I had big plans to post this quilt yesterday and wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day – but some sort of stomach bug had even bigger plans at our house. Luckily my husband was spared and took great care of us and the house, and now everyone is feeling a bit better. (Kids sure bounce back faster than adults!)

I’m pretty pleased with out my little low volume quilt turned out. As I mentioned earlier this week, I used the “Inside Voices” fabric bundle, sent to me by Amanda at Westwood Acres. I just checked and I see they are out of the bundle, but keep an eye on their shop, they were so popular that I’m sure there will be new bundles in the future!

I decided to feature bold pops of red and pink with the quieter neutral prints in the quilt. I think this is a fun way to draw attention to a single color family or range. I chose my colors in honor of Valentine’s Day this week.

All my cut pieces were 3.5″ wide. The lengths varied from 3″ to 4.5″. The finished quilt measures around 44″ x 45″. It was fairly easy to assemble – simply sew the fabric into strips/columns and then sew those together to make the top. I didn’t pin my strips together when sewing them to form the top and I regret that. I ended up with some drifting and a not perfectly square top that gave me fits. Sigh, live and learn.

The backing is a dot from Tanya Whelan’s Delilah Fabric. The binding is a fabric called Running Stitch by Patty Young’s Lush collection. I quilted this one free motion with little loops all over. I do love the finished product, and the size is perfect for a baby quilt.

Next up – basting a quilt I finished for my son. Not sure if I have the energy to make it to the sewing room today, but hopefully this weekend!

Low volume sewing is pretty hot right now. For me, one of the biggest challenges is finding low volume prints in my stash. It’s probably pretty obvious that I tend to be attracted to color saturated prints. Amanda from Westwood Acres sells a low volume bundle in her shop on Etsy. She cleverly named it “Inside Voices”, I love that! Amanda asked if I wanted to play around with one of the bundles, and I thought it would be a great way to jump right into the low volume trend.

I was throwing around a few options for this bundle. I was this close to pairing it with some other prints and making a zigzag quilt using this technique by AmandaJean of Crazy Mom Quilts. In the end, I started thinking about my Stepping Stones quilt. I decided to make something using the same basic construction. Columns of fabric that are equal in width, but various lengths. These pieces are from 3″ to 4.5″ long and 3.5″ wide.

I laid it all out Saturday morning. Went to lunch with the family. Came home to this.

“Who me??” Does anyone else have a dog that likes to roll all over your projects. It’s a good thing he’s so cute.

I’m hoping to have this little baby quilt finished up by Valentine’s Day. Can wait to share it with you!

Last week I finished my latest round of The Traveling Quilts Bee. This iteration, I had Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson’s quilt. No pressure, right?

Elizabeth’s quilt is 80′s themed. She found some really, really bright fabrics to send along with the quilt. I’m talking neon! This is how the quilt looked when I received it.

So many people had already added amazing things to the quilt. Check out the Pac Man by Monica! Genius.

I was going back and forth on a few ideas. MTV logo, Cindy Lauper silhouette. In the end, I’m not that good of a sewist for those. But I knew I could do a Rubik cube! I did a little searching on Google Images and found a nice Rubik graphic. I opened it up in Photoshop and traced the lines to come up with a bit of a paper piecing template.

I printed the image out and cut it into sections based on each side of the Rubik Cube. Then I cut those sides into strips and paper pieced each strip.

Once I had the strips sewn together to form each side, I pieced them together as I would any Y-Seam. That was a little trickier than anything I’ve done, as I not only had to line up the y-seam, but also the seams of the color squares on the Rubik Cube.

Elizabeth’s quilt also uses some black and white prints. I dug around in my stash and found this older Seagull print (Alexander Henry I think?). Since this is an 80′s themed quilt, I thought it was a bit clever and reminded me of the band Flock of Seagulls. Hopefully you don’t hate the band Elizabeth!

I’ve mailed the quilt on to Ashley and am excited to see what she adds!

I finished my Glimma quilt just a couple of hours ago and I am pretty proud of myself for braving the frigid cold outside to get pictures! It helped that my car has heated seats. And I think it’s actually 20 degrees which feels like a heatwave after the sub-zeros from the last two days!

I’ve decided to call this quilt “This Way, That Way”. I love the effect of the flying geese going in all the different directions.

As I mentioned here and here, Windham Fabrics sent me a little pack of charms from Lotta Jansdotter’s upcoming line Glimma, due out in April. I decided to mix it with two shades of Essex Linen – yarn dyed in black and flax. Paper piecing the flying geese made working with the linen quite easy. When it came to removing the paper and sewing everything together however, I really relied on starch. It stiffened up the fabric enough to make it easy to work with, not stretching all over the place.

I quilted this with diagonal lines, randomly spaced. They are each between 1/4″ and 1/2″ apart. I bound it with the Yarn Dyed Black Essex Linen. The back is a Moda Crossweave in a coral color (not sure the exact name). It measures 30″ x 40″.

Have I mentioned that I’m actually going to get to meet Lotta at QuiltCon? I signed up for her Textile Printing class and I can’t wait! Is anyone else taking it? And speaking of QuiltCon, I am honored to have two quilts selected to be displayed, my Off Centered Improv and my Belle Wave quilts. I’ll be spending the next week getting them ready, sewing hanging sleeves, labels, and packing them up to ship. Fun, fun!