Challenge Quilt Reveal

You may remember this post from way back on March 11th where I told you I had finished up my entry for my local quilt guild annual challenge.  I promised to share my finished quilt shortly.  Well low and behold, we got over two feet of snow the next day and our meeting was cancelled and the presentation of challenge quilts was postponed until our April meeting.  (interestingly enough, the same thing happened last year too....).  The guidelines were as follows for this years challenge:

Challenge Quilt for March 2014: The color of your Birthstone or Birth Flower
Make the quilt perimeter no larger than 240″ total. Suggestions or ideas (but not limited to) are: throw size quilt, wall hanging, baby quilt, jacket, bag or table runner, etc. The item needs to have the usual quilt construction, ie: 3 layers, with batting in the middle & quilted. The birthstone color and/ or birth flower must be listed on a tag on the front of the item for display. You can use just the birthstone color or just the birth flower color or both. Two other colors may be used in addition to the specific colors identified. There is a limit of 2 entries per member and they need to be completed. 

I am a November baby so my birthstone is topaz (I hated how ugly it was growing up) and my birth flower is the chrysanthemum (ever read the book Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes about the mouse? My favorite!).  I decided to make a quilt inspired by both.

The center stone is the Shine Bright pattern from Sarah at {no} hats in the house.  I am huge fan of Sarah's work and am always inspired by what she makes.  The greatest thrill for me was when she saw what I was working on on Flickr and commented on how much she liked it!  Talk about a confidence boost!!  This was my first time sewing curved seams as well.  If I could go back and do it again I would add the background pieced to the center gem before sewing the gem together, but as it was, I had already removed all the papers and really didn't want to pick open all of those seams.  So I improvised.  I cut a circle out of the middle of my background fabric, slightly smaller than my gem, then pinned and sewed around the outside of the gem.  It got a little wonky; there are a few ripples in the background fabric, but overall it worked!

I quilted the background using the chrysanthemum quilting tutorial from Rachel at Stitched in Color using a dark red thread matched to the background color.  I'm also a huge fan of Rachel's work.  Her use of color is just amazing!

I did have some problems with tension while I was FMQ the flowers so the back of this quilt is pretty ugly.  A quick, last-minute fix meant it was ready to display for the guild meeting but really I should have gone back and ripped out all of the background quilting and re-done it.  Luckily this is a wall hanging, and we'll hopefully never see the back of the quilt.

I added a row of stripes to the top of the quilt, using up the oakshott cottons I had purchased for this project.  I feel like it added a bit more interest to an other wise simple quilt.  I also felt like it helped to show off the quilting a little more as well.

I stitched in the ditch of the gem stone, hoping to add some depth to the pattern without retracting from the overall design.  This was my first time doing straight(ish) line quilting with my free motion foot.  There are only a few minor deviations from straight so I'm really happy with the results.  I'll definitely be revisiting this technique in the future.  I also added some "sparkles" with my quilting and then sewed on some gold colored seed beads when I was finished to add to the shine of the gem.

Luckily I didn't win the challenge (I know you're saying "wait, what?!").  The winning quilters make up the body of the challenge quilt committee for next years challenge and with being President of the guild next year, I'm not sure I could have handled all that.  The winning quilts were fantastic though!

Don't these look just like daffodils?

Northern Lights inspired quilt

Thanks for stopping by and happy quilting!

More Paper Piecing

I've really had the urge for some paper pieced blocks recently.  Sometimes I just crave those crisp lines, sharp points, and unique patterns.  I made three yesterday during my snowstorm induced day off.  I found all the patterns at Wombat Quilts.  She has complied a great list of free pieced block patterns.

I've been making them in my [Pink - Yellow - Grey] color scheme to add to that sampler quilt.  My personal favorite is the Neon Snowball block.  It was so fast too.  With only 5 pieces per piece, I had it done in under an hour.  I liked the Lost Geese block pattern but I'm not super pleased with my fabric and color placement on that one.  Hopefully it will blend in okay with the rest of the blocks.

Neon Snowball Block, Wombat Quilts

Icky Thump, 627Handworks

Lost Geese Block, Wombat Quilts

I'm linking up with Quiet Play for this weeks Paper Piecing Party.

Happy Quilting!

Paper Pieced

I've had the urge to do some paper piecing over the last few days so I started up a block to add to my Pink, Yellow, and Grey blocks which I'll receive from this months round of Sew Pieceful.  I haven't been able to do much else, what with my sewing room full of wood. Though I need to get a move on finishing my Challenge quilt since we present them next Wednesday!

My camera broke the other day (major bummer) so I won't be able to share many photos until I'm able to replace it.  In the mean time, Happy Quilting!

WIP Wednesday - Challenge Quilt

I'm making progress on my challenge quilt.  This weekend I sewed the paper pieced center to a dark red background.  Not my favorite but I'm limited by the challenge in the number of colors I can use (only three).

This was my first experience sewing curves and though it isn't 100% beautiful and perfect I'm happy with how it came out.  It lays flat and there's only slight puckering around the edges.

I ended up taking my background fabric and cutting a large circle in the middle of it then pinning and sewing all the way around the paper pieced medallion.  Not the easiest method but I had already removed the papers and didn't want to risk warping the gem center.  For future reference I would probably finish each section in quarters then sew the whole thing together.

For added interest I used some the remaining oakshotts and added a simple pieced border to the top of the panel.




I started out by stitching in the ditch of the gem with my FMQ foot to highlight the center star and the diamonds created in the outer rings of the gem.  I also added some little "sparkles" through out the gem.  I plan on finishing them with some hand quilting in metallic thread and adding some shiny seed beads to help the quilt shine (pun intended).

Since the theme is birthdays I decided to FMQ chrysanthemums (November's flower) onto the background in a dark red thread using a tutorial by Rachel at Stitched in Color.  This is my first experience free motion quilting on my new Janome sewing machine.  So far I'm incredibly happy with the outcome.

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

A little of this and a little of that.

I've got quite a few WIPs at the moment that I wanted to share with you.

I picked up some 1 1/2" Hexagon English Paper Piecing templates on a shop-hop with my local quilt guild this fall.  I wanted to try it out so I grabbed some 4 1/2" fabric squares that I picked up from a local quilt shop that was going out of business and picked out the greens (my first few were blue before I decided to stick to one color) to start working away.

These have been a fun project to take on the road with me while I'm waiting in line or something.  For the most part I've worked on them at the laundry mat while waiting for washers and dryers.  I think when it's done I might call it my "Laundry Quilt."  I will probably gift this quilt to someone (maybe my Mother in Law) since these more traditional fabrics aren't really my style.

In March I'm taking a sewing class at Nido, the new fabric shop in Burlington, VT.  Some of my girlfriends from college were interested in learning to sew their own clothes and since I'm really only comfortable with 2D objets (read: quilts) I though this might be a fun opportunity to learn some new skills.  We're making the Laurel Dress by Colette Patterns.  It's a simple shift-style dress with lots of options to customize.  To see some of the fantastic versions of this dress check out the Colette Patterns Flikr Group.


I've been really struggling with picking a fabric for this dress.What I like to sew with and what I like to wear are two TOTALLY different things.  Just check out my Apparel Fabrics Pinterest Page for proof.  I've looked at everything from shirting stripes, forest animals, bicycles, neon dots, gauzy florals, and even lace (but that requires essentially making two dress, one in lace and one for a layering shift)

Finally I decided on the Dot Chambray in Indigo from Robert Kaufman's Chambray Union collection.  My fabric came yesterday and I am in love!  It is unbelievably soft and I think it's going to make a beautiful dress that I can wear both to work and casually.  I'm glad that I ordered this fabric when I did.  It's already out of stock again!

Now I just have to wash/iron it and work on cutting out my pattern pieces for my dress.  I think we're going to go to Nido's open sewing night the month before our class for help with that portion though since we're all newbie dressmakers.

Finally,  I've made some more progress on my challenge quilt that I shared last week.  I was able to finish my gem center and I'm really loving the piece so far.  Now for the next challenge.  Piecing curves!

There are a few spots that get a little muddied from lack of contrast (as you can see in the black and white picture below) but overall I'm really happy with the piece.  At this point, I'm definitely not taking it apart.

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

Anyhow, that's it for today.
Happy Quilting!

Paper Piecing

This weekend I was able to start working on my challenge quilt for my local quilt guild.  Submissions are due in March each year.  Last year I had a great idea for the challenge but somehow March snuck up on me and I wasn't able to even begin the project I had in mind.  This year I am determined to do things differently.

The challenge theme this year is to make a quilt inspired by either our birthstone or our birth flower; for me that's topaz and chrysanthemums.  We are limited to the use of three colors only.  When I heard the birthstone part of this challenge I knew that I had the perfect pattern in mind to work with.  Sarah from {no} hats in the house has a beautiful paper pieced pattern out called Shine Bright (available as a purchased pattern from Craftsy) and it was just singing to me!  I knew it would be perfect for this challenge.  NLQG ladies, I'll know if you're reading this if a similar block shows up at the March meeting!

I am so excited to be working with a beautiful Oakshott Rainbow Orange Wraps Fat 8th Pack and Kona Cottons in School Bus, Orange, Carrot, Kumquat, Tangerine, Flame, Sunflower, Banana, Maize, Lemon, Canary and Citrus.  This is my first experience working with Oakshott and so far, I am NOT disappointed.  They really do live up to the hype that everyone seems to give them.  They are silky soft and a charm to work with and the colors are just amazing.  They have just the right amount of sparkle for this project.

Enough about fabrics.  What about the project?!  I was able to work on this for a few hours on Sunday as well as a few hours on Monday afternoon (I stayed home sick from work...ugh) and completed a little over half of the gem.  it was slow going at first but once I got back into the swing of paper piecing it was easy sailing.  I must admit, I was worried about wasting some of this beautiful fabric but so far I've been able to use up pretty much every scrap with very little waste.  Who knows, maybe I'll try some improvisational piecing to use on the back of the quilt with the rest of these little pieces.

And I must say, I think it's coming along quite nicely as a topaz gem stone.  What do you think?

Happy Quilting!