A new favorite

I have a new love by the name of the Moda Love quilt pattern.

Charm, candy & layer cake friendly, this pattern is simple and stunning.

It all began for me at HollyHill's Breakfast Club with a mini quilt kit of Moda's new Autumn Lily line. So I made the quilt.


And then I fell in love with Sandy Gervais' Rambling Rose, so I made one of those too.


And then I thought to myself... Let's make a bigger one!

I peddled my way over to Fiddlesticks and dove into Sweetwater's Elementary

Half squares and squares all lines up and ready to go... So much fun!!!


Now it's up on the wall where I'll tweak it now and again before I finally sew it all together.


I'll finish it off with a blue dot border, and be oh so proud to put it in the shop.


Happy Quilting!!
Dawn

Batting has a right side too

Check out this info from the APQS blog. Nothing worse than your batting punching through the quilt back.

Fleurologie

Every little girl needs something made from Fleurologie by Stephanie Ryan.

Big love.

Lately

Here's a new crib quilt hurrying its way toward the shop. Chirp Chirp by MoMo is the cutest!

Then there's this slow moving beast. I'm dragging it along kickin & screaming. Pretty sure the blocks have been rearranged 20 times since this photo. 

One thing is clear though. I need a bigger design wall :)

And some fresh photos of the Reunion quilt because it was a beautiful day 

Kid tested... :) 

Sweetwater Jelly Roll Quilt

There's a new quilt in the shop!!







This is a lovely experiment with a jelly roll that turned out better than I imagined.

You can watch a tutorial over at Missouri Star Quilt Co if you want to make your own. This quilt was made using one complete jelly roll including the binding with about a yard and a half for backing.

If you aren't up to the task or are just too busy, there's always my shop!

Happy Quilting!!

HST Celebration!

The Curio half-square triangle quilt top is done! In celebration of this beautiful fact, I've quilted and am now binding a Sweetwater Reunion jelly roll quilt, soon to be up in the shop.

It all started with a giant pile of left over HST blocks.


I paired them up and chain pieced away.


For this quilt, I made a bold move and pressed the seams open. I may never do it again, but I will say, my blocks are absolutely, most incredibly FLAT.






The other unusual for me process with this quilt was to match my seams and needle down in the intersection, starting with the last block and working my way backward one intersection at a time.

It was a lot of stopping and starting, but I found it delightful that my points never had a chance to shift out of place.

Look at this aqua chevron stripe near the top!! It totally makes the quilt for me!




The idea came to me in a stroke of after-dark over-caffeinated genius, and I'm super happy with the results!




Moving immediately on to something completely different, I pulled a finished quilt top out of the pending pile and quilted it up.



And a sneak peek of the back... Binding is still going on.


Absolutely cannot wait to pull the last stitch on this guy, and then whip out a baby girl gift for a work colleague.

Add to that one birthday party and breakfast delivery for 12-15 on Sunday and it looks to all add up to a mighty busy two day weekend.

Better get busy!

Happy Quilting,
Dawn

I 💗 leftovers

I'm piecing a quilt made entirely of leftover HST from a bed quilt I'm working on. So so fun! I live playing with scraps!






You can see by the shaggy edges that they've been hanging around the scrap pile for awhile!



I've trimmed them up and stacked them in pairs.


Pretty, isn't it!
I've Been playing quite a bit with the layout on my design board....

The original intention was to lay them out in a pinwheel like this:



But my tastes have changed and now I'm thinking a scrappy lightning/zigzag pattern like this


Or this:



Such a blast!

Hope you have a happy, scrappy quilty day!

Dawn.

Goings on...

It's been. awhile... I took a long vacation, and am finally back in the routine of things.

I broke out the old Curio blocks and I'm cracking down on them this week. The pattern is called Diamond Lattice, found on Moda Bake Shop.


The design wall isn't big enough for half this quilt - there are 2 more lattice blocks yet to go on the end of each row, and then 4 more full rows.

I have to admit, I found it very appealing to piece these blocks and then slice them right in half to add the sashings. There's a lovely pile of 2 1/2" strips waiting and stacks of blocks all laid out in order just waiting to be sliced and diced - I'm savoring the process & only doing one at a time. :)

I'm going to use this one on my bed, I think!! The colors are delicious. Not the bright brights that typically draw my eye, but lovely nonetheless, and at least for me, a bit unexpected.

Then, there's this yummy bit of leftovers! Nothing like a pile of HST scraps to make a girl's day!


I'm ironing the seams open on these so they'll lay nice and flat, which isn't my usual method, so we'll see how we go.

As you can see, there's enough here to make quite the quilt.

In other news, I took a little jaunt up to Vancouver to a favorite shop of mine on Saturday, and Cheran had just got in the Snowbird collection from Edyta Sitar @ Laundry Basket Quilts.

I'll admit, I've seen these online and thought, ok. More blue fabric. Whatever. But. Do yourself a favor. Find them for real and just pet them, even if blue isn't your color.

I wanted all of the fabric ever, but sadly I don't have all of the money ever, and I had to be satisfied with fat quarter cuts. :) at least if I want to keep making the rent. I suppose if I had taken the plunge, I could console myself by building a very very beautiful tent.

Here's a sneak peek:


The navy and teal dot along the edge there was so great I nearly bought the whole bolt. It's going to be the backing, and I've decided on this pattern, from the book Fat Quarter Winners by Monique Dillard. This woman is a genius with a fat quarter.

You can see her in action over at Craftsy.

Well, with all this excitement it's hard to put down the rotary cutter and close my eyes, but I must. Tomorrow is all numbers and data entry, and I'm hoping these visions of quilts to come are enough to tide me over.

Happy quilting!

Recently...

Honky Tonk is finished and up on etsy



And I've been monkeying around with a jelly roll pattern this week too. Here's a picture of the progress so far:


The fabric is Reunion by Sweetwater for Moda I saved out 6 strips for binding, and its a decent size out of one jelly roll.

If I could do it over, I would use larger strip sets, 4 instead of 3, to cut down on the busy busy confusion of the pattern, use all the strips up, and buy extra for binding. I'm going to add a border if I can find any of this hiding in some shop somewhere and it'll be a nice smaller lap quilt.

If you like the pattern, Missouri Star Quilt Co has a video tutorial online. The only thing I will say is that the block edges are all on the bias with this pattern... Not sure if its mentioned in the tutorial or not.

Next up, I'm piecing another crib quilt. Bartholo-meow's Reef is a cute little collection with a cute little deep sea diving kitty hiding here and there.

Excited about it!

For now, my hard working quilt tester needs my attention and I have stitching to do!




Until next time, happy quilting!!
Dawn (& Ralph)

Honky Tonk Baby

Here's a few pictures of the quilting process for the Honky Tonk Quilt I've been working on!

I used masking tape to mark out a perfectly straight line across the blocks from corner to corner.  It's like magic.  You stitch right next to the tape and you get very very fancy straight lines. 

SEE?

I went back in again, and added a second set of tape lines and stitched along the opposite diagonal... 

Then I added another line 1/4" away from the center on each side, in both directions, followed by 3 lines spaced at 1/8".  I think it turned out cute!



It shows up remarkably well on the cream colored square.. and it extends into the border - all the way to the very edges



And I loved how it reads across the intersecting corners of different blocks!
 

Next up is the label and binding, and our little cowboy quilt will be ready to go!

 

Happy Quilting!

Dawn

It's a big day!

6 months ago, a fantastic Block of the Month began arriving at my house and I've been stashing the envelopes away and sighing since the end of November.

Just LOOK at it!!




I'll confess I've been afraid of this very very beautiful quilt.

It's not the 100+ little appliquéd pieces in every block or even making sure the right color ends up in the right place, though to say it out loud sounds slightly ridiculous.

Nope.

It's the size of the blocks.

21 inches square.

Nine TWENTY-ONE inch squares have to be cut off a giant heap of unruly yardage.

Yikes.

So. This weekend, I cut a couple of those giant squares and, while I'm afraid they might be ever so slightly shy of the prescribed 21 daunting inches, they're cut.

Today, I got this far:




Isn't it cute!??! I suspect my top left leaf sits a little high... Hopefully it doesn't interfere with all the frilly stuff that lives all around it!

It's the center of block ONE. And here's a crop of the block from the finished quilt off the store website.




-sigh-

I am SO in love with this quilt.

Hope your day is as happy as mine!!