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.

HomespunIreland just made a beautiful treasury of all things pink and sew-y. I think you’ll love it, so go take a look!

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″

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.

The window blinds in my studio have been breaking one by one. It’s a sunroom, so there are 6 of them to go! I’m taking it as an interesting challenge to come up with some homemade curtains!

So far I have two ideas, one is from Kaffe Fassett’s book “Passionate Patchwork”. It’s a shabby chic pastel patchwork curtain which I’ve already started. Here’s a peek.

As you can see, I’ve got three rows done, well actually now it’s four, but this is the photo I took yesterday. I love the way the sun shines through and makes an extra pattern of squares. (click on the first image to see what I mean!) The squares are purposely a little rough and raw edges are all exposed, but that’s why I say “shabby chic”, it will fit in well in my place of work!  But I’m afraid a whole wall of all these little squares would be a little overwhelming, so I think I better just do one window…then something else on the other windows. Maybe solids with borders or valances made of those squares. What do you think?

The second idea is a curtain with some pockets for small lightweight storage. (needlebook, tape measure,  spools of thread, little scissors, etc.) I saw the idea on Ikea.com, but I don’t want it to LOOK anything like their version, which is primary blocks of color. So I’m still working this idea out. Any suggestions?

I’m finishing up my entries for the Des Moines Area Quilter’s Guild Quilt Show, which is fast approaching! (October 28, see here for details) And most of what I have left to do is quilting. So, I thought I would share a trick that helps me figure out my quilting designs. It’s a dry-erase board. Practicing the design I want to do gets it into my hands and I’m more ready to do it on the sewing machine. It also helps visualize the results, of course. Thanks, Lisa for sharing this technique with me. She’ll have to fill me in on who taught it to her!

I also just discovered a blog you should check out, all about machine quilting filler designs. ONE EVERY DAY FOR A YEAR!! Can you believe it?!

Go here to check it out!

So, I recently lost a quilt…sounds like something I did, but no, it was stolen from us by the burglar who stole our computers this summer. It was the quilt that I made for my husband for his birthday just last year.

Here’s an in progress photo.

He was not ready to say goodbye to it!! So, I’m already working on the replacement. I hope to make it even better than the last one and it’s really fun to work on. I love the fun Halloween prints and this sugar bowl block is a fun one.

While I don’t really believe that we will ever get the lost quilt back, it was pretty cool to find out that there’s a website out there dedicated to doing just that. LostQuilt.com has a catalog of lost quilts and an archive of quilts that have been found. There are some cool stories and some sad ones. Here’s the page decdicated to Dave’s quilt: www.lostquilt.com/HalloweenMoon.php

I just got done hiding all my thread under lock and key! This is why…kids, cats, & thread don’t mix! Three spools of thread got wrapped around my studio table and chairs, tangled in the little boy’s legs, and batted around by the cat until I couldn’t salvage any of it. Argh! My husband would ask, what I was doing that I didn’t notice this happening…but you wouldn’t believe how quickly kids and cats can get into trouble together!!! 

So, I’ll be locking up my thread from now on (not the kid or the cat!)

Yesterday I played with crayons and stamps on fabric! I have this lovely stained-glass look stamp, which I stamped with Fabrico black ink. After ironing that to set the ink, I colored in the images with fabric crayons. Look how the coloring looks rather dull and rough until I set the crayons with the iron too…It was so fun to see what the iron would do to the crayons, I tried it several times! I think I’m going to make these little images into something, so the last photo is finding the right fabric to go with them. 

What do you think I should make them into?? Pin cushions? Little quilts? Key chains? Tiny wall art? hmmmm…