Dresden quilt finished!

 

Finally - a finish! Is this really the first finish I've had since June (wonky square rings)? Sadly, yes! I think summer is just a busy time. After my wedding in September, it's game on, a bonanza of quilty finishes. So I say now! :P

Here's the scoop on my Dresden quilt...

The idea began June 5.
The instructions on how I constructed this quilt were posted on June 11.
The progress was featured in a couple WIP posts throughout June and July.
That's 2.5 months in total! I didn't pay it nearly enough attention this summer, but it's done now and just in time for the contest deadline. :)
I'm entering it in the "innovative" category!

Quilt Summary..

Fabric: Poetica, by Pat Bravo, and some Kona solids.
Size: 53" x 72"

The design is based off of an 18 degree triangle template. I used the EZ Dresden ruler to cut wedges from a ginormous (54"x54") log cabin block. I arranged the wedges randomly in 8" rows, using a gray Kona solid as the background.

I did straight line quilting that echos the 18 degree triangle on the back of the quilt. The binding is machine sewn.

I love back! The triangle makes me so happy, and the light purple is such a great contrast to the dark gray on the front. I don't mind exclaiming over how much I love the back, because, to be honest - the front sort of didn't turn out as great as I had imagined! It's sooo dark. Too dark! I think I can live with it though. :)

Lots and lots and lots of pics! I'm really happy about this quilt, but it's future is yet to be determined. This one might be a gifter.

I hope everyone had a great weekend, and really, a great summer - hard to believe it's almost over!

June Wrap-Up

"Wait.. today is July?? What the?"  ... is what I thought when I woke up this morning and saw "Fresh Sewing Day July" posted over at Lily's Quilts.

So I went through my blog to see what I accomplished this past month. There wasn't much! A quilt, a potholder, and a place mat - which was actually finished May 31st so forgive me for cheating a little. ;)

Even so, I feel pretty impressed with myself for having a whole entire quilt finished. I've been clicking around to some of the peeps that have already linked up and WOW, holy cow! So many of you have gotten so much done, it's pretty unbelievable. Guess I'm just slow, heh. :P

On the subject of "where the heck did June go", I started thinking about what else happened in June...

• My future sister-in-law and her boyfriend stayed with us for a week
• My family threw a big party for my mom to celebrate her retirement
• My fiance finished summer I and started summer II (classes for his (2nd!) masters)
• We chose a caterer and are pretty close to signing a photographers contract
• I made up our save-the-dates and sent them out
• We watched all of season 2 of workaholics
• The garden was finalized and it's poppin
• I read "Gone" by Michael Grant
• Fiance built shelves and put a door on a closet that's been empty since we moved in 

Exciting stuff people. I'm sure there are other things that happened, but I haven't finished my coffee yet, so that's as good as it's gonna get!

I'm also going to sneak in to the small blog meet up. I have exactly 50 followers (woo hoo for that!), so I'm right on the border. Glad to meet you!

Wonky Square Rings Quilt Complete!

Wonky Square Rings is complete! HIP HOP HOORAY! :D * confetti * (Picture onslaught ahead!)

I should call this my “learning” quilt. I feel like what I've learned while making this quilt is worth more than the finished product itself!

 

This quilt started as a way to save some money, because the fabrics I started with for this were from a quilt top I purchased for a few dollars in an antique store.

The block design came out of a need to sew, to sew anything, to just sit down at my machine and put fabrics together with thread. Eventually all of the blocks were completed and the top was finished.

In this post I talked about how I realized I didn't like all that white (the finished product may have changed my mind - I'm on the fence now!). I talked about not buying cheap fabrics just because what I really wanted was out of stock. If you read through the comments section, you'll see I got some great feedback from you guys! Thank you! That was some of the best feedback I've gotten from a blog post. Really cool! :)

 

You might have noticed that I went ahead and did the quilting like I had planned – straight lines with turns intersecting each other. I love quilting this way. My brain really took to this method fast – I thought it was much easier than stippling/meandering. My brain gets really confused when I stipple – I feel like a crazy person! My hands go one way and my brain wants to go another. With this straight line intersecting method I knew exactly where to go, no weird miscommunication going on in my body, lol. 

The biggest tip I have for someone who wants to give this quilting method a shot is to slow down, actually almost stop, when you come to a turning point. At first this will seem awkward, but after a while (5 or 10 minutes) it comes naturally, you just do it and barely even think about it.

By the way, anyone want to take a guess at how many calories quilting burns?? I don't know the answer, but judging by the way I felt it's significant! I was getting sweaty in areas that shouldn't have been getting sweaty, LOL. Yikes..

I had my doubts about this quilt until the quilting was done and the binding was on. I think those two things really made the quilt come together. But I think I say that with every quilt I make!

One more thing I learned? Make my quilts bigger!! I keep thinking 50”-60” is enough, but it's not. I really like to lay on the couch and have lots of quilt on me and my fiance. :)

Speaking of my fiance... we went for a cruise down to Lake Michigan – it's about a 10 minute drive from our home. He stopped and held my quilt for the photos and then we kept going until we got to this little tiny beach at the end of the road...

And we watched the sunset. :) (Yes, this is a terrible sunset picture, but you get the idea, hehe.)

 

Thank you guys so much for all your input along the way - it's always interesting to hear what tips you guys have and the encouragement makes the process so much fun. :)

I'm going to link up with Canoe Ridge Creations for Sew Modern Monday.Thank you for coming over!

Irish Hills Patchwork Quilt

I posted this yesterday, and only recently found out about the Bloggers Quilt festival, hosted by Amy's Creative Side. I hope it's okay to enter this quilt! :) I thought this might be a good way to get out into the blogosphere and meet some new quilting bloggers. So thanks for stopping by - here we go!

Mom mom lives in an area of Michigan that people call "the Irish hills". I don't know why it's named that. Well, it does have rolling hills, and I just googled it - apparently it was settled by the Irish. Now I know! In any case, it's really beautiful and the downtown area is charming, but if you get outside of town it's sort of "country", if you know what I mean. (Nothin' wrong with country! I'm actually living in the burbs, wanna-be-country style - I swear we are starting our own farmers market in the backyard, but that's another story..)

One of the first times my fiance and I drove there together, we stopped at a somewhat decrepit gas station/"everything" store to get some beer. We were the only people there, except for one guy at the register buying a case of Budweiser and having a very intense conversation with the cashier about night crawlers. I guess we looked like outsiders or something, because the guy eventually turned around and said to us (rather creepily, through the few teeth he had left) WELCOME TO THE HILLS! (Mm, thanks?!! lol) We felt like we were in a movie, but I guess you had to be there!

So yeah.. how does this all relate to the quilt?  It started it's life in "the Hills" - you could say that's where it was born, aww. I found a quilt top, in an antique store, that somebody (I wonder who?!) had started and never finished, and the price was right so I grabbed it and eventually used parts of it to make this large patchwork. I guess I'm taking someone else's history and pushing it forward?

Inspiration? Well, I gotta give some love to Film in the Fridge, as this quilt is one of my favorite's of hers!

I realized I didn't really care for this green color on the backing much too late, so now I just live with it.

Most of the fabric on the top didn't come from the found quilt top. I'd say only about 20% is from the antique store find.

So I'm left with much of the found quilt leftover - I am starting to think of how I can use the rest of the fabric. There is some WHACK fabric in there. I mean look at those neon stripes.

But there are some real gems in there - I especially love this aztekky looking print on the top left:

Maybe I will cut the rest into jelly roll type stripes, along with some solids and sew up one of those race-type quilts. Or maybe it'll sit in my craft room closet for a few years. :P

If you are still reading, thank you for checking out my quilt. I will be clicking on as many of you as I can this weekend!

3rd time's a... wedding gift!

 Another quilt from last year (2011), a wedding gift for my cousin. I was totally coerced into making this for her! A couple months before the ceremony, my mom and Aunt said to me "Wouldn't it be nice if you made a quilt for Colleen's wedding? That would be sooo nice!" Well, what was I supposed to do? :P

It wasn't that I didn't want to, it was just that it was only the third quilt I had ever made! I was nervous it wouldn't turn out very well and that everyone would notice every little mistake. In the end it turned out okay, but I was a bit rushed and the binding looks a little sloppy in some areas. That just adds to the homemade charm, am I right? :)

I looked at her registry and chose a color scheme based on what she had on her wish list. I went with a bundle from the Fat Quarter Shop.

When in doubt... patchwork.

Second Quilt: Blocks and Stripes

After my first attempt, I took a vacation from quilting. I started my second quilt a year later. I went with a tutorial from Film in the Fridge. My confidence level was kinda low then, so to ensure it would end up looking purdy I kept my fabric choices very close to her design. I love how it turned out and it's the quilt I use the most, especially when I'm on the couch with a book.

If I were to recommend any quilting design to a beginner, this would be the one. It was really quick and and the best part is that you don't have to line any seams up! It can't get much easier!

You guys digging that hot new fabric with the ducks? Haha, I'm kidding. Just about everyone has some of that stuff in their stash. :P

Start at the beginning

I made my first quilt (almost two years ago) in a tiny apartment on a rickety little table in the dining "nook". There was barely enough room to spread it all out, and nowhere to stick my two cats to keep them out of the way.

  

I had no idea what I was doing. I don't think I used a rotary cutter, I chose the worst batting possible, and for some reason decided free motion stippling was the only way to go. LOL, oh past me, you crack me up.

I also didn't know anything about binding, so I just went to Jo-Ann's and bought some of that cardboardy pre-made stuff! Did I read any tutorials on how to miter the corners? Nope. I'll spare you the close ups of that hotness!

All in all it was a bit of a nightmare, but it could have been worse. Ignore those two purple squares next to each other. I'm going to go ahead and assume I was drunk. :)