Long story short, I’m working on a quilt for my brother.
It’s going to be king sized which, to be honest, makes me hyper ventilate, but I’m working through it.
Here’s what I have so far.
Tag Archives: quilt
a log cabin for Christmas
28 Dec
Here’s my dad’s Christmas present.
All of the prints, except for the red center prints are from Windham Fabrics The Brick House line. The solid black is also from Windham, but it’s from the Gee’s Bend line. The red and black print that is at the heart of some of the blocks is something special my mom picked up at the Museum of the Fur Trade’s shop. It’s a reproduction of one of the five fabrics that William Clark took with him as presents for the Indian tribes he met on the Lewis and Clark expedition.
I love this quilt – the color, pattern, prints, the wool quilting, the whole thing, love love love!
I chain pieced the log cabin blocks.
Chain piecing sped up the process since there were so many blocks. The pattern is Straight Furrows, from the book, The Classic American Quilt Collection – Log Cabin. Yes, the price on that link was right! I paid a dollar plus shipping for my copy of the book.
Here’s the back of the quilt. It’s pieced with large sections of the fabrics that I used on the front.
I quilted it in a diagonal pattern through the heart of each block. I used aurifil 12 wt wool in ivory. It wasn’t trouble free because the thread split on me a few times, but I found if I lengthened the stitches, used a 90/14 quilting needle, and kept a steady speed I had much better luck.
I love the fuzzy look of the wool thread in this quilt.
It adds a sort of homespun feel to the project.
I know some people would probably want to avoid that, but I say enjoy what you are making. I like fabric – modern, reproduction, print, solid, whatever – I love all of it!
i was a bit preoccupied
18 OctThe past few weeks I’ve been getting ready for a trip. It was a big deal because I haven’t travelled solo since the 90′s. I was feeling confident until one night when cj was in tears asking how I could leave when I promised him I would always be there for him. Talk about some Mom Guilt! I took a deep breath, had some friends and the spouse promise me that all would be well and…
I went to the Sewing Summit…
It was cloudy when I arrived, so I was shocked to see the mountains outside my window when I woke up the next day.
All I can say is there are not enough adjectives to describe the trip…amazing, funfilled, overwhelming, thoughtful, kind, inspiring, exhausting, hilarious…
It was lovely to hang out with people who’s blogs and tweets I’ve been following for so long, and also to meet new people {including Megan‘s awesome Mom & Dad!}
Honestly, it was just great to hang out and instead of typing LOL we could actually just laugh together.
I was lucky enough to be Amanda‘s teaching assistant. You can blame the boom of mini quilts that’s about to happen all over the internet on her uber-inspiring class.
I got to sit with Claudia during the improve piecing class. 
I know what you’re thinking a bunch of ladies on the loose, there must of been some crazy nights…
like this, but she‘s Canadian, and she’s awesome…
mostly, this happened…
(thanks for sharing your pic Amanda)
I love this pic too.
All the classes and dinners and chats and stitching flew by and I was heading home before I knew it. Oh and I also saved a camera.
Things at the cottage were fine. The spouse learned how to make tacos, lulu was thrilled I was able to find sock monkey flannel to make her some new pj’s, and cj keeps the little owl I found him by his bed at night. He had some trouble sleeping while I was gone and there were a few extra “NO” and “I don’t want to” last week, but he seems to be getting back on track.
I’m doing my best to finish all the projects I’ve already started before starting anything new.
We’ll see how that goes.
how to make a broken fence block
16 JunI always forget all the little short cuts that can make patchwork go more smoothly.
I think about strip sets only after I’ve individually stitched an entire postage stamp style quilt.
So, when it came to making a non-traditional rail fence block I put extra thought into what I could do to make the piecing part go a little more smoothly.
Here’s how I make the blocks for my broken fence quilt.
I cut 12 1/2″ squares of fabric. (a total of 36 for my lap quilt)
I want 5 bars in each block so I work with 5 pieces of fabric at a time.
I stack the five pieces on top of each other and make 4 random cuts with my rotary cutter.
Then divide the pieces so that each block had a slice from each fabric.
I stitch the pieces together with a 1/4″ seam and press.
After pressing, I trim each block to 10 1/4 ” square.
This method gives you 5 blocks at a time, but my quilt is made of 36 blocks. For the last block you can just make one block with individually cut strips, you can make an extra set of five (use extras on back or in another project), or you can do one set of six. I will warn you (because I didn’t think this all way through when I chose this option) if you do six cuts, your block will be shorter than 10 1/4″ . I simply add an extra strip on those blocks.
For this quilt I cut the bluish blocks vertically and the reddish blocks horizontally.
happy piecing
box block quilt
1 JunI managed to make my deadline for teacher gifts.
Today is the last day of school.
We went this morning to watch the kids compete in the school olympics.
Both kids competed in the three legged race and neither one fell over!
I made a set of pot holders for Cj’s teacher. I found some fabric with math problems on it and couldn’t pass it up.
Lulu’s teacher will be having her first baby near the end of August. She’s planning a yellow nursery so I went with a group of fabrics from Kate Spain’s Central Park line.
The pattern for the block is the box block from the book The Farmer’s Wife Sampler Quilt.
I enlarged the template a bit from the one in the book. I did outline quilting in a sort of tic tac toe pattern on each block with a variegated yellow to cream thread.
The back is a solid piece of the zoo print from the Central Park line.
I’m off to pick up my new fourth and second grade students!
of water heaters and the royal wedding
2 MayI don’t know if this happens to other sewists, but often when I look back at a project I remember what was going on while I was working on it.
While piecing together my desserts quilt…
I was watching the first season of Jamie Oliver’s food revolution.
It took forever to baste my graphic bricks quilt…
because I was caught up in “Vincent and the Doctor” and “the Lodger” from Doctor Who.
I just finished this quilt. It’s for the kids to curl up in during movie night. Lulu chose all the fabric, kindly keeping in mind that she loves monkeys and cj loves owls.
I was having a new water heater installed while I was piecing the blocks. I tried to distract myself with the cutting of the triangles, in an effort to ignore the pounding that was going on in the basement. (who knew moving some pipes around could be so noisy?)
By the time I was ready to finish the binding, it was the royal wedding day. I was able to stitch my way through the ceremony and ended up with a perfect quilt for the kids’ movie night.
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