The Pink Quilt aka Katie's Favourite Things

In my last post, I told you that I made quilts for my friend's daughters.  This quilt is for the oldest sister.  She likes all things pink.  Her mom sent me a list of her favourite things and I made her a custom quilt.

Some blocks are machine appliquéd, and some are pieced.  Since some of the blocks were different sizes, I decided to add pink patchwork for the sashing.  I dug in my stash for all of the pink fabric I had.  I have very few scraps left now!

Penny

The above photo is Katie's favourite doll Penny.  Her mom sent me drawings of the doll so I could get her just right.  This quilt was definitely the result of some team work!

R2-KT

Pink Hippo

For the quilting, I used a pattern called Floral meander.  I thought it needed something soft and flow-y.  I think it turned out so pretty.  I am sure she will love it!

They get their quilts in a couple of days now and I can't wait to know what their reactions will be.  I really had fun making them!

Princess dresses

Hi!  Remember me? Wow, time has flown by since my last post.  I have been quite busy and have a lot to tell you about.

As I told you before, I am now offering longarm machine quilting services and I have been quilting for others.  I haven't been too busy, just busy enough and I must say that I am really enjoying it.  But what I have been really busy doing since I last blogged is finishing two commissioned quilts for my friend's daughters.

Today I would like to share with you one of those quilts.  It is for a 4 year old little girl who just loves the Disney princesses.  Her mother asked me to make a quilt just with the dresses.  She told me which princesses she wanted.

I bought the pattern from Chi Town Stitching on Etsy.  My daughters had lots of fun helping me pick the fabrics for the dresses and loved watching me make each one. 

I had so much fun making this quilt. Who doesn't love princesses? Here are some of my favorite dresses:

I quilted a lovely pattern on it with some hearts in a soft pink thread.  I think it adds beautiful texture to the quilt.

The backing is a Disney fabric featuring a few of the princesses.  It is so nice and soft.  My mom bought it for me last winter when she was down to the States.  I hadn't even started the quilt back then so unfortunately I didn't have enough.  I just ended up adding a strip of the pink polka dots I used for the outer border to the bottom edge of the backing.  I think it looks okay.  

I used the fabrics from the sashing and border for the binding.  I think it makes it look a little fun and whimsical.

She will be getting it for Christmas and I can't wait to see her reaction when she opens the box.  I had so much fun making this quilt!

Next week I will share with you her sister's pink quilt.  Be warned, there will be a lot of pink in that next post!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2015 - Swoon

Every time Quilt Market happens, Amy from Amy's Creative Side hosts the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Thank you Amy for letting us share in this big virtual Quilt Show!  It is so much fun and so inspiring!

My first entry into the fall 2015 edition of the Blogger's Quilt Festival is in the Large Quilt category and is my Swoon quilt.

If you are a regular follower you have seen this quilt before, but if you aren't, here it is!

Swoon

Swoon

Fabrics: Architextures by Carolyn Friedlander and Home Essentials by Mark Lipinski

Pattern: Swoon by Thimbleblossoms

close-up

I loved making this quilt.  

I love piecing and these 24" blocks were fun because they were just challenging enough but there weren't a ton of them to make.  

I am learning to quilt on a longarm and this was a great quilt to tackle with some custom quilting.  The big spaces were lots of fun to fill and allowed me to get in a lot of practice.

another close-up

I am very proud of this quilt and love everything about it!

Swoon

Thanks again to Amy for having the Blogger's Quilt Festival.
I hope all of you will go check out some of the other quilts!

BOM

Back in 2013, some of the members of my quilt group and I shared in a Block of the Month project.  There were 6 of us who participated.  Each of us shared a pieced block pattern and a machine appliqued block pattern, so a total of 12 blocks.  All of the blocks finished at 12".  We each chose the fabrics we wanted to work with and the final layout of our quilts.  I shared most of the quilt tops with you back in January 2014.

I really wanted to try to do some custom quilting using the computer on the Statler and I thought this would be a great quilt to try it on. So a few weeks ago I did just that.

I chose a design for the borders, one for the sashing, one for corner stones, one for the pieced blocks and a different one for the appliqued blocks.  I used a beige thread that blended in very well with the background fabric.  In hind sight, I could've used a darker thread so the quilting would show up a little more but as this was my first time doing custom work and getting used to using the machine I wanted it to blend in, just in case.  I really love the texture the quilting gave to the quilt, and those little corner stones are my favourite part!!

I had so much fun quilting this!  I am really getting the hang of the computerized machine and I am loving the results.  

You will notice a new tab at the top of my blog called machine quilting services.  I am now offering machine quilting services so if you would like something quilted, I hope you will consider sending your quilt my way.  I would love to quilt for you too!

Here is my BOM quilt in its new spot, hanging in my dining room.... just perfect for the fall! 

I just love that texture!

Minecraft

My friend commissioned me to make a Minecraft Quilt for her Minecraft loving son.

I know nothing about Minecraft except that it is a computer game, so I went searching online.  I found a blog called Slightly Off Quilter.  She used EQ7 to figure out all of the fabric requirements and cutting diagrams for each block, and she shared them all on her blog.  There are no directions per say, but everything I needed was there.

I had a lot of fun making this quilt, even though I know nothing about the game.  It was a lot of work but very satisfying.  For most of the blocks, the squares were cut at 2.5" and the blocks finished at 16".  The hardest blocks of course were the axe and the sword with smaller squares cut at 1.5 inches.

I quilted it with a simple meander with a beige thread.  I didn't want the thread to show in the faces or the quilting to take away from the piecing.  

I finally mailed off the quilt this week so Duncan should receive it next week some time.  I hope he likes it.

Also, I wanted to let you all know that I am now offering longarm machine quilting services!

I will be adding a tab at the top of my blog where you will be able to find all the info. It should be up in a couple of days.

I hope you will consider me the next time you decide to send a quilt to someone to have it quilted!

A special swap and new friends

I have been participating in swaps on IG for a while now and it is always fun to make new friends with common interests. I love going to the mailbox and getting Happy Mail! My girls love seeing the packages I get and helping me open them. They think it's cool that people from other parts of the world have made something for me. And they love helping me pick fabrics and threads for the projects I work on for others.

Last spring, someone I follow on IG (Violet) posted a photo of her daughter sewing and she asked if anyone had kids who would be interested in swapping with her daughter. I haven't shared with you here on my blog yet, but both my girls finished their first quilts, and they have made quite a few cushions and zipper pouches and bags for friends so I told Violet that my girls would love to swap with her daughter.

So we sent each other the essential information, likes and dislikes and decided we would mail out the swaps towards the end of the summer.

The girls loved working on their mini quilts over the summer break. I helped a little with design but they did all the sewing themselves. They were really happy to be making something for a new friend, and for someone who lives in the U.S. (another country!) made it even more fun.

 

 

The girls received their mini quilts as well and they loved them. They really got the essence of what it is to participate in a swap. They had fun running to the mail box every day after they mailed their package too. I love sharing all of this with them! And I'm glad they are making quilty friends too!

 

 

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Chevron

Last year my daughter was lucky enough to have a wonderful teacher. This teacher also subbed for her the last 2 and a half months that she was in grade 1 and my daughter was so excited when she found out she would be her teacher again in grade 4.

Anyhow, she announced to the class about a month and a half before school was out for the summer that she was expecting her 2nd baby. The kids were so excited! The day she told them also happened to be Track and Field day and when I showed up after lunch to help out, they couldn't wait to tell me. So as we walked home from school at the end of the day, I told Emilie, we should make her teacher a quilt for the baby. Her face lit up and she couldn't wait to start working on it.

I knew we wouldn't know the sex of the baby before the end of the school year so I needed to find a gender neutral palet. My mom and I went to a quilt show and Mad About Patchwork had a beautiful bundle of Prisma Elements. I thought they would be perfect.

The plan

This quilt was so fast and so much fun to make. I kept it simple with big HSTs. For the back I pieced some Pieces Of Hope fabric by Riley Blake. The colours kept it gender neutral. I used the red puzzle pieces fabric for the binding.

 

I quilted it on the Gammill after it was retro-fitted with the Statler so it was one of the first quilts we got to try with the computerized designs. This quilting design is called Scratch Modern. I love how it looks like a windmill.

As it turns out, Emilie was too busy with gymnastics competitions and school, so she didn't get the chance to help out much but she was very excited to give it to her teacher. And on the last day, the teacher announced she is having a girl and will be decorating the room in coral colours.

 

 

 

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Swoon

Hello! Wow, I can't believe it has been 6 months since I last posted something on my blog. Although I do think the break was good for me, I am hoping to post more regularly now.

I may not have been blogging, but I have been quilting. I have a lot of things to share with you so I thought I would start with my favourite finish so far this year, my Swoon quilt.

I started these blocks back in January 2014. I love that the blocks are so big but still take precise piecing. I enjoyed making every one of those blocks. The fabrics are Architextures be Carolyn Friedlander and Home Essentials by Mark Lipinski.

The very beginning of the quilting.

This past spring, I decided I was ready to do some custom free-motion quilting on a quilt, using the longarm machine. My Swoon quilt was hanging in the closet at my mom's so I decided it was the perfect quilt to try custom quilting.

It took me a long time to decide what to quilt. I looked at a lot of photos of Swoon quilts on Flickr and on Instagram before deciding to do some ruler work along with some loops, continuous curves and swirly things in the stars.

Quilting in one swoon block

I love the way it turned out!

Here it is right after I finished quilting it.

I am very proud of this quilt. I truly love everything about it. It is now on our bed, and I love making my bed in the morning and running my fingers over all of the texture.

 

My mom has since upgraded her Gammill to the computerized Statler. I am still doing hand-guided free-motion quilting however and can't wait to work on the next one!

 

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TGIFF - Hexie Garden

It's done!  I finished my Hexie Garden quilt.

My mom bought me the kit to make this quilt some time last year.  I started cutting it out and piecing the blocks in August.  I finished piecing the top at a retreat in January and I quilted it last week.  I put the final stitches in the binding this morning... just in time for TGIFF!

I used my Hex N More ruler by Jaybird Quilts to cut out the hexagons and triangles for this quilt.

 I did change one of the fabrics in the kit.  The turquoise fabric in the center of the flowers is from my stash.  The kit had a solid dark grey for those triangles and I just felt the quilt needed a pop of something instead of the dull grey.  I am so happy I changed it!

I love orange and the orange fabric that was included in the kit for the binding was just perfect.

I love hexagons and this quilt was all machine pieced and so much fun to make.

 I am linking up to TGIFF over at my friend M-R's blog Quilt Matters.  She made an amazing little quilt using leftover half-square triangles... You should definitely go check it out!