Finishing a Commission Quilt {WIP Wednesday}

I'm on a tight deadline to finish up the first of two commission quilts before I head to Florida for a week with my Mom.  I know I haven't shown you much of this one yet but hope to share more soon.  In the meantime, I need to get back to sewing!

quilting like a mad woman this week

Martin Cat thought he was helping me sew the backing up

I'm linking up with this weeks WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

Voting is Open! | Pantone Quilt Challenge 2015

Voting is now open for the 2015 Pantone Quilt Challenge (#PantoneQuilt2015).  Visit either of the two challenge hosts blogs to vote for your favorite by clicking on the heart in the top right corner of the link up image.    You get one vote per category!  Voting is open until 6pm 29 April 2015 NEW ZEALAND TIME!  (That's 2AM on 4/20 here on the east coast).

Good luck to everyone!

Anne at Play Crafts

Adrienne at On the Windy Side

If you like my Two Birds, One Stone quilt best, I'm #5 in the Quilts category.  

Two Birds, One Stone hanging at our local guild show a few weeks ago.

Round #5 - Chelsea at Patch the Giraffe {Round Trip Quilts}

Chelsea blogs at Patch the Giraffe and can also be found on Facebook, Intagram, and Pinterest.  

Chelsea's top came to me looking like this.  Amazing right?  Also small.  The whole thing was only about 36 inches in size.  But that's perfect.  Chelsea is aiming for this to finish at about lap quilt size.

Image borrowed from Liz at Green Cheese Quilting

I was worried that I wouldn't have enough solids in the colors Chelsea had requested so I started by digging through my stash and was pleasantly surprised to find a wide variety of colors to pull from.

I was immediately drawn to those paper pieced stars.  They finish at 8".  I really like how they balance out the smaller borders and piecing.  So I set to work choosing and sizing the templates I would need.  My original goal was to make four or five stars and set them along one side, similar to how Chelsea had set her original center.

I made three blocks before I ran out of time.  As it was I was over a week late mailing this off to Leanne.  At that point, my "make it work" came to the rescue.  I re-purposed some of the orphan pieces in the bag and made some quilt low volume flying geese to fill in some of the blank spaces and got to work piecing together my addition.

Though this isn't what I originally pictured when I started working on Chelsea's quilt, I'm happy with how it came out in the end.  The larger stars help to balance the weight of the quilt and I like how that one extra butterfly block is escaping out of the neat and tidy row that Liz added before me.  Chelsea I hope you like it!

2015 Pantone Quilt Challenge Linkup!

The linky party is now open for the 2015 Pantone Quilt Challenge.  I know a lot of people dislike this year's color, Marsala, but honestly, I really like it.  It's a color I gravitate towards in every aspect of my life: beauty, quilting, home decor....

I'm submitting my quilt, Two Birds, One Stone to the challenge this year in the quilt category.  You can read the full post here.  You still have time to get your projects finished (or started).   The link up is open until next Friday, April 24th.   I'm hoping to snap a few more pictures of this quilt at our Quilt Show this weekend where it will be hanging. 

Linking up with Finish It Up Friday and Crazy Mom Quilts!

2015 Finish-Along {Q2 Goals}

So I failed epicly at my finish along goals last quarter.  I managed to not finish a single thing on my list!  Unfortunately life got in the way and all sorts of other things crept up on me that ended up taking precedence over what I had originally set as my goals.

Let's first look at what I did finish during Q1:

This fun Churn Dash Quilt for a good friend.

An Unnammed Mini-Quilt for NLQG Auction

My NLQG/Pantone 2015 Challenge Quilt: Two Birds, One Stone

A Raffle Quilt for a good friend and local school

Now to set some goals for Q2:

1. Finish Commission Quilt 1 of 2 by the end of April.  The top is done.  I just need to sew the backing and then baste/quilt/bind for my customer to gift.

2. Begin work on Commission Quilt 2 of 2 immediately thereafter.  This is a second version the quilt above, this time to be kept by my customer.

3. Finish this fun Modern Hexies mini-quilt I started working on.  Quilting is done, just need to bind and hang

4. Start/Finish some secret sewing I have to finish for a secret person that I can't tell you anything about yet.

5. Pull fabrics for a commissioned baby quilt for a nearby family member.  We'll be using this pattern and have decided on a color scheme:  gray, light blue, mint, navy, white and a green apple color

6. Finish my Rocky Mountain Puzzle bee block quilt.  I need to make a few more blocks then put the whole thing together.

7. Finish making additional blocks for my Low Volume Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt then put the whole thing together.  I think I want to back this one in Voile or Lawn for a nice, light, summer quilt.

8.  Make fabric baskets for Mom and I to use in our locker at the gym.using the One Hour Basket pattern.  I'm going to use some of the Cotton + Steel prints I got during the VT Shop Hop.

9. Finish my Modern Double-Cross Quilt.  It's a graduation gift for a cousin who graduated high school LAST YEAR.  No pictures yet, since it's a surprise.

10. Quilt and bind my #orangepeelQAL quilt from last year.  

11. Quilt and bind my scrappy red and white hourglass quilt, also from last year!

12.  Bind the wedding quilt made for my Uncle and Wife who got married in October 2013.  Also very late.

Linking up with Adrianne at One the Windy Side.

Aurifil BOM Raffle Quilt

I have another finish to share!  I finished this quilt at the end of March and shipped it right off to a friend for a raffle at her daughters school.  My friend is PTO president and very involved with ALL the aspects of her children's lives so when she asked if I could make a quilt for the school I immediately jumped on it.  If anyone was deserving of such a thing, it's her!

This large quilt was made using my homeless 2014 Aurifil BOM blocks.  I started these in January of last year and unfortunately only made it through to the August block.  They were fun to make but I didn't have the time to finish the rest of the blocks and to be quite honest, they weren't really speaking to me anymore.

The blocks themselves are coral, peach, and orange with low-volume backgrounds.  Because I was on a deadline to finish it up, this quit is made up of a lot of "make-it-work" moments.  I decided to use my hoarded Nanny Bee in coral print by Heather Ross for a bright and fun background, but the blocks got lost in all the red.  So to make it work I added the green borders around each block.  The layout came about  because I only had 8 blocks to work with and I really wanted to make the quilt a more substantial size.  For the backing I used some on-hand extra wide fabric in a rich purple color.  I also bound the quilt using the Cricket Clover print from the same Heather Ross collection. 

I machine stitched the binding down using a blanket stitch on my Janome.  I figured it would make for a more durable quilt in the long run.  For the label I used a piece of some also long hoarded Heather Ross fabric.  I think this one is called Bicycles I Have Loved.  Another bicycle makes an appearance on the front in the block you can see just off to the left in the picture below.  The label is my favorite part of this quilt!

The best part about this quilt is that my friends daughter loved the quilt so much that they ended up taking it home with them from the fundraiser night.  It now happily lives in their living room!

Find me at MQX on Saturday!

Hello blog quilt world!  I just wanted to pop in really quickly and let you know that I'll be at the Machine Quilters Exposition (MQX) tomorrow, Saturday, April 11th, selling raffle tickets (and also volunteering) for the Northern Lights Quilt Guild raffle quilt.  You can read all about our quilt in this prior post.

I'll be back really soon to share some recent finishes and on going projects but for right now I'm all tied up in training new employees at work and final details to get ready for our quilt show next weekend!

If you are going to be at the show please stop into our table in the lobby to support our local quilt guild!  Happy quilting!  Hope to see your shining, smiling faces soon!

finished 2015 NLQG Raffle quilt.  Tickets are 1 for $1 or 6 for $5