Before I was a quilter, I sewed. I embroidered, made stuffed toys, sewed clothes and pillows and just liked to try projects with fabric…but I obviously didn’t know any of the rules of quilting….

I just rediscovered an old project I made 10 years ago, while waiting for my first baby. It’s reallly cute, but I obviously didn’t know what I was doing. I made a quilted wall-hanging without a stitch of QUILTING!  I remember taking it down because it had gotten saggy. It’s also a set of pockets, so after years of holding toys and small books, the fact that there was no quilting holding it together made it look bunchy and wrong.

So yesterday, I fixed it.

Because “Once a Quilter, Always a Quilter”, I couldn’t just leave a quilt un-quilted!!

Click the images to see them bigger.  And I apologize, I don’t remember where I got this idea!! I think it was a book but I can’t be certain. If I figure it out, I’ll surely let you know, because I want to give proper credit. It was a great idea! And so fun to make. Look at all those rows of fancy stitches and reverse applique that I had fun with.

It’s still not a masterpiece of quilting. The sandwich, of course, didn’t lay quite flat anymore, so there are some bunches. But I’m now proud to call this a little quilt!

Kind of funny to have finished a 10-year-old UFO that I didn’t even know was a UFO! But it shows there’s always room for improvement.

I just completed another Project Quilting entry that I’m quite proud of. The theme is “Stars over America” and that was really the only guideline. The only other rule was that you could use red, white and blue, but you had to use at least one other color (and that you didn’t have to use red, white and blue).

My interpretation the fireworks that were blazing over America everywhere on July 4th (or 5th in Urbandale due to rain!) My boys had the best time with the fireworks this year and I am giving this to my three year old, Brennan, who saw fireworks for this first time this year. The background is a deep blueish, rainbow batik that looked just like the night sky to me, and has big flowerbursts that look like fireworks. Then I used metallic silver and pink paintsticks to do some of the fireworks and threadplay to do the rest. I used shiny rayon threads, that really sparkle and added a little more sparkle with beads and sequins. The silhouette on the bottom symbolizes with America with its trees and houses.

Close-ups to show the paintstik portions, I did with hand-cut freezer paper stencils and quilted fireworks of just thread. I added sequins and beads to a few of the starbursts, and a couple of silver star charms to go with the theme.

That’s the happy boy who gets this “beeeeauooootiful” quilt!

If you’d like to see any of the other beautiful entries, go to the flickr pool.

And pretty soon you will be able to vote at Kim’s Crafty Apple, but I don’t think it’s up yet tonight.

Ok, ok, it seems like the only thing I’m finding to write about is the Project Quilting Challenges, but at least I have that!

Here’s what happened last weekend…

The Challenge: 1. The front, back, borders, binding and embellishments should all be made from materials that have had a previous life as something else.
2. You may use new thread and batting.
3. Your project should include at least 3 different materials used as embellishments.

My source of “previous life” materials was a bag of old clothing slated to go to Goodwill. One of which was a green flowered suit jacket that I could hardly part with! It was so cute, but never fit me right. (Teresa, it was Ruthie’s, recognize it?!) Anyway, I decided that making a quilt out of it, instead of giving it away would let me keep it around! (I know, selfish, huh?!) Here’s the stash:

I decided to work small because the pink and yellow fabrics looked like good dolly quilt material, so I cut 2.5″ squares and arranged them in a trip around the world. Then I fussy cut some of those fabulous pink flowers from the jacket and roughly machine appliquéd them on. I counted the appliqué as the first embellishment.

Next, I found an assortment of pearly white buttons…they are pretty easy to find on clothing! And the third embellishment was the silk leaves. They made the center appliques look like a nice wreath. That’s it!

The fabrics gave me some special challenges that made me appreciate quilter’s cotton. They were all stretchy twill, which was thick AND stretchy. It didn’t press well because it would just bounce back, but I was able to press the seams open and even pin the seam allowances flat a few times. I used a quick straight stitch to add on the appliqués, because the fabric didn’t fray much and I wanted it to look pretty casual and handmade, even a little rough due to its recycled nature. I had to use pants legs to get a long binding piece, so it became pink. And I did it single layered, because it would have been too bulky folded in the traditional way. But I like the raw edges on that too, keeping with the appliqués.

Please click on this last photo to really see it. It was a horrible rainy day when I finished it so the photo is dark, but I am really pleased with the finished quilt.

Sorry, voting is closed. I waited too long to post this story to get any votes from my friends…but that’s ok, I’m just happy to quilting, I don’t need to win anything!
You can still go to Kim’sCraftyApple to see the other entries, though. There are some beautiful ones, as usual!

Happy Quilting!!

So, I forgot to take in progress photos of my latest “Project Quilting” challenge…but I definitely want to show you the finished project! And here’s the story….

The challenge: The theme is “Road Trip” and must use at least 12 different fabrics on the front of your quilt.

My inspiration: An old, metal, red cooler that my family had when I was growing up. We went on lots of family road trips and camping trips and decorated that cooler with souvenir stickers from the places we visited. I’m pretty sure my parents started the collection before I was born, because some of those stickers I just heard the stories about. It was a fascinating cooler.

So this tote bag is symbolic of that very special cooler! So, I found images of souvenir stickers online and tried out a new transfer paper I had called “TAP – Transfer Artist Paper”. It was pretty easy to use. It went through my inkjet printer really smoothly. Then I ironed it onto a piece of white cotton and the backing peeled right off. It was working a little too well, as I wanted the transfers to be rough around the edges. Many of those stickers had been through a lot, and were in various stages of faded and rubbing off, so I tried to mimic that by distressing the transfers a little and printing some of them more faded then others.

Click the image for a close-up of the patches.

Here’s one in progress photo I remembered to take.  I quilted diagonal lines on the outsides of the bag.  I also stitched around the patches.

The top border has a story too, I needed to include 12 fabrics, so I decided to go all out with scraps. I dug through and found any scraps I had that looked like scenery of a road trip; flowers, stones, starry skies and leaves. They are arranged in two strips on either side of a road-like dashed yellow line.

I wanted this to be a nice tote bag to use for future road trips, so I quilted the sides, lined it, made a gusset in the bottom so it’s really roomy and added nice thick handles, so it’s a really functional bag.
My mom doesn’t know where that old cooler is anymore…but the memory of it will live on in this project!

It’s already time to vote, so if you like my project, please go to Kim’s Crafty Apple and vote for it. But if you have a chance, go there to see all the other entries, too. There are some really talented quilters participating in these challenges. I don’t even know which I’m going to vote for!   You should actually go to the Flickr site to see all of the entries in more detail.

I’m participating in the third Blogger’s Quilt Festival!
Please read about my special quilt story below, then click the button and go browse the other entries to your hearts content…there are so many beautiful quilts and quilt stories, you’ll be amazed!!! Enjoy!

The quilt I want to share with you is one that’s been done since last fall, but I actually had to go out and take a photograph of it this evening. I hadn’t snapped a pic of it before, because I had to give it to my husband the minute I cut the last thread. (Actually, he had it over his lap while I was sewing on the binding!) This is the second Halloween quilt that I made for my husband, Dave. You might remember, the first quilt I made for him was stolen in a burglary last summer. He was so sad because he said that quilt had been the best gift anyone had ever made for him (awww!)  So, of course, I had to replace it in the only way I could, make him another one!

I hunted down some of the fabrics online and had fun picking out new halloween novelty prints, then I set to work remaking the same pattern. I don’t think I’ve ever remade the same pattern twice, so it was a new experience. I’m not going to start a habit of doing that, but it was fun to see my technique improving and efficiency improving as I whipped through another time!  (It had been less than a year since I made the first quilt.) I offered to improve it in any way he saw fit and his suggestion was to make it bigger! So, of course, I did. I added to extra rows and one column, making it a lot bigger and taking a lot more work. But it’s now very nice to share on the couch. Who said a lap quilt has to fit over only one lap?! Needless to say, he loves his “new” quilt.

NOW, go look at all the other wonderful quilts in the festival!! And be ready to click a while, you won’t want to quit!

Yes, this is my third Project Quilting project, but they’re now calling this one Season 1, Challenge 1. I got third place last round, so I decided to keep up the momentum and try again. I made another successful project in just three days! The first day all I did was think about it. The second day I designed the blocks, cut them out and started piecing them. The third day I figured out a good way to present them all in one quilt….

So, the challenge is this: Cut 50 3″ x 5″ rectangles of any fabric and add up to 2 half-yard cuts to those for the entire quilt, including the backing and binding. You can manipulate, cut, or sew those rectangles in any way (including throwing parts out), you just need to start with those rectangles.

I chose my fabric first, some pretty batiks and a Floragrafix print. I chose 2 darks and two lights for the rectangles and two multicolor medium for the borders, backing and binding.

Then I designed my block. I turned under a 3/8″ seam allowance and folded the darks into prairie points which I decided to use for pinwheels. Then I made blocks around them with the light rectangles. After playing around a while, I decided to use the Floragrafix print for some of the light rectangles in the blocks to add interest and depth to the blocks.  I had to trim the rectangle pairs into squares before assembling, then I lined them up like a rail fence.

So now I just had the one mottled multicolor for all the backing/binding/borders, which I thought would work well, but I still cut it into two half-yard cuts to follow the challenge rules. I experimented with lots of arrangements of these four blocks. But I was somewhat stumped by the 1/2 yard pieces for the back/binding. That’s really not much fabric, and it’s long and skinny! So I decided to go with the flow and line them up on that 1/2 yard. They fit just perfectly!

I did screw it up a little by adding triangles to the end, but I really wanted it to look complete and well-finished as a table-runner. So I pieced the back to make it a little longer, added some borders to show off that multicolor batik and then sandwiched it Quiltie-style, sewing around the edges and turning it. That way I didn’t have to find enough fabric for binding strips!

I got all that done with a whole evening left to do the quilting, so I had some fun with free-motion, creating swirly wind around the pinwheels. (Click to see it bigger)

Finished piece is 48″ x 12″

I took a class a while back from Joann Belling hosted by the Des Moines Area Quilter’s Guild about a slick way to make Flying Geese units and another block she calls “A Brave New World.” Her teaching was so engaging and fun, she included many tips and tricks for doing things as efficiently as possible. Clipping the corners as you clip the thread, rotary cutting without a ruler when a straight cut isn’t critical and chain piecing are just a few of the time-saving tenants she preached.

Well, Connecting Threads just posted a great tutorial that is just like Joann’s method for doing the geese…so you better go check it out if you don’t know how to do it yet!

Here’s some photos of my first blocks made with her technique. I just used some scraps I had ready in time for class. Then later I found the beautiful floral center fabric coordinated very well! Such luck!

Kim Lapacek from Kim’s Crafty Apple issued a challenge on her blog called Project Quilting. In the spirit of “Project Runway” she gave a tight deadline (a week), limited budget ($10) and an inspiration (the shoofly block) and this is the project I came up with…

(Click photo to see it bigger)

I used some funky, highly-contrasty, geometric prints I had in my stash. The design is a large shoofly block in the center, turned on point and then surrounded with smaller shoofly blocks and one in the center. The challenge also specified that it had to include a stripe. I was originally just going to bind it with the stripe, but I am glad I decided to really highlight that stripe in the large shoofly block.

I’m excited to say that I learned a new technique for the quilting of this project!! Charlotte Warr Anderson’s Book “One Line at a Time” described how to quilt those repetitive geometric quilting lines, following a template and stitching around it one line at a time. It was really fun to do and I like the way the quilting echos the geometric qualities of the fabric prints.

Here’s a look at the back so you can really see the quilting lines.

I’m so proud to have gotten this done in a week, that is highly unlike me! I usually let things sit a while in between stages and flit between projects before getting anything done. This one was a straight through, plow! (reminiscent of the retreat…perhaps I should run with this new trend!)

If you’d like to see what other quilters did with Kim’s Challenge, here is the link to the Flickr Pool.

Here is the beginning of my Kathmandu project. I just couldn’t wait to show you! It’s going to be a wholecloth quilt, embroidered and embellished into a colorful banner-size wall-hanging.

The fabric is that ruddy red with gold designs printed in blocks (I’m going to use 2 blocks x 4 blocks; from the Katmandu line by Mark Lipinski for the Troy Corp.). I’m going to fill in those lines with embroidery, then sandwich and quilt it and later embellish it with beads, sequins and/or shisha mirrors.

It’s so exciting to start a new project!! I know this will be a long project that I will work on many, many hours…but it is already fun to look at and enjoyable to do, so I’m looking forward to working on it a long time.  Some projects I do because I want the finished product, but this one I’m really doing for the process…and I hope it will be a beautiful masterpiece in the end.

Thanks for looking!

I got all excited about two weeks ago when I thought up a new product (A Quiltie Pillowcover) and the first one turned out great! But wait, there are no pillowcovers in my shop?! Well, it turned out too great! I’m keeping this.

My rationale is that I got that brown flowered fabric as a Christmas gift from my mom. And I love it! I have two other quilties in the works using other fabrics from that bundle, but I don’t want to give them ALL away! So, I think I’m going to be making more pillowcovers. It’s a great idea, practical-minded and just as easy to make as a quiltie (frankly, easier!), so I’m excited to have come up with a new product. I’m just not ready to roll it out yet.

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