Quick Friday Finish!

Do you buy quilt kits?
I very rarely do because it takes away the fun task of looking at all the fabrics and choosing pieces to coordinate for a specific project. But I spotted this tabletopper kit at the Hobby Horse  and liked all the fabrics they included. It was a great beginner project and/or a "no brain power required" project for the experienced quilter. The pattern was easy to piece with four patch blocks in the corner of the sashing. 

And when it was finished, it looked terrific hanging in the tree in my backyard. Aren't the leaves so beautiful this year?!?



This was the perfect October project to work on. I free motion quilted around all the interesting motifs in the centre fabric. This is a classic Patrick Lose fabric called Happy Halloween. 

I even love the selvage with the little spiders!






And then, while watching (more listening than watching) Bonnie Hunter on QuiltCam, I machine quilted back and forth across the black lines in the border fabric using black thread. So quick and easy...left to right, right to left, repeat.







I even love the backing of this project which I pieced together using pieces from my orange scraps bin. The binding was also made from leftovers.
Thanks to Hobby Horse for this fun halloween project! Linking up to Friday Finishes at Crazy Mom Quilts and TGIFF.

Mystery Quilt Finish

Humble Quilts Quiltalong

This must be a blogging record for me with daily posts and THREE finished quilts in a week! The first finish was the Tetris bed quilt, yesterday's finish was a baby quilt and today's finish is this adorable 21" miniature quilt.
Humble Quilts hosted a mystery quiltalong called Palmateer Point. The layout was posted on Monday and because it's a small quilt, I was able to quickly put the pieces together and finish the quilting with some straight lines.

The brown and blue fabrics are Shweshwe fabrics from South Africa, and were lovely to work with.  I'm so happy to have them in a finished quilt!

We (the quilt and I) went for a walk to find a good place to take a photo. Turns out there were many good places!
Thanks to Lori for a really fun mystery quilt adventure! Click here to see more variations from the quiltalong.

Finished Baby Quilt

The Berenstain Bears baby quilt is finally finished! The finishing of this quilt was upstaged by the other UFO finish last week, but now it's finally done.
The pattern is called "Arrows Up" and is by Jackie Seyer at FRJ designs. I pieced the quilt in 2014 and when it had marinated in the UFO closet long enough, I started the quilting!
Even though I am trying to be okay with "random layout", the places where there are clumps of colour bug me when I look at it. I remind myself again that "random" does not mean "evenly placed"! And I also tell myself that the baby won't care about exact colour placement.

Does this darkened photo show the quilting lines better?
I did stop machine quilting before the quilt became as stiff as cardboard (as advised by my blog readers!) 
It's now ready for another baby to be born! 
And I'm ready to finish up another quilt!

Big Friday Finish!

It's such a great feeling to reach a goal that you set for yourself! Today I am patting myself on the back for finishing my UFO of the month - Tetris. 
This project was a quiltalong over at Happy Quilts in 2012. 
Yes... this quilt began 5 years ago!
The free pattern is still available on Melissa's blog - click here. And you can see other variations of the Tetris quilt at the link up here.


I added the letters to the top of my quilt because I love making letter blocks. I tried to make the letters look "boxy" in keeping with the Tetris theme.

If you check the UFO lists on the right hand side bar of my blog, you will see that the Tetris quilt has been on every list since 2013! 



And now I am so happy to be declaring this quilt to be "DONE"! It's a great feeling of accomplishment!
To see more Friday Finishes, hop over to Crazy Mom Quilts. And to see the September finishes over at One Monthly Goal, click here.

A Mini Finish

Now that The Bear is finished, and before I get to work on my August UFO, I wanted to make a quick little wallhanging from fabric I purchased at the Goose on the Loose shop hop in May. I loved the whole line of this Bee Creative fabric, so believe me when I say that I demonstrated great self restraint in buying only 3 pieces of the fabric line!

I didn't want this great fabric to go into storage and decided to simply cut out the panel squares and border them with the bee fabric. I machine quilted diagonal lines with the walking foot on, and used masking tape as a guide for spacing the lines.

I'm very happy with look of the black flange tucked in the hexagon binding. It makes a perfect little 13" square wallhanging for the front door. 
I'm going to make up some little kits to give to some of the Slow Sunday Stitchers, so if you'd like to make a similar wallhanging, check back here on Sunday for the giveaway to "bee inspired"!

Big Bear Finish!

The Bear quilt is finished! 
This quilt was started in the fall of 2016 with Lorna's MOD Bear Paw Quilt Along. I thought I was going to make a little wallhanging, but this bear project took on a life of it's own and decided to become a bigger quilt. I made as many blocks as I could with the brown fabric I had purchased for the project.
Then I got the idea to add the word 'Killarney', which is the name of the provincial park in which I saw a bear that year (you can read the story here). Adding the word row meant that I ran out of the light background fabric and had to buy more to make the borders. The new background fabric turned out to be a slightly lighter colour which didn't bug me too much until I saw the finished quilt outdoors. But it's way too late to change it now, so I just have to live with it. I am tempted to tea dye the whole quilt and see if that tones down the difference between the two fabrics.


It was only fitting that I took the photos of the finished quilt while camping at the same park where I met the bear last year.
We had fun finding just the right spot to hold the quilt for photos. However it is difficult to get qualified quilt holders who understand how to hold the quilt still and parallel to the ground!

The quilt has already been used for cuddling up in around the fire, for warmth at night, and for protection from mosquitoes, black flies and bears!
Thank you to Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts for another great quilt along and a wonderful pattern!
I'm so happy to be linking up my finish to One Monthly Goal and Let's Be Social. You can see more bear quilts at the QAL link up here.

Finished Mini Quilt

Back in May when issue #15 of the 100 Blocks magazine came out, I was immediately smitten with Bonnie Hunter's block. In the magazine this block was called "sawtooth flutter" but I'm calling my version "Bonnie's Star". 

I sewed her block pattern using leftover triangles given to me by one of my quilt guild members (who would have otherwise thrown the pieces in the garbage). It was a fun challenge to turn the baggie of scrap triangles into this 133 piece 12" block. 
Since I already had the walking foot on my machine because I was quilting the Bear, I thought a quick little diversion with some instant gratification would be nice. And it was! I just did some stitch-in-the-ditch quilting around the block pieces and some parallel lines in the border and it's done - including a label and hanging sleeve.
A quick finish is just what I needed to maintain my motivation for my larger long term projects. 

Finished Quilt!

Pinned to the design wall today is a finished quilt! This is my version of Bonnie Hunter's pattern called Grand Illusion. It was her annual mystery quilt that started in November 2014. 

The quilting was quick and easy - just a horizontal and vertical grid with the walking foot.
This quilt taught me that I really am a scrappy quilter. I purchased new yardage for this quilt and struggled with it the whole time. I learned that I don't want to sew with new yardage because it just doesn't make my heart sing. Why use one green fabric when 10 or 20 greens will make me happier?!? 
Thank you to Bonnie for another wonderful mystery quilt experience! 
To see more projects on design walls, hop over to the link up at Small Quilts.

Totally in Love!

The Scrap Vortex quilt is FINISHED!  
The photos aren't great because it was late in the day and I had to fiddle with the camera's exposure settings, it was 5 degrees outside, and it was windy. But it's done!
Oh how I love thee, let me count the ways...

1) First of all, I love that it is a finished, useable quilt (instead of a UFO sitting in a closet). I am proud of my efforts to move it constantly forward to completion.

2) I love the asterisk corners and think that creative spark is growing into another whole quilt idea.

3) I love the metaphor that scrap quilts are. All those tiny bits of fabric have joined with their friends to become something amazing! That is the power of a group, and the beauty of a mosaic, with the strengths of each part contributing to the beauty of the whole.

4) I love that the quilt began with a quiltalong at Crazy Mom Quilts, and the quilting design also came from Crazy Mom Quilts! The spiral quilting is perfect for the vortex theme, and I am relieved at how flat this quilt is in spite of all those tiny pieces, bias edges, and intense quilting... there were a lot of variables to manage in this project. This is the back of the quilt, made from two pieces of yardage joined for a simple backing with two seams.

I like this terrible photo because it shows the wind and camera exposure elements I battled to get a good photo. At least I was able to get some shots before the rain started.
Ahh the trials of a quilt blogger.... LOL!

I am so excited to be able to post my finish over at the One Monthly Goal link up! Woo hoo!

Votes For Women is Finally Finished!

Sometimes I wondered whether this day would ever come and here it is... 
drum roll please...

Votes For Women - outdoor photo

Votes For Women is a finished quilt!

Getting the vote for women, and getting this quilt finished both are testaments to the sticktoitiveness! I probably shouldn't even joke about that, since it's not even in the same league of accomplishments at all.
However, did I mention that it did take me 5 years to finish this quilt!?!?

machine quilting photo

The blocks in this quilt were made during a quiltalong hosted by the incomparable Barbara Brackman and started in 2012. All of the prints in her fabric line called Metropolitan Fair are in this quilt, along with many other reproduction prints. A huge thank you to Barbara for the wonderful patterns and delighful fabrics!






There is a ton of machine quilting in this project, all of which was completed on my 22 year old Brother sewing machine. The blocks are free motion quilted, and the sashing was quilted with the walking foot. And every stitch was made using Aurifil thread.




Here is a photo of the backing, which was pieced from leftover chunks of this project and from Circa 2016. I have no idea why that dark square is pieced right there in the middle like that! Must have seemed/seamed like a good idea at the time! I will attach the label near that square since it draws the eye to look there. I'm working on a photo transfer label for this quilt.

This was the best photo from the indoor photo shoot. My quilt holders are reaching as high as they can and were just able to hold it up off the floor, but only if they held it sideways. Oh well, you can see the whole quilt ... just tilt your head to the right!
Finished size: 61" x 83"

Finished Quilt!

This is my first finish for 2017! It's called Valentine 9 Patch and was a quiltalong with Temecula Quilts in 2014. The free pattern is still available - just click on the Temecula link. The finished quilt is 24" x 24".



I started the project with fabrics from the "Mama Said Sew" line by Sweetwater. I had a charm pack and a bit of yardage, and added a solid white Kona for the background.





The heart blocks were pieced on my 1964 white featherweight that I call "Sweet baby Jayne". This is such a beautiful sewing machine and was the perfect choice to sew these love blocks.


The machine quilting was done on my Brother 1500 which is such a work horse machine. It only does a straight stitch and has been quilting all my quilts for more than 20 years. 

A quirky bit of trivia about this wallhanging. In my excitement to start the quilting, I basted the quilt top to the backing with the text going vertically instead of horizontally. I only realized this when I was almost finished the quilting and had no intention of ripping out the stitches, repositioning the backing and starting over! It's another one of those humble moments in quilt making, but the mistake will face the wall, and only you and I will know this bit of trivia... don't tell anyone :)

How do you know when a quilt is really finished?
It has a label on the back. I stitch my labels right into one of the binding corners.
BTW I really liked using these binding needles by Fons and Porter.