patchwork makes me happy

I love turning this....

...into this.

Doesn't it scream summer? Isn't it so happy?
Oh, I just love it!

The squares are cut 4 1/2" so they finish at 4".
It's a lovely lap size. 60" x 72". My favorite.

Several scraps are from the lovely miss Anna of Noodlehead, (thanks Anna!) like this lovely patch of pearl bracelets. It's the only red square in the whole quilt, but I had to include it anyway. It's so good!

Several of the scraps are from my own collection, like this long hoarded Heather Ross camper van fabric. Isn't that guy on the van so cute? I love the grey bikes, too! So many fun fabrics in one quilt top. I think this is going to be a favorite for a very long time!

Quilting on the Go blog tour

Today I'm happy to be a stop on the Quilting on the Go blog tour.

Quilting on the Go is written by my long time blog friend Jessica, who blogs at Life Under Quilts. I have admired her beautiful travel quilts for many years. In fact, she is the one who got me started on EPP over two years ago. I'm so excited for her beautiful book! It clearly covers every step of the EPP process-preparing a travel kit, choosing fabrics, how to join the pieces, very important assembly instructions-like finishing the edges of your quilt (that's a biggie for me!)-and so much more. The book has several small projects: a pincushion (adorable), a tiny sewing kit (a must make!), pouches, bags, and a pillow. There are several quilt patterns in the book, too. Of course! The book is a great resource if you are just beginning EPP, but it's also a great motivating resource if you are in the middle of an EPP project. For me, it was wonderful to see finished quilts! It gave me hope that one day I will have a finished quilt, too. May sound silly, but if you are in the middle of a hand pieced quilt, I think you know what I mean. :)

EPP (English Paper Piecing) is a slow process, yes, but I really enjoy having a portable quilting project ready at all times. The kids and I love to get out the picnic quilt (they select an activity, I grab my stitching) and we hang out on the lawn together. It's a wonderful way to spend a summer afternoon!

Here's a progress picture of "Oh My Stars" quilt. The countdown has begun! I only have 27 stars left to add to the quilt. (And the filler pieces, too). I'm getting there! It's exciting to be this far along in the journey. I'm looking forward to lots of hand stitching this summer! (Really, I am!)

Since this is a blog tour, of course there are some freebies! You can visit Lesly's blog to enter to win your very own copy of Quilting on the Go. (Giveaway open through today.) Next week Lucy will be giving away a copy, too.

If you need paper pieces, you can use the code UNDER20 for a 20% discount at Paperpieces.com.

Be sure to visit the other stops on the blog tour:

June 11 Lesly at Stitch Literate http://pickledish.blogspot.com

June 12 Clare at Selfsewn http://selfsewn.blogspot.com/

June 13 Christina at A Few Scraps http://afewscraps.blogspot.com/

June 14 Victoria @ Bumblebeans http://bumblebeansinc.blogspot.com/

June 15 Amanda Jean at Crazymomquilts http://www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

June 16 Laura at Quokka Quilts http://quokkaquilts.blogspot.com/

June 17 Lucy at Charm About You http://www.charmaboutyou.com/

June 18 Katy at I'm A Ginger Monkey http://www.imagingermonkey.blogspot.com/

June 19 Ara Jane at What Ara Jane Loves http://whatarajaneloves.blogspot.com/

June 20 Kathy at Pink Chalk Studio Blog http://www.pinkchalkstudio.com/blog/

June 21 Jessica at Life Under Quilts http://lifeunderquilts.blogspot.com/

And if you would like to purchase a copy of the book it's available at:

 

 

So, my question to you is, do you EPP? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it. Personally, I'm looking forward to making a hexagon EPP project after I get this diamond quilt done. I think I'm hooked!

going old school

Welcome to finish it up Friday! I was hoping to have my sewing room put together to share today, but that certainly didn't happen. Turns out I have a finished quilt top to share instead. I'll take it! :)

I went old school in the sewing department this week. I made several wonky log cabin blocks and put them on a white background. I realize this is soooo 4 years ago, but it was still fun to do. :) Isn't this such a happy quilt?

For the centers I fussy cut fabric that my sister bought for me in Sweden a few years ago. (Thanks Anita!) I think this was a great way to show case the fabric. A side benefit was using up some of my string scraps, which are always plentiful. The blocks are huge! 20" finished. When making my blocks I tried to mix up my color schemes to make it NOT make it look so much like me, but I don't know that I succeeded in that. It's really hard to work against your normal inclinations.

I haven't sashed a quilt in white for quite awhile now. I really dislike the colored threads showing through the front, so I tried pressing the final seams toward the centers. I hope that alleviates at least some of the problem. Still, there are lots of threads to trim before I baste! The quilt top is 60" x 80".

 

Do you have a finish to share today? If so, please link up to a specific post. Thanks for joining me!

 

Happy Friday to you!

xo

the answer

Thank you so much for joining in my guessing game! It was quite fun for all of us here to read your answers. :)

The number of quilts is....

91!

(I KNOW! That's a lot!!!! I was surprised by the total, too.)

Jenny was the closest with her guess of 93.

Rachel gets honorable mention for guessing that it is one BIG quilt folded very carefully for the illusion of many. :) Very clever and a little bit sassy. I love it!

Several questions were asked in the comments such as:

Where do you store them all?

We use several of them daily and the rest are stored in my quilt cupboard. It was a TV armoire that I eventually took over and filled with quilts. It's a happy, happy place!

How long did it take you to accumulate that many quilts?

13 years. That is the amount of time that I've been quilting, too. Hard to believe!

Were they made by you? Gifts?

Some of them were gifts, one is vintage (purchased) and the rest were made by me. No wonder my arms hurt most days. :P

LeeAnn asked how do you make folding fun?

Heh. It took awhile to refold everything, but it was fun to "revisit" each quilt. And as Debbie brought up, quilts need refolding, anyway!

Nicolette recalled that I did a guessing game very similar to this many years ago. I checked and it was way back in 2008! It was fun to look back at that post and see the totals then.

No one asked, but I'm sure someone is curious. I've finished 218 quilts in my day (as far as I can figure). That counts wall, baby and larger. Doll quilts, place mats, pillows and the like aren't counted in that number. So, the fact that I have 91 at my house isn't too bad. (Or maybe I'm in denial.)

Either way, I have a stack of quilts that I plan to sell (when I can figure out pricing and work up the guts to put myself out there) because I certainly don't NEED 91 quilts and I definitely want to keep making more!

Now, I need to get back to quilting.....ha!!!

quilt party

We've had so many rainy days that it's forced us to find some inside fun. Yesterday afternoon we had a quilt party, which was a HUGE hit with my kiddos. We gathered (almost) every quilt in the house and spread them out in the living room. It literally looked like a sea of quilts. It was ridiculously fun.

Afterwards, there was a lot of folding to do. We made piles and did a tally. The totals were revealed at supper. It was really, really fun to take stock!

We also thought it would be fun to host a guessing game here on the blog. Guess how many quilts are in the piles shown. I'll send a little present to the winner. (Or to the person who has the nearest guess. If there are multiple winners I'll draw one from a hat.) Go on, make your guess! Oh, and please leave me your email address, too. Please, only one guess per person.

Happy Monday to you!

leftovers quilt

Welcome to finish it up Friday!

As of 11 last night I still had 2 sides of binding on this quilt to hand stitch down. Oh, and my internet is down, too, so I wasn't sure I would be able to blog about it even if I did have a finish. But, thanks to some late night and early morning binding, I am done with my leftovers quilt! And thanks to my handy hubby, who helped me rig up a hot spot with my phone, I'm able to share my finish with you. He's quite a guy! I'm so thankful to have in-house tech support. :)

On to the quilt. The blue/green/purple pieces are leftovers from this quilt that I made for my nephew several years ago. The blocks are floating on a Kona Ash background. I used a light gray thread and quited a simple swirl over the whole thing.

My favorite block in the whole quilt is the pink/orange/yellow block. It was pieced from my never-ending supply of scraps. (of course!) This was kind of a last minute addition and I love how it gives the quilt an unexpected punch of color. I am a huge fan of grouping warm colors together and cool colors together and this was a great way to integrate the two in one quilt. I think it's really effective! I have so much more exploring that I want to do with that idea.

For the back I used a bunch of blue fat quarters from Connecting Threads (now discontinued, I'm sorry to say). They make a wonderful backing, plus, they are so soft! I sure LOVE a two-sided quilt!

For the binding I used this wonderful Central Park print by Kate Spain. I wish I had yards and yards of it. It finishes off the quilt so nicely! Incidentally, I used the same print for my last quilt finish. I don't think I've ever bound two big quilts back to back with the same binding print. It's gotta be pretty good for that to happen. And it's not even a polka dot or a stripe. Amazing! :)

I love how all the elements of this quilt work together! It measures about 68" x 92". I'm so happy to have this one finished!

How about you? Do you have a finish to share? If so, please link up to a specific post. Thank you for joining me to finish it up Friday!

squaring up a quilt, a non-traditional approach

I'm not sure I should admit this, but I'm not one to square up quilts on a regular basis. Usually I just follow the rows of patchwork when adding the binding, then I trim off the excess batting and backing afterward. That usually works for me. But what do you do when you have wavy solids on the edges of your quilt with no patchwork to guide you? Well, you have to get a little creative!

(I didn't plan to blog about this, so I didn't take any step by step photos along the way, but I'll try to explain what I did anyway. I hope it makes sense!)

The goal was to square up my leftovers quilt. The edges weren't square after piecing it, but I figured if I started hacking at the quilt top things might go bad. So I decided to quilt it and THEN deal with the problem. Nothing like procrastinating, huh???


What I did to square things up:

I laid the untrimmed leftovers quilt on the floor, as flat as possible. (In the photo you can see the grey front and the blue back.) Then I pulled out my spiderweb quilt-which is MOSTLY square-and laid that over the top. I smoothed things out, much like I do when I baste a quilt. (Nothing is taped down at this point.) The purpose of the spiderweb quilt was to act as an approximate cutting guide. Working on one side at a time, I anchored the masking tape on the floor, then stretched it taut over the width of the quilt, parallel to the edge of the spiderweb quilt, as pictured above. (Think of stretching a string from post to post when planting a garden to achieve a straight row.) After eyeballing the line, I lowered the tape and smoothed it out very carefully onto the quilt, making sure to not distort the line. My cutting guide (the tape) was in place. I got out my 6"x 24" ruler, my rotary cutter and a mat and cut oh-so-carefully following the tape line. The long ruler kept my cutting line true. I had to be sure to move my mat with each cut! I was also VERY careful not to cut my finished quilt!  By the time I got to the 4th side of the quilt I was heaving a huge sigh of relief. It looked pretty good. I measured the final side and I was only off by 1/8" from top to bottom, which isn't bad at all! I did a bit more trimming in one particular area and called it good! I am quite happy that this technique worked or I may have ended up with a very small quilt. :)

I'd love to hear your thoughts on squaring up quilts. Do you bother? Or are you like me and only do so when completely necessary?

If you have any questions about my approach, I'll try to answer them in the comments.

camp stitchalot and a little progress

I'm excited to tell you that I am going to be teaching at Camp Stitchalot in August! There will be 3 other teachers that weekend: Jacquie of Tallgrass Prairie Studio, Dan of Piece and Press and Rossie of Fresh Modern Quilts. Brenda of Pink Castle Fabrics is the host for the weekend. I'm excited that I get to teach at camp, but I'm beyond thrilled to be able to learn from the other teachers. What a line up!

For my class I will be teaching how to make a slab (improvisational piecing with scraps) based on the material in Sunday Morning Quilts. It's one thing to make a smaller piece (a single block) from scraps, but how do you take it beyond a block? I'll be covering how to use this technique to make a larger quilt. It's quite fun!!!

The solids above were sent to me so I could make a sample block using the slab technique. I started with Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids in Marine, Turquoise and Luna along with some Kona Cotton in Bone. I added in a few scraps of my own because I needed a bit more variety. (We were allowed to add scraps, so I didn't break the rules. No worries!) It was an interesting exercise to work with a limited color palette, but I also enjoyed the challenge of working within those parameters. It's good to stretch your skills! Speaking of stretching...I had to chop these up to make scraps in order to make my block. THAT was probably the hardest part! :)

This is my final block and it measures 20" square. I rather like it! It was fun to sew with fabrics that someone else selected. This block will go into a sampler quilt along with blocks from each of the teachers. I can't wait to see how they all play together!

 

If you are interested in going to camp, you can find all the details here. I hope to see you in August!

----------------

In other news.....quilting time is hard to come by these days, but I'm trying to be content with the time that I get. I don't always do so well with the contentment piece, but I'm working on it. :)

Currently in my machine....my leftovers quilt. I'm estimating that I have less than an hour of quilting time on this one. It's a big quilt, so I'm excited to have made that much progress. I'm looking forward to picking a binding fabric!

One more bit of progress...while my sewing room is still not organized, I have my cutting table cleared off. Woo-hoo! This piece was formerly an island in our kitchen, now the center of my sewing room. My husband teases me saying that I'm spoiled, but I think it's a dandy fabric holder/cutting station! I'm very thankful to have it! (By the way, gotta LOVE that billiard light above it, no?)

The island turned cutting counter (it's from IKEA) happens to hold a whole lot of fabric! Hurray!

design wall

Welcome to finish it up Friday! I've got no finish for today....but I did get up my design wall hung up. I'm very excited!

I've been without a design wall for several months (because our house was on the market) and boy did I miss it! It's so wonderful to have it back. I've noticed that I don't really use it for designing exactly, but it's more like a block storage apparatus. I sit and stare at it and let the ideas percolate. It also acts an ever changing wall of artwork. I LOVE it!!!

Making a design wall doesn't have to be a big project at all. I use a king size flannel sheet tacked up on the wall with push pins. Easy peasy...and inexpensive, too! This wall just the right measurement for the sheet. Perfection! It's over half full...which tells me I'd better get busy and get something (anything) finished! :)

How about you? Do you have a finish to share? If so, please link up! Thanks for joining me for finish it up Friday! Hope you have a great weekend!

settling in

School is out and summer vacation (heh) is here. We are trying to find our summer groove, which always takes awhile. As if that weren't enough, we are working very hard to settle into our house and make it feel like ours. We've made some headway...it's good to celebrate the progress rather than to focus on how much needs to be done.

Our living room was the first room to come together. I love the fireplace! Our IKEA bookshelves and leather chairs look pretty good in the space. This might be my favorite room in the house at the moment. The view out the window is pretty amazing.

It's like living in a tree house! It feels like we have our very own park in the back yard, too. I'm loving all the GREEN! It's quite different from just a few weeks ago. Spring has finally sprung! It took a long time this year, so we are enjoying every minute of it. The kids are loving their new big back yard! Consequently, so am I. :)

Our bedroom is set up, but it still needs artwork. And paint! On the foot board, my apple cake quilt. One of my very, very favorites! It's nice to have this one out and in use again. I love rotating quilts throughout the house.

We've actually hung things on some of the walls already. That must be a new record! On the left, ticker tape on canvas, 24" x 36" (tutorial here). I LOVE that piece! On the right, my snippets wall quilt. It's nice to have some color on the walls!

 

The sewing area is a complete disaster, so no photos on that front yet. I don't want that mess documented! I may need to seek outside help. It's completely overwhelming.

I have NOT had much time to sew and boy do I miss it! I managed to indulge in a little bit of scrap therapy yesterday. Somehow sewing little bits of color together has a way of soothing the frazzled nerves. I'm not sure why, but I'll take it!

pin cushions

Welcome to finish it up Friday! Anyone else utterly exhausted? ;0)

Because I am stubborn to the end, I actually eeked out a finish for today. I had these pin cushions almost done, so I hand stitched them closed this morning. Hurray for finishing something! I have 3 more like it to finish-just as soon as I find my big bag of walnut shells. I bet it'll be a few weeks before that happens! :)

(there is a tutorial here for making a mini whirlygiggle block if you'd like to make something similar.)

A few more BIG finishes that are happening today. It's my kids' last day of school AND we are selling our old house today. HUGE finishes, wouldn't you say? Both very good things! I'm excited for summer!

How about you? Any finishes to share today? If so, please link up! Happy Friday to you!

catching up

Oh, mylanta! So much has been going on, I think a catch up post is in order.

Last week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we packed up our house in Wisconsin. We had movers (thanks to the company relo) to help us out, but it is still a ton of work! It was a little bit sad to see the contents of our house disassembled. On the other hand, it was kind of exciting to finally be at this point. It's been a long time coming!

There were plenty of quilts to move. It was fun to see so many piled up in one spot! Usually they are spread out here, there and everywhere. I had a hard time entrusting the quilts to the movers, so we opted to move them ourselves. They filled the trunk of the car. And that was just a portion of them. Yikes! 

After a few days (and very little sleep) we had the house completely empty. That requires much celebrating by the short people in the house. Lots of shouting, running in circles and twirling. It was fun to watch the kids enjoy the empty rooms and I made sure I let them. I was certain to take it all in. They've been through a lot with this move, too!

It was hard to say good bye to our house. I get so sentimental sometimes! After 4 houses you'd think I'd kind of be used to it. So many memories there and so many friends to say good bye to! It has been a great place to live.

 

EARLY Sunday morning, a day and a half later, I flew out to Pittsburgh. I had the opportunity to speak and teach at a guild there. Yes, right smack dab in the middle of the move. Why not?!?!? 

Actually, the timing was wonderful and I enjoyed my trip very much. It was a break from the reality of the move. Pittsburgh is a lovely city, the guild was wonderful and I was in good hands the entire time I was there! Many thanks to Sally and Diane for showing me around and keeping me company in the down times. It was a delight.

I did a trunk show on Monday night and a scrap management workshop on Tuesday for the guild. During class one of my students snuck an apple on my (borrowed) sewing machine...an apple for the teacher. Isn't that the sweetest thing ever? Thanks Elizabeth! I'm so very thankful that I get to travel, speak and teach about quilting. It's pretty incredible that I am able to work doing something that I love to do!

For the trip I finally broke down and started using my scrap happy purse. It's been sitting around unused for months and this was the perfect opportunity to break it in. I loved the size of it. Great for everyday use AND for traveling. My iPad fit in it well, along with my normal purse contents and I still had room for a snack. My purse also made me recognizable at the airport. Can't ask for more than that! :)

I got home at 2am on Wednesday. At 10 am the moving truck arrived and they unloaded all of our stuff. We are now surrounded in a sea of boxes. Sheesh! We are glad to have all our things in one place again. Speaking of that, I best get unpacking. I've got lots to do! Gotta get it done so I can sew!