilt! I loved Lotta Jansdotter’s Echo fabric from the moment I saw it. It matches my family room perfectly and I knew I wanted to make something with most of the line. I decided on log cabin blocks, set on point.

I took the quilt to my favorite local barn for pictures, isn’t it pretty?

I quilted this in a meandering free motion style and it measures 58″ x 68″. For the back, I used some blocks of white, Kona Ash, and one of the larger scale Echo prints.

And now for the reason this quilt took me longer to post…I developed a new pattern for it!

The pattern includes lots of detail – cutting diagrams, assembly diagrams, quilt top assembly diagrams. If you’ve never put quilt blocks on point, there are directions that you can use with any blocks. I hope you will check it out! It is available for instant download in my quilt pattern shop. It’s also available in my Etsy store and Craftsy pattern shop.

Last week I finished my Modern Whimsy quilt, and I am very pleased with how it turned out! When choosing a design this time, I turned to my collection of quilt books and ended up using a pattern (sort of) in the book Fresh Quilting: Fearless Color, Design, and Inspirationby Malka Dubrawsky. This is the quilt from the pattern. I say I “sort of” followed the pattern because rather than using the actual measurements, I just made up my own based on the width of the solid fabrics I had and also the size of one of my quilting rulers. {Lazy much?} This meant the solid fabrics I used were cut 2.5″ x 17″ and the printed fabrics were cut to 6″ x 17″.

There were a couple things that drew me to Malka’s pattern. First was the fact that the resulting quilt appeared random and scrappy, but if you look at the solid fabrics, they are actually a pattern. In each column, the top 3 solid strips are the same color, the next 2 are the same color, and then the bottom 4 are the same color.

When I was laying out the Modern Whimsy prints, I made sure not to place a print with a non-white background between 2 solids that matched. For example, if the printed fabric had a blue background, I did not place it between blue solids. This ensured the fabric would really pop and not get lost in the quilt.

This quilt went together extremely quickly. I cut it in one evening and assembled the top the next morning. I think it has a pretty nice “wow” factor for a short timeframe.

For the back, I used some leftover prints and solids and made a strip through the top of the quilt. I quilted in a meandering free motion style. The binding is scrappy, using all of the colors of the Modern Whimsy circles. I really love how that part turned out, especially from the back. It measures 62″ x 49″.

I’m very excited about the destination for this quilt. I have a group of friends that started in an online message group 6 years ago. We met when we were all pregnant with our now 5 year olds. Over the last 6 years, the group has become a little smaller and moved locations, but there are still quite a few of us together. A lot of us have met each other in real life through vacations or just the fact that we happen to live in the same cities. It would be impossible to tell you how special this group is to me. We have been through a lot together – from siblings being born, to losing children, love, divorce, career changes, illness…even losing two of our own to cancer.

I tell you all this so you know how important this group of women and their families are to me, and how lucky I am to have the chance to help one of these moms and her son with a quilt. One of our moms (a fellow Chicagoan) has a little boy who was born 5 years ago extremely premature. He has cerebral palsy and receives therapy at Center for Independence, Through Conductive Education. It is an intense therapy program for children with Cerebral Palsy. The center has made unbelievable progress with my friend’s son – he has even started a bit of walking with a reverse walker, something they were told he would never be able to do. And the best part is that they do not turn anyone down because if an inability to pay.

This quilt is being donated to the Center for Independence for an annual auction fundraiser on March 2nd. I hope it helps raise a bit of money for an organization that has given so much hope to someone I love.

First, I just want to thank everyone for your kind comments on my “A Million Thanks” post! You all are seriously making me blush and I am looking forward to coming up with new ideas for tutorials and quilt alongs for everyone! It’s going to be a great year I think.

And I’m happy to share my first quilt of this new year, Morning Tides. Designer Mark Cesarik sent me a bit of his fabric collection last month and I knew right away that I wanted to make improv blocks with it.

I incorporated a few shades of tan and some white into the blocks. They are all a bit different in size. I sashed them in white then to make the center of the quilt.

I can’t take credit for the idea of off-centering the main focus of the quilt. Heather did this last year and I loved it! So I added a border of purple, wider on the right and bottom sides. I also added in a bit more of the Morning Tides fabric for added interest. The purple is FreeSpirit Designer Solids Lavender and it is a perfect match.

I quilted the blocks and white portion of the quilt in a meandering, free motion style. Then I quilted the purple border with straight lines, spaced about every 3/4″.

I went out yesterday in the freezing cold to try to get some photos with my camera’s remote. I was laughing at some of the photos when I got home. “Is this thing working??”

And then half the photos were like this – sideways! Oh well, live and learn!